u/Certain-Singer-9625

Warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t watched the entire fifth season.

I just finished Gotham for the fourth time, and here are a few things I've noticed.

Selina Kyle

When Selina is stealing the jewel, the music is a bit different from that which appears on the S5 episode soundtrack album. Personally I like the aired version better, but it’s just an interesting little discrepancy and I wonder when and why they changed it.

Barbara Lee

When things really get moving it's easy to miss that Barbara Lee's clothes in both her appearances of this episode are shades of purple. Yvonne Craig purple, if you know what I mean.

Edward Nygma

Early in the episode Ed says he's been in Arkham for ten years. Since Bruce has been gone for ten years, that means Ed was arrested very shortly after he stood on the ramparts with everyone else to save Gotham. I wonder what he did to bring about this fast, unfortunate turn of events.

(Oswald similarly complains that Gordon threw him into Blackgate six months after reunification.)

Deleted scenes: Ed and Oswald

Ed and Oswald are walking down the street when they happened to come across a foppish-looking man with an umbrella. They descend upon him…presumably for the umbrella.

In another deleted scene, Oswald and Ed are enjoying white wine at the afterparty for Jim Gordon’s promotion to Commissioner. Ed expresses an interest in salvaging their submarine, which is lying in pieces at the bottom of the river along with their treasure. That suggests that contrary to the idea that Nyssa got away, the sub hit one of the mines in the river and she (and Ed the dog) perished.

Deleted scene: Riddler

When Riddler wakes up, he not only sees the note "Oswald" left him and the crate of C4, but he also discovers his bowler hat nearby and…a large trunk. He opens it up and is delighted to find Mayor James bound inside. "Hello!" he says with a hearty laugh. (In the aired episode you can see the hat and trunk in the background.)

And finally, a note on the “For Gotham” showdown in the previous episode. I mentioned the discrepancy between it taking place during the day, as opposed to when we saw it in the season premiere, which depicted a nighttime shootout.

But something else I didn't really catch was that when they go to the ramparts to defend Gotham, they all leave together from Jim's office. The season opener suggests that Ed came from his library, Oswald came from City Hall, and Harvey came from a bar.

Of course it could be that the S5E1 flash forward simply didn't show them all gathering at Jim's office to talk before they left for the final battle. But more realistically, it's probably just a writing inconsistency.

Holy crap. Every time I see the beginning of S5 I am so impressed. It’s the only time in the series where you flash forward to later in the series and then learn how it all came about.

The ominous music, the coming together of enemies to defend the city…what a great sequence. (Does anybody notice that the music in the scenes with Harvey have a nice Irish lilt? Or that Harvey purposely leaves his drink unfinished as he goes off to his possible death?)

Carps are minor. There’s obviously a huge discrepancy between this scene taking place at night, and it later taking place during the day. And Gordon’s radio communication with the mainland is kind of a clumsy expository device. Also, we saw the Mayor blown up in his office in S4, so where did this new City Hall come from?

But that opening “For Gotham!” scene…damn that’s good!

Maybe I'm blind, but I've never really noticed this before.

This is the S3 episode that begins with a teaser in which the senior council of the Court of Owls is standing around an illuminated table, prepared to vote on Gotham's fate.

When Kathryn says that Gotham is diseased, there is nothing on the tabletop.

When the council has voted and Kathryn declares that Gotham must fall, that tabletop suddenly has a model of the entire city in the middle of it.

What I never saw before was that during the scene in-between those two, when Kathryn tells the council to vote, that model is rising up out of the table.

The shot is really quick, the model is partially obscured, and frankly the scene is so intense that I had my eyes on Kathryn that whole time. I kind of feel sorry for the craftsman who designed that motorized table and model, lol. They're too cool to not be more of a focal point.

I came across this totally by accident when researching the war theorist Von Clausewitz on Wikipedia.

“Clausewitz had many aphorisms, of which one of the most famous is, ‘War is the continuation of policy with other means.’”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Oswald paraphrases it in the episode “Arkham”.

Oswald: “I told you there is a war coming, Jim. There will be so many deaths. So many.”…

Jim: “This war…what are you talking about? Why will there be a war?”

Oswald: “You know war is just politics by other means. And isn’t politics just money…talking?”

Jim: “Talking about what?”

Oswald: “Arkham, of course.”

Until today I’d heard of Von Clausewitz and knew vaguely that he had to do with military decision-making, but I had no idea that Penguin was actually quoting him.

I just thought that was kind of cool.

Concluding this topic...

Sometimes the mix of light and shadow is hazy, as it is during this scene of Richard Sionis' sadistic hiring methods…or the golden light coming in to GCPD HQ to break up the more usual darkness of the show.

Then there are two very noir shots that look similar: Galavan's monks arriving to stalk Bruce, and our heroes hunting Galavan together. The effect of having the moon before them, casting long shadows, is so effective they used it twice…although wisely in different locations.

Then there's that narrow street near the bridge as Barbara leads Gordon into a trap. Nice angles, nice use of geometry again. (And I can swear that same street appeared in The Penguin.)

Even with Jerome and Barbara…dang, talk about highlighting your subject. Great shot setup and framing.

And finally, some (probably) common but nice practical effects. These are two adjacent frames of Jim shooting Galavan (notice the shell being ejected), but what a cool difference. They had fog blowing quickly in the background, so even that changes between frames.

And lastly, this was probably CG, but what a cool idea to have Firefly and Freeze's battle reflected in Hugo Strange's glasses!

When Gotham first came out, I remember a reviewer saying that its look compares very favorably to a Batman theatrical film––quite a compliment, and one with which I definitely agree. A lot of that comes down to the gigantic sets, such as Wayne Manor’s drawing room or GCPD Headquarters. But it also comes down to the locations and photography. It's clear they put a lot of time and money into this show, and that's why the show looks so good and feels so real, despite the fantastic subject matter.

More of what makes Gotham so noir. Crazy dizzying angles, lots of backlit scenes (notice how the stairs behind Harvey have the same effect as window blinds in those old black and white movies), stark contrasts, shooting through window frames (like Barbara's clock tower penthouse), and shapes within shapes, like bridges.

The picture outside Kristen Kringle's apartment is very dark, but the creatives noted how they decided to make it weirder still with sparks from the elevated train, which is why this particular frame is lit up. Elsewhere they noted that it always seems to be raining in Gotham City. (Not really, because it would be expensive and inconvenient to use a rain rig all the time, but you get the drift. It's gloomy.) And finally, you get this very "Untouchables"-like shot of unlikely allies…backlit, of course.

First in a series of appreciation posts for the absolutely wonderful photography of Gotham. Most pictures come from the season 2 Blu-ray feature "Gotham by Noir Light".

Director of photography Christopher Norr points out what makes them noir: the creative use of light and shadow, the odd angles, the emphasis on geometry, how there's often steam or smoke in the background for effect, and even (as in the photo of Oswald and Jim) searchlights that move down alleyways for no particular story reason but to invoke thoughts of prison guard towers.

I love the mixing of occasional warm colors in with the blues and grays that make Gotham City so dark…and, as in the last photo, small touches like water dripping off the garage, just to add to the gloom.

All in all, Gotham features some of the strongest noir look I've seen on TV since…well, the original Outer Limits.

Well, Ben McKenzie and Morena Baccarin, anyway, on an episode of Sheriff Country this fall.

https://screenrant.com/sheriff-country-season-2-ben-mckenzie-casting/

Barnes be like, “We do everything by the book!”

“We can’t do anything until you bring me evidence!!”

“This evidence? It’s not enough. We need more.”

“You got more, but it’s still not enough. Bring me witnesses!”

“Okay, so you found ten witnesses, but they all have sketchy backgrounds! Find me ten witnesses who are nuns!”

“Jim, I want to trust you, but I don’t!”

“Jim, you broke my heart! You belong in prison!”

I’m mostly through my fourth rewatch of S2 and I’m liking Captain Barnes less and less every time I see him.

Aside from being a constant obstacle, this is a man with anger issues. So it was entirely appropriate that he got the Tetch virus. If the virus made normal people raging mad, it turned Barnes into a full blown lunatic.

So I wasn’t entirely unhappy to see him gone. It’s just that my preference for a police captain character was Capt. Essen. And look how long she lasted.

I’m on my fourth go-around watching Gotham, and I just noticed a small but dumb error.

In “This Ball of Mud and Meanness”, Bruce finally gets to meet >!Patrick “Matches” Malone!<. This woman named Jeri tells Bruce that he lives in that big building on Grant between 9th and 10th. Apartment 9B.

That’s Bruce in the picture, approaching the building. How many stories do you see? 😏

Did anybody else see “Smile 2” and notice the scene where a bunch of creepy smiling people come crawling towards the main character, Skye Riley?

It’s framed as a succession of still images, but they keep moving closer to her, and I couldn’t help feel this was a deliberate homage to that infamous scene of Bob climbing over the couch.

All of a sudden I'm seeing a lot of these lawn "ornaments" popping up in my area. Most of them are towards the more rural end of town. Boomers will remember the giant pink flamingo fad. This appears to be in line with that.

I see on the web that some of these things get as big as 6 feet tall. And especially when I see the larger ones, I have the same thought:

Compensating?

No spoilers but…

Toward the very end of From S4, some of the major characters have an argument about the best way to try to escape their creepy town. Unfortunately, the plan they believe will succeed also means that not everybody will make it out alive. The main character, Boyd, flatly refuses to accept that.

Until he pretty much has to. He comes to the painful realization that some must be sacrificed if all are to be saved.

The moment they even began discussing their plan, I thought of Babylon 5 and G’Kar. I have to admit, B5’s version of this scene was much more dramatic. Still, it was great to see this bold decision played out on a totally unrelated show. Bittersweet memory unlocked.

I don’t know if this has been seen here before. The original Bluesky post was about the photographer, but this is a beautiful shot of Sherilyn Fenn.

Can’t help hearing Newkirk’s line in my head when I see this. 😄