Gotham City is dark. It has always been dark, and “Gotham,” Fox’s new drama that has basically been billed as Gotham City before Batman, is not about to lighten it up. The pilot opens with a sequence of what can only be a young Catwoman climbing about and eventually witnessing that most heinous of crimes, the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Soon the future commissioner James Gordon and his corrupt partner Harvey Bullock are on the case. As Bullock says, “This isn’t a job for nice people.”
This pretty much sums up “Gotham.” It is not a show about nice people. Catwoman, obviously, is a thief. A little less than halfway through the pilot, the detectives show up at the door of the Pepper household, where a young Poison Ivy opens the door and warns our heroes about her clearly abusive father. Pepper and the cops fight, and this ends in Pepper’s death. Gordon finds that Pepper was framed and, hero that he is, takes steps to remedy this situation—a task that takes the rest of the episode. This is predictably difficult, and “Gotham” quickly asserts itself as a spiral of betrayals, from the cops of the Major Crimes Unit to the gangsters of the Falcone family.
The most interesting thing about “Gotham” is that it does not totally steep itself in the Batman mythos. Bruce Wayne and (an unnecessarily abrasive) Alfred Pennyworth have minor roles, but the episode really plays out as a cop drama. Much like an episode of “NCIS,” “Gotham” is about a good cop in a bad-cop town and his quest to bring a murderer to justice. This is an admirable quality in a show centered around Batman culture. The fact that the villains Gordon goes up against eventually become part of Batman’s menagerie of enemies seems almost incidental. Just because The Riddler gives Gordon and Bullock their crime scene results does not make the results more sinister (even though he tries to give the information to them in riddles). The Penguin gives information to the police, but that does not make the information more or less helpful. The Dark Knight’s nemeses are around, but not all-encompassing. “Gotham” even adds an original character, Jada Pinkett Smith’s crime boss Fish Mooney, into the mix.
However, while “Gotham” focuses on just being a crime show, it can’t help but throw a little Batmania in to spice things up. I mean, when you are operating within a universe as legendary as Gotham City, it would be a crime not to use your source material. As mentioned above, a fair amount of regular characters from the many Batman sagas have already been given roles, some more important than others (The Penguin and Carmine Falcone seem to be the main antagonists thus far).
The problem is that the show struggles with subtly introducing these characters. If I did not know any better, after watching “Gotham” I would probably say that Oswald Cobblepot’s real name was just Penguin, not an embarrassing pet name given to him by his fellow gangsters. And if the word “riddle” had been repeated just one more time in Edward Nigma’s scene, I may have actually vomited. The pilot was written for people who have little idea of the content of Batman’s universe, but it does not seem to me that those types of people are the ones who were excited for “Gotham.”
Overall, “Gotham” exhibits a poise that I certainly did not expect from it. Much like any pilot, it has its struggles, but I am tentatively excited to see where it goes and whether or not it can overcome the mantle of Gotham City to become a wholly original product.
Hate “Gotham” and Miss “Smallville”? Let Jake know at smasal@wisc.edu.
