Gotham
Gotham premiered last night, and it was generally well
received by critics, particularly in comparison to every other new drama. This
makes me think it’s not a great year for dramas, because Gotham suffered from
some really sloppy writing overall. First, the introductions of the villains
were heavy handed in every case, from the Penguin who did not yet even remotely
resemble a penguin, to the Riddler who Harvey responded to with the grating, “If
I wanted riddles, I would read the funny pages.” Further, insisting on calling
Mario Pepper an innocent who Harvey and Jim would be in trouble for killing was
ridiculous, considering the whole “attempt to murder a police officer”
basically renders your innocent status kaput.
That said, there’s something unique about a setting where
everyone on the police force is crooked except Jim, and the idea of Detective
Gordon as a lone crusader for justice. Also, the ending worked for me. The show
has a good base, but the writing and in particular the dialogue has to improve
for this show to go anywhere.
Sleepy Hollow
At the end of last year, I compared the first season of
Sleepy Hollow with the first season of Buffy, where the show can be ridiculous
but has a good central grasp of characters. In Season 2, Buffy came back with a
character heavy slow moving episode that really detailed what the focus of the
show was going to be moving forward. Sleepy Hollow came back with a fast-moving
plot heavy premiere that gave almost no one any opportunity to breathe. That
was a disappointment, as I don’t watch this show to see the various plot
mechanisms.
The early hallucination was clever, as it kind of forced the
viewer through the motions of “hallucination…no, time jump…wait, hallucination…HALLUCINATION!”
but after that the episode basically became a plot machine. We’ll see whether
the show is willing to slow down a little and let the characters bounce off
each other and really do their thing.
I’ll check up on these shows occasionally on big episodes,
and maybe do a midseason recap for each.
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