Road to the Bat

Gotham

 

The DC comic book corporation has always played second fiddle to its competitor Marvel Comics. Though, with one of DC’s less than popular franchises (Green Arrow) making splashes on TV with the CW show Arrow, anything DC or comic book related have become a hot commodity. DC has decided to expand the DC universe on the small screen. The Flash is premiering on the CW October 8^th and Constantine (yes that is a DC property) is premiering on NBC October 25^th; so Fox has decided to get in on the action and grab a DC franchise of themselves. However, they grabbed one of the most popular franchises in the world, the Batman franchise.

Gotham is set many years before Bruce Wayne dons the mantle of Batman and the series starts with that catalytic event of Bruce’s parents being murdered. Assigned the horrific case are rookie detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie Southland) and his seasoned partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue Sons of Anarchy). Gordon investigates the case to its conclusion, but comes to find out that the “conclusion” isn’t what it seems.

This premiere episode is packed full of Batman characters in their younger state. People like Oswald Cobblepot aka “The Penguin”, Edward Nygma aka “The Riddler”, and prepubescent Selina Kyle aka Catwoman just to name a few and yes this is a few. The audience is introduced to a lot of people in this first episode and I think this is a good and bad thing. The good part of this is for die hard Batman fans, like myself, it is cool to see these characters on screen and watch them evolve. The bad is for fair-weather fans, who don’t necessarily know these people have a lot of information to take in with just the first episode. I thought that it might have been better to slowly introduce characters for those new or fair-weather fans.

The acting in this episode was superb from the entire cast. Hard to pinpoint stand outs because everyone was great, so I will stick to what I think is the main three cast members. Ben McKenzie brings an inner fire to Gordon not seen on screen before. He is the rookie when it comes to Gotham and McKenzie shows us that passion to do good in a very corrupt city. Donal Logue steels nearly every scene he is in. Logue’s Bullock is everything that Batman fans have grown to love about the character, gruff and very pessimistic. Logue portrays Bullock as a man with a conscience, but to beaten down by the city to fight any harder and does what he needs to do to survive Gotham.  Robin Lord Taylor (The Walking Dead) plays a young Oswald Cobblepot before he becomes known as The Penguin. Taylor teeters back and forth with being a sadistic killer and a frightened young man way out of his league among the organized crime families. Taylor does this so well that it made me very excited to see where they take his character. So looking back to my earlier post, On The Dark Streets, I noticed that a couple characters from my list made it to the show. I do still hope that the others make it in some form.  So with what I know from news/internet rumors and what was shown already I have decided to make a few bold predictions:

1)      According to multiple reports, this first season of Gotham will revolve around Cobblepot. My prediction is that Oswald will rise among the crime families, HOWEVER, I don’t think he will rise to the power Batman fans know him to have. I think he will still struggle to earn the respect he feels he deserves.

2)      Creator Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist) said they created the Jada Pinkett-Smith character Fish Mooney just for the show. My prediction is that she doesn’t last out the first season.  I believe she will be a casualty of Cobblepot’s rise to power.

3)      Without saying a word in the first episode, audiences were shown a young Selina Kyle played by Camren Bicondova. I predict that she becomes a very important character as the season goes on. She does witness the Wayne murders, so this may be the reason for her importance.

4)      With Selina Kyle’s screen time on the rise, I predict that young Bruce will see his screen time dwindle. Unless Gordon becomes friends with Alfred, I don’t see any reason on why Gordon will keep going back to Wayne Manor.

This was a great start to what I hope to be a great show. I do hope that Gotham City will become more of a character as well, but Mr. Heller has given this Batman fan a reason to tune into Fox on Monday nights.

 

The Verdict: Worth Your Time