Not Quite Pleasantly Surprised by Gotham Season 2

A couple weeks ago, when I found myself in another Batman craze, I decided, what the hell? Let’s give Gotham’s second season a watch. I had heard from other people that Season 2 was better than Season 1, but to be honest, I had no expectations going into it. After all, literally anything could be better than Season 1. Gotham’s first season felt long, drawn out, and boring—it didn’t help that it had no direction whatsoever and relied on offensive tropes with its characterizations. I am thankful to say, though, that Season 2 was much better, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I actually binge-watched the whole thing in two days and now find myself somewhat excited for a third season. That said, being enjoyable is far from being good, and Gotham still has a ways to go.

If It Can Go Wrong, It Certainly Will in Gotham’s First Season

Well, Gotham is… it… it exists. When Gotham first premiered, I was excited beyond words. Like, wow, a Batman prequel that’s going to chronicle how both Batman and all his rogues came about! It has to be good! But whatever I was expecting, that isn’t what I got. Gotham’s first season was too long, tiring, and boring, and by the time the last episode came out it was a chore to watch. I certainly didn’t expect its first season to be perfect—all shows have problems when starting out—but I definitely didn’t expect it to be this bad. Spoilers and trigger warnings for sexual violence and graphic descriptions of violence below.

Why James Gordon Continues to Be Gotham’s Biggest Problem

Gotham is one of those shows that I find very polarizing. For everything I love about the story, it does something else that I hate. I adore its take on Selena, but she threatened a false rape accusation. Gotham has done an amazing job with Penguin’s character, but it’s also fallen victim to fatphobia. The show has given us an autistic Riddler, and that’s awesome, but his character has been subjected to numerous clichés and stereotypes. Then of course, there’s Arkham Asylum, which is problematic in its own regard. It also hasn’t helped that the latest two episodes have been absolutely disgusting and gory. I didn’t need to see Fish Mooney, the show’s best character, gouge her own eye out.

Despite all its issues, though, Gotham could still easily have been a good show, but time after time, it’s failed to live up to its potential. The show lacks direction—any given episode has at least three plots—and unfortunately, James Gordon’s plotlines are completely removed from the other two. At this point, I swear he was added into the show just because the creators felt obligated to include him. Why he’s the main character, or why he even needs to be there, I don’t know. But what I do know is that right now, this problem is really wearing down on the show’s direction.

Batman: Year One

So, I had some free time yesterday, and instead of pursuing my normal Saturday afternoon GTL (Gym Tan Laundry), I ended up in front of the TV on Netflix. Netflix has this new feature called “Max”, wherein the most annoying voice I’ve ever heard (keeping in mind that I’m a huge fan of Fran Drescher) takes you through a TV game show-type experience in an attempt to guess what you’d like to watch. It gives itself a number of chances to make a good guess, based on the info you supply. It almost didn’t find me anything I wanted to watch, mostly because I had seen everything it suggested, not that it was off the mark. I think it was on the seventh guess that it suggested Batman: Year One. I gave it a try.