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    Gotham - How Batman Without Batman Works

    A Batman show without Batman is still fantastic

    "Hey, how about a Batman show with actual Batman in it" is something a lot of knuckle-draggers have been saying since Fox announced they would be making a show focusing on Jim Gordon.

    That mentality is limiting and terrible and should be removed from pop culture as a whole.

    I'm going to go through the show and why it is very good with out anyone wearing a cape. Please be advised that spoilers are ahead and really, you should watch it now anyways.

    Batman-less Gotham allows for some complex characters

    Hey, guess what - Batman's always going to win. O sure Two-Face might have him on the ropes, but he's going to pull out a W.

    And why is that? Because he's the good guy and good guys pretty much always win.

    Now don't get me wrong, I love Batman and can watch him pummel people all day. But this is a nice switch.

    Jim Gordon is clearly our hero for the first hour. And he's really good at it. But at the end, he's forced to either kill the guy who will become Penguin or get killed himself.

    He fakes the Penguins' death. The Penguin them immediately murders some rando fisherman with terrible luck.

    That blood is on Jim's hands. And all of the other murders Penguin commits (and there will be more than a few) is on Jim. That's a pretty grim outcome for our hero's noble choice.

    Our hero's sidekick is his partner. If you're familiar with Harvey Bullock, you know he's not above breaking a few laws to make sure the real criminals get put behind bars. In this show, it is established he is pretty nefarious. If Jim didn't convincingly fake Penguin's death, both would have been put down by Bullock. Pretty dark stuff. I'm sure as the show goes on, we'll see some ebbs and flows in Bullock's moral tide.

    With no real hero in the show, the show becomes infinitely more interesting.

    Batman's origins are better rounded

    Rich kid's parents get shot, pearls fall to the ground, he grows up to be Batman.

    That's the bare mins on Batman's origins. We go from kid who gets inspired to moral hero almost immediately.

    I do not want to over-exaggerate Batman's importance, but the only other crucial age gap that gets looked over I can think of was Jesus.

    This will be an interesting look at the steps Batman took as a kid.

    Not to say this is going to be like "Episode I" where he's an annoying ass hat. But if handled properly, seeing young Bruce Wayne cope with the loss of his parents could be extremely moving.

    Oh, also, Alfred seems like kind of a dick. What's up with that?

    In the recent Batman: Earth One, they made Alfred an military type who was completely capable of kicking ass and less apt to wipe one. He was kind of the hesitant guardian who vowed to watch over Bruce because Tomas and Martha Wayne had suspicious that their lives were in danger. It'll be interesting to see if that's the route the show takes.

    All the villains

    You know what really makes Batman the best? The bad guys. Truth be told, I think every hero should be measured against his rogues gallery. This is why Superman movies don't work. Because pitching a god up against a bald guy does not create good tension. I also think that this (o and rampant sexism) is part of why Wonder Woman has not been made yet. Off the top of your head, can you name all the Wonder Woman villains? Do any carry the same weight as the Joker? Not really.

    Eh, actually that doesn't matter too much, it's mostly the rampant sexism thing.

    Anyways for a lot of people, Batman Begins was the first time people realized Gotham had a bit of a mob problem. O sure Gotham was run with costume villains, but the mob too?

    Of course!

    And some people find it more interesting when a city has a brutal mix of cut-throat organized crime leaders and some straight up nut cases. This allows for everyone to get a chance to shine.

    Also, the stand up comedian is totally going to be the Joker, right?

    This could be cooler, anyways

    You know what's cooler than Batman fighting bad guys? You and me fighting bad guys. Batman, though he has no super powers, still has incredible strength, infinite wealth, access to all the gadgets in the world, and an intellect that goes toe-to-toe with Sherlock (no, really, that happens once... it was terrible).

    But the cops on this show are flawed and duplicitous. Sure they try to do the right thing, but they're just regular old people. And that makes for a much more interesting fight.

    Once Batman figured out the Riddler's plan, it was only a matter of time before he got the jump on him and then overpowered him physically.

    Imagine if Batman had a tough time figuring out the plan in the first place. And then when he does, he doesn't know what to do with it. Or even worse, he didn't want to deal with it.

    We saw in this first episode that Bullock wants to pawn off the murder of the Waynes. And he's our second lead. In this episode they put the Wayne murder on the wrong guy and kill Poison Ivy's dad. And this is still within the first half hour of TV.

    When our heroes don't have to uphold this mysterious image, they are allowed to get dirty.

    Also, if you never read "Gotham Central", please do. It is very, very good. It's essentially the cops of Gotham trying to make due in this world.

    Most importantly, this is Batman on TV

    The bottom line is: this is a show set in the Batman universe that will be on air every week.

    WHAT?!

    If you told baby me that this was a thing... well I would have said "I know, it's called Batman the Animated series". But if you were to tell me that a gritty live action show set in Gotham would exist on national TV, I would have flipped out (then I would have had a bunch of questions like 'who are you?' 'how'd you get in here?' and 'really? you went back in time and are only telling me that?')

    But honestly nerds, calm down. Cut this "darp, where's Batman? I can't be comfortable unless everything is exactly how I want it to play out in my brain spot" garbage.

    This show has the potential to be really cool.

    So enjoy it!