Anghus Houvouras with a suggestion for fixing Gotham…
Gotham has been the craziest kind of failed experiment. A show that was off the rails almost from the beginning. The show has been raked across the coals in its first season for being ‘Batman without Batman’, citing the show’s penchant for cramming in every Batman villain in some shape or form while giving us pre-pubescent Bruce Wayne who isn’t exactly in fighting form. I’d call the first season of Gotham ‘awful’, but it doesn’t seem strong enough. Train wreck. Garbage. An unmitigated disaster. Any of those would feel apt.
People were hoping for a hard-boiled television series based on comics like Gotham Central were vastly disappointed. GCPD BLUE it is not.
However, rather than pick apart the show for what it isn’t, let’s see if the show can be fixed based on what it is. If Gotham Show Runners are going to make this a weird, off the wall, insanely plotted show while abandoning continuity with reckless abandon, then why not go buck wild and do something really off the wall.
Why not make Jim Gordon Batman?
The main complaint people have about Gotham, other than the god awful writing, is how the show has taken its favorite characters from the comics and shoehorned them into a world without Batman. Gotham is clearly, definitively NOT the Gotham City of the comics and films so many people love. So run with that. Make this the craziest adaptation of Batman ever. Make Jim Gordon Batman.
I know, it’s crazy, but stay with me.
It’s painfully easy given the narrative that’s been set up. Bruce Wayne is just a kid. Incapable of becoming the Batman unless producers decide on doing a massive flash forward or giving young Bruce the most inconceivable growth spurt in history. But Gordon is exactly the right age. Gotham has proven to be too difficult for one good cop to handle. He’s capable of bending the rules when it suits his needs. Gordon could work the beat by day and the dark shadows by night. Young Bruce Wayne could finance his shadow war on the Gotham Underworld, and eventually could become his partner.
Why not make Bruce Wayne Robin?
For all intents and purposes, the producers of Gotham have set a series of events in order that could lead to this course. Gordon is like a father figure to Bruce who is mourning the loss of his parents. The mentor/mentee relationship is exactly the same basic build as Bruce Wayne and young Dick Grayson. Wayne funds the whole enterprise. Lucious Fox makes the tech they need. Gordon decides to fight crime outside the system laying the groundwork for Bruce to one day take on the role.
Gordon has recently take on the mantle of the bat in the comics, carrying on the legacy of the Dark Knight and making sure the cowardly lot of criminals that line Gotham’s street having something to fear. The idea of Gordon as the first Batman of Gotham is a strange one. I realize, in principle, that it goes against everything we know about Batman. However, Gotham has proven time and again that abandoning the core concepts of Batman’s history is something they are all too comfortable with.
Why not go batshit crazy with Gotham and make Jim Gordon Batman?
What do you think?
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
https://youtu.be/8HTiU_hrLms?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published May 6, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
