In Defense of Gotham (2014): It's Better than the Fandom Says ❤️🖤
(at least as of season 3) Gotham is currently one of my favorite TV series: it has interesting characters, relationships, storylines, good acting, stunt work and a wonderful mix of dystopian elements with humor. Yet a lot of tumblr posts would have you believe that it's the worst thing ever written.
So in honor of its 11th anniversary (September 22th), here's why I don't think it's bad and why some critique points belong in the true-but-not-worse-than-in-most-other-shows category: 1. "The writing is bad" as if there weren't lots of quotes ranging from humorous to wise. You do realize that everything was written, it wasn't just weird plotlines people threw into a story that wrote itself. Every character you like for more than their acting was written to be like that, every plotline you were invested in had to be plannned in advance.
2. Bad continuity aka forgotten plot points I find annoying too cause come on, you can't just introduce a character who looks identical to another one without saying why, but on the whole (aka if we ignore that Isabella should've been adressed 😅), there are actually a lot of things with consequences for the furtue, more than in other stories (think characters holding grudges because of early events, or personal relationships mattering, butterfly effects (the Wayne murder having consequences in every direction from Bruce to Ivy and Tabitha).
3. Misogyny For a show inspired by New York in the 1970s, when things like domestic violence or abuse in a family were often widely ignored, the crimes against girls and women as well as reactions are depicted pretty well and yes, a part of that includes ignorance from male characters.
There are some things that really annoy me about the show's treatment (like a lot), but I still like the women themselves: they're good characters, whether they have major or minor roles (for example Nora Fries was so sweet during the like two episodes she was in or Liza I keep thinking about despite how little we know about her). To me Gotham even stands out in how good the female characters are compared to other shows. Think about how many fandoms need a female characters compilation or questions like "favorite female character" to even talk about them 🥲
Certain characters may be tied a bit too much to their femininity, but for some that's great realism-wise. Barbara Kean for example reinvents herself so many times, emerging with a new look, but essentially just another type of attractive a woman can be, which makes total sense consider how important being attractive has been for her.
4. Queerbaiting We have multiple queer characters. It's annoying that a certain character never explicitly realizes he's queer, and a shame that some of my favorite ships aren't canon, but they're only a part of numerous characters and, like real people, have problems getting together. Some of the Gotham account tweets from back then were fully queerbaiting, though.
5. Conclusion Ultimately I don't know what every single "Gotham would be an amazing show if it wasn't so bad" poster likes in entertainment, but I'm sure for a part of what they want to express is that it's a weird show, that they. Crazy things happen but it's a crazy world. Sometimes the reason for something happening is because it's iconic and it loves to do iconic things.
My questions for the heavy Gotham criticizers is this: what do you think makes Gotham "the worst show"? What makes it worse than so many bad shows (for example boring ones) when it's already better on multiple levels?
Hopefully this post can bring more positivity into the Gotham fandom, since entering the fandom enthusiastically but seeing a lot of people hate on it can be pretty discouraging, both for new and old fans. ❤️