Day two of writing my Nygmobblepot season 3 re-write fanfiction (day one was cut short after the power went out while I was looking at pictures of Victor Zsasz on google images):
I'm really struggling on what to do with Isabella's character. I initially thought it'd be better to write a completely different take on her, make her an actual Hugo Strange clone, or use that plastic surgeon who was giving mafia people new faces or something. But the more I think about her, the more I can't stop thinking about her.
Even if we just take we have from canon, we can only assume she was a regular woman who just happened to look like Kristen Kringle. But not only was she willing to look past the fact that Edward murdered his last girlfriend, she dyed her hair and dressed exactly like her. Who would be capable of doing that? Who was this woman? Why didn't we get to see more of her? Did the writers have an actual plan that had to be cut off or were they just winging it?
Was she actually in love with Ed or did she have ulterior motives? If she had known Penguin planned on killing her and survived, would she have tried to get him back?
I just finished watching Gotham (the TV show) and here are some of my thoughts and opinions. SPOILERS AHEAD (for the entire show)
I'll start with the biggest crime they committed: Cowardly portraying Nygma and Cobblepot's relationship.
I know, I know, it was a decade ago and I'm sure there would be lots of pissy people if the homosexual couple in the Batman show was two guys instead of two girls (written for the male gaze). I'm assuming FOX just barely allowed it to happen at all, but I still think they could have written it differently.
It's not the fact that they didn't end up together or happy (even though, technically, in the finale they did end up together). What I would've liked to see was an earnest portrayal of unrequited love instead of them immediately shoving Isabella in. Her character was confusing and just unnecessary, was she a doppelganger like Bruce's? Kringle's long lost twin? It's like her only purpose was to immediately reassure the homophobic audience that Nygma couldn't possibly reciprocate Oswald's feelings, to make it acceptable to them.
By making Oswald kill Isabella so soon they officially put the final nail in the coffin, and I think that was lazy and uninspired.
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Lee Thompkins was whatever the writers wanted her to be whenever they wanted to, which is funny considering they gave her a line in S4 about how she would never be what Jim or Ed wanted her to. Speaking of, the whole Lee/Ed thing they did was just... underdeveloped at best. Lee never really felt like she "crossed the line" to becoming a villain, even though the writers kept insisting on her having a "bad side". I can't see how she would have moved past Nygma murdering Kristen Kringle.
Barbara's storyline felt a bit more natural, but not that much. I don't expect a Gotham tv show to have responsible portrayals of mental disorders, but it was just a bit confusing how she initially was treated as irredeemably "mad" after being at Arkham, to becoming a mob queen, to being welcomed back into the "good guys" (I didn't count, but I'd say she murdered more or just about the same number of people as The Riddler, who wasn't given that same grace). Her character being a "cheating bisexual", and the way they portrayed her relationship with Tabitha also left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I think the writers struggled a bit when writing Selina (and Ivy), which makes sense since teenaged versions of Catwoman and Poison Ivy are not usually portrayed and definitely not what comes to mind when you think of them. Selina's motives and intentions felt shaky, and I think they could have shown more of her friendship with Barbara and Tabitha, how they influenced her. It was hard to imagine her becoming Catwoman, and getting recast in the finale also didn't help. Still, her melodramatic teenage romance with Bruce was way more bearable to me than Jim and Lee's.
Victor Zsasz, Jerome and Jeremiah were the highlights of the show. I also liked Fish Mooney, the third/final version of Ivy, and Lucius Fox (who was severely underused, I loved his scenes with Ed and wished they were forced to work together more often)
I think they dropped the ball when portraying certain villains like Mr. Freeze, Firefly, Scarecrow and especially Harvey Dent. I guess they probably didn't want all of the villains to be fully established in Gotham while Bruce was still 15 years old, but they could have dedicated a bit more time to them as villains instead of just showing their origin stories and fading them into the background.
To be honest I didn't mind the jump from the show being about the GCPD and Gotham mafia to the "Hugo Strange bringing people back to life" part of the show, but I do think they jumped the shark with that "No Man's Land" arc.
The 10-year jump they did on the finale had some hilarious implications for me. Bruce said he would "come back when Gotham needed him", but, the way they wrote it, it felt like things in Gotham were doing mostly fine until the very moment Bruce came back. Penguin is released, Nygma escapes, Jeremiah reveals he was faking a 10-year coma, Barbara Lee (what a stupid name) gets kidnapped. If I were you, Bruce, I'd keep on travelling the world.
