There’s a new Batman movie. As a breathing human being with the capability to consume media, you’re surely aware of this. The release of a new Batman movie is the kind of world-renowned event that The Super Bowl or Fyre Festival could only dream. Many of you will probably be content to watch the movie, talk about it with your friends for a few minutes, and go about your lives until the next one comes out. Some of you might even be happy to skip the movie entirely. Not me. The release of a new Batman movie is a whole event, a chance to check in on some of my best friends. Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, James Gordon…the whole crew is likely to be there. In many ways, the release of a Batman movie is my Super Bowl. Hopefully it doesn’t turn out to be my Fyre Festival.

I wasn’t always this way. I had a Ninja Turtles-heavy childhood that gradually matured toward X-Men and Dragon Ball, and I guess watched all the Batman movies with everyone else in America, but I didn’t really find Batman until adulthood. A friend told me I should play the Batman: Arkham series of video games when I was in my early 20s. He was right. Getting into Batman as an adult seems like a weird thing, but I think it may actually be more normal than liking him as a kid. He’s a huge bummer of a superhero, all dark colors and dead parents and dry no-nonsense dialogue. Luckily, where he lacks in fun, he makes up for in unpredictability. No, Batman won’t kill anyone, unless you’re reading one of the really dark comic arcs, but he’s liable to threaten them, seriously maim them, or oftentimes help or even befriend them depending on the situation. Batman doesn’t see the world as the Ninja Turtles did, with cool good guys and lame bad guys, he sees a nuanced palette of shades of grey.

Numerous on-screen portrayals have painted the image of Batman as I know him to various degrees of accuracy (read one of the many Batman Week articles for more information on this), but if two Suicide Squads, a Joker, and a Harley Quinn movie in the span of five years taught us anything, it’s that we don’t come to Batman for the hero. We come to see the villains. Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Two-Face, Riddler, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze. I could go on, and you probably could too. The story of Batman’s adversaries is basically our modern folklore and mythology. Seeing them done well brings me so much more satisfaction than watching Michael Keaton or Christian Bale nail Bruce Wayne’s anti-social qualities. And in this humble writer’s opinion, no live-action Batman performance has celebrated these villains more than the Fox Broadcasting Company’s show Gotham, a show I lovingly refer to as “Baby Batman.”

For those unfamiliar with Baby Batman, the show is a prequel to the Batman story. It starts from the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents just like every piece of Batman media, but instead of immediately skipping ahead to a decade or two after that moment, the show stubbornly stays put, focusing on the young Bruce Wayne being raised by his butler Alfred and Jim Gordon, the officer that found him at the scene of his parents’ murder. At this point in the summary, this show may seem very depressing, but fear not, it has a fun conceit that drew instantaneous ire from the Batman fandom community: all of the Batman villains that we know are already in the city, a decade or two younger and already up to no good.

If you think that’s a stupid premise for a Batman show, you certainly aren’t alone. Gotham is perhaps the most-derided piece of Batman media, which is really saying something. Having seen all 100 episodes of the series, I still have no rebuttal to it being a stupid premise. But where Gotham was aware of its own conceits, often celebrating its own absurdity, it was also a labor of love made by fans of the Batman canon. And the mostly-young-up-and-coming cast, fronted by the star power of The OC’s Ben McKenzie and Deadpool’s Morena Baccarin, had a fun enthusiastic energy that embraced the show’s ludicrously while selling it as best they could.

For the sake of keeping this article under 100,000 words, let’s not get into the show’s absurdity or silliness. Let’s talk about when the show reached beyond its silly premise and lackluster budget and gave Batman villains more depth and charm than they’d ever previously seen on camera. I would make an argument that this process started in season 1 with Anthony Carrigan’s commanding-but-way-too-fun depiction of a young psychopath Victor Zsasz in episode 7 and hit its stride with an incredibly grim portrayal of the The Electrocutioner in episode 11, but for relatability I’ll skip ahead to episode 14 when we are introduced to significantly-less-obscure villain Scarecrow. We learn about his father first, a man who murders people, extracts their adrenal glands, and injects his son with the adrenaline so he can conquer fear. It’s a two-episode arc portrayed in a gruesome and scary way that Scarecrow himself would love.

Season 2 kicks up the gears a bit. Edward Nygma, who we know as The Riddler, murders his girlfriend and develops a split personality, Mr. Freeze grows cold after being foiled in an attempt to save his dying wife, and Hugo Strange starts bring back dead asylum inhabitants. Season 3 brings in a delightfully ridiculous Jervis Tetch, aka The Mad Hatter, speaking in whimsical couplets that add depth to the terrifying madness-just-behind-the-eyes look perfected by actor Benedict Samuel. The discomfort the viewer feels watching this character is not unlike being accosted by someone at the renaissance faire that is way too into the whole thing. The season also gives the main “good guy” actors a chance to portray evil-twin versions of themselves due to the arrival of a couple of Clayface-type mimic characters.

Episode 21 of season 3 gets its own paragraph due to the arrival of Alexander Siddig’s Ra’s al Ghul. There’s a thousand actors they could have given this script for the end of season 3 to, and none of them could have sold it as well as Siddig. His screen time is undeniably magnetic but woefully short as he conditions Bruce Wayne to kill his butler-turned-foster-parent and announces Wayne as his heir (Gotham is the kind of show that will make a child actor convincingly stab someone). He later enjoys a full death and resurrection plot, as well as stealing Commissioner Gordon’s ex-girlfriend because he is a certified Chad. His brief appearances on the show alone are almost worth watching the whole thing.

Season 4 and 5 bring the city and show into full-on chaos, facing the issues of any late-stage TV show that has already jumped the shark multiple times, but still feature a number of very fun moments such as Professor Pyg feeding people to other people, Sofia Falcone corrupting Commissioner Gordon, and an unlikely brief redemption plot for The Riddler. The final episode is about as abrupt and disappointing as you’d imagine a 100-episode network television superhero show’s ending. Still, the show’s overall fun and value shine through, it remains oddly faithful to the Batman canon in any ways it can, and this Little Engine That Could dutifully pulls into the final station at a clean 100 episodes. It’s a ride I don’t know if I could take all the way from start to finish again, but as a depiction of one of my favorite franchises, it’s one I look back on fondly. Despite the ridiculous premise of all of the villains being young and active, we still managed to avoid a hipster Joker that looks like Riff Raff or two heroes bonding over their mothers being named Martha. Gotham shines bright in the Batman universe, even in the face of all its critics, and no matter how many new Batman movies are made, it will always be the original Baby Batman.

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