As Jack Napier once pointed out in Tim Burton’s Batman, when it comes to Gotham, “Decent people shouldn’t live here. They’d be happier someplace else.” The premiere of Fox’s new drama Gotham goes a long way to show why that’s the case. Gotham is not a nice place, and it’s certainly not a place for “nice guys” like Jim Gordon, a fresh new face on the Gotham police force. He believes in what’s right. He believes in good. He sees the world in terms of black and white; good guys and bad guys. Gotham, however, is not a place that makes those kinds of distinctions easy. Indeed, at times it’s less of an issue of good guys and bad guys than it is of bad guys and worse guys. Can a genuinely good guy like Jim Gordon survive uncorrupted in a place like Gotham? Comic fans already know the answer, but it’s not a story that’s been seen on screen before, and thus far, Gotham makes it look like it might be a story worth telling.
Of course, it’s always hard to get a feel for where a new show might go just from the pilot. After all, there’s a lot of introductions and world building that needs to take place in that first episode, which can make things rather busy. Gotham certainly falls prey to this shortcoming as it has many characters to introduce and plenty of work to do in establishing a Gotham that has yet to hear of Batman. It also has a unique problem in that for many of these characters, fans already know what will happen to them and what their fate will be, so there’s a difficult balance to maintain in doing unexpected things with them while still hinting at their future. Unfortunately, Gotham takes the less subtle route, with people making penguin remarks at Oswald Cobblepot and someone asks Edward Nigma not to speak in riddles. Yeah, we get it, these are future big-bads that Batman will face someday, but I don’t need quite so many blatant references to their future monikers. For fans, it’s enough just to hear their names and see these characters in new situations. For those who aren’t fans, I imagine it would be fun to later on find out, “Oh, he’s that guy?!” So why spoil any of that fun by being so obvious?
As for the main characters, Ben Mckienze plays a fine Jim Gordon. He has a bit more of an edge, and he’s somewhat more serious and dour than other versions of him, but it works for this show. In addition, I do like him being more physical and smart. Often in the comics and animated shows, Gordon is always two steps behind the World’s Greatest Detective, which makes him look not so smart. However, since Batman isn’t on the scene yet, it’s fun to see that Gordon has a keen, sharp, deductive mind of his own. Donal Logue could steal the show as Detective Harvey Bullock, which is something the character wouldn’t be above doing. Stealing, that is. Bullock is the cop who’s been in Gotham long enough to know how things work, knows not to rock the boat, and long ago gave up on the ideal of “doing the right thing.” For now, he just wants to survive. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for us), he’s been saddled with the new guy, do-gooder cop, and former war hero idealist Jim Gordon as his partner. The dynamic between these two is where the core of this show needs to develop, as it’s the pilot’s strongest, most entertaining element. Jada Pinkett Smith also makes a strong impression as the gang boss Fish Mooney, a new character made for this show, but one that is strong enough that I can see her becoming a part of the Batman overall mythos.
Along with all the character introductions, there’s also a lot happening in this episode.
The Wayne’s are murdered, Gordon meets Bruce Wayne for the first time, we get short glimpses of a very different Alfred Pennyworth, we learn just how much organized crime and corruption there is in Gotham, we learn of certain characters motivations, and Jim Gordon discovers that thriving in Gotham as a “good guy” may not be as easy to do as he thought. As Bullock explains to him, sometimes you have to do a bad thing in order to do a good thing. Whew, is that a loaded statement! Can Gordon kill a man in cold blood at the bequest of a crime lord – a very bad thing for a good cop – just to protect the ones he loves from a bunch of very bad things? Plus, taking out a future super-villain (not that Gordon knows that future) could help save a lot of pain and destruction, so that’s a good thing, right? But is it true that bad things can help lead to good things? Can negatives lead to a positive? Can evil beget good? Is doing the right thing, the good thing, worth doing if it will just lead to a whole lot of bad coming down on the one who does what is right? These are tough, morally complex questions; ones that I hope are explored in-depth as Jim Gordon’s journey through Gotham evolves.
However, in the meantime, I can’t help but think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when it comes to finding an answer to these questions. Jesus knew that doing the right thing, the good thing, was going to lead to a whole lot of bad for him; suffering, pain, beating, torture, and eventually death. However, he also knew that the right thing would lead to a whole lot of good for rest of the world. And when he was offered a chance to do the bad thing, and perhaps take a different path in doing a good thing when he was tempted in the desert, he knew that although that bad thing might have given him a chance to do some good, that good wouldn’t ever have been good enough, and certainly not as good as doing the right thing. Therefore, Jesus chose to suffer, die, and rise from the grave in order to save the world. He could have avoided that. He could have taken the Devil’s offer to rule the world and perhaps do a lot of good that way. But that wouldn’t have been enough to save this world from sin, and so Jesus did the right thing, because only that could lead to true good. It wasn’t an easy choice, and sometimes in the real world, just like in Gotham, that choice never is.
Overall, it’s not a bad start for Gotham, but while I enjoyed the debut, it never fully pulled me in quite the way I was expecting. It’s off to a better start than Agents of Shield, but there’s still a lot of work left for this show to do in order to prove it’s worth coming back to week after week once the initial curiosity factor has faded. How things will balance between Jim Gordon’s adventure’s in Gotham, the development of the future super-villains, and the development of one Bruce Wayne into a future vigilante is going to be tough to carry forward, but if the characters are engaging enough, like with Gordon and Bullock, this could be a really good show despite basically being Batman Begins…Again.
