So, Gotham finally came to an end after five seasons of following the career of Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne’s rise from scared child to the Batman. There have been some amazing moments throughout the show’s run, with unexpected moments, deaths and great character births, but the finale, just wasn’t what it could and should have been. Here’s my thoughts.
Whilst it was great seeing the ways in which certain characters had changed and adapted after the ten year time jump, there were some odd moments. I will start with the characters themselves, so many of them have apparently not aged a day. Some prosthetic work or make-up would have simply done the job for some characters with this, but looking at Jim, Barbara, Penguin, Riddler, Harvey etc. many of them look exactly the same bar minor changes (the moustache which appeared for a few minutes, Penguins weight gain, Barbara’s hair colour etc.). Some characters had appropriate changes e.g. Selina, Alfred, Jeremiah etc. with re-casting and dramatic changes made to them.
Moving on to the actual plot of the episode, it felt very short and rushed. We seemed to rush right through the bomb threat to Wayne tower in a matter of minutes, quickly being rushed into Barbara (child version) being kidnapped by Jeremiah. They wanted to do too much in this episode, but it needed more time. This is the big finale we have all been waiting for, we didn’t even see Bruce Wayne appear, and I’ll be moving on to how they handled Batman later on. A two part episode would have been able to tackle the plot points established and given more time to the characters, maybe even have brought back certain other characters (e.g. Zsasz and Ivy). I didn’t feel any worry for what would happen to Harvey in his little side plot and I would have appreciated more hints towards the future of this world, like an emerging threat that Batman will have to tackle in the future.
Now, let’s talk about Batman, or the lack of Batman. This wasn’t a great tackling of the character. The images released and the trailer footage was exciting, it looked like we were going to get a great Batman and have some exciting moments, and the small snippets in the trailer seemed to be holding some stuff back, but that’s all there was. The trailer literally showed us every single time Batman was present except from the final shot of the show with him on the rooftop (a good Batsuit btw). It would have been great to see some action sequences, a Batmobile, him talking to Penguin and Riddler – annoying how they talk about the incident they had with him, rather than showing it – interaction with Gordon or even anything more than shots of the back of his head. I was hoping for an exciting look at Batman, to see Bruce Wayne, to see the Batcave and a great exploration of the character. A perfect moment to do this, was with Jeremiah in Ace Chemicals. We could have had Batman swoop down and beat him up a bit, it wouldn’t have to be a big epic fight scene, they have had giant gun battles and car chases in this show, they can manage a 30 second hand to hand fight here. I simply would have appreciated a great look at the character, it feels more like the type of thing Smallville would do. I watched this show for years, hoping for a brilliant Batman, but was really disappointed. Hell, Titans had a great depiction of Batman, we didn’t see his face, and he was evil! If they can manage that at the end of their first season, why couldn’t Gotham after 5 seasons? I’m not annoyed, just disappointed.
Anyway, there were some great parts about this show, it gave us great stories around the villains and I really enjoyed seeing Bruce Wayne grow up, but now it’s over, its like this – you’ve been eating a pizza, you’ve really been enjoying every slice, wanting more and more, you were promised a great final bite, you get to the last slice, it’s all great and you take a final bite and it’s really horrible, leaving the last taste you have of that pizza being the bad part, you try and remember the good parts of the pizza, but all you can remember is the bad bite.
Who knows, maybe we will get a reunion episode in the future and see a real Batman episode?
BeardTalksFilm 