GOTHAM Season 1 Episode 2
Episode Title: “Selina Kyle”
Writer: Bruno Heller
Director: Danny Cannon
Previously on “Gotham”:
I think tone is going to be a big problem for “Gotham.”
In the second episode of the series, there were a few scenes that were on the knife’s edge of actually working. However, screenwriter Bruno Heller tended to favor histrionics instead of character development.
Case in point: Carmine Falcone (John Doman) visits Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) in her club and he completely humiliates her by having his men beat up her lover after revealing that he knows that she is working against him. Pinkett Smith actually has a very brief, quiet moment of acting as Fish tries to compose herself following Falcone’s departure. But it was completely ruined when Fish started and yelling and screaming at her customers to get out.
I’m not a fan of Pinkett Smith’s performance on this show, but that is clearly a writing problem. There is no subtlety in “Gotham.” Even James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) have some ridiculous interactions with each other and the other cops that needlessly descend into cartoonish shouting matches. Although I did enjoy Bullock’s bit about dropping the coffee that he bought for Gordon shortly before dropping his own coffee at a murder scene.
But the biggest sin of “Selina Kyle” is that the episode named after the future Catwoman has almost nothing to do with the actual Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova). In fact, she’s barely in it at all for the first half of the episode. Selina or “Cat” (again, there’s no subtlety on this show) witnesses a few of her friends being kidnapped by the inept criminal duo of Doug (Frank Whaley) and Patti (Lili Taylor). These geniuses give homeless kids free food and then awkwardly try to drug them in front of their friends. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just drug the food?
For the sake of convenience, Selina is caught off-screen by cops who round up the street kids on orders from Mayor Aubrey James (Richard Kind) and then she is promptly kidnapped with a busload of kids by the Dimwitted Duo of Patti and Doug. We don’t even get to see Selina’s one bad-ass moment onscreen when she apparently swipes a man’s face with her nails.
The only time that Selina even shows a hint of character doesn’t happen until the very end of the episode when she blackmails someone into giving her a chance to speak to Gordon. The audience knows that Selina is telling the truth about seeing the murders of the Waynes, but nothing she saw in the pilot seemed to be that useful in identifying the shooter.
Speaking of the Waynes, the explanation about why Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) can’t see a psychiatrist was unbelievable bullshit. According to Alfred Pennyworth (Sean Pertwee), the late Doctor Thomas Wayne left strict instructions that Bruce should make his own choices. What?!
When the kid is burning himself to “test” his limits, that is a huge red flag. Of course, the fear is that any good psychiatrist could help Bruce Wayne deal with his trauma long before he becomes Batman. Or perhaps they could even eliminate the need for Batman altogether. And they can’t have that, so that’s why we have to deal with this crap. It’s also another forced way to keep Gordon and Bruce within each others’ orbits.
Robin Lord Taylor seems like he’s the only cast member who is really having fun with this show. And as Oswald Cobblepot (aka The Penguin), Taylor is also the only villain to consistently make an impact. In this episode, Oswald quickly turns on the two college “bros” who pick him up off the side of the road and proceed to mock him before he kills one of them and tries to ransom the other. It’s actually a very darkly funny moment when Oswald fails to convince the surviving bro’s parents that his ransom demand is real. Oswald demonstrated some real menace immediately afterwards.
A lot of “Gotham’s” flaws could be overlooked if the show was consistently entertaining. It’s not even a guilty pleasure at this point. There’s still a lot of time for the “Gotham” creative team to figure out how to make this mashup of semi-Batman related ideas into a real show. But “Gotham” needs a lot of work and I’m not sure that this creative team is up to the task.
