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The Spectrum-Tribune battle kept me from seeing Gotham, and even on In Demand, it wanted me to buy the episode for some crazy reason... but I also have an Amazon Fire stick, so I downloaded Fox Now and watched the premiere last night. And boy, did I get my ham! I love that Tabitha is dead, and I hope she stays that way. I was tired of her arc some time ago; the whole "totally invincible fighter who can't never ever be defeated in battle" shtick gets old after awhile. But, it was weird that this woman, who I'm pretty sure has survived multiple brush-ups with people who had swords and/or guns, was suddenly overpowered by a crippled weirdo. Sure, Penguin has creepiness in his favor, but why was he suddenly too strong for her? Doesn't she have a side job teaching moms how to lift wrecked cars off of their babies or something? But that's a minor quibble. She was a vicious bastard, Tabitha, and I'm glad she's dead. Hahahahahahaha! I'm glad she's dead! ahahahahaha... glad she's dead, ahahahahahaha.... I knew that chopper would get shot down, but making it fly super-low, and between the buildings to boot, felt conspicuously implausible in a show full of supernatural supervillains. C'mon, guys, I demand realism from my Batman fiction! In real life, no helicopter would fly that low through a city when the only thing known about the city is that it's chock-full of anarchy! I'm starting to think that the writers are not taking this seriously. Seriously, though, overall, it was a good episode. A little over the top, sure, but I think that now, at the end of its run, Gotham has found where it wants to live. It's found that crazy, not-even-sure-it-was-there place between straight police procedural and wacko grimdark DC comic book reality that I wasn't sure it'd ever find back when the show should have been called The Life And Times of Fish and Penguin And Other Ancillary Characters Whose Names You Recognize.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:43
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Phylodox posted:It is 100% totally plausible that the illegal helicopter illegally carrying illegal supplies into a city that’s been cut off by the military would want to fly that low to avoid being spotted on radar. I get that. But between buildings? In a city that's known to be dangerous? Someone with a regular gun could damage the chopper from their bedroom, and the only thing they knew about the area was that only the bad guys have guns, and they control most of the city. It's a minor quibble, really. As soon as Bruce said that he could fly some supplies in, I already knew exactly how it would play out. Except that Tabitha died.
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Jan 7, 2019 20:48
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Will Balloon Man come back and save the day?
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Jan 8, 2019 05:54
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HUGE SPACEKABLOOIE posted:I haven't watched this show since right around "WHAT'S ALTRUISM?!" happened but I'm thinking maybe I need to pick it up again... I loved that line. It was so absurd and dumb, but totally believable coming from Bullock. And the cherry on top was Gordon's immediate reaction.
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Jan 9, 2019 02:38
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I dug the headshot Gordon did on the Skellington Gang leader there toward the end of the episode. I like seeing the shine of his previously unshakable moral code get tarnished as time goes on. I'm not so sure about Selina, though. I knew when they had a close-up of her face and she was talking with her eyes closed that we'd have some cat's eyes stuff going on, but then they didn't do the cat eye thing... and then they did. It was weird. Was there an iteration of Catwoman in the comics that was in some way actually feline? (Serious question; I'm not a comic book guy and I seriously don't know. I don't even know if that's a stupid question.) As long as we don't get a basketball scene with her, I think we'll be OK. Overall, I enjoyed the episode.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:52
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TheLoneStar posted:I was expecting it, yet was still disappointed that this Harley continues the odd trend of barely making her look like an actual harlequin. The Animated Series got it perfect right off the bat. The animated series got it perfect right off the bat because Harley Quinn was created for the animated series. Every other incarnation of her is, by necessity, derivative (when it's not a cheaply bastardized version of the character).
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Jan 21, 2019 19:02
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One thing that I liked was seeing Zsasz displaying an emotion besides "Smartass." He's always hypercompetent and never afraid of anything... until this episode, where I saw that veneer of confidence wear a little thin. He looked worried in a scene or two. I don't think he ever has been worried on camera before. It kind-of gives a little depth to how bad things are in Gotham.
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Jan 25, 2019 18:46
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GigaPeon posted:Reminder that if you like Zsasz's actor being a quirky mobster, then watch Barry on HBO. I'm going to try to binge this. It was too slow starting for me to sustain interest when it was airing normally.
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Jan 26, 2019 20:34
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Tiggum posted:I realise it's entirely in-character for him, but Jim being so insistent on not letting Zsasz be executed because he didn't commit these particular murders - even though he definitely did commit a whole lot of other murders - was pretty dumb. I would have liked Penguin to point that out. Like, accept the evidence that it couldn't have been Zsasz and just put it to the crowd that even if he didn't do this specific crime he's still an unrepentant serial killer. I don't think Zsasz would even have denied that since it's pretty widely known. Well, like you said, it's in-character for Jim to do exactly what he did... and that's why it happened. Almost anyone following this show would notice how out-of-character it would be for Jim to do anything other than what he did, and we'd all be arguing about whether Jim was a clone from Indian Hill, under some kind of mind control, or if a computer scientist made some red gothamite and gave it to him. There's an in-universe reason why they didn't have Jim let the execution go on, and I don't know if anyone has touched on this yet: Penguin was trying to take over leadership of Jim's sector. The people want justice for what happened to their loved ones, and here's Penguin with a certified, card-carrying bad guy to blame. The line between justice and revenge is never as thick and well-defined as we'd like it to be, and in the world of Gotham, it's all but vanished. So, Penguin riles them up against Zsasz, and if he executes him to the crowd's fervent approval, then their allegiance will go from Jim to Penguin. It's a classic dictator move, really. For Penguin, having loyal followers is extremely important, because he wants power and that's how he defines power. He might have thought that Zsasz bombed the building, but he wasn't sure, and he certainly didn't care if Zsasz really did it--he had an axe to grind with Zsasz and with Jim, and doing so in front of a properly motivated crowd would kill both of those stones with one bird. Penguin's motive was 75% power play and 25% personal vendetta. And it partially worked: in the end, Zsasz lived, but Penguin did snag some of Jim's population.
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Jan 28, 2019 21:09
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nooneofconsequence posted:Dogs do to smile. Yep. It's looking up that they have trouble with.
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Feb 1, 2019 04:48
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I don't think I've watched a single episode of this show and not said "Got Ham?" at some point. Part of it is because when the title card pops up, the text "GOTHAM" does this zoom-in fish-eye thing, and as it zooms in, the space between the middle two letters becomes more pronounced... I've been watching Batman stuff for decades, and only when I saw that title card did I think, "Got ham?" My son is autistic. Every time he sees the title card, he says, "Gotham." I correct him: "Got ham." Then we get into a little argument about it. It's predictable, but fun.
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Feb 3, 2019 04:23
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Phylodox posted:The one time Bullock outwits someone... I love how they've crafted his character. I 100% believe that the only reason he was able to figure out that riddle was because by pure happenstance, he got in trouble as a schoolboy and had to write a report about it. Totally believable. Hell, I remember in the 6th grade, each kid in my class had to write a report on a European country, and we went around the room, choosing countries. We had to do a presentation and everything. To this day, I know things about Belgium that no American should know.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:46
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Davros1 posted:I remember once a teacher gave a sheet with a list of instructions on it and told us to get to work. It was supposed to teach us to read everything first, because the final instruction was to disregard everything on the sheet. Those were great, because it was always "1) Read all instructions first, 2) Write your name at the top of the paper, 3) Poke four holes on the bottom of the paper with your pencil, 4) Tear off the lower left hand corner, etc." They had you doing stuff that other people could hear and that you couldn't just erase or anything. When you read the last instruction that said "Just do #1 and #2 and ignore the rest," you would hear people groan.
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Feb 15, 2019 19:02
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Tiggum posted:I've heard about this kind of test and it's always seemed fairly dumb to me, because it's just using people's understanding of context against them to no real purpose. In practically every other situation a set of numbered instructions is meant to be followed in order, and subverting that doesn't seem to teach any kind of useful lesson, it's just a trick. Right. I like tricks. I like it as a practical joke, not as a teaching aid. And the main reason I like it as a practical joke is that it usually fools so many people in the classroom that nobody feels singly targeted. Then the teacher has a good laugh, reminds us how important it is to always read all the directions, and for the rest of the semester or school year, you never once are put in a position where failing to read all the directions before beginning the task has any consequences. It's never brought up again. I love it.
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Feb 15, 2019 19:36
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Poor Jeremiah. What a horrible way to go-go. (I'm supremely proud of that.) Anyway... who knew that the Joker built the Batcave?
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Feb 22, 2019 03:04
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Is it the same one? Not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious now.
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Feb 22, 2019 03:17
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Boris Galerkin posted:I just started season 1. Is there anything universally terrible that I should skip? hahahahaha wow. Uh.... OK... uhm... you know what? No, no there isn't. I mean, yes, there is definitely terrible stuff in there that you should skip, but by and large, it's little bits of terrible strewn about in the first season or so, and it's a lot of work to skip those terrible parts without missing the good stuff. The show takes a bit of time finding its footing, trying to find the sweet spot between police procedural set in Gotham City and Bat(man)poo poo crazy comic book TV series. But, once it settles into its Bat(man)poo poo crazy comic book police procedural groove, things really start getting good. Also, you don't want to skip the terrible stuff because if you do, you'll miss out on understanding how they polished up many of the early turds that they farted out while trying to be too serious. And, some of the terrible stuff is just so terrible that you have to see it. To wit: keep an eye out for a character called Fish... well, in general, I suppose, as she sure is something awful alright, but in particular, watch for her to suddenly throw everybody out of her fancy club. It's an over-the-top line delivery that comes out of nowhere and even makes one of the extras giggle. There's a gif of it somewhere, I'm sure.
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Mar 16, 2019 15:28
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Phylodox posted:Do yourself a huge favour and stop trying to map Gotham onto any existing Batman canon right now. You’ll just give yourself an aneurism. Yeah, this, pretty much. Sage advice. But don't worry too much, because if you do get an aneurysm, the Asian FBI profiler/resident psychiatrist from Law & Order: SVU can fix you up in a jiffy. And you'll have plot-convenient superpowers.
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Mar 17, 2019 16:05
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Dr Christmas posted:Remember the balloon man? Remember that one serious tv reporter seriously talking about people seriously looking up to him as a serious solution to the city's problems? oh boy, do I! And you don't have to call him "the balloon man." Just Balloon Man is fine.
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Mar 19, 2019 01:13
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Nice.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:18
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Burning_Monk posted:"What's Altruism?!?" ... and Jim's expression following that line was equally priceless.
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Mar 19, 2019 20:50
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Boris Galerkin posted:I’m in season 3 and Bruce just killed Alfred and none of this makes sense. Why would the leader of the court need to do this complicated thing of cloning Bruce, teaching the clone to be Bruce, kidnapping the real Bruce, then training the real Bruce, and then killing everyone in the court, then sending Bruce back… when he could have just ordered them all to slit their own necks open and they would have done it without a second thought because these people are so brainwashed that they’ll cut their fingers off and eat it if you tell them to? I'm not going to say that you're wrong for asking these questions, but I will point out that asking them is kind-of like asking why it is that a roller coaster that picks you up on one side of a platform and drops you off on the other side of the same platform has to go through such a long, winding, fast, stomach-churning, equilibrium-screwing path to accomplish that task. By this point in the series, they've abandoned all but the last vestiges of real-world logic. They're operating on comic book rules now. Why is it needlessly complicated and ridiculous? Because they got their ham, that's why.
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Mar 27, 2019 14:52
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nooneofconsequence posted:I'm sad we can't have just a season of Batman. Well, the problem is that the lead just isn't old enough. And that's a huge problem--you can't have BatAngstyTeen, or BatYoungMan. It's gotta be Batman. I mean, how could a show like this work around the fact that this character simply isn't old enough to play a believable Batman? They can't just magically age him up! Twice!
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Mar 29, 2019 04:14
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Gonz posted:So help me God if I see another iteration of Bruce Wayne’s parents being killed, and that pearl necklace falling apart on the ground. Well, let's be fair. They couldn't have the killer leave a pearl necklace on Bruce's mom's chest. This is a family show, after all.
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Mar 29, 2019 15:53
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The Bloop posted:Jack Rapier OK... I laughed out loud at this. Let's just hope there's not a Jack Rapiest out there.
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Mar 29, 2019 17:30
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I thought the quick shot of a bat silhouetted against the moon was a nice touch. It was telegraphed subtly, and the shot was long enough to appreciate while being short enough to avoid being overtly self-referential. Can't wait for the finale. It has been a long, strange trip, hasn't it? Who wants to post their favorite bad Got Ham moments from when the show was still finding itself? One of mine was the strangely out-of-place soap opera crap from season one, which involved Babs and her ex-girlfriend, Detective Badlywritten.
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Apr 19, 2019 05:07
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nooneofconsequence posted:Weird. Not really. It's entirely possible that Bicondova simply didn't believe that the makeup artists could convincingly age her up from 18 to 28. She is still very young-looking in the face, and the ten years that separate 18-year-olds (or however old she's supposed to be) from 28-year-olds make a huge difference to one's appearance, voice, and everything else.
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Apr 20, 2019 03:33
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muscles like this! posted:That's probably the biggest issue with ending the show like this on the start of Batman's story. They couldn't actually conclude anything since this is technically the beginning. So you're just left wanting more, which isn't happening. Ending a show with the audience wanting more is something, though. Most shows don't manage to do that.
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Apr 26, 2019 20:46
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Chuds McGreedy posted:This whole past week I was thinking about how many drat times Ben McKenzie has said “GCPD!” over the life of the series and how I was gonna miss it, and the motherfucker said it THREE times in the finale! We need a supercut of all GCPD line deliveries.
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Apr 26, 2019 23:54
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Just Chamber posted:I did like the nice touch of the reporters and general public wearing 1940's trenchcoats and fedoras etc which echoes the fashion in the 1989 Batman movie. I think the overall art design (especially the architecture) reminds me of the 1989 movie; something like a Gothic post-industrial nightmare-scape. I was hoping that when we saw Batman from the front, that he'd have the 1989 logo on his chest. That would have been a little too on-the-nose, I think, but it would have been cool.
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Apr 28, 2019 18:16
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The Bloop posted:I will greatly miss this show and this thread I can still remember the first time I got ham. I can also remember that brief, wonderful time when this show had a character named Galavan right around the same time that the show Galavant was on, and the wonderful sing-song episode recaps that could be created to the tune of Galavant's earworm of a theme song. I won't say that Gotham was perfect, and while all shows tend to start out rough, Gotham was particularly lost in terms of tone and direction at the beginning of its run. But I just love the insane balance they managed to find between real-world police procedural, gangland drama, and supernatural comic book insanity. It wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but I think it managed to create an in-universe atmosphere where people being resurrected, people with superpowers, and people being resurrected via a process that gives them superpowers was somehow plausible. And, if I'm remembering correctly, we got to see Joker almost have his "Jack is dead my friend; you can call me... Joker!" moment... but he just couldn't come up with the perfect J-name. I also like his look; they went full scaryface instead of "Whoa, look at that creepy misshapen smile!"
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Apr 30, 2019 15:25
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Burning_Monk posted:Remember the good times.... villian super mart! God! I LOVED that. So much detail, right down to hand-made signs letting shoppers know about sales and other deals on overstocked implements of calamity. I kept meaning to bring that up here, but I kept forgetting. Thanks! I really wish we got a montage of them rebuilding Gotham, and I wish that montage included one brief scene of some working-class bad guys stocking timers and dynamite on the shelves of the Villain Depot as things got "back to normal."
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Apr 30, 2019 18:08
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qirex posted:It was pretty crazy from the get go, I mean balloon man, dozens of street kids getting kidnapped, the goat killer and the bone-dissoving super strength drug were in the first half of the season. True, but it also had a lot of not-crazy stuff in it. Remember, there were a few soap opera elements front-and-center in the early going, and it really leaned much more heavily on the police procedural side. It tried to blend regular stuff with crazy stuff, and if you ask me, the show was OK but didn't really find its feet until they said, "screw the normal stuff; we're going full-on bat(man)-poo poo crazy!"
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Jul 29, 2019 19:34
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