#kelsey liveblogs gotham

[daisyachain]

The best point of comparison is WoT. BSG and WoT. Considered to be in the top 5 works of fiction in their respective genres but a significant step down in popularity from the top 3, legions of rabid fans, long-lived and beloved, considered to have seasonal rot but where I liked the later parts better than the earlier, started out with heavy references to one existing work and then dropped it completely, comprised of a few really fun and interesting chapters interspersed with the dullest slog imaginable. I am colourblind. Not only can I not see what other people are seeing, I don’t see how they could see it at all

[daisyachain]

File name ‘Pier One Imports’

[daisyachain]

Alexander Siddig as Ra’s Al Ghul has to be one of the more inspired comic book castings ever made

[daisyachain]

THE PIER. If Gotham is the main character on this show the THE PIER is a recurring villain.

[daisyachain]

Also Gotham comes so close to coherence by portraying its cops as murderers, domestic abusers, thieves, corrupt bastards, by portraying sentences as unfair and prison/institutions as a hell where the innocent and unlucky go to die, by portraying the police as helpless and incompetent to help people in need (Bridgit, Victor, the street kids) and not even able to track down a single killer (the Wayne murders), by saying that Gordon is unable to fix the department and will only become more useless and corrupt the longer he stays there………but it does all this for the aesthetics. The depiction of institutional harm is all in service to making Gotham the type of industrial dystopia we all know and love. It’s not the realism of The Wire, it’s a bunch of Brits trying to imagine the worst most corrupt possible city and accidentally creating Just Normal Police

[daisyachain]

The dichotomy. Barbara and Tabitha are allowed to kiss on screen but never allowed to talk about their feelings or have a relationship, even when they’re clearly infatuated with each other and also banging, they are only allowed to ever imply the terms of that. Their involvement must be passable offable as a couple of fourteen-year-old girls doing kissing practice while Tabs real relationship, full of love and domesticity, is with Butch. Contrast Ed and Os, Oswald is allowed to proclaim his love and their relationship is carefully negotiated within the dialogue, the characters themselves are constantly addressing it, but they are legally barred from ever having anything. Ed must no-homo any chance he gets even as he is able to talk about his love for his ‘best friend’ and ‘enemy’ in ways that Barbara can never speak. Babs and Tabs can be involved if they never talk about it, while Ed and Os can wax poetic about their relationship so long as they never touch except to hurt each other.

[daisyachain]

When he tosses the drugs into the sea Riddler gets down on one knee and opens a small square box

[daisyachain]

Say hello to my little friend :^)

[daisyachain]

Love how in season 5 Penguin just uses Nygma. Turns him over to Gordon (or tries to) without blinking. Wheedles him into making him an escape plan for him and his money and then proceeds to do none of the work. Complains about him and his plans. And Nygma just goes with it. Builds him his escape route, saves him from the Ventriloquist, follows him back to the docks then follows him back from the docks. Their cooperation is always marked by the best worst power balances and s5 brings that to a delightful finish with Penguin being The Worst except for both times he saves Nygma and Nygma following Penguin around like the dog named after him. The explicit power imbalance (Nygma does everything for him) counters the implicit (Penguin will keep him alive no matter what)

[daisyachain]

Friends. Romans. Countrywomen. Please watch Gotham (2014). Yes even the bad episodes. Yes even season 1. Be frogboiled into the spiritual child of Adam West and Denny O’Neil. Executed by the team the network forgot. Starring Sean Pertwee and a bunch of nobodies. Lose your sense of self, good taste, and propriety as you watch plotlines coalesce and then dissipate into the ether whence they came. Start a running tally of the costumes that slay. Admire the tailored suits and leather gear and impeccably chosen ties. You may not like it. You will not be the same.

[daisyachain]

Selina benefits from the prequel treatment maybe most of the characters. By starting as kids the writers couldn’t start off with Gorgeous Sexy Catgirl as a start because—she’s like 12. Necessarily then they had to come up with another angle and ended with a scrappy street urchin. She can be tough, she can be the muscle, she can be Bruce’s more cynical and experienced mentor, she’s the older sister to Ivy and Bridgit, and it adds a different tone to Catwoman now that she is a protector rather than a seductress.

[daisyachain]

Again with Gotham vascillating between extremely problematic and not-as-bad-as-it-could-be, the Penguin is usually a rich villain with a prominent nose saved from overt anti-semitism by making him Extremely English or Italian New Yorker depending on the version. Gotham’s version falls into an odd middle ground. First, it casts two Jewish actors as Oz’s parents and a gentile actor as the character himself. Elijah isn’t coded as anything other than generic rich New England WASP (especially with the stepfamily), Gertrude is Hammer Horror Hungarian, so it comes across more as random chance of casting. Then again, Bruce’s decades of coding are split down the middle by the show casting a Jewish actor to play him and refusing to ever portray the character as Jewish to my memory.

For a show that draws so obviously from mid-1900s New York it’s noticeable that it brings up its gentile characters’ Christianity and cathedrals without touching on Bruce’s Judaism (what’s new, he’s been canonically Jewish since Kate Kane was created and that was years ago). If we take Oz’s coding as intentional rather than accidental, then the show honours the Jewish history of its source material by treating its deuter- and tritagonists as Jewish. At the same time, this makes the usual erasure worse and more obvious by making a borderline character (the Penguin) into an explicitly anti-semitic stereotype and by showing that the creators understand Bruce as a Jewish character and are just choosing not to ever mention it

[daisyachain]

Including resurrections, the Gotham recurring character kill count is:

Penguin kills Fish* (1), Butch (2), Tabitha, Isabella, Carbone

Nygma kills Kringle, Penguin*, Lee*, Penn, Doherty

Gordon kills Fish (2), Jerome* (1), Galavan* (1)

Barbara kills Butch* (1), Ra’s (2)

Bruce kills Ra’s* (1), Ra’s (2)

Jerome kills Essen, himself

Fish kills Maroni

Lee kills Nygma*

Butch kills Galavan (2)

Tabitha kills Barbara*

Sofia kills Carmine

Ra’s kills Alfred*

Jeremiah kills Ecco

*later revived

Of Penguin and Riddler I’m going to give the top murder prize to Penguin for the murder of a few minor characters and a lot of bit characters. Nygma despite being the most annoying man known to man has a lower total body count just by virtue of not murdering his way through season 1.

[daisyachain]

Dieselpunk urban combat finale about the defense of a city against the forces of governmental neglect and gentrification? Good. Big bad defeated by attaching a bat-attracting signal? GREAT.

[daisyachain]

At the end of my journey I take everything back. Gotham does not have contempt for its audience. It is not a bad show. It is an inconsistent show; an incoherent show; it swings wildly between stylized camp and clunky cringe; it is so cruel and bigoted that it sometimes feels like watching it is punishment for watching it. Yet it is made with love. An immature, flighty love, but a love still there. From one night of passion between a gender neutral girlboss and a closeted clown came the show bible for s2-5. The awkward scripts and bizarre stage directions are a fiery blaze upon the printer paper. It is a show that is trying so hard to be something. It gets halfway there. It crawls on its hands and knees to the finish line. It is a show that is shouting out to you, the audience, begging you to return its feelings. I do, I say. I do.

[daisyachain]

Alfred and Selina’s relationship. Her first murder was his best friend. But also was the guy who tried to kill him. He hit a child. He makes her dinner when she shows up at the house. He’s too protective of Bruce to be a mentor of any kind to Selina while Selina views him more as an obstacle than a person for a long while. Eventually Selina loses her other mentors and her friends which leaves Alfred as…someone she trusts. Eventually Alfred realizes she’s Bruce’s only friend and that means his protection of Bruce extends to her. They neither like nor dislike each other but they are family.