Gotham (Fox) [** Spoilers **]

FortuneChip

pixelburp wrote: »

Jesus the Cobblepot storyline is infuriating; while he's the most interesting character so far, his plot barely makes any sense, it's an incoherent mess that 30 seconds of proof reading would have shot down. Ok, even if we run with the idiocy of returning to Gotham so soon, on what planet would slinking under the wing of your former boss' rival seem like a good idea? 'Nobody looks for a dead man' he remarked in this episode; I respectfully disagree when your memorable physical appearance would be spotted by a Falcone snitch in seconds. Or, you know, that random guy you had to kill 5 minutes after arriving back.

And speaking of 30 seconds of proof reading, I don't think the writers understand what a 'paradox' is. Usually linguistics doesn't bring the pedant out in me, but Edward Nigma talking about a paradox that is quite clearly nothing of the sort just wound me up. Of all the people to get it wrong.

The mafia stereotypes are hilarious though; David Zayas' Maroni has to be seen to be believed. It's like something out of The Simpsons

I talked in this very thread about giving Gotham a chance, but these scripts are so fundamentally terrible it's hard to see where the improvement can come from.

Grab the hammer champ; because the nails are all in place!

There's no doubt that somewhere on the creative team there is an earnest heart that really wants this to be special, but it's just so poorly scripted.
There's so much potential but between ham-fisted dialogue, tonnes of wink/wink references, it's just becoming more and more silly.

I can't even blame the cast; there's potential in them too, but how enthused can someone like Donal Logue be when his opening line to the E. Nigma is "Enough of your riddles".

Everyone knows the source material, there's no harm in a little subtly every now and again.

ramble ramble

TwoShedsJackson

The guy playing Cobblepot is doing a really good job, but yes he should have been killed within ten minutes of getting back to Gotham - he's not exactly anonymous in looks, style, or the way he acts. Willing to overlook that for the sake of entertainment, I mean soon enough he will no doubt be able to be back out in the open with his own bodyguards etc. but this show is on thin ice.

Nody

FortuneChip wrote: »

Everyone knows the source material, there's no harm in a little subtly every now and again.

It's like Game of Thrones boobie show; it's done because they are afraid their audience might not catch it and hence lose interest (god forbid you actually had a interesting plot or something to keep them entertained after all)...

CastorTroy

Dunno why, but I was thinking last night that this show could take a dark turn at some point, though there aren't really any expendable main characters whose death would have that effect.

RobbingBandit

pixelburp wrote: »

Jesus the Cobblepot storyline is infuriating; while he's the most interesting character so far, his plot barely makes any sense, it's an incoherent mess that 30 seconds of proof reading would have shot down. Ok, even if we run with the idiocy of returning to Gotham so soon, on what planet would slinking under the wing of your former boss' rival seem like a good idea? 'Nobody looks for a dead man' he remarked in this episode; I respectfully disagree when your memorable physical appearance would be spotted by a Falcone snitch in seconds. Or, you know, that random guy you had to kill 5 minutes after arriving back.

And speaking of 30 seconds of proof reading, I don't think the writers understand what a 'paradox' is. Usually linguistics doesn't bring the pedant out in me, but Edward Nigma talking about a paradox that is quite clearly nothing of the sort just wound me up. Of all the people to get it wrong.

The mafia stereotypes are hilarious though; David Zayas' Maroni has to be seen to be believed. It's like something out of The Simpsons

I talked in this very thread about giving Gotham a chance, but these scripts are so fundamentally terrible it's hard to see where the improvement can come from.

One of the oldest tricks in the book, it's called hiding in plain sight.

Alfred Borden

Show took a step back this week in my opinion. Would like to see it staying consistent pretty soon.

dublinman1990

I watched the first pilot of this show on Channel 5 last Monday night and I thought the episode had a lot of activity on it's first outing.

The pace was too much for me to keep up for a whole hour. It was going like lightening. The amount of villains introduced in the show was just a lot to to take through to the next episode. To have three bad guys introduced for the pilot of a batman show is very rare.

The pace needs to be much slower for this show to be more successful. As I haven't seen the other episodes yet, it will be nice to have a slower tempo going into future episodes.

The Indo have given a lot of praise for the pilot and given it a 4 star rating in it's TV review. They also reported yesterday that the pilot of Gotham will not be shown to viewers of RTE2 until the new year.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-reviews/gotham-this-dark-knight-prequel-is-a-blast-30662422.html

That means the only options for viewers until then will be the FOX channel on Sky, Channel 5 and Netflix until the Irish rights are on show in January 2015.

aine1980

Watched the first 20 mins of this episode & gave up.. I think I'm finished with Gotham

dublinman1990

I forgot to mention that the pilot of Gotham debuted with a viewership of 1.78 million viewers on Channel 5 and 318,000 on Channel 5+1 in which it is regarded as the biggest drama of the year so far for the channel.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s243/gotham/news/a603316/gotham-debuts-with-17m-made-in-chelsea-returns-with-549k.html#~oSNFz5ZxPerBEk

lertsnim

Great show. It's perfect viewing for when I want to switch my brain off.

_Kaiser_

This show is all over the place and the fact that we all know what happens to the main characters ruins any kind of suspense. Young Bruce still acts like mini-Batman which just disrupts everything as well.

The last straw though was the catfight and Jim's bisexual girlfriend - both presumably for the benefit of the teenage boys in the audience.

I'm done.

Potential-Monke

I think people were expecting too much from this show. There is only certain places it can go, and when the majority of the cast is not expendable i'm sure it's a nightmare to write for. However, i think it's good at what it does. I was never into the comics (no DC or Marvel in the middle of nowhere in the 80's!), so i've no idea if they're sticking strictly to a Batman origin story or not, so for me it's very interesting to see where the characters come from and how they develop.

Take Penguin for example, most of the films and tv shows portray him as this ruthless business man with a love for violence. It's interesting to see him as a younger 'uin working his way through the families and making his own mark. Same with the Riddler (one of my favourite characters), even with the short air time he gets, you can see why he's going to turn out the way he will, and i think they're doing a brilliant job portraying that (again, with the limited air time he gets) through his love for his job and the rejection he shows when others don't listen to him or ignore him; the actor playing him has got that disappointed and dangerous look each time it happens.

As for this episode (5 - Viper), they made it very obvious that

Viper was the precursor to Venom

the first time you see it. With a bit of research, i found that they've changed the origin story of that to suit the show, but still interesting none the less.

Also, for those complaining that young Bruce is acting too much like Batman; well, he is the worlds greatest detective, so surely that was in him from the get go, and only surfaced after the killing of his parents. I mean, he didn't just suddenly become the worlds greatest detective when he decided to don a bat suit. So it's also interesting to see him do the mini bats but within the limitations of a, what, 13 year old? I'm pretty sure it'll head in the direction of him only being able to go so far, and this will lead to his disappearing and training to become the Batman. Or, they're creating their own origin story for Batman, completely ignoring the Nolan trilogy and maybe taking hints from the comics, or creating a brand new one?!

Anyway, with only 2 episodes left, i can't wait to see where it goes. Especially can't wait to see Mrs. Smith bite the bullet, because she annoys me. Don't think it will happen in this series though, not with the side story of Liza just starting anyway.

Awesomeness

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I think people were expecting too much from this show. There is only certain places it can go, and when the majority of the cast is not expendable i'm sure it's a nightmare to write for. However, i think it's good at what it does. I was never into the comics (no DC or Marvel in the middle of nowhere in the 80's!), so i've no idea if they're sticking strictly to a Batman origin story or not, so for me it's very interesting to see where the characters come from and how they develop.

Take Penguin for example, most of the films and tv shows portray him as this ruthless business man with a love for violence. It's interesting to see him as a younger 'uin working his way through the families and making his own mark. Same with the Riddler (one of my favourite characters), even with the short air time he gets, you can see why he's going to turn out the way he will, and i think they're doing a brilliant job portraying that (again, with the limited air time he gets) through his love for his job and the rejection he shows when others don't listen to him or ignore him; the actor playing him has got that disappointed and dangerous look each time it happens.

As for this episode (5 - Viper), they made it very obvious that

Viper was the precursor to Venom

the first time you see it. With a bit of research, i found that they've changed the origin story of that to suit the show, but still interesting none the less.

Also, for those complaining that young Bruce is acting too much like Batman; well, he is the worlds greatest detective, so surely that was in him from the get go, and only surfaced after the killing of his parents. I mean, he didn't just suddenly become the worlds greatest detective when he decided to don a bat suit. So it's also interesting to see him do the mini bats but within the limitations of a, what, 13 year old? I'm pretty sure it'll head in the direction of him only being able to go so far, and this will lead to his disappearing and training to become the Batman. Or, they're creating their own origin story for Batman, completely ignoring the Nolan trilogy and maybe taking hints from the comics, or creating a brand new one?!

Anyway, with only 2 episodes left, i can't wait to see where it goes. Especially can't wait to see Mrs. Smith bite the bullet, because she annoys me. Don't think it will happen in this series though, not with the side story of Liza just starting anyway.

There are 22 episodes in the season.

Anyway I though last night was better with the somewhat subtle reference to Venom and not having it rammed down your throat and also not even any flashing Riddler signs when he popped up

Potential-Monke

Awesomeness wrote: »

There are 22 episodes in the season.

There is??? Nice!

TwoShedsJackson

Potential-Monke wrote: »

There is??? Nice!

I'd prefer a shorter season, like the 16 they mentioned at first, cuts out on filler episodes which there are bound to be at least 4 or 5 of, and keeps things moving at a better clip. BUt ad revenue is king, of course.

iano.p

Started looking at this on channel 5. I must say I like it it could work out to be a good show.

pixelburp

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I think people were expecting too much from this show.

Depends on how you define 'too much'; because I wasn't expecting such poor dialogue and scripting that's almost beyond cliché. Even when Agents of SHIELD started off equally ropey, it had a zip to its dialogue and some charm - here the writing's just swill. This weeks episode actually had the gall to give a character important information via a convenient 'Breaking News' segment on TV. It really is like something The Simpsons would do and it's just so shockingly lazy.

Gotham has tonnes of potential; the world before Batman is a story unto itself and has bags of possibilities, but the TV show instead stays so wedded to the mythology of Bruce Wayne everything else sinks into a frustrating mess of exposition and the ticking off of Batman tropes. It's like the writers decided "ah sure, everyone knows Batman, we'll just throw in the characters people know and call it a day". Wayne shouldn't be in these episodes at all imo.

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Take Penguin for example, most of the films and tv shows portray him as this ruthless business man with a love for violence. It's interesting to see him as a younger 'uin working his way through the families and making his own mark.

See, this is interesting because the above, and the most recent episode, get to the heart of one big problem this show has: everyone has already taken their pre-ordained positions, there's almost no character development in sight. Who is Oswald? What does he want? Why is he doing these things? Nobody just wants power for its own sake, but because we know he's The Penguin, he starts off evil and has nowhere to go; he just conveniently murders his way closer to the ear of Maroni. Big whoop. Gordon's the same only on the other end of the spectrum; he starts off the lone crusader in the corrupt precinct and his character doesn't appear to have any room for growth. His being mixed up with Cobblepot is just a problem to overcome, instead of a fundamental conflict.

All that said mind you, the Venom / Viper stuff this week was kinda fun, even if it yet again betrayed that wavering tone the show can't quite settle on.

JP Liz V1

Morena Baccarin is joining as

Dr. Leslie Thompkins

duridian

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Morena Baccarin is joining as

Dr. Leslie Thompkins

Good news! I love Morena.

titan18

pixelburp wrote: »

It really is like something The Simpsons would do and it's just so shockingly lazy.

In regards to The Simpsons, Maroni reminds me of Fat Tony. Such a stereotypical Italian mob guy.

The Gibzilla

I loved this episode. There were a couple of hammy moments in it, but I think I've gotten used to that side of the show. All of young Bruce's scenes were good, they really showed the development of his detective skills. I liked that he had "Zorro" on in the background when Alfred woke him up. It was a nice touch. The development of the Penguin's character is shaping up, though I still can't warm to Fish as a character and find her scenes the most cringe-worthy. I'm also expecting some inevitable pun if Fish is killed off by Penguin in a later episode.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable episode and I think the series is starting to gain a nice bit of moment. I would echo the sentiment that extending the series to 22 episodes is a mistake, it just means there will be too much filler and that could halt the progression of a show in it's first series. 16 would've be just right for this, but I guess only time will tell. I was on the fence about sticking with the show or not, but after last nights episode I think I'm going to keep with it, at least for one season.

MJ23

Fish is pure cringe.

don ramo

MJ23 wrote: »

Fish is pure cringe.

hopefully she will be penguins first big victory, i really hope shes only gonna be in it for a season, hopefully even less,

as someone said earlier each character is kinda already assembled as weve always known them, none of them seem to be very happy people with great lives that are gonna be torn apart over the next 3-4 seasons leading them to become megalomaniacs,

its only ok so far, its not the first show i watch on a tuesday, and it needs to improve a lot before it is, i had very high hopes for this, i was disgusted FOX got it, would have loved if someone like HBO or Showtime got it, but networks do pull it off at time, like SHIELD and Arrow

Alfred Borden

This episode was very good. Liked the increased presence of Nigma too.

Potential-Monke

Yeah, say what you want about it, but this show has me hooked. Some might consider it a filler episode, but it progressed enough to be needed. Again, love the Nigma story, you can see him slowly going down the crazy train from an over-excited crime scene investigator with a love for riddles into a full blown sociopath.

RobbingBandit

Good to see Bullock's beginning and the Riddler coffee mug Nygma was drinking from was great.

Macker1

Finding it hard to keep watching. Some good characters but a few too many that are simply annoying.

TwoShedsJackson

Best episode so far also has a complete absence of Fish Mooney. Coincidence!? I THINK NOT!!

ShaneU

Macker1 wrote: »

Finding it hard to keep watching. Some good characters but a few too many that are simply annoying.

Barbara Gordon is insufferable

RobbingBandit

Wonder what CatGirl stole from Bruce, looked like a cigarette case to me.