Josiah Lucas

I think Gotham mostly failed at brining to life the story of Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon and all of Batman’s villains. I’ll start with the positives first, Gotham does have some really powerful moments especially in the first episode such as Jim Gordon coming into a corrupt police department and a crumbling city with a purpose to abide by the laws and follow his morals while putting back the pieces to a shattered city. I also liked (in season 1 and the opening of season 2) the way Bruce Wayne uncovers his morals to soon become the cape crusader he is destined to be and sticking with those morals and the lessons Alfred teaches him. Also the relationship between Bruce and Selina (cat woman) was quite strong at first (in later seasons it got pretty stupid). The first season had the best take off with the villains, the scripting was much better than later seasons and the villains were fleshed out really well with some great acting (especially by Jerome Valeska and the Riddler). Now to the negatives, the show was constantly dark, violent and gory with barely any nice moments to flesh out the characters and make the audience connect with the characters (if an audience is connected with the characters then they care for them, the nice moments in a dark show connect the audience with the characters). The villains and their origins started off well but soon it felt they developed too quickly making it feel like the creators of the show ran out of ideas and so to keep the show “interesting” kill the villains off and revive them in silly ways (in contrast to this it is accurate with the comics but this kind of constant ‘death revival’ stuff is not fit for the big screen), in simple form the villains just became rushed. I think the deaths in the show were also silly, wacky and unrealistic making the show seem just plain stupid, gun fights, fist fights and knife fights are the kind of stuff for a show like this not people getting squashed by wrecking balls and made into meat pies. Now I understand Gotham is supposed to be dark as it is before Batman during Gotham’s falling point (this is why the people of Gotham need Batman), but all this gore and constant darkness makes the show dull, repetitive and at some points boring. I could say more about this show (both positives and negatives) but these are my major points, overall this show can get dull and silly but it does have some really powerful moments. I enjoy this show and really like it but from a critical perspective it is not a very good show, I would only watch it if you are a comic book fan and know lots about Batman and his villains.