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“Gotham” recap (1.1): Some questions can only be answered with a mask

I figure there are two ways to recap Gotham: 1) Like a curmudgeonly pedant who pisses on every flaw and Bat-mythos alteration, or 2) Like a comic-loving gay lady who wants to swoon with her friends over kickass women in Gotham City, including ground-breaking lesbian Latina detective Renee “HBIC” Montoya. I will be recapping the second way, so if your whole deal is like, “Ugh, who wants to watch a Batman show without Batman???” please see yourself out.

Of all the tricky things to write in all the world, pilot TV episodes must be the trickiest. In 42 minutes, you have to trot out everyone one of your characters and recommend them all to the audience; weave an interesting conflict around all of them to draw them together; plant a hundred promises you’ll pay off later; and ask questions that are so eyebrow-raising people are willing to invest eight months to let you answer all of them. (If you want to see that done with an intensity that will make you actually breathless, watch How to Get Away with Murder Thursday night, holy crap.)

Those classic conundrums are compounded exponentially when you’re talking about Gotham City because we’ve been knowing Batman and his cast of supporting villains and heroes in various incarnations all of our lives. We know Adam West’s campy version and we know Chris Nolan’s dark and twisty version. We know Gotham City in print, we know it in animation, we know it on live-action TV, and we know it on the big screen.

Gotham‘s pilot assumes we’re all set with the vanilla basics, so mostly it just rolls out its entire cast to help us put new faces with old names. The plot, of course, is: Bruce Wayne’s parents get murdered in Crime Alley and rookie detective Jim Gordon shows up to investigate, accidentally diving head first into a cesspool of corruption because the mob has Gotham City PD in its pocket. So, to reduce the redundancy, I’m going to skip the blow-by-blow this week and offer you a ranking of “Pilot”‘s characters in order of most to least kickass.

Fish Mooney – For starters, how ballsy is it to call yourself Fish Mooney? Somebody says to you, “Put on some pants, we’re going to talk to Fish Mooney,” you know you better slide into the best trousers you own because Fish Mooney, just by nature of being called “Fish Mooney,” is flawless. On one hand, she’s puppeting her criminal empire, standing in the rain beating the donk out of some thug who doesn’t have her money, bitching out Penguin for letting her hair get wet, and then smashing him upside the noggin with a chair later on for diming her out to the cops. On the other hand, she’s setting up some rando petty criminal for killing the Waynes to make Harvey Bullock indebted to her and then ordering both his and Jim Gordon’s execution for questioning her methodology. Then, when both her hands are free, she straightens her wig and looks hella unimpressed with everyone.

Renee Montoya – In Gotham City, you’ve got your regular police detectives and then you’ve got your Major Crimes Unit. Renee Montoya is the second one, which means she’s always descending on you and your beat cop buddy suggesting she should take over your case because you are a real-time jingle-blaster and she’s both Good Cop and Effective Cop. This is what she does to Jim and Harvey when they land the Wayne double homicide, and then she undermines Jim even further by strutting right into his fiance’s apartment, all, “I know he doesn’t get you (off) like I got you (off), and also he’s a crooked jerky jockey, so.” Hetero burn! Hero burn! Hellllooo, Detective Montoya.

Selina Kyle – High above the city of Gotham, Selina Kyle parkours here and there and teases her hair to look like she always just finished playing Quidditch and spies on all the city’s sadsack shenanigans, including: a) The murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, b) The funeral of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and c) The comings and goings of folks at stately Wayne Manor. She also does a little thieving now and then: money for herself for some food and some hoodies, and milk for Gotham City’s stray cats. Compassion for homeless animals is even more kickass than compassion for orphaned genius billionaires. (I’m grading on a lesbian curve, hush.)

Bruce Wayne – I mean, whatever, he becomes Batman after witnessing the brutal murder of his parents, fine. But who knew he started becoming Batman like the literal afternoon they were buried? Just climbing up onto his roof, flapping his arms, telling himself he’s not afraid of anything. Hardcore, Master Bruce. Hardcore.

Alfred Pennyworth – When Alfred shows up in Crime Alley to take Bruce home, Jim tells him he made a promise to Bruce to find his parents’ murderer. Alfred doesn’t thank him, doesn’t shake his hand. He fully goes:

Then: “Bye, bitch.”

Oswald Cobblepot – Give Him. Your Goddamn. Sandwich.

Crispus Allen – Kickass by being adjacent to Renee Montoya at this point.

Detective James Gordon – Unlike Fish Mooney, whose name you do not forget if you want to live to see the sunrise, Jim Gordon is not convinced you know he’s Jim Gordon. One hundred and three times he says his full name to people in “Pilot.” To the guy who tries to hijack the police station, to Bruce Wayne, to Alfred, to Penguin and Riddler and Poison Ivy and the hoodlums in the alley and the guy selling hot dogs on the corner and the cab driver who whizzes by and to his fiance, who probably needed the reminder, honestly, after Renee sashayed her stems right into her apartment. Yes, yes, fine. He stopped the police station from getting shot up and confessed to Bruce that he got played when trying to solve his parents’ murder and defied Carmine Falcone by letting Oswald Cobblepot (Penguin) go free and one day he’ll father Batgirl, but for now, he’s kiiinda plain. Honest. But plain.

Captain Sarah Essen – Yells so hard at Harvey Bullock that the walls literally shake. Bravo.

Detective Harvey Bullock – What a butthole. He doesn’t want the Wayne murder case, chastises Jim for trying to comfort Bruce thereby saddling them with the Wayne murder case, sets up a fake culprit and shoots him in the head to put the Wayne Murder case to bed, and then forces Jim to shoot Cobblepot’s brains out so he gets the message that Falcone is the one who calls the shots around here. (Jim only fake shoots Cobblepot’s brains out.) All of which could have been avoided if he’d just given Montoya and Crispus Allen the case like they asked him to do!

Edward Nygma – Twitchy little ferret, aren’t you, Malfoy?

Barbara Kean – [COMIC BOOK SPOILERS!] Poor old Barbara Kean. Looking at her looking at Renee Montoya, she’s got no idea she’s choosing between a sexually satisfying relationship with a boss ass bitch who’ll become an actual superhero, or marrying a dude and giving birth to a caped crusader and a full-blown sociopath while her husband is off banging his boss. Ah well. Her loss is Kate Kane’s gain, I suppose.

Ivy Pepper – I do love it when kids swear. “Bastards” was her best part of this episode, and also she was surely five seconds from poisoning her dad with one of those plants (quite rightly), so Harvey just saved her the trouble, really.

Carmine Falcone – Um. Paddy Doyle? Jane and Maura would straighten out GCPD so fast there’d be no need for a full season of the show. Anyway, as Carmine Falcone, Gotham’s Big Bad, the only thing he’s managed to do so far is set Penguin loose upon the world.

All in all, I’m really impressed and crazy excited for the rest of the season.

What did you think of Gotham‘s pilot?

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