A dangerous new drug has hit the
streets of Gotham. A man with a mangled ear is handing out this new
drug, Viper, to the unfortunates living in the slums of Gotham. When
inhaled, Viper gives those who take it super strength but kills them
within a few hours. Who is manufacturing Viper and why is it being
given away for free? It’s up to Gordon and Bullock to figure out
these mysteries and stop the ever increasing death toll.
So yeah, I’d give a spoiler warning
but the big twist of this episode is obvious from about thirty
seconds in. A junkie is given a vial of green liquid that immediately
gives him super strength. When the episode eventually reveals that
Viper is an early form of Bane’s Venom it seems somewhat
anti-climactic.
One of the frequent issues with Gotham
is the intended audience, or audiences, it wants to reach. Gotham has
a bizarre split between trying to be a crime procedural, such as the
wire and trying to be a superhero show like Smallville. This episode
in particular really suffers from attempting to reach these two
completely different audiences. As I’ve said previously 'Gotham' is
at its best when it is dealing with morally grey themes, when it is
being subtle. Subtlety and super strength do not play well together.
For example, one scene of this episode
features Maroni threatening Gordon. The Penguin has been beaten by
Maroni in order to gain the truth about his past. Gordon is kidnapped
to corroborate this story. This sequence is tense as Gordon is made
aware that if his story and the Penguin’s do not match, they will
both die. Gordon has no idea what Penguin has said so he is forced to
tell the absolute truth, the truth that may still get him killed if
it differs from the ‘truth’ that the penguin has given Maroni
earlier.
This scene is brilliant. It is a really
strong idea and it is very well executed. What makes this scene so
successful is the grittiness of it, the real world menace. Later on
we get a scene where an old man gives a supervillain speech before
taking Viper and destroying his Zimmer frame…
To say 'Gotham' has a problem with
inconsistent tone would be somewhat of an understatement. I’m not
saying that Batman has to be gritty to be successful. The success of
Batman in a variety of tonally different productions has shown that
the universe is very adaptable. That being said the 1960’s Batman
television show never had a scene where a screaming man was burned
alive.
The abrupt tonal shifts are only one of
the problems in this episode. The script in general seems to barely
hold together. If a stranger handed you a green vial that simply said
“Breath Me” on the side, what would you do? Gotham attempts to
explain that the people who chose to take it are desperate junkies
but this justification doesn’t really work for me. The people
taking it have no idea of what it might be; they don’t even know
that it’s a drug. The bottle could be filled with toilet cleaner
for all they know and yet they immediately use it? I appreciate that
an effort has been made to show the desperate nature of the
downtrodden in Gotham but this still seems pretty unbelievable.
The reasoning behind why the villain is
handing out the drug is also really badly explained. He is trying to
stop a drugs company doing something unethical by killing innocent
people. Suggesting a character is insane does not automatically
justify them doing stupid things. Part of what makes insanity a
threatening concept is the alternate skewed versions of reality it
creates in the subject.
Irrational behaviour is completely
rational to the person doing it. As a writer it is your job to
present the motivation, however strange, of your characters. Or you
can do what they actually did in the episode and just have Jim Gordon
loudly point out that the motivation of the villain doesn’t make
sense and hope that the audience will just accept it. Jim Gordon has
accepted that the world doesn’t make sense so who are you to argue?
This over-reliance on universal chaos
and insanity is becoming a worrying element of modern writing. Many
writers try and inject reality into their work by adding an element
of random spontaneity to it. Very little of what happens in the world
is truly unexplainable however; most things happen due to some level
of logical progression, even if that logical progression is hard to
fathom.
Most writers simply use chaos to fill
plots holes. They take the attitude that the real world isn’t a
well edited narrative so a realistic depiction of the world shouldn’t
feature traditional narrative elements. The primary issue with this is that the
human mind is preconditioned to find narrative in the world around
us. We take events that happen around us and form them into a logical
sequence to allow us to understand them. Good and Bad luck are
entirely attributed to this view of the world, with good and bad
events bound to eventually follow unconnected triggers.
We as an audience expect things to make
sense, for them to be explained. We don’t have to like what
happened or how it happened but we do need to understand why it
happened. This explanation doesn’t have to be direct and in depth;
Karma can be enough of a driving force to create a narrative! All you
have to do to give a villain basic motivation is make them evil,
that’s fine. Once you start suggesting that somebody is insane you
open yourself up to a lot of questions that need to be answered. If
you don’t answer these questions your writing immediately loses any
sense of reality you attempted to add.
So, rant over, what is good about this
episode? Surprisingly even with the above complaints Gotham remains
an enjoyable show. The cast remain fantastic and it’s nice to see
an ensemble show with no obvious weak links performance wise. Sean
Pertwee is becoming one of Gotham’s best characters in the form of
Alfred. It’s nice to see Alfred realise that he has to enter
Bruce’s world in order to watch over him. For all the issues that
Gotham has in terms of tone it manages mood brilliantly. The universe
of Gotham is feeling increasingly dark and unstable as the series
progresses.
Don’t let the
huge negative to positive ratio let you think I didn’t enjoy this
episode. The reason I rant about the flaws in Gotham is because it
has the potential to be a truly great show and keeps making stupid mistakes
that hold it back. Hopefully future episodes will be more consistent
but even ‘bad’ Gotham is still pretty good.
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