I Can’t Believe I Watched a Whole Season of Gotham

I, Jill Pantozzi, am going to tell you why I did not like the first season of Gotham. You’ve been warned.

[Spoilers for all of Season 1 of Fox’s Gotham.]

Why do I give that warning? Because I don’t want anyone yelling at me for being “too critical” of a thing they love. This is a review. A brutal one. I’m going to be critical. Did you enjoy Gotham? Awesome, that makes me very happy. But this post may not be for you.

Let me get this out of the way first: I’m an enormous Batman fan. While I had concerns for the “mythos” prior to the premiere and for the first few episodes, that concern quickly fell to the wayside. I mean, sure, I still think “Ivy Pepper” is a dumb name, but in the long run, it’s inconsequential to a story. It was clear the creators weren’t too concerned with sticking to any one version of the Batman/Gotham story from the comics, and that’s okay. I’ve enjoyed adaptations in the past that stayed close to the source material and ones that haven’t just as I’ve disliked some of both.

No, what I could never wrap my head around was what kind of show Gotham was trying to be. Was it camp? Was it a gritty crime drama? Was it the tale of one man’s rise to greatness in the face of great adversity? Was it a mob tale? Was it Fox throwing wild ideas at creators they thought would make for good television? The answer is probably a little bit of all of those things, and that’s no way to tell a good story. Gotham seemingly threw a bunch of stuff in a pot that works well in other formats without regard to how they might work in this landscape. And the result was bleak.

Much like Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series (which included items like Tommy guns and sophisticated laser security systems in the same episode), Gotham had a peculiar mix of old and new; but what works in animation doesn’t always work in live-action. In Gotham there were 1950s style clothes (sometimes, but not always) and cameras, but also 2000-ish era cell phones; really swank helicopters, but mental health facilities from the dark ages. I’m not sure of the creative reasoning behind this, but it never made sense to me, and it certainly never made sense in-story.

Character development was practically non-existent on the show. Fish, who should have been a really interesting character, wound up in the same place where she started the season — fighting to be on top. Not even her traumatic kidnapping/eye-popping experience made her any stronger or smarter in the long run. That’s not to say I disliked all the characters; quite the opposite, in fact. I put both Camren Bicondova’s Selina and Robin Lord Taylor’s Oswald on our list of the Best Comic Book TV Characters of 2014. Actually, the actors are what I would praise the highest from Gotham. They had some tough material to work with, after all.

There was a sudden rush of excitement on my part when they brought in Firefly’s Morena Baccarin as Dr. Lesley Thompkins; she might have done the best job of making awkward dialogue, a constant on the series, work. And while I disliked how Alfred was depicted in general, Sean Pertwee had fantastic delivery most of the time. John Doman was a natural Carmine Falcone; and Donal Logue, bless him, was exactly the kind of Harvey I’ve always imagined. Plus, Chris Chalk’s brief but believable appearance as Lucius Fox actually had me excited for Gotham for once!

But not all was good on that front, either. Where’d Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen go? I don’t know! Harvey Dent? Probably tucked away in a corner at City Hall polishing his coin! There was a lot of heavy-handedness on this show, but Edward Nygma might have been one of the worst examples. Stop trying to make Nygman happen, Gotham. Seriously. And the baby villains. I don’t think I ever quite got over the idea, and the series never gave me any reason to like it as we went on. In fact, it gave me several reasons to hate it.

And that finale? Oof. I think even fans of the show would admit that was a rough one. Fish returns to Gotham, miraculously healed of what should probably have been a fatal gunshot wound she took while escaping the Island of Dr. Dollman. She also has a swank new haircut. But okay, let’s forget about that; let’s instead consider how she basically helped Penguin throw her over that way-too-high wall to her doom (presumably, Jada Pinkett Smith basically sealed the character’s fate months ago) after making one of her smartest moves of the whole season — shooting Maroni square in the head. And then there’s little Selina, suddenly deciding to become her gun-toting lap cat. Uh, okay.

Then there was Barbara. She had so much potential, even if it was apparent early on that they weren’t giving her bisexual character anything of substance to work with. It was pretty clear where they were taking her the last few episodes, but after she was subdued by Lesley and Gordon comes home to find them with Falcone, she… is dead? I don’t know, but Gordon clearly doesn’t give a shit. She was either in desperate need of medical attention, or she was dead, but we cut from Jim consoling Lesley to casually chatting with Falcone about his dad on the balcony. There’s absolutely no reaction from him to Barbara’s fate; but then again, “no reaction” was par for the course for most of Gordon’s dealings this season. I believe he had two switches — stoic good guy and furious loose cannon.

I’m sad I didn’t like Gotham; it would have been nice to have another Bat-show on TV to watch besides Arrow. But I’m also unapologetic about my dislike of it. I’m still glad others enjoy it, even if I can’t comprehend how or why; I can just honestly say after 22 episodes that it’s not for me. And I should add here that I didn’t hate-watch the show; I kept watching because I genuinely felt it would find its footing eventually. For me, it never did.

Gotham may wind up a completely different show in season 2, but I won’t be there to find out. I’ll keep up with what’s happening out of curiosity, but I’ve already devoted way too much of my life to something I dislike just because I love Batman.

Sorry, Batman.

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Jill Pantozzi

Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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