In the episode “A Dead Man Feels No Cold” in Season Two, the company is shown to be more a grounded industrial chemical plant whereas in Season Five “Ace Chemicals”, the plant is more comic-book-y with less focus on realism even the vat of green chemicals is cartoony.
Correction: Season Five is where is later appearanced after Season Two, not Four.
Kevin Williamson was the major player in the writing of this show from the first season on-warm but as seasons began to progress his tone and style began to fade though It’s not to say the show wasn’t chancy or stereotypical. it’s truly unfortunate that he allowed Plec to take the reigns because you can definitely see when she decided to make it her own show. Kevin had this dark style that bounced between styles of drama and thriller even darker than Twilight but Plec just wanted her romances, xenophobia and racism throughout. Strong accusations but they float in between seasons.
Barbara started out pretty standard in-terms of recurring characters and then she changed and became a bigger part of how the city changed. I love that but in the final two seasons I feel like she regressed.
As a British child, there was nothing like a Holiday Park either for camping, caravanning. Places of major British leisure during the days of relaxation Holiday parks like Butlins, Pontins and Haven has me thinking these sites would make for stellar hideouts during the virus as most of those have fences and means to stay protected against the infected if secured in-time. And I’m curious to see what those parks would look like during fallout and years after the rage virus took over.
The Bone Temple is a good film don’t get me wrong but I feel it like looses Boyle’s soul in tone and colour. The film breathed the earth and soil of the UK like no other in this franchise. Even how the movie is filmed compliments the experimental work of 28 Days Later. The look of the movie is beautiful to look at yet some scenes of pixelated and edited like glitches. It matched being outdoors in a cold and abandoned environment. Bone Temple kind of removes that for a warmer atmosphere, which is fine but when you compare it to 28 Years there’s a noticeable difference.
Surely, we will see Holy Island again in the final film. The cottage wouldn’t make for an interesting setting outside of seeing Selena and Jim, and if there’s no Selena or if she is missing then Holy Island would be perfect. Get an infected inside that island and we’d have a perfect survival story.
Let’s discuss! A season that maybe isn’t your “absolute favourite” but it’s the season of Gotham you watch the most. Share an arc you find the most intriguing and one (and only one) character you enjoy. (…I can kind of guess).
You can’t pick the entire show.
But what about you Gothamites?
Although Harvey wasn’t a ‘good’ guy, he is a component for Jim’s survival. When Jim played God, Harvey grounded him and helped him understand Gotham’s corruption even before the city was overrun with insane supervillains plotting to seize control. Without Harvey’s intervention, Jim’s life was often in danger. I hate that the show thrown him aside once Season 1 was done where that season established him as this “bad” cop of sorts that had a kind heart yet he was not afraid to push the boundaries, he progresses to become what the GCPD needed all along. Donal Logue was great.
In the episode The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, Jerome destroys the power plant across the river and turns Gotham “into a dark island”.** **Considering he managed to plan the cutting of the power in Gotham, he definitely could’ve done it to create No Man’s Land without the need for Jeremiah Valeska or Ra’s Al Ghul since it’s basically what they wanted by the end of Season Four.
Bruce could’ve been kidnapped during this to train and return by Season Four where he cleans up the city and assists Jim in saving the city.
Rewatching Season Four with fresh head made me appreciate how the show managed each storyline. After the crazy third season it was refreshing to see them handle the plots stable enough to keep the momentum. I really like the Sofia and Pyg storyline that happens concurrently and the twist later on, the horror aspects of Professor Pyg was a nice touch also. Jim once again battling Penguin’s system to maintain order. Bruce carrying on his training and Ra’s planning in the background until things turned nasty, i do wish he stayed around longer.
Of course the season isn’t perfect; we get the return of Barbara and I do believe she should’ve stayed dead, Ed and Lee becoming a thing (yikes…) and Jeremiah Valeksa’s existence being retcon’d into the series like he was always there yet somehow Jerome only now wanted to find him, that’s one of the stories that felt cheap.
Every show has a season that sets up future events and Season 4 is Gotham’s chance to set the stage for the future. Unlike Season 5’s rushed pace, this season allows us to savour the unfolding events.
Since Cambridge is where the virus begun, the third film should depict Cambridge being overrun with Monkies attacking people at the lab. And because Cillian is back, it’ll be like 2002 again.
Since Arnold Vosloo is coming back to the franchise but his Imhotep character’s arc is complete I believe The Mummy 4 could explore the concept of reincarnation with Imhotep. He could play a “present-day” Imhotep, remembering his past and further investigating his history. This could lead to something awakening, especially since the franchise has previously dabbled in reincarnation. Joining Rick and Evie would add another layer to the story. It would be a better concept than Abandoning Arnold Vosloo.
NOTE: Long essay. Not Ai.
Gotham was at its best when it committed to being a crime noir drama, where the city itself was the character and everyone living within it was simply trying to survive. Season One especially excelled at this. The arcs were stable, the twists felt earned, and because the show was still fresh, it never felt like it had to constantly overstep itself. There were stakes because the story allowed consequences to matter.
And look, I love the later seasons for being unapologetically unhinged and completely insane. That’s part of Gotham’s charm. But there’s no denying that something was lost when the show became so focused on introducing and escalating villains before Batman had even arrived.
You can see the difference clearly when you compare Season One to what came later. In Season One, characters have a purpose within the larger structure of Gotham. Their actions affect one another, alliances form for reasons, betrayals have consequences, and the story generally feels like it’s moving toward something.
Later on, characters can flip sides whenever the plot requires it, alliances shift without much purpose, characters die and return, and people can be horribly injured without it necessarily meaning anything. The show keeps raising the spectacle, but ironically, the stakes begin to feel smaller because the audience learns that very little is permanent.
Penguin is probably the best example of what made Season One work. His manipulation and ambition are woven directly into the city’s existing power structure. He isn’t immediately treated as some enormous supervillain; he’s a survivor who understands how Gotham works and slowly positions himself to benefit from it. By the end of the season, his rise feels earned because we’ve watched him manipulate, betray, and outmaneuver people to get there. His power means something because the story took the time to establish how he obtained it.
That’s what I think Gotham ultimately lost.
The city stopped being the source of the story and increasingly became the stage for its villains.
Season One was interested in Gotham as a place—its corruption, its institutions, its criminals, its power structures, and the people trying to survive within them. The later seasons became increasingly interested in Gotham as a showcase for characters who would eventually become Batman’s rogues gallery.
And that’s a shame, because Gotham peaked when it was still asking the more interesting question: what kind of city creates Batman?
The supervillains were always going to be part of the show’s identity, but once they became the identity of the show, Gotham itself became less important. Season One was the rawest version of what Gotham could have been: a crime drama about a corrupt city slowly producing the mythology that would eventually define it.
We got the crazy version of Gotham, and I love that version too.
But I still wish we’d gotten more of the city.
Out of the villains in the show, Malone is the one that Gotham created. He one living in the city, embraces it in a darker way than the other villains we see. He killed. And he went unpunished because the system shaped who he was. No consequences and no trials to overcome. It never fed him it made him tired. In the city of the zany crazy villains, ones that thrive and breathe in weird and strange, he is one that became dried up because of the corrupt. Basically dead to the world he once thrived in.
Throughout the first season, Fish enjoyed teasing Jim for his constant similarities to the bad guys, the thing he fights every season after that. This finally became evident in the Season 3 finale when she could say it with certainty.
Out of all the live-action Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man is easily the most unhinged. A big reason for that is Sam Raimi. Before making Spider-Man, he was best known for horror movies, and you can feel that all the way through the film. Instead of making a normal superhero movie, he mixed horror, action, comedy, and drama together, and somehow it all works.
The Green Goblin is probably the best example. He’s not just a bad guy trying to take over the city—he’s genuinely creepy. The scene where Norman Osborn talks to himself in the mirror feels like it’s from a horror film, and Willem Dafoe goes all in with his performance. He’s loud, scary, funny, and completely over the top, but it never feels out of place.
There are horror moments everywhere. Peter’s transformation after the spider bite is strange and unsettling, Aunt May’s house gets attacked like something out of a scary movie, and the Goblin keeps popping up in ways that are meant to shock you. Raimi never lets you forget that becoming Spider-Man—and fighting villains—is dangerous.
The way the film is shot also makes it stand out. The camera moves fast, zooms in at weird times, and follows Spider-Man through the city in a way that feels exciting and a little chaotic. Everything is bigger, louder, and more dramatic than most superhero films today.
What really makes Spider-Man (2002) so special is that it doesn’t try to be realistic or cool. It fully embraces how weird comic books can be. One minute it’s funny, the next it’s creepy, then it’s emotional. Most modern superhero films stick to one style, but this one isn’t afraid to be all over the place.
That’s why I think Spider-Man (2002) is the most unhinged Spider-Man movie. It’s bold, weird, full of energy, and feels like it was made by a director with a clear vision. More than twenty years later, there’s still nothing quite like it.
Jim took the job very seriously and pushed Barbara to the side to focus on the city instead of the relationship, going missing for a while and Jim seems to blame her for how he acts around her. It’s not Barbara’s fault for wanting to know the truth about Penguin and all the other corruption, Jim being suspicious. Not calling the relationship off before Lee.