Gotham appreciation thread

Just finished the first 4 seasons of this show. I'll be getting the 5th when it comes out on DVD later this month.

I love Gotham. I'm not blind to its faults. Some of the writing is extremely poor, such as the bit with the double of the Riddlers girlfriend. That is one of the laziest bits of writing I have ever seen.

Still I do love how it embraces the two sides of Batman, the comedic and the darker qualities to create a show that is absolutely outrageous at times.

I'm also glad that they called it a day after 5 seasons and didn't drag it out like Smallville. God Smallville got fucking ridiculous. He already did everything that Superman does before putting on the cape! It was great at the start to see how Superman became Superman, but by the end your reaction was just "who cares if he puts on the suit now? What the fuck will be left for him to do?"

With Gotham however it does feel like we've seen the beginnings of a legend and all of the characters we've seen here will go on to be the characters we know and love.

Any other fans of Gotham here. I remember Lady Lusipher was a huge Gotham fan. She even met Sean Pertwee! Its a shame Lady doesn't post here anymore. I know we didn't always see eye to eye, but I thought she seemed quite intelligent and fair at times. I would love to hear what she thought of Jodie. (Assuming she still gives a shit and got one of those life things I keep hearing about )

I guess with all our oggling threads this place is maybe seen as a boys club now LOL. Shame as it would be nice to have some female posters. If any potential female posters want to start a thread oggling guys go ahead.

Smallville just struck me as dumbed-down twee nonsense.

I've not seen Gotham yet.

Tanmann wrote:Smallville just struck me as dumbed-down twee nonsense.

I've not seen Gotham yet.

The first 5 seasons of Smallville were okay. There was a lot of great stuff in there. It was interesting seeing Clark Kent become Superman, and the Lex/Lionel Luther story was excellent. Jon Glovers portrayel of Lionel Luthor was fantastic.

However it stayed long past its welcome. As I said it got ridiculous by season 10 because he had done everything he was supposed to before becoming Superman.

He'd formed the Justice League, moved to Metropolis, got off with Lois Lane, revealed he was a superhero to her, beaten Darkseid, Brainiac etc before he put on the suit. When he becomes Superman he's going to have nothing to do.

Gotham could have fallen into that territory if it had gone on. It nearly did there's SPOILERS two stupid decisions in season 4. They killed off Ra's Al Ghul and Solomon Grundy before Bruce becomes Batman (though given the nature of both villains, they could easily come back.) Still other than that, it does feel like a prequel nd fleshes out some of the characters really well.

Smallville has also obviously been made difficult to watch because of Allison Mack's involvement in a sex cult! I know people say you should separate the artist from the art, and sometimes you can.

If its a painting where you don't have to see the artist its undoubtedly easier. (If they are dead then its easier too as you aren't paying them royalties.)

If they are an actor however I think it depends on the type of character they are playing. Kevin Spacey for instance, he always plays bastards so it can be a bit easier.

Hell looking at this clip is quite good as he finally gets his just deserts LOL.



Allison Mack's character is supposed to be an Osgood type, lovable nerdy, cute etc, so yeah knowing what she's done it becomes hard to watch it back to say the least. Its a shame as whilst it wasn't perfect it did have its place as an influential series. Gotham, the entire Arrowverse sprung from it, but Mack I think has brought the whole thing down.

Superman doesn't really strike me as an interesting character. Unless you do something really interesting with him he just seems a bit wet. A confused, conflicted and ultimately deranged Superman is perhaps the most interesting version of the character. That's why Superman III rocks because we see a different side to him. He bangs Pamela Stephenson, blows out the Olympic torch, straightens the leaning tower of Pisa and then gets drunk before knocking the crap out of himself in a junkyard. I've watched Smallville a few times but I never liked it as much as I probably wanted to.

Smallville suffered from chickflick syndrome. Endless scenes - usually at the end of an epsiode - of Clake fudding himself stupid in the window of that barn while trying to catch a glimpse Lana undressing in her bedroom window. Okay you don't actually see him pulling one off but what else do you think a teenage boy is going to be doing when peeping thru his wannabegirlfriend's window?

The "its on, its off" relationship between Lois and Clark was seriously tiresome and wasted far too much screen time. And of-couse we had to have the love triangle crap with Chloe / Alison Mack moping after Clark all the time, her love for him forever unrequited. You would have thought she would have got the message by the end of series 3.

And then just when Lana leaves and you think the production team will concentrate more on the action and storeytelling and so ditch the lovey-duvey nonsense, in walks Erica Durance to start the Lois-Clark bollocks. Same-old-same-old.

The series also suffered from a serious deterioration in dialogue writing in the last 2 or three seasons. The whole production was seriously hammed up with melodramatic storylines and actors being asked to work to scripts that were cheesey and just plain awful.

There were great moments throughout the series. Michael Rosenbum was an excellent Lex Luther and John Keegan was similarly first rate as his father Lionel.  Amy Adams appeared as a fat eating young schoolgirl in an early episode (Craving) and there were interesting appearances by stars from previous incarantions of the Superman legend (Chris Reeve, Margot Kidder, Annette O'Toole, Terri Hatcher, Dean Cain). Carrie Fisher guested in one episode.

One of the worst aspects of the series was its leading man - he just wasn't a very good actor. In the last couple of years this became embarrassingly obvious, with only his eyebrows doing any acting of any note.

As for the costume, i read several times during the shows run that the production team wanted to avoid using the costume. In a way they were trying to enhance their own street cred by avoiding the camp associations of the Superman comics, films and books. But in doing that they took a path that was itself filled with camp, melodrama and cheese.

Who the fuck is John Keegan?

iank wrote:Who the fuck is John Keegan?

Sorry. I meant John Glover who played Lionel Luther.

I really should double check this shit when i type it.

I was thinking he was Kev's bruvver.

Finally found it. In this bit Professor Pyg forces several rich people to eat the corpses of the poor to show them how they mistreat the poor (even though he has just cooked several of them alive to make this point )

Who would have thought forced cannibalism could be so funny.