Gotham

Far be it from me to lay into a series that hasn't yet aired.

There's so much that might be good here.

A Gotham Central-esque show could be fantastic. A slowly crumbling city, served by a still barely above board police department, that can work as a conduit for any crime story you want to tell. It's also some fertile soil for original stories and ideas because pre-Batman Gotham remains fairly well uncovered. I'm not sure audiences realize how amazing a character Jim Gordon can be, but he is well worthy of a central role in a TV show. And people love procedurals--just give viewers sixteen of those every year while slyly feeding us an overarching tale of decay. Like The Wire, but with occasional hints of Batman. Plus, Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock? Bill Rawls as... someone?! Yes, yes. Oh God yes.

And it could still be all of that. But.

Just after the one minute mark of the trailer, we see a freshly-orphaned Bruce Wayne hanging out, talking to Gordon. Nothing alarming so far. But then he's... standing on the roof of Wayne Manor? Prepping his rooftop posing routines? No. What? Why? Now those "occasional hints" are brushing against the backbone of the story, which is worrying because Batman's origin is a story that's not only already been told, but has already been told very well. It's precisely because we know what's coming that we don't need to dive into it immediately. There's something original and unique waiting to be told and it's very quickly succumbing to familiar yarns. Or worse, dull ones. Pubescent Bruce is about as un-Batman as Bruce gets. Maybe we'll delve deep into his goth phase.

(Fan-fiction idea that nobody wants: season one's finale opens with the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne and closes with Detective Gordon--a few months into his tenure in Gotham, a little less naive and a little more prepared to drag his adopted city out of the sewer--comforting young Bruce. If we have to wait to see that, it means the show has enough other things going on that it hopefully won't be using Lil' Batman as a crutch.)

Meanwhile, foreboding text shouts weird promises at us: "before Penguin," "before Catwoman," "before Riddler," "before Poison Ivy" in between smash cuts of the junior rogues because Fox is grittily rebooting the definition of "before," apparently. I wouldn't even mind, since these characters are a part of this universe in one form or another. An up-and-comer on the black market named Oswald Cobblepot, for example, could very easily be the focus of a strong season one plot line. But inside of two minutes we get written confirmation of four future villains, with Batman still some ten years from debuting in Gotham. Stay tuned for season two, when Joe Kerr, an albino child with a flair for card tricks and purple suits, confounds the GCPD's psychological profilers.

Why is thirteen-year old Selina Kyle dressing up as a cat burglar and standing on the edge of a rooftop (more rooftop brooding--is nothing sacred)? And what does it have to do with Jim Gordon? I'm going to have to watch to find out, aren't I? They're going to make me watch this thing, aren't they?

All we have is a trailer and already the Easter eggs are cloying. Like the worst excesses of Smallville (except Clark already had his powers). Or the shaky foundation of needless foreshadowing that the Star Wars prequels were built on. There is an assumption that we care about these characters from the start when in fact we need to be given a reason to care. And even when we do care, cramming them all together gives no one time to breathe and makes a lush, complex world achingly small. The more disparate elements you drag in, the less it resembles Gotham Central and the more it resembles Batman Babies.

Comic book mythologies are bloated because they've been developed over decades by dozens or hundreds of creators. The best stories pick a single conceit (or a couple of simple ones) and follow it to a new conclusion, inadvertently creating more mythology. They don't throw everything at the wall, desperately reminding fans that they haven't forgotten about everyone's favorite corner of the canon. They also don't shout out to the casual fans: "hey, don't worry, you already know this story," because they understand that those fans can sometimes care, even if they don't know exactly what's going on from the outset.

(Fan-fiction idea that nobody wants: GCPD Cyber Crime specialist Eddie Nashton grows slowly disgruntled as his efforts go unappreciated and starts a few elicit side projects trying to earn a name for himself. Casual fans get caught up in his slow turn from smarmy good guy to obnoxious quasi-villain before realizing who he's going to be. Meanwhile, diehard fans shit themselves upon recognition of his name--that's the kind of balance the Marvel movies excel at.)

Am I a pedant for reading too much into a trailer for pilot that's only just been picked up for a series? No. I'm a pedant for other reasons. Since this show is going to happen anyway, I can make but a simple request to an uncaring universe. I'm looking at something that could be a landmark for Batman storytelling getting bogged down in canon-service. Good Batman stories have already been told. Good Catwoman stories have already been told. Tell a good Jim Gordon story. Tell a good Harvey Bullock story. Tell a good Gotham story. And let the fans wind that into the rest of the mythology on their own.