ME: So I was watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine last night and
FLAPJACKS: Ugh who cares I wanna talk about the Batman show with no Batman.
ME: Oh, yeah, Gotham. That sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it?
FLAPJACKS: Well, I don’t see what the point is of a show about Batman with no Batman.
ME: For starters, the show is about Commissioner Gordon, not Batman.
FLAPJACKS: Look, that’s a cheat. First off, it’s not like anybody asked for a Commissioner Gordon show. Would you want a show about Alfred, too? Back when he was a British spy and secret agent and wait that actually sounds great so never mind that, but a Commissioner Gordon show is basically just Law and Order unless you put in super-villains. And if there are super-villains, then where the hell is Batman in this show?
ME: Maybe it’s no super-villains and it’s like a show where Gordon is a Good Cop and the rest of the force is corrupt because it’s Gotham City and they are the true villains.
FLAPJACKS: They already did a corrupt cop show and that was The Shield.
ME: Except that I just described the exact opposite of that show. Jim Gordon is the anti-Vic Mackey.
FLAPJACKS: EXCEPT except that thanks to the early promo material for the show we already know there are gonna be supervillains. They all but said so.
ME: They also said that Rage was gonna show up in Agents of SHIELD and that turned out to be a guy called Mike Peterson, which is like the least superheroey name ever.
FLAPJACKS: Was that official promotional buzz or was that nerds trying to guess things by randomly naming black characters from Marvel with super-strength?
ME: I personally cannot tell the difference any more.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway. Look, part of the thing about Batman that people like is that his villains are obsessed with him. Let’s assume that some supervillains are going to show up in this Jim Gordon show, because seriously, why would they not put supervillains in the TV show set in Batman’s city? Isn’t there already a cop show without supervillains on the air?
ME: Well, there’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine –
FLAPJACKS: Sitcom, doesn’t count.
ME: Maybe Rookie Blue?
FLAPJACKS: That’s a coming-of-age show that happens to be about cops.
ME: Almost Human?
FLAPJACKS: Robots are basically supervillains anyway.
ME: Blue Bloods?
FLAPJACKS: That’s more of a family drama than a cop show although you do have to admire Tom Selleck’s moustache, which is very Jim Gordonish.
ME: NCIS?
FLAPJACKS: No.
ME: NCIS: Los Angeles?
FLAPJACKS: That’s the one. See? We’re covered. We have a cop show without supervillains already! We don’t need another one!
ME: I bow to your inescapable logic.
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NTSF:SD:SUV::?
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You missed a “FLAPJACKS:” I think, right before “Sitcom, doesn’t count.”
I kinda liked the pilot of Brooklyn Ninety Nine, but it’s another show like 30 Rock or How I Met Your Mother, where there are inside jokes for people who have lived in NYC.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine was passable, but is definitely going to take some time to find its bearings.
Gotham, on the other hand, should ideally just be based on the comic book Gotham Central. I know that sounds really pretentious and “why can’t we just rely heavily on source material” but it was a solid show about police officers where Batman appeared very, very rarely which is really how it should be done.
The whole thing just really feels like DC is putting out altogether too many shows, though. I’m also not asking for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D but these shows could use more than one word in their titles.
I would contend that the TV landscape has been rather saturated with cop procedurals for a while now, and that we don’t really need any more on those grounds. But I also really like Gordon as a character, so this might work out.
Jim Gordon is my favorite non-superhero character in superhero fiction (I don’t really read comics much, so I include TV and movies in this). If they can make a good series that focuses on his personality, values, ethics, and internal and external conflicts, with a serial instead of episodic structure, I’ll definitely watch.
Jim Gordon doesn’t need to be super to be a hero. He’s a good man who keeps his head even when the world seems to be falling down around him.
Well, I for one agree that it’s dumb to make a show about Gotham if you’re not gonna use anything that’s batman-y in it.
So maybe the Penguin will show up? Young Harvey Dent? The Riddler wasn’t a thing before the Batman era either, but if they’re going Smallvile with it I’m sure some episode or other will deal with a young Edward Nigma being a hacker or whatever it is the writer’s think is “edgy” and “now”.
And sure, I love Gordon as a character, but there’s not so much you can do with him alone, other than have him fight corrupt cops.
So unless they’re willing or trying to go the full “Breaking Bad” way of “everything slowly turns to crap as corruption gets worse and the mafia grows more powerful” (which I’m not sure the people holding the reins of these franchises have the stomach to pull off) I can’t really say I’m all that excited for this.
Now if this was a “Gotham Central” show, on the other hand…
I’m pretty sure Batman will eventually show up in Gotham.
I’m excited about this show. Yadaa yadda corrupt police, yadaa yadaa detective Gordon, yadda yadda criminals getting weird and wearing maskes, BAM Gordon shows up to a crime scene, all the criminals tied up and knocked out, bat shaped shuriken sticking out of a wall. No one every actually sees the Batman.
THAT is how you do a batman story, from everyone else’s perspectives.
Next thing you know, there will be a Superman show with no Superman. Insanity.
I think the smart thing to do is use just a couple of supervillains, sparingly (and I think everyone keeps picking the Riddler for obvious reasons, and are completely correct in doing so). Use them to show how completely unprepared the GCPD is for them, and demonstrate the need for Batman. Maybe they can just about stop the supervillains, but not catch them. Maybe they can’t stop them at all. And then, if Batman shows up in season three or four, it’ll feel earned and justified, and the first couple of Batman-less seasons will have more heft precisely because he’s not there.
“Ugh who cares I wanna talk about the Batman show with no Batman.”
I gotta be honest, when I read this my first thought was “Oh, you mean Person of Interest?”
Have they stated what cannon they are going with? The movies, the current comics, older comics, the new movies, the not released movies, etc.
I think everybody would be banging there heads against the wall a lot less if not for the fact that, as several astute commenters have already pointed out, Gotham Central, the comic that everybody has pointed out would make an awesome TV series for more than 10 years, is just waiting right there. This announced show sounds so close to Gotham Central, but for the incredibly crucial difference that it takes place prior to Batman, which is just so much less dramatically interesting. Way less room to maneuver.
You can’t really argue that “cop show with supervillains” alone is a particularly novel approach in a world with Luther in it. You need Batman in the mix to really make it special.
Oy, sorry for the formatting disaster.
Fixed. – Pronoiac
For a brief, shining moment I had hope that Fox was pulling a fast one and was making a show based on Commissioner”Wildcat” Jim Gordon AKA The Whisperer AKA one of the earlier pulp character Kane and Finger shamelessly ripped off when they created Batman and his world.
But then I read the press release and had the same reaction as Flapjacks.
How about a show about tough investigative reporter Lois Lane before Superman showed up to hog the spotlight?
You know, Marionette, that is a pretty sharp comment.
I would watch the hell out of either Marionette’s idea or the thought of Alfred being in the SAS pre-Wayne Butler days. Maybe he saves a young Thomas Wayne in *insert war of your choice to make chronological sense here* in one episode! 🙂
Follow up for Marionette: Considering how badass Amy Adams actually was as Lois (seriously, best Lois in TV/movies ever, IMHO, regardless of what you think of the movie itself) I would love to see a reporter-drama with Lois as the main char.
The Batman show without Batman? You mean Birds of Prey? Yeah, that was a disappointing reinterpretation of a perfectly good comic. The best part of the BoP dvd set I used to own was the poorly animated Gotham Girls shorts.
If Gotham models itself off of the Gotham Central comic then I think it might actually be better suited to TV than BoP. Still, I’m not sure anyone would actually watch it. Even if it were well made it would just be another drop in the ocean of competing cop shows.
You know, like Brooklyn Nine Nine.
Of course none of the perps on Brooklyn Nine Nine use freeze rays. I think. I only saw the pilot. I was busy watching Agents of SHIELD when episode two aired.
I am cautiously optimistic – I mean, go back to YEAR ONE. There aren’t any super-villains in YEAR ONE (except kind of sort of Catwoman), but the villains are still over-the-top mustache-twirling mob types. Give us a show where James Gordon is the only man in the city not on the take, in a city basically controlled by fat and overconfident mobsters – well, that could be very interesting indeed. And if they throw in the inevitable “Jim, meet Eddie Nigma,” or “you’ll be working with Assistant DA Dent on this case,” well, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I imagine if the show is a hit they’ll probably put off showing us Batman until the very end, just like with SMALLVILLE, because the moment we see Batman is the point when it stops being about Gordon. The last scene of the last episode, whether the show lasts one year or ten, will by Gordon firing up the Bat-signal for the first time, cut to credits.
I wonder if Barbara will be a character?
“It’s wacky fun tonight as Jim’s buddy Joe Kerr stops by and knocks Barbara off her feet!”
Kid Kyoto, if by some fluke this monstrosity gets something like Smallville‘s success, that will probably happen. Somehow.
Blargh.