Gotham Season 2, Episode 1, "Damned If You Do"

Hey, look, Gotham's back! Gotham had a first season that was enjoyable, if incredibly uneven, and so much of enjoying it had to do with ignoring it as any precursor to an established Batman mythos, something the final episodes of last season completely cemented by throwing off the reins of any established canon. So, I came back to it with last night's premiere unsure of where I stood with this, a re-imagining of the origins of many of my favorite comic book characters. And I've decided Gotham is like that friend you have, the one who's fun at parties, but makes lots of bad decisions, and all you can do is shake your head and enjoy it when they win, or don't screw up entirely. They're good intentioned, and sometimes pull of a Hail Mary pass, but wow, what you have to do to get there.

I will say, flat out, that Gotham made some improvements this first episode. The main one, the one that leapt out at me, was that it handled its mammoth cast better than at any point last year. While there were still three plotlines (more if you count some brief touches), each and every one connected to a main plot, with Jim Gordon being kicked off the GCPD and having to find a way to get back on the force. While Bruce had his own thing going on, trying to break into his father's proto-Batcave, and Barbara Kean and the loonies in Arkham were being the loonies in Arkham, Gordon encountered each of them and we saw how they effected his decision. And Penguin's plot simply tied in to Gordon's, without there being anything going on aside from that. Riddler was a little more off to the side, but we'll get to that in a bit. Still, there were no plotlines that seemed to be sitting out in right field, not tying in to anything going on in the main plot of the series, which is a focus sorely lacking last year.

Even though the plot was consistent, there were some holes that you could drive a truck through. Gordon needing to go to Penguin to oust Commissioner Loeb seemed a questionable decision for a number of reasons, the largest being that Gordon has dirt on Loeb. There was a whole episode last season that ended with Gordon knowing Loeb's daughter killed her mother and Loeb covered it up. While Gordon might be too noble to use it, to completely ignore it seemed an odd choice. I can ignore lapses in logic that are intrinsic to a show, but simple ignoring events that are key to the show's past seems odd (frankly, that entire episode seems to be ignored, as no one has since mentioned that Gordon is head of the policeman's union).

I'm also wondering where the series is going to go with Gordon having killed a man while doing a favor for Penguin. I have to really work to wrap my brain around a Gordon who would do that, as it is completely anathema to the Jim Gordon I've read for three decades (although not to the one in Geoff Johns's Batman: Earth One, which I think the producers have been drawing some inspiration from). I'm hoping that this is an action that haunts Gordon, and not in the "Penguin is holding it over his head," way. I know Gordon has no problems taking a life when threatened in the line of duty, and I'm fine with that. But Ben McKenzie's excellent moment when he tells Leslie Thompkins, "I did a bad thing," should be something that comes back around later on.

The performances on Gotham continue to move between the sublime and the grotesque in the best possible ways. I give all the actors on the show credit for taking what they're given and committing wholeheartedly to it. There are smaller performances, like Donal Logue's Bullock, where he's much more at peace than we saw him all last year. Robin Lord Taylor continues to impress as the Penguin, and I really enjoy David Mazouz's Bruce Wayne. The Arkham crew were a delighful group of scene stealers; now that she's insane and villainous, I am enjoying Erin Richards's Barbara Kean 1000 times more, and while I don't think Cameron Monaghan's Jerome is going to be the Joker in the end, he's a pleasant maniac to watch. And my usual kudos go out to Anthony Carrigan, whose Victor Zsasz is my favorite character on this show, with his wicked performance that can switch from manic glee to violent terror in moments.

I have some issue with the direction of Edward Nygma, though none of that has to do with Cory Michael Smith's performance. The schizophrenic, talking to a slick version of himself in the mirror thing is out of character for Riddler. And I know I said you have to embrace a different mind set when looking at this show, since these aren't any version of these characters we've seen before, but we will be seeing more of district attorney Harvey Dent this season, and having two characters with the same kind of dark side and rage issues seems redundant, although Evil Ed meets Big Bad Harv might be fun (and before anyone corrects me, I know the Big Bad Harv thing is DCAU only, not straight DC canon, but it works so well here, I had to use it).

And this wouldn't be Gotham if we didn't introduce at least a couple new characters, in this case the mysterious Galvan siblings. We didn't get much from Tabitha yet, although Jessica Lucas imbues her embryonic Tigress with enough cold calculating power and violence that you know she is no one to be messed with. Her brother, the seeming new criminal mastermind of the season, Theo, is played by James Frain, an actor who I am an unabashed fan of. Frain is one of those "that guy" actors, someone who appears in everything, and is often the villainous Brit. Whether it's as vampire Franklin Mott on True Blood, corporate baddie Ferdinand on Orphan Black (the best sci-fi show on television now. You should be watching it), wicked prince Eric Renard on Grimm (the best supernatural superhero show on TV now, and one with no comic book antecedent), the supervillain Chess on The Cape (remember The Cape? Six seasons and a movie never happened there, sorry Abed), or a slew of other characters, Frain brings a palpable sense of menace to his antagonists that I admire. I'm looking forward to seeing what Frain and his Legion of Madmen do.

Other episode highlights included Bruce and Alfred building a bomb and high-fiving when it works, Barbara's little phone call to Leslie, and the production design on Penguin's minions and the club Gordon goes to collect Penguin's money. Whatever else you have to say about this show, it is designed gorgeously,

So, where are we with Gotham now? Is the show perfect? By no stretch. Is it a fun carnival ride of madness and poor decision making by characters who should know better? Absolutely. And really, that's all I'm asking for at this point.

Animated Discussions: Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts

I try to get these animation reviews up promptly within a couple days of release, but the past couple weeks have been busy, and so I didn't even get to watch the first movie in the all-ages Batman Unlimited line until Monday, two weeks after it's release. But I decided I wanted to write this review anyway because I was really impressed by the movie and figured many people might have passed on it, since it was clearly aimed at younger audiences and is part of a program to push a new toy line.

I won't deny that you can see the influence of the toy line in the movie. Batman wears a huge variety of different costume variants that are just there begging to be made into action figures, and robot animals that turned into vehicles, which would have been a dream toy for me if I was eight.  Each of the heroes and villains are slightly redesigned to make for a unique action figure of their own. But most of the designs work, they have a very dynamic look to them. I was especially pleased to see Green Arrow in his goatee look; while I have no problem with the Arrow based look, that Neal Adams vibe is a classic. I was less enamored with Flash's redesign (there's something about the way the lightning bolt ears attached to the cowl that seemed off), but it wasn't offensive and still carried the Flash spirit, so I could understand it.

One of the things that jumped out at me from the first moment of the movie was how indebted it was to previous animated Batman, and that the creators were going to run with that. The Gotham of Batman Unlimited is much more sci-fi than the classic Burton Batman movies/Batman: The Animated Series art deco look, or the grotty urban feel of the Nolan movies. The opening scene has a flying police car, which clearly drew its design inspiration from Batman Beyond, and the flying costume Batman is wearing in that opening scene is black and red in a color homage to that particular series. It was a nice touch that was there for Batman animation geeks like me to smile over, and I always appreciate those extra little touches.

The plot of the movie is pretty straightforward. A group of animal themed villains calling itself the Ani-militia, consisting of Silverback, Cheetah, Killer Croc, and Man-Bat, and aided by robotic animals, are pulling heists in Gotham, and Batman and his allies, including Nightwing, Red Robin, Green Arrow, and Flash, are trying to stop them. Meanwhile, Oswald Cobblepot is opening the tallest building in Gotham, and there is talk that the Midas Heart Comet, a comet that's core is made entirely of gold, will be passing over Gotham in a few days. If you know anything about Batman, you know who Cobblepot is (spoilers if you've never read a Batman comic, seen Batman '66, Batman Returns, or Gotham, or seen a Batman cartoon before: he's arch-villain The Penguin), and his scheme and involvement with the other villains isn't hard to figure out.

The nice thing is that while the plot is simple, it doesn't talk down to the audience. In the same way Batman: The Brave and the Bold was an all ages show that adults could enjoy, this movie works the same way. The nice rapport between Batman and Green Arrow, not the competitive one of B:TB&TB, but more the one of old comrades, Nightwing's frustration with the A.D.D./act first/ think later Flash (one who I have to assume is Wally West, since his personality is much closer to Wally than to Barry Allen, although we never see him unmasked), and Red Robin's attitude as a still in training hero are all solid character beats that keep those of us who are looking for more than just Batman fighting robots engaged, although the robot fighting is pretty great too.

There's also a nice character arc for Kirk Langstrom, the villain known as Man-Bat, a sort of werebat creature. Langstrom is mild-mannered scientist who, like all good comic book scientists, experimented on himself and his experiment went wrong. When Batman figures this out and works up a temporary cure, we see Langstrom is haunted by what he does as Man-Bat and does his best to make reparations while he's still human, and makes a connection with Red Robin. In the end, Red Robin is able to get through to Langstrom in Man-Bat form and we get a nice little redemptive thing with him at the end of the movie. It's not something you'd do in one of those old cartoons that were big toy ads, and I like that we get that kind of character depth.

The voice cast is an excellent line up of established voice actors. Roger Craig Smith voices Batman, reprising a role he played in Arkham Origins, and he's clearly influenced by Kevin Conroy's seminal performance. Will Friedle, best known as Terry McGinnis/Batman in Batman Beyond, does a great job as Nightwing. Yuri Lowenthal, who has spent years as Ben 10 on various incarnations of that franchise, brings his youthful exuberance to Red Robin. Another interesting return to a character is Alastair Duncan, voicing Alfred, a part he voiced in The Batman, the series that aired between Batman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and is often forgotten these days. And on the villain front, Dana Snyder (Master Shake on Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Alchemist on The Venture Bros. to name a couple credits) does an exceptional job as the Penguin, giving him not just the haughtiness, but a touch of humanity as he deals with the way the people of Gotham look at him.

For one of these younger audience directed animated movies, I was pleased to see a couple solid special features. There's a short documentary on The Penguin, talking to the movie's screenwriter Heath Corson, TV comic writer Adam Glass, and one of Glass's children. about the Penguin's personality and history. It's not as in depth as the ones you get on the DC Animated line, but it hits on a lot of the important character points, and I like that they discuss the Penguin as a victim of bullying who turned on his bullies, something that comes up in the movie. There's also a selection of DC Nation animated shorts, the ones that used to air in and around Young Justice and Green Lantern. Not surprising with the animal theme of the movie, these are mostly the DC Superpets shorts based on the style of Tiny Titans artists Art Baltazar and Franco, and are adorable. There's also a Justice League of Animals short where Batmongoose encounters his nemeses The Croaker, Catcat, and Moo Face, and Wonder Wombat teaches us an important lesson about wombat's dietary needs. But the highlight is the three part Batman of Shanghai, a gorgeous anime influenced three part caper involving a Batman, Catwoman, and Bane redesigned to be set in 1930s Shanghai. Hey, Warner Home Video, any chance we cold get a DVD that's just a massive anthology of all the DC Nation shorts? There were a lot of really amazing ones, and I'd love to see them again.

A couple of final random thoughts. I would have liked to see a little more diversity in the team of heroes. It's clear that there was a, "strike while the iron is hot," idea by having Batman and his usual allies team up with the leads of DC's two big hit TV series, but I would have liked to see Black Canary thrown in there too. That's a minor quibble in an all around fun movie. Oh, and the robo-wolf that Batman is able to reprogram to work with him (and turn into a motorcycle)? He names him Ace. Don't get the reference. Look up Ace the Bathound when you have a second. It'll be worth your time.

There has been no further movies in the Batman Unlimited brand announced yet, buy from this one, hopefully there will be. There's enough room on the DVD racks for both these all ages adventure movies and the darker Batman Vs. Robin style movies. I'd be curious to see what other characters would look like with these new designs. It's nice to see that, as I've said before, there are a lot of people with a lot of different versions of Batman, and this one is a pleasant surprise that you can enjoy with your kids.

Gotham Episode 17: Red Hood (Or, My Thoughts on the Importance of the Joker's Mask)

I had thought, at the beginning of the season, that I might regularly write about Gotham and many of the other comic book based TV shows this season. But time gets away from one, and even more than time, the incredibly uneven season of Gotham hasn't helped it (not to mention the best comic based show of the season Agent Carter, didn't start til mid season. Expect something looking at the season next week). Every time I think Gotham is finding its footing, an episode would happen that would make me shake my head and put down my virtual pen. But last night's episode, "Red Hood" while still uneven, finally hit some of the points about Gotham City that I feel like they've needed to, not to mention having some strong performances and a plot that actually followed in most places.

One of Gotham's principal sins has been that it is incredibly busy. There are countless plots in each episode, to the point that many of the case of the week plots suffer at the hands of writers needing to stuff in a dozen other characters. And while there were still plenty of plots, I actually found the case in this episode actually worked, and Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock did some actual police work, not just roughing guys up, going to mob connections, and stumbling blindly into the solution of a case. While I understand Gotham has only the thinnest veneer of a procedural, it was nice to see that Gotham's good cops aren't completely dependent on luck and fists. And kudos to Lee Wong as Chiang, the witness. That guy was just a delight to watch. Any episode that doesn't have a great scene chewing sequence from Zsasz should totally have that guy.

That case of the week is the titular Red Hood Gang. While last episode set up one possible suspect for the future Joker, that episode was exceedingly uneven, and I have certain giant problems with the presentation of a commodity known to Gordon being the Joker (more on that later). The episode starts out with a sequence clearly meant to inspire memories of the brilliant heist scene from the beginning of The Dark Knight but in an early form; this isn't a Joker who's ready for prime time. But more than that, it's clear he's not the Joker when one of his gang kills him and takes the Hood. Pretty soon we're getting scenes of gangland betrayal as the Hood passes from one hand to another through murder.

My first instinct was to think of the Hood as a cursed object, like the Scarface dummy, carved from the gallows wood from Blackgate Penitentiary (my wife, Amber's response to that when I mentioned it was, "God, no wonder s#$%& like this happens in Gotham when they let people do stuff like that." And I can't say she's wrong). But I got to thinking and I don't think it's the Hood itself, it's the city. This is the first true talisman of the madness that bubbles beneath Gotham. The idea of the city as a character is a big part of Gotham, and I feel like the showrunners have been trying to capture that in this series with fairly limited success. The madness has been so contained, so random, and all so easily explained. Gotham isn't a bad, crazy city. It's just a corrupt, lazily run city. Get rid of guys like the mayor, Commissioner Loeb, and the Wayne Board, and the city itself is redeemable.

But Gotham isn't that. Writers over the years, as recently as Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder, have played with the idea that Gotham itself is just wrong, founded on blood, madness, and death, and it needs something like Batman to try to set it right. But as many proto-Scarecrows and Black Masks we see, none of them have been anchored in the city. The Red Hood has a power, not the one to avoid bullets that the initial owner thinks it has, but the power to inspire madness, to dredge up everything that is below the surface of Gotham and give it form. And that's a part of Gotham, and part of the Joker. More than just a grinning, unrepentant matricide, the Joker is anarchy and madness incarnate. So the idea that he is the logical (or illogical, I suppose), extension of what the Red Hood is doing to Gotham feels much better to me.

See, while I prefer Batman to have found his parents' killer and moved beyond that, I much prefer my Joker as the unknown. Accepting Alan Moore's, "pat little poor pathetic failed man who broke" theory feels no better than accepting Tim Burton's, "preening criminal who just went off the deep end," theory. Who the Joker is doesn't matter, and shouldn't. Knowing his origins takes something away from the character. Christopher Nolan got that, with Joker's speeches about his scars, and Paul Dini got it in "Mad Love" when it turns out the story he told Harley Quinn to win her over is just one of many versions of his past. The past to the Joker is just a shadow, something to cast where he needs it to serve his purpose. Who he was before he put on that hood and stepped into Ace Chemicals doesn't matter. That was a human being. The Joker is no longer anything human (Metaphorically. The verdicts's still out on what he really is until the end of Scott Snyder's "Endgame"), and to give him a past humanizes him, something that does him a disservice.

As to the rest of the episode, and the other plot lines, I'm happy to see further development from Bruce. I was fairly impressed early on with the show's handling of Bruce Wayne, but felt it meandered a bit. The past three episodes, we're starting to see a bit of Batman showing up. Not much, not enough to be frustrating, but the rage that fuels him is there, and the beginnings of the skill. But he's still a kid. And while the more militant Alfred is still not my ideal, I am really starting to adore the rapport between Sean Pertwee's Alfred and David Mazouz's Bruce. the entrance of the third party into their house, this time tied to Alfred, allows for Alfred to be fleshed out, and to provide some wonderful character moments between David O'Hara and Pertwee. And while I saw the episode ending twist coming a mile away, the moment of the betrayal was no less impactful for it.

The remaining three plotlines (yes, those of you who aren't watching Gotham, you thought I was joking about the number of plotlines in a episode. I wasn't), well, the less said about Barbara and her drunkenness and her growing weirder relationship with Selina and Ivy, the urchins she let stay in her apartment when she found them squatting there, the better. The only thing that I have to wonder is if there's a way that this show can make Barbara less likable. She doesn't listen to anyone, she's useless, and now with that scene that felt like something out of Law & Order: SVU between her and Selina, she's graduated from useless to plain creepy.

The Gotham mob plots were a bit more interesting. Fish Mooney's meeting with the guy running the clinic/human organ harvesting place she is imprisoned went about as expected. It's always great to see Jeffrey Combs on anything, although it took me a second to recognize him without Star Trek alien prosthetics, but that voice is so distinct it captured me immediately. And Jada Pinkett Smith once again proves that Fish chews that scenery better than anyone, and that nobody can outcrazy her. I still wonder why they don't just shoot her and be done with it, but maybe we'll get that when the Dollmaker makes his appearance. And can I say how odd it is that the Dollmaker, a fairly recent and obscure member of Batman's rogues gallery will now have appeared on TV live action TV series (a version was on Arrow last season), while we have yet to see a live Killer Croc in any medium. And I think the duo of Penguin and Butch is going to work just fine. They have been two of the highlights of the season, and they play off each other really well.

I don't know if Gotham is out of the woods just yet. There's still five episodes left in this season, and a lot can happen in five episodes for good or ill. But "Red Hood" might have been the series's strongest outing to date, and shows the potential of what the series could be with a little more clarity of vision.