[Ever since their LOST rewatch, James and Scott Williams have been talking about doing another dialogue review of a TV show. With Fox’s Gotham starting this week, as well as C!TB’s proud and recent history of doing this with comic book-inspired TV shows, they decided to take a look at the pilot episode of this new show and evaluate what it does right, where it slips and where it might go from here.]

James: Good timing! This mediocre season premiere of Modern Family just ended

Scott: I missed that, although I did check out Black-ish. It… is pretty much exactly the type of show that should be following Modern Family.

James: I’ve heard the pilot isn’t full of laughs, but it’s got a really solid concept and sense of self that is giving people a lot of hope. And, I mean, pilots are usually the worst episode of a comedy series

Scott: Yeah, it has real pilot syndrome, but it does get a certain viewpoint and actually manages to get at some interesting issues surrounding identity in modern America.

Scott: But enough about that.

James: True enough! We know why we’re here: A CASTMEMBER FROM THE OC. Also, something about DC Comics

Scott: I came for Donal Logue.

James: We are, of course, talking about the series premiere of GOTHAM, Mondays on Fox.

Scott: I was really not planning on watching this… I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this was, if not a BAD idea for a show, then kind of a misguided one. You do “Superman without Superman” and you still have a teenager with powers fighting cool villains. You do “Batman without Batman” and you’ve got… a really mopey kid.

James: That’s as good a place as any to start it. I have been cautiously interested in this series, almost entirely because of the involvement of Ben McKenzie, but I’d be lying if I said the concept itself didn’t inspire a lot of trepidation.

Scott: Based on nothing but the title and “Young Jim Gordon,” I was slightly interested. Then they said, “Oh, Penguin’s in there. And maybe the Riddler. And Catwoman, but she’s a kid, obviously.” And that pushed me further and further away.

James: Here’s the thing: Smallville might have outlived its usefulness by a few seasons, but “Superman before he was Superman” is an interesting idea with roots all the way back to the Silver Age of comics and any number of rebooted Superman origin stories since. “Gotham without Batman” is similarly tempting, because it’s basically “police procedural” and “billion dollar franchise,” and with series like Gotham Central, it’s been done really well. The difference between Gotham Central and Gotham, however, is that the cops in Gotham Central exist AROUND Batman, but he’s still there. Gotham is about the city and characters BEFORE Batman shows up, and in addition to some weird scenes - more on those later - it also just sets up a weird situation where the heroes of the city basically HAVE to lose, in the end. The Gotham pilot ends with Detective Jim Gordon telling Batman the Kid that he’s gonna clean up this city… but we know that’s not going to happen. The city HAS to get worse, or at least not change, or else there’s no reason for Batman. The premise is fundamentally nihilistic in a way that’s hard to ignore. Then you add in a lot of the winks to who the characters will become, and at times the pilot is almost challenging you not to care because it’s basically saying, “Hey, after the series ends, this is gonna get really interesting.”

Scott: It’s a show built fundamentally around what’s NOT in it, which requires you to keep a mental checklist of everything you know about the later status quo. The prequel curse.

James: It doesn’t help that a lot of those winks are really clumsy, and one of them is the literal first scene of the show, either. The episode features a lot of slightly-too-cute references and unnecessary coincidences, and the first of them is that Baby Catwoman witnesses Batman the Kid’s origin story. Never mind that for a show whose producers have gone to great lengths to say it’s not about Batman, the literal first scene is Batman’s origin story. Again: it’s CHALLENGING you not to care. And that’s unfortunate, because there’s actually some pretty good stuff in this episode.

Scott: The thought that I kept having was that if you take out all the stuff that has to do with Batman, you wind up with a perfectly acceptable - if unremarkable - show about corrupt cops and the mob.

James: Admittedly, one with some good performances and sets, which are the parts of the episode I enjoyed. Like, most of the actors playing “regular” people and not future Arkham Asylum residents do really good jobs.

Scott: The premise of the episode is that the Waynes’ murder was orchestrated by Carmine Falcone (John Doman here, sadly not Tom Wilkinson) which begets a coverup that his underling Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) executes by playing the corrupt Detective Harvey Bullock (Logue) into arresting - in fact, executing - the wrong man. Except that his new partner Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is the only honest cop in Gotham.

I didn’t mind showing the origin at the beginning, if that was the impetus for Gordon’s journey through the episode and ultimately the series. It does change the origin in ways that might not sit well with, for instance, Chris Sims. Who, it should be noted, thinks more about Batman than I do about people I know in real life.

James: I’m generally not a stickler for shows or movies maintaining elements of comics continuity. For one, WHICH continuity? Second, I like the idea of being surprised, and as someone who’s read or seen almost all of the modern Batman origins, the idea of seeing something new IS interesting. I just want it to be GOOD, and piling on a lot of winking coincidences is something that’s really dangerous. I mean, is it really NECESSARY to have Teen Catwoman basically stalking Batman the Kid? What does it add to the story? To me - and admittedly, it’s just been one episode and they could pull it off in the execution - it mostly just says, “Get it? Eh? Eh? Can you see us winking?”

And like you said, behind that winking is a procedural, and it’s one that could be pretty good just on the strength of the actors alone. Logue and Pinkett Smith for me are the standouts in the episode. Pinkett brings a real mercurial menace to the character of Fish, and Logue manages to have you not completely hate the dirtiest cop in Gotham. My favourite iteration of Harvey Bullock actually isn’t the corrupt cop from Year One or Batman Begins, who’s entirely without redeeming qualities. I was always a fan of the version in Batman: The Animated Series, who might be sloppy and lackadaisical and jealous and petty, but is ultimately a human being with complicated feelings you can get behind. There’s some of that in the Gotham pilot, even if the switch from hating Gordon to kind of liking him is a little abrupt.

Scott: Logue is a charming scumbag in this, and he may be the show’s ace-in-the-hole. Regular producedurals don’t get to play their characters as broadly as this - verisimilitude has been the trend in TV drama forever now - but the shameless corrupt drunk Bullock, set against the rigid-beyond-question performance of McKenzie as Gordon (and I mean that in a good way) makes for a good double act. I really warmed to the duo over the course of an hour.

James: Logue is basically playing the DC Comics version of his character from Terriers, which I am 100% okay with.

Scott: Even if Bullock goes from trying to get Gordon reassigned to saying “I like you, I don’t want anything bad to happen to you” over the course of one case. But, hey.

James: It’s abrupt, to be sure. It’s a switch that mostly works, inasmuch as it does, based on the strength of the two actors’ rapport. And hey, I might be a mark for any non-Mischa-Barton OC alumnus, but I really did buy McKenzie’s sincerity as Gordon here. He’s not a pie-in-the-sky naive rookie, but someone who just doesn’t want to put up with the garbage that’s surrounding him.

Scott: He plays him just on the right side of jaded.

James: Which really befits a guy who’s had combat experience in the armed forces. He’s seen some shit.

Scott: It’s far from the most exciting performance in the show, but his job is to be the eye of the storm that is Gotham, and it does work.

James: Yeah, those characterizations are really good, even if not revolutionary. Even characters like Renee Montoya (Victoria Cartagena), Crispus Allen (Andrew Stewart-Jones) and Alfred (Sean Pertwee) are pretty realistic and balanced. Pertwee gets one of my favourite little details of the episode, when he’s taking Batman the Kid away from the crime scene where his parents were killed and gives him these quiet little military orders to keep his eyes up and forward, and not to look down. It’s fatherly, strict but also loving - he’s trying to keep a traumatized kid from looking at the corpses of his parents. It tells us more about Alfred than almost any other line of dialogue in the episode does about any other character, largely because it’s more showing than it is telling. And brother, does this episode have an issue with telling.

Scott: It’s the most shouty take on Alfred I’ve ever seen. Although, we rarely see that much of Alfred with young Master Bruce. Different from the doddering, elegant Michael Gough or the compassionate, yet deep-behind-the-eyes Michael Caine. I’m not sure I like it, but I could buy into it.

James: It’s very consistent with some of the modern iterations of Alfred as a rougher military man, and in particular with the representation in the animated series Beware the Batman. I’d disagree about the “shouty” descriptor, more in favour of calling it “brusque.” Because it’s actually some of the quietest and most subtle dialogue in the show. Compared to Gordon shouting at Bullock, calling him a cynic, it’s almost Shakespearean.

Scott: Brusque is a good word.

James: The show’s approach to dialogue reminds me a lot of that episode of Futurama, “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings,” where the Robot Devil gets upset about how you can’t just go around announcing every thought and feeling you have. This is an episode that refuses to let anything be subtext. I don’t think there’s a single non-Alfred speaking character that has a thought they don’t announce to the camera. A lot of the episode’s faults lie squarely with the dialogue of showrunner Bruno Heller, who I’m not sure has ever heard a real live human speak before.

Scott: Yeah. Donal Logue makes it work because he gets to grumble all his dialogue, but pretty much everything the Penguin says, for instance…

James: A couple lines that really stuck out like sore thumbs to me were instances where characters speak in just really bizarre, stilted ways. The suspect in the Wayne murders, for example, announces, “I did nothing!” which is how an extra on Rome might speak, not a member of the working class in what is basically 1980s New York.

Scott: I had to stifle a laugh every time a character said “Shiny shoes.” Shiny shoes! Mario Pepper didn’t own shiny shoes!

James: The bit about nothing is something that gets repeated by ANOTHER character later. It just sounds wrong being spoken by a real live person, and it’s something that should have been caught in a table read. And oh man, the goddamn “shiny shoes” line. It’s like Heller really wanted to make sure that nobody missed out on the importance of the line Batman the Kid says when he describes his parents’ killer, which ends up sounding really condescending coming from the mouth of a grown man and not a kid in shock. McKenzie does his level best with it, but there’s only so much polishing of bad dialogue that an actor can do without just rewriting it entirely. Which is unfortunate, because a lot of the cast is doing a pretty good job. The show does a genuinely good job at making me interested in the cops and the mob bosses.

Scott: There are all these little levels of conflict: Bullock and Montoya, Bullock and Gordon, Gordon and Fish, Penguin and Fish, Falcone and Fish… They’re interesting. They might make for a decent show!

James: There’s a really nice bit of characterization when Gordon is chasing down Mario Pepper - which nobody has ever or will ever be named in real life - and he threatens to shoot Mario if he keeps running. Mario doesn’t stop, and Gordon doesn’t shoot. It’s a nice little detail that shows Gordon as a good dude, someone who doesn’t kill unless he absolutely has to. It’s integral for the series to work that we note that difference between him and Bullock, whose weakness is shown by his willingness to kill.

Scott: Totally. I noticed that moment, as well as the later one with the Penguin, and I thought “Yes, there’s Jim Gordon.”

James: Look at their final scene together in the episode, where after being rescued from being killed by Fish Mooney, Bullock is given an ultimatum by Falcone: Gordon kills the Penguin, or Bullock kills them both. And so help me, you really buy that Bullock might not want to kill his partner, but he will if it means saving his own life. Juxtapose that with Gordon, who goes out of his way AGAIN not to kill someone he doesn’t have to.

That’s the difference between the characters in the show’s core relationship, and when it’s showing that instead of having them just list each other’s character traits while trying not to look directly into the camera, the show is at its best.

Other times, though, it slips in the execution. Did it seem weird to you that Bullock was so afraid of losing his job over shooting an innocent man, when not only is it almost impossible for a cop to get fired for shooting a perp in the real world – let alone a corrupt fictional city – but when the “innocent” man was about to murder his partner with a knife?

Scott: Yeah, that reeked of “STAKES.”

James: It seemed like the most inconsistent part of his character; a jaded cop who games the system but doesn’t know how it works. But that’s really minor stuff compared to the things the show does well and its far more egregious flaws.

Scott: The show doesn’t really seem to know its own rules at times.

James: Because I do buy Bullock as a coward, but he’s one who knows how to get what he wants. He wouldn’t be afraid of consequences that would never happen for something that he wasn’t wrong to do. Like, killing Mario Pepper is the one actually RIGHT thing he does in the entire episode.

Scott: He’s afraid of TAKING the case - which I liked - but once he’s on it, he’s on it, and the Pepper-killing moment would have resonated better without that.

James: It would have shown him as a serious cop who CAN make a tough decision in a moment’s notice, and occasionally be RIGHT to do something severe. It would have made his character better! As well as backing up the ambiguity that you and I both liked about the episode. A Harvey Bullock who’s sometimes right is something that could carry the show.

Unfortunately, the future supervillain characters are just the polar opposite, and they represent everything I was worried about regarding the show. Someone chastises Edward Nygma for “telling riddles.” People call Oswald Cobblepot “Penguin” as a cruel nickname. WE FUCKING GET IT, BRUNO.

Scott: Aside from the previously mentioned Catyoungin’, we had the INEXPLICABLE Pre-Riddler, and the utterly ineffectual Penguin.

James: It’s the opposite of subtext. It’s just text.

Scott: To say nothing of Mario Pepper’s daughter Ivy, just chillin’ with some plants.

James: It’s just Heller and the other producers reminding us that when we were kids, we saw Batman Returns and Batman Forever.

Scott: Guys, Ivy’s not even her name.

James: And to say NOTHING of the standup comic in Fish Mooney’s club that you can almost guarantee is the Joker. That, by the way, is the exact moment I told the show to fuck off.

Scott: With his stolen jokes >:(

James: A joke he stole from greeting cards! Greeting cards in 1980!

Scott: Fish Mooney: The most easily-amused person in the world.

James: I was really hoping that it would turn out she was actually really displeased by his joke and was just stringing him along before demeaning him and kicking him out, but nope. She just really loves Hallmark jokes. For real.

Scott: The Penguin gets the most screentime, and I think that was a rough call… he’s the one who has benefitted the least from the trend of psychoanalyzing Batman’s villains, so there’s both less high points to work with, and less audience attachment. You could have done something, and for half a second, when he was snitching on Mooney to further his own station, I almost bought in.

James: Almost.

Scott: The Penguin is zero people’s favourite Bat-villain, and getting punked out immediately here didn’t help that. “Bet you guys can’t wait for this sandwich-stealing emo gangster to come back!”

James: You take away his nickname and the fact that he holds an umbrella and he immediately becomes a slightly better character. If the show wasn’t so insecure that it had to constantly remind you that this show that they swear doesn’t have Batman in it is all about Batman, it might have worked. Have a cowardly, desperate-to-be-taken seriously thug of Mooney. Have a douchey IT guy that thinks he’s smarter than everyone. Have an abused kid whose father was killed by police. Those are characters that are totally fine without being desperate pleas for the attention of DC Comics fans.

Scott: How long before the Nygma character inexplicably wears a green blazer or bowler?

James: In the promo materials, he’s already wearing a tie with green question marks all over it. I’m shocked he didn’t wear a green bowler already. I’m honestly shocked.

Scott: That scene probably bothered me the MOST out of the entire thing. It lasted about 28 seconds, and they rushed through it, but they had to CRAM his Riddleriness in there.

James: There was zero reason for it! Just have someone call him Edward and just kinda dislike his condescending attitude! It’s an easy character to write until you start squeezing in comic references.

And that’s the weirdest, most frustrating flaw of the episode: it constantly reminds you of all those times you saw those villains in better versions, where they were able to fight Batman and actually reflect aspects of his psyche. The Riddler without Batman to play off is kind of pointless, and his scenes in this episode do nothing but remind the viewer that Batman isn’t there and will never be.

Scott: The show winds up as this really damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t prospect. It gets peoples’ attention with the crummy Batman connection. Without it, it’s merely an okay, slightly broadly-played corrupt cop story that would go without notice and probably be a fondly-remembered cult series that lasted one season. With them, there are eyeballs on the show, but this is what they’re seeing.

James: Which goes right back to the first scene, where Batman the Kid’s parents are killed: it centres it around something we’ll never see play out. This isn’t like Gotham Central, where if you miss Batman not being in this story you could just read the five Batman books coming out that month that GC existed to SUPPORT. Gotham just has a big bat-shaped hole that it repeatedly reminds you exists. It’s supporting something that’s not there, which is only going to get riskier as the villains get more time. And again, it’s frustrating, because I liked basically every other actor and character! It’s really cool seeing John Doman as a version of Carmine Falcone that actually thinks he’s doing something productive and good. That’s something NEW the series does, and I want more of it.

Scott: His “What is organized crime without law & order” is a good take.

James: Definitely! Falcone is usually portrayed as a mustache-twirling villain, and him basically telling Jim that he was friends with Jim’s dad, and liked him even though they were natural enemies, and giving Jim real, genuine advice (from his point of view) is a characterization that the show should be built off.

Scott: I really do think that Gotham in the pre-Batman years would have a story to it. We know crime still exists by the time Batman gets there, but it could easily be about small victories, conspiracies, power struggles, moral choices. There’s something there.

Scott: But the show requires Bat-signifiers, so we get umbrellas and Catkids and riddles arbitrarily sprinkled in. It’s a dumb take on an okay idea, and maybe - MAYBE - it’ll get less dumb rather than more as time goes on.

James: And if you combine that with the moral difficulties of Jim Gordon trying to take down a criminal who actually LIKES him a little, that’s something everyone involved could really sink their teeth into. A Carmine Falcone who’s a little bit right is way more interesting than a psychopath shouting that he hates being called the Penguin.

Scott: It has a cast that’s better than the material, and the germ of a good idea. I don’t want to beat up on the show too much, I don’t think it’s a lost cause… but boy, the bad parts are roof stoof. Gordon trying to use a broken system to defeat an affable mob boss, who is ultimately a target of his own underlings (who are themselves targets of their own underlings?) That’d be enough. It’s not The Wire (I assume… I never did get around to that one) but it’s something.

James: Back to another thing I really liked: the visual style. Aside from a few sketchy CG vistas of the Gotham skyline, it’s got a really nice visual aesthetic. It reminded me both of the Burton movies, which were simultaneously contemporary and retro, and some of the neo-noir movies of the 70s and 80s, which had really saturated colours with high contrast.

Scott: The show doesn’t maybe go for broke on that aspect as much as it could, but you’re right. It has a look. The fact that there’s a notable early scene in a classic greasy spoon… perfect.

James: You end up with a Gotham that has a really strong sense of setting: it looks threatening and overwhelming, with set elements like the elevated trains or the arms reaching out of the GCPD holding cells on the main precinct floor that actually look like they’re reaching out and trying to swallow Gordon.

Scott: I liked the GCPD set too. It was BUSY.

James: It felt like a twisted version of an 80s cop precinct, which is totally consistent with a lot of live action representations of Gotham as a city that is deeply sinister, right down to its everyday architecture. If the show can focus on the things it does well - the relationships between cops and criminals and the setting - I really think it could be enjoyable to watch on a regular basis.

Scott: It’s going to be at war with itself for a while. The ads boast all of the villains and hints at their futures, (which of course we aren’t going to see) but if it can shed that premise and become the show it seems to want to be, it might have a good run.

James: It was never going to be on the level of the Wire, but if it can be Dick Tracy, I’ll be a lot happier than if it’s just Batman: Year Negative One

Scott: It could be a nicely exaggerated procedural, or it could be a miserable experiment in hourlong in-jokes for the nerds who are not watching.

Batman: The Long Tenth Birthday

James: Batman Minus Batman

Scott: Batman: Hush, because seriously it’s bedtime.

James: So, final verdict: will you be watching next week? Or will the only Gotham you see be the final moments of the credits before Sleepy Hollow starts?

Scott: I’ll keep a series recording on it, if only for the combo of Logue and McKenzie. I see potential, even if the odds point towards this show becoming a huge debacle, but it isn’t that yet. I actually liked the pilot a lot more than I thought I would, owing to those two actors, and the non-Arkham baddies. And no thanks to Mr. Pepper.

James: Mario Pepper sounds like the stage name of a host of a bad game show.

Scott: He sounds like a Mad Lib.

James: “And when the cops got to the apartment, they ran into [Non-threateningly ethnic first name] [Name of a food item].”

Scott: The other thing the show could do is lean WAY into its premise, and have Jim Gordon literally fighting deathtraps, but that seems unlikely. At least until season 3.

James: Oh, if the show became Jim Gordon 1966 I would be on a soapbox on the street corner right now handing out burned DVDs of it. In the meantime, like you, I’m going to cautiously stay watching it; it’s got some potential, and the next few weeks could see the show really deciding what it wants to be. There’s still a lot of room for course correction. Plus, I can pretend it’s a sequel to The OC.

Scott: And I can pretend it’s a sequel to Grounded for Life… a really, super-depressing one.

James: Or the sequel to Spin City, where Paul Lassiter became Mayor.

Scott: I did notice that! I always like Richard Kind.

James: Take this advice, Bruno Heller: more Richard Kind, fewer themed supervillains! And with that, let’s call it!

Scott: Same Gordon time, Same Gordon channel.