With gang war tearing apart the streets
of Gotham City, Gordon finds himself desperately trying to hold the
city together against ever increasing odds. Meanwhile Dr Thompkins is
trying to council Barbara after her ordeal with the Ogre, but is her
grief everything it appears to be? Away from the chaos of the city,
Bruce tears apart his father’s office in search of the secret he
took to the grave.
So this episode of ‘Gotham’ is a
mixture of the best and worst the show has been so far. On one hand
we have the excellent gang war, which pits the various crime bosses
in direct combat and on the other we have the somewhat boring
conversation scenes with Barbara and Dr Thompkins.
To start with the good points, the gang
war is brilliantly handled. The return of Mooney brings a bit of the
old ‘Gotham’ energy back to the show. Maroni, Falcone, Penguin
and Fish are all brilliantly played and to have them share scenes
is great. During the chaos of their meeting various factions take
their turn at the top and it is genuinely unclear who will become the
king of Gotham, well at least until the end. We have a fight scene to
the death between Penguin and Fish, but with Fish being a show
created villain and with The Penguin being The Penguin, it is pretty
clear who will come out on top.
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"King of Gotham"?...More like EMPEROR.....amiright? |
A little bit more time would have been
nice to establish the actual chaos in the city but letting the cast
work their magic is certainly not something I would want to cut down.
If only more of the episode could have been spent with the gang war
and not with the Jim Gordon fan club coffee morning…
The scenes with Barbara and Leslie do
not work that well. ‘Gotham’ has an issue, well it has a lot, but
it particularly has an issue with dramatic irony. With dramatic irony
the audience is made aware of a situation that the characters of the
show are unaware of, this helps to build tension. ‘Gotham’
creates these situations but completely forgets that they should be
building tension. For example, Barbara asks Dr Thompkins for private
counselling but we as the audience assume this is to break her and
Gordon up. Therefore we approach her mind games with Thompkins with
relatively low stakes.
As it is later revealed, she was using
the meeting as an opportunity to kill Thompkins.
We did not know that
until the final moment, so no tension was built, no pay off prepared.
If we had known Barbara’s plan from the start these scenes would
have added a lot to the episode. They would have been a nice parallel
with the situation in Gotham with the gang tension waiting to boil
over. These scenes feel slow and low stakes when they could have been
very tense. It’s particularly weird because the reveal that Barbara
is insane should have been shocking. As it was we established that
she had gone crazy, just not how crazy, so it really felt
anti-climactic.
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Got that audition for 'The Cable Guy 2' in the bag! |
The rest of the episode is mostly spent
with Bruce searching his father’s office for the Batcave. Again
‘Gotham’ acts as if nobody watching knows anything about Batman
so they act like the reveal will be surprising. In some ways this fresh attitude is
a strength as they are willing to do new things with the characters
but on the other we know The Penguin won’t die and we know that The
Batcave is going to be hidden in that office.
What’s left of the episode is spent
with Nygma as he goes even more insane. These scenes play out like a
student psycho drama, complete with echoing voices and video to show
insanity... Oh man, is it possible that the Riddler may become the
Riddler? Wow!
So does ‘Gotham’ season 1 end on a
bang or a whimper? Well both really. ‘All Happy Families are Alike’
may be the end for ‘Gotham’ creatively. The original pitch of a
show focussing on the crime families of Gotham City is done and
buried. From now on the city is being run by The Penguin and Season 2
is promising a whole load of new heroes and villains...
Whatever the future may bring to
‘Gotham’ this episode was really entertaining. It had some
moments that didn’t work so well but those that did, such as the
John Woo-esque hospital shootout, worked really well. I really hope
that for season 2 they don’t turn the show into a psycho of the
week crime procedural but I don’t hold out much hope. I have felt
increasingly during this season that the good moments focussing on
characters and intrigue were created accidentally while attempting to
make a PG 13 version of the Adam West 1960’s Batman show. Hopefully
with time to prepare the second season will avoid some of these
creative pitfalls and at least retain part of what made the original
pitch so interesting…. yeah I don’t think it will either but I
intend to keep watching so it must be doing something right!
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