Legends of the Dark Knight # 4 | Gotham: The Fifth and Final Season

Gotham has come a long way since my rave about its first season. Within a few months of my review, the moody and gangster-littered GCPD procedural had become a fully-fledged Batman TV series in all but name – albeit one marked by the absence of the eponymous Dark Knight. Just as Smallville’s showrunners had, Gotham’s quickly tired of the constraints imposed by the series’ prequel setting and set about turning the likes of young Oswald Cobblepot and Edward Nygma into realistic renditions of their comic-book alter egos. Prized works the likes of Year One, The Long Hallowe’en and even The Killing Joke served as inspiration for story arcs both short and long as Gotham surrendered sense to spectacle in a three-year stint that saw it shed around three million regular viewers whilst still cultivating a passionate following. These Gothamites were understandably – and unexpectedly - thrilled last year when, despite the deteriorating viewing figures, FOX renewed the show for a half-length fifth and final season that would be - slightly misleadingly - subtitled Legend of the Dark Knight.

 

Despite its many crippling logical flaws, I love Gotham just as much as I did when it first started. With Batman, if not Bruce Wayne, seemingly the exclusive preserve of the silver screen now and for the foreseeable future, it’s probably the closest that we’ll get to a live-action Batman TV show for a long time (one that’s inspired by DC’s Dark and Modern Ages, anyway, as opposed to the camp capers of Batman ’66). Though often playful, Gotham’s tone is deliciously dark and its characterisation is exceptional. The show’s second-season subtitles Rise of the Villains and Wrath of the Villains were well-deserved as actors the calibre of Robin Lord Taylor and Cory Michael Smith made Penguin and the Riddler just as important – and sometimes just as sympathetic - to the audience as Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne. Erin Richards created a Gotham City Siren out of nothing. Cameron Monaghan, somehow, exorcised the ghost of Heath Ledger and reinvented the very idea of the Joker in the most expansive and enthralling of ways – and all without once uttering the “J” word. Naturally, I’d have preferred to see these embryotic legends evolve over a fifteen-year period instead of four and a bit, but the fact that Gotham was a race rather than a run doesn’t negate the incredible work of its writers and actors. If you can forgive the narrative convenience of ten-year comas, long stretches in Arkham and an eighteen-year-old’s face lurking beneath that famous cape and cowl when all’s said and done, you might come to share my view that Gotham boasts the definitive interpretations of many of the mythology’s most iconic characters.

Sean Pertwee’s grizzled, Earth One-style, ex-military Alfred is a far more captivating take on the usually sardonic and theatrical butler than any portrayal before or since, while Camren Bicondova’s Selina Kyle becomes the franchise’s most grounded take on Catwoman since Year One. Another standout is Donal Logue’s Harvey Bullock, a character slightly short-changed in the series’ middle seasons but once again brought to the fore for the final run, where he’s even indulged with an episode built entirely around him and his past. Most remarkable of all though is Ben McKenzie’s Jim Gordon, whose five-year journey has been so damned heroic that it threatened to undermine the very need for a Batman.

 

Gotham’s truncated final run would take its inspiration from the brutal No Man’s Land storyline that ran through most of the Bat-family titles that were in print twenty years ago. I’ve read as much of the arc as has been republished in trade collections (over two thousand pages’ worth!) and, whilst it was certainly an incredibly inventive and harrowing run of stories (Gotham really should have borrowed the retrieving of ammo from corpses), it certainly didn’t look like the optimal way to start tying up a prequel show’s threads. Of course, it wasn’t the showrunners’ plan to conclude Gotham with their take on No Man’s Land – they’d written themselves into a corner with the previous season’s concluding cataclysm in the hope of having at least another full-length season, if not more, to finish their story. Yet, serendipitously, cutting Gotham off from civilisation gives the show’s swansong a tight, insular feel in keeping with the series’ over-arching tone. Removed from the rest of the world and free from the rule of law, the harsh conditions of Season 5 highlight exactly who each of our principal characters are. For some, like Harvey Bullock, it emphasises who they’ve become. For others, like Bruce Wayne, it points to who they’ll be. And for Jim Gordon, the city’s champion of today, it’s probably his finest hour.

Divorced from the United States, Jim has to lead from the front. McKenzie has always vested the character with the necessary stoicism to evoke the future police commissioner, but this season sees him to do so in the most challenging of circumstances as it’s not only Gotham that’s gone to Hell, but his personal life too. This much the season has in common with the comic-book version of No Man’s Land, in which a weathered Commissioner Gordon leads his Blue Boys in their mission to retake the city one block at a time - ultimately at staggering personal cost.

 

The comics’ broad backdrop is as far as the “adaptation” goes, though - as ever, Gotham tells its own story in its own unique and subversive way. Jim doesn’t lose a wife here - he gains one. He doesn’t patch things up with an old brother in arms - he goes to war with one. And, just because Gotham is Gotham, along the way he gets his psychotic ex up the duff with a baby Batgirl, on the face of it just because she was once a dead cert to one day become Mrs Barbara Gordon. Put like that, it might sound like the type of twisted logic that underpinned the latter half of Game of Thrones, but within the suffocating enclosure of No Man’s Land these pieces all click into place with a feeling of inevitability rather than expediency.

 

 

Indeed, the story of Barbara Kean is one of Gotham’s most notable. Originally introduced as Jim’s first-season love interest, the writers’ quickly seized upon Erin Richards’ wickedly cool portrayal and allowed the character to blossom into one of the city’s most infamous gangland villains and, in a particularly exciting move, even an heir to the Demon himself, Ra’s al Ghul. In of itself, this would have been a remarkable enough departure from the source material, but the show was careful never to paint Barbara completely black. As storylines progressed we saw more and more grey chinks in her maleficence, until the cataclysm left her poised on the brink of redemption; an unlikely ally of Bruce Wayne in his war against Ra’s. Whilst grounded in self-interest, Barbara’s bad-ass actions towards the end of the preceding season betrayed something else stirring beneath the surface – something honourable, if not entirely good.

 

And the eventual Mrs Gordon’s tale has been every bit as turbulent as Barbara’s. From practising medicine at Arkham Asylum though marriage to the mob to becoming the so-called Queen of the Narrows, Leslie Thompkin’s narrative couldn’t be any further away from her comic-book counterpart’s. However, both versions of the character are built upon fierce moral fortitude and a self-sacrificing desire to help others - qualities that make Lee the perfect partner for Jim as he fights to maintain his own ethics while trying to safeguard innocent citizens in the ruins of society. In a universe where Barbara Kean is a murderous vixen and Sarah Essen has yet to set foot in the GCPD, Lee had to be the one at Jim’s side when “The Beginning” arrived. It may not be comic-book accurate, but it’s true to the characters as brought to life by Ben McKenzie and Morena Baccarin, and deeply rewarding for the viewers who invested so heavily in their relationship.

“You’re going to be reborn, and then you’re going to be the bane of the unjust.”

The coming of Bane (Shane West) is handled just as shrewdly. Although the character has always been conceptually linked to Batman, the show shifts that emphasis onto Jim, creating a shared history between the two men that allows the show’s central hero to take ownership of its final season’s big bad. Eduardo Dorrance was Jim Gordon’s friend. Now Bane is Jim Gordon’s nemesis. This version of Bane might have a whole new raison d’être, at least for now, but the essential flavour of the character is retained thanks to Eduardo’s Hispanic lineage and the time that he spent imprisoned in Peña Duro. Even his affiliation with Nyssa al Ghul feels deliciously apposite, cementing The Dark Knight Rises overtones already evoked by Shane West’s overtly Tom Hardy-inspired performance.

Where this final season ultimately triumphs, though, is in the apotheosis of the series’ long-running Joker storyline, which stretches right back to “The Blind Fortune Teller” in the first season. Unlike the Bat’s other prominent nemeses, the Joker didn’t naturally lend himself to a prequel series. If anything, the character’s always been at his best when he’s shrouded in intrigue. Red Hood? Jack Napier? Pale Man? Arthur Fleck? The Dark Knight’s most infamous enemy has had as many potential back stories across the media as Batman has had Robins. And to its great credit, rather than fashion its own inevitably mystique-killing origin story for the Clown Prince of Crime, Gotham builds upon an alluring idea first posited by Alan Moore in The Killing Joke. Over five years, the series takes the character’s nebulous, “multiple choice” past and makes the notion finite. Multiple origins. Multiple dead ends. Multiple possibilities. Gotham’s Joker is not a mad man but a mad idea; an infectious evil spreading from one individual to another and most memorably embodied by Cameron Monaghan’s antagonistic, chalk-and-cheese Valeska twins.

 

As the second season hit its stride, Jerome Valeska could have conceivably been a youthful version of the ragged lunatic from The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger’s anarchic pipe bomb of a performance was effortlessly emulated and even embellished by Monaghan, whose exuberant and terrifying portrayal raised the bar for the series so very high that his character’s untimely demise threatened to derail it. Of course, the Joker has rarely let death hold him back, and to universal delight Jerome would be resurrected – less his face - to play out a perverse, live-action version of Scott Snyder’s Death of the Family. Like most comic-book shows, Gotham might be derivative at heart, but when it borrows, it borrows from the best.

 

 

The show’s penultimate season introduced us to Jerome’s straight-laced, super-smart architect of a twin brother, Jeremiah, whose exposure to his brother’s trademark laughing gas would drive him crazy – but it would be craziness equal and opposite to his soon-to-be late brother’s. Clad in a purple suit and hat and with skin paler than Rodney Trotter’s, Jeremiah Valeska looked set to claim the mantle of Joker. He quickly gained power and influence. His colourful cult of personality grew to include a prototypical Harley Quinn, Echo, along with legions of black-clad adherents. Yet Monagahan’s portrayal of Jeremiah would place method at the heart of the madness: the genius lacking in Jerome was now there in spades, but the humour-fuelled anarchism typical of both Jerome and the Joker was eerily absent.

“Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...

If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha!”

It wouldn’t be until “Ace Chemicals”, and Jeremiah’s second attempt to break the young Bruce Wayne, that Gotham would send its embryonic Joker tumbling into a vat of noxious chemicals – probably the most common element in all his possible pasts. His injuries would leave him looking like the distillation of just about every Joker that there’s ever been, but more importantly they would complete his mental transformation, somehow merging the sensibilities of the twin Valeskas into what has the potential to be the ultimate Joker. Sadly, as Gotham ends with “The Beginning”, we may never get to see Monagahan test that potential. The much-hyped appearance of Mr J is all but restricted to the final act of the final episode, serving more as a teaser for a series that we know will never come than as a satisfying finale.
 

Flashing forward to ten years after the events of “They Did What?”, the concluding part of the No Man’s Land storyline, “The Beginning” is an awkward but necessary leap - one charged with expectation as viewers brace themselves for the rise of the villains and the coming of the Bat. The trouble is, most of the villains rose long ago, and the Bat can’t really be shown on screen, lest viewers twig that he’s being played by a stuntman and a teenager. David Mazouz’s near-absence is felt almost as keenly as Camren Bicondova’s recasting – half the episode’s heart is tied up in two characters, one of whom we can’t see and the other whom we can’t recognise. Worse still, Penguin and the Ridder are reduced from believable, multi-faceted characters to colourful caricatures torn straight out of a show cancelled fifty years earlier. When Penguin emerges from his decade-long incarceration somehow fatter and donning a monocle, you half expect Adam West and Burt Ward to come running around the corner to escort him back to Blackgate.

 

 

Fortunately, “The Beginning” does get some things right. Sean Pertwee’s Alfred transitions effortlessly from the rough military father figure of the principal series to the more mannerly butler of the comics and most films. He may be more Jeremy Irons than Alfred Gough, but that’s all to the good. Harvey Bullock finds himself at Commissioner Gordon’s trusted right hand, where he belongs, whereas the Commish himself mischievously summarises Gotham’s attitude towards eighty years of Batman lore by shaving off his obligatory moustache after a just few minutes on screen. To me, that says it all.

 

The season’s Blu-ray release improves upon the last few seasons’ bonus material slightly, particularly when you consider that it’s supplemental to only half the number of episodes usually released. On top of the compulsory Comic-Con panel highlights, the two discs also house a short feature teasing the season entitled Gotham’s Last Stand as well as a fifteen-minute series retrospective, Gotham: A Modern Mythology, which has been produced to DC Entertainment’s usually lofty standards, albeit with an unusually stunted runtime.

However, the most interesting offering is a wider one, and one that’s not exclusive to this release, such is its scope. Villains: Modes of Persuasion takes the viewer on a deep journey into the warped minds of rogues summoned from every corner of the current DC TV landscape. Whether its especial focus on the villains of Gotham is deliberate, or simply a recognition of the programme’s dominance on that front, I don’t know, but its inclusion on what is likely to be the series’ final home video release is certainly fitting. Already a huge fan of the Arrowverse, this piece is responsible for also getting me hooked on Krypton – just as they’ve cancelled it. Thanks for that, Warner Bros.

 

The release is rounded out with a rather lacklustre selection of pithy deleted scenes, only one of which – between Jim and Barbara – really merits any attention. This hasn’t stopped the cut Penguin and Riddler sequence from “The Beginning” from becoming quite a talking point, however, though only because it’s potentially very confusing (perhaps offering us a clue as to why it was cut). The brolly-twirling, bowler-hatted feller looks so ridiculously OTT that as a viewer you assume he’s another comic-book villain, one you can’t quite place, rather than just an extravagant chap in line for a prop-continuity mugging.

 

Nonetheless, despite Gotham’s final season being readily available to Netflix subscribers, the Blu-ray’s documentaries should make it an attractive prospect for those who still value physical media and/or are sticklers for quality. Had it been released as a steelbook, then this collection would most definitely have earned itself a permanent place on my own shelf. Cheaply packaged as it is, though, an iTunes season pass will probably serve me better in the long-term. Add to CheapCharts wishlist…

Gotham: The Fifth and Final Season is available now on Blu-ray, with today’s cheapest online retailer being Amazon, who have it listed for £29.99 including delivery. Alternatively, the season can be downloaded in 1080p from iTunes with many of the same bonus features (Villains: Modes of Persuasion amongst them) for just £19.99.

 

A complete Gotham Blu-ray box set is also available. Zavvi, who are offering it at £68.99, appear to the cheapest retailer for this presently.