Gordon is introduced in the next scene, defusing a volatile scene in the police department with a bottle of aspirin, quick thinking, and his mits. The killing is played out in exacting detail, with a lot of gun barrels staring straight down the camera and little Bruce watching the life escape the dying eyes of his father. Gotham opens with Selina Kyle, the eventual Catwoman, parkouring her way through a cold-open around the titular city, stealing milk and pickpocketing businessmen before accidentally playing witness to the Wayne family murders.

The problem is that I’m not convinced by Gotham’s pilot that those characters are in the right hands. I can’t wait to see more of my favorite comic book characters in a re-imagined live action setting. The whole hour, Jim Gordon keeps encountering familiar, albeit re-imagined personalities from the Batman rogues gallery – Selina Kyle, Ed Nigma, Oswald Cobblepot, Ivy Pepper (the new name for Poison Ivy’ s alter ego) – and all we get are brief winks as if to say, “Bet you can’t wait to see more of this guy.” The reason that this pilot fails as a compelling piece of storytelling is because somebody on the other side of the TV screen believes that personifying a city gives him or her leeway to forego actual compelling character development. This city that will give birth to Batman, Joker, and a million different punny readings of the phrase “Boy Wonder” is its own living breathing character, and even though the wolf’s jaws could snap shut at any moment, goddammit, don’t you just have to love this skeezy bastard of a place? It’s almost as if, during this confrontation, Carmine Falcone is trying to tell us that Gotham City is a character. “I love this city,” says Falcone, as if trying to hypnotize the audience into believing the same thing before wishing him luck with a good old fashioned, “In bocca al lupo.”

Gordon, the young and ideal too-good-for-this-city gumshoe has had his life saved by the deadly mafioso and finally come to some hard conclusions: he’s been chasing false leads all episode, and this guy controls everything.įalcone lays down the rules of the game: yes, he runs the police yes, he rules the mob organized crime is his business and it depends on law and order. The first hour of the new series Gotham’s final act begins with an encounter between crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Doman) and Detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), the future man to stand beside the Bat-Signal. “This town needs an enema.” – The Joker, Batman (1989)

Gotham season 1 episodes