6 Times Gotham Improved Batman's Mythology (And 4 Times It Failed)

2. It Didn’t Overly Rely On The Freaks

Gotham Scarecrow Season 4
Fox

Of course Gotham served up its fair share of camp, erratic, vibrant supervillains, but the series didn’t lazily fall back and just rely on the ‘freak’ corner of Batman’s rogues gallery to carry the show.

So often in the Bat-books, the narrative will be solely focussed on one of the Caped Crusader’s freakish villains. That’s all well and good, yet there’s always the temptation to allow this ‘freak of the week’ to take centre-stage at the expense of the greater world of Gotham City and its more non-powered characters.

In the Gotham TV show, while such villains were allowed to flourish and were showcased well, the series also retained its identity of being a show about regular people in a corrupt and dirty city. More time was afforded to the war between mob bosses than it was to simply highlighting a crazed supervillain. And in doing so, Gotham shone a spotlight on how everyday people can be just as vicious and underhand as any over-elaborate, amped up to 11 comic book rogue.

Advertisement
In this post: 
Gotham
 
First Posted On: 
Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.