Gotham, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot
A while back, Gotham ended. And I reviewed the series as it ended, having followed it from beginning to its end, probably the only show that I cover that I can safely say that I did so. And sure, the Netflix shows are one thing, but they feel different compared to covering a weekly TV show, y'know? And I went back and rewatched this first episode of Gotham, because I never actually reviewed the first episode of Gotham when I started blogging all the way back in 2014. And just to make that list of episodes on my DC Comics TV show tab be full, I decide to talk about my impressions about this first episode.
And... hoo boy, the first episode of Gotham really wasn't all that, huh? Almost made me remember why I almost didn't think to continue this show. One of my biggest pet peeves about superhero comic book adaptations -- or any adaptation of anything originally aimed at children -- is when the people in charge of the adaptation themselves feel almost ashamed of the source material. So we get shows like the first season of Arrow, grimdarkifying a cheerful happy Robin Hood into an emo vigilante. Or the angry, psychotic, kill-happy version of Batman in Batman v. Superman whose basis from the comics is taken from a 'bad future' standalone series. Or, well, shows like Gotham and Smallville, where they are, respectively, Batman and Superman shows without Batman and Superman. And where Smallville was still pretty upbeat. Gotham, of course, was all gothic and dark and stuff.
And it focuses not on Bruce Wayne, who was just a kid, but on James Gordon. He's got no mustache, he's the only good cop in the city, and he has to deal with all of the nonsense happening in Gotham City without Batman. And... and the problem with a prequel show like this is that you kind of expect Batman's classic villains to show up... but they can't be dealt with properly because they have to be around when Bruce becomes Batman, right? And while the pilot episode doesn't have to deal with that, we sort of get to see a bunch of interesting characters, these proto-Batman-villains getting shown to us in the time before they became supervillains.
And so we have pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle slinking on a rooftop as she sees the iconic Thomas and Martha Wayne murder. We get Poison Ivy Ivy Pepper as the young plant-loving daughter of some dude framed for the Waynes' death, and pre-Riddler Edward Nygma as the riddle-happy GCPD forensics expert. And all of these are basically quickly breezed through since it's not until the later episodes that we really explore them, although perhaps it's a bit too much to just go 'ho ho hey look, it's Riddler, get it? It's the Riddler, from all those other comics and TV shows, but he's not the Riddler yet but he asks riddles'.
Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. proto-Penguin, has the biggest role here, stuck as the attendant of the show-original Fish Mooney, before getting shot and tossed into the river, and then rising up, killing some dude and stealing his sandwich in the most hammy way ever. Basically a huge chunk of the episode deals with the gangsters of Gotham, the villains before psychotic clowns and men with ice guns prowl the streets of Gotham. We've got some familiar names like the Godfather-expy Carmine Falcone, a crime boss with a code of moral, who clearly have the cops in his pocket. Gotham-original Fish Mooney is a simultaneously irritating but also campy character that was obviously set up as a 'starter villain' that the show is going to have free rein to kill off... which, of course, to anyone reading this after watching even the first couple of seasons... yeah, that sure didn't happen. Gordon's partner, Harvey Bullock, is basically no better than a mob enforcer-slash-executioner... but is clearly conflicted about it, and the other cops with names (Sarah Essen, Crispus Allen and Renee Montoya) are glorified cameos. Bullock's writing is easily the thing that the show's pilot doesn't have a good handle on at this point, really being inconsistent on writing him as an abrasive tit or someone who's actually scared, and it's not until later episodes in the first season that Donal Logue would really settle into the role.
The script is still pretty awkward, really, and the jumping focus of trying to show off the pre-Batman Gotham City and trying to tell a regular cop-in-a-shithole-city story with James Gordon isn't well-balanced. The show itself also doesn't quite have a proper tune, going from some campiness on Fish and Oswald's part, and something more grounded and gritty when it comes to the cops. And I don't think Gotham actually gets this balance down until they decided that if they were going to do an adaptation of Gotham City, they better do it right and make things as loony as possible. And... and I really don't think that this pilot really is all that impressive, I really don't. Honestly, it was a pilot that actually turned me off from watching the show. There's a lot of clunky exposition, but for the most part the pilot is basically just there to set up the mood... which it does so somewhat successfully.
Ultimately, it's not the most impressive first episode, mostly because of the real mismatch in terms of trying to juggle various different tones that the Batman franchise itself has vacillated through the past 80 years. Still... considering that I really did like the five seasons that came next, it's sure interesting to look back and realize that the original pilot really wasn't that impressive.
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