Hey, all. Nice thread you've got going on here. I've only watched the first couple of episodes (I can watch the rest and give a fully informed opinion), but from what I've seen I don't really like or enjoy it. I understand that it is meant to be a crime/drama show and not about Batman... I still don't find it a show that I would watch if it weren't for the DC characters (and I don't watch it even then; I just keep putting off the time to watch the rest).
But I have a question for all of you. Hypothetically speaking, how could they make a better show? If Fox and DC decided that they were going to cancel Gotham and make a reboot (they'll own up for their mistakes and all to make everyone feel better. I'm sure people will throw fists, but it's better to just admit it and restart the right way than keep a dead dog on the leash), this time making it a Batman show, how would it be the best superhero show ever? Please put away any comments about "this isn't a Batman show," or "DC would never risk such a big cash cow like Batman on TV;" I just want to ask how it would work in a hypothetical, perfect world. What I see is a show that is more of an all-encompassing chronology of Batman (and, eventually, the Bat Family), but that is extremely updated. Very similar to the route that the Arkham series went, where instead of only putting in things that would happen in real life (like the Nolan Trilogy), they figured out ways to make EVERY piece of history work in the real world, simply updating history to respect it (like Robin).
That being said, one of the biggest issues I hear people talk about is the length of the show. A lot of people say that it should be like Daredevil and Breaking Bad, in which it was one story arc every season over the course of about 13 episodes, as opposed to about 20 with more of an episodic style. Although DD and BB are two of my favorite shows, I believe this is a huge mistake. The reason being because it is much too fast and doesn't give any ability to show everything they've been through (plus one story arc is more susceptible to "filler episodes," which we saw in both). I didn't see any villains other than Fisk's ring of five or so, and there is so much history in Daredevil that we could have seen, even if it was all worked into one plot. With the time length, it really took me out of it because there is no way that I could believe that either show's seasons lasted for more than a month or two. So what happens when they make the second season? It either takes off right from the last (like BB, which took me out of it because they still had flip-phones in the fifth season), or they do a very big time jump and just say that the first season was Year One and they just "did they same thing they've been doing for another 10 months," which would get a lot of flack because it's so much potential wasted and lazily thrown in as "nothing important happened k bye." This leads to either a lot of suspension of disbelief or a very short career in crime fighting (Even Batman in the Dark Knight Trilogy was Batman for a combined total of a year and a couple months if you think about it, which is something I hate about the Trilogy). And, obviously, having it be episodic gets a little tedious after a while, as much as I like the Flash, Arrow, and Smallville. This is why I think that a 20 episode season with an overarching seasonal major plot intertwined with a minor subplot (the minor subplot born and maturing each episode, i.e. a villain introduced and taken out or just introduced) is the best way to go. It definitely worked with The Blacklist (Berlin and the Fulcrum being the major plots of the first two seasons, while every episode has a new FBI's most wanted criminal introduced and taken out), and takes care of the problems that I listed above. For instance, Season One would be Year One-esque with the mob being tackled every episode, but in every episode there's a villain who shows up like Zsasz or Anarky or whoever. What do you all think? (and sorry for the wall of text. Hey, I'm chatty; it's part of my charm.)
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