Gotham, Season One

[SPOILERS ALERT!]


There's a lot right with Gotham, but there's also a lot wrong with it. A lot of things that don't work well and a lot of things that work brilliantly. It's normal for a first season to be a bit shaky, to take time to figure out what kind of tv show it wants to be (just look at Marvel's Agents of Shield) but Gotham seems to be inconsistent sometimes. There were episodes that were really good - the episodes where the Ogre/Jason Lennon (Milo Ventimiglia) was involved - and there were some not so good episodes, especially "The Blind Fortune Teller", where the rumoured Joker - Jerome (Cameron Monaghan) was presented to us.

I'll start off with the negatives. The show didn't need episodes such as "The Balloonman" or "Viper"; the writers seemed to be creating unnecessary villains when focus could have been pulled tighter on Ed Nygma (Cory Michael Smith). The show took episodes 20-22 to let us see Nygma unravel and lose his mind. One moment, Nygma is crushing on Kristen Kringle (Chelsea Spack) and the next, he's killing Kringle's boyfriend and starting to become the character we all know and love - the Riddler. His change seemed rushed. It seemed like the writers of those three episodes - John Stephens, Jordan Harper and Bruno Heller - realised that they needed to create more of a story for Nygma and actually give Smith some better opportunities to show off his incredible acting.

Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) also seemed like a bit of a useless character until the writers decided to use the extra six episodes the network gave them to do something with her. In episode 20, the Ogre kidnaps Barbara and slowly breaks her emotionally until there's nothing left of her, which also gives Richards - like Cory Michael Smith - the opportunity to do some character development and do something other than stand there and look pretty, whilst going through a bi-sexual story arc which was dropped as soon as it was portrayed.

Is Gotham a child-friendly show, or does it want to be darker? I don't know. And I don't think Bruno Heller (who developed the series) knows either. The darkness that people know and love about Gotham is shown very sporadically, either due to Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) shooting someone and seeing blood spray everywhere or to the part where Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) scoops out her own eye, lets it drop to the floor and then stomps on it. There's also the scenes where Gotham tries to be like comic books and features the highly dramatic actions that shouldn't be in the show. For example, when Fish is flung over the edge of the roof by Cobblepot and dies (maybe?), Cobblepot stands on the edge and screams "I'm the king of Gotham" whilst laughing manically and the character of Cobblepot's mother - Gertrude Kapulput (Carol Kane) - who's character is on the borderline of annoying because she's so cartoony.

Let's talk about the finale for a sec. Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova)...Why is she now working with Fish and being loyal to someone other than herself? It doesn't make sense. And what about Fish coming back to Gotham? The writers either should have kept Mooney in the hospital with Dr. Francis Dulmacher/The Dollmaker (Colm Feore), or not shown The Dollmaker story arc at all and just shown Mooney coming back to Gotham.

There are too many small villains in this show and it makes it too busy and too messy. This show would be brilliant if it just concentrated and a few big villains throughout the season. What they did with Gerald and Jonathan Crane (Julian Sands and Charlie Tahan) was brilliant, because they focused on one of the big villains and made two very good episodes out of it and created the foundations for the character of Scarecrow. Again, what they did with Jason Lennon/The Ogre was fantastic. Focusing on one villain and making three brilliant episodes out of it. By dwindling the amount of villains means the writer would have had the opportunities to focus on Nygma and Harvey Dent (Nicholas D'Agosto) - who's character I think needed more building upon as well. Dent could have made a bigger supporting role than what he was.

However, there are also so many positives. One of the first things that I picked up on when I started watching the show is the casting. The casting is perfect, so a big thumbs up to the casting crew. Each actor and actress just slides into the roles that they were given so smoothly and conveys each specific character at its best. Child actor, David Mazouz, who plays a young Bruce Wayne, is exceptional and Seann Pertwee! I don't think I've ever seen a better Alfred. (Sorry Michael Caine!) Pertwee brings Alfred alive with his dry, British humour and his somewhat funny "yes, Master Bruce" and "anything for you, Master Bruce". James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and Harvey Bullock's (Donal Logue) chemistry on screen was also fantastic, with it's witty comebacks from Bullock, it was an intriguing partnership between the two. It was a bit slow for Nygma to make his dramatic entrance as the Riddler, but when he finally got up to that point, when we finally saw his losing his mind and becoming the character that we identify as the Riddler, it was some of the best acting that I had seen on the show. The way that Cory Michael Smith portrays the Riddler is mind-blowing. He's gotten every characteristic of Nygma spot on.

Even though the story line of Bruce investigating his parents' death was slow at first, it begins to pick up a nice pace just after the mid season finale. And the ending where Alfred and Bruce find his fathers - Thomas Wayne's - bat cave?, it gave me chills and it was an awesome ending to the series. As we can see from the season two promos, we get to see more of Thomas' hiding place and maybe find out if this is where Bruce builds the foundations of his Batcave?

I mentioned earlier that there was a great character development for Barbara after episode 20, and it's true. Seeing her develop from this fumbling character of a pretty woman standing in a corner doing nothing, to wielding a knife and killing her parents and going psycho on Dr. Leslie Thompkins (Morena Baccarat); those scenes did wonders for Barbara's character. Hopefully, we see the writers in season two extend on Barbara's mental breakdown, because I think it would be interesting to see which kind of character she turns in to. Or whom she turns in to? Harley Quinn maybe?

The mafia world in Gotham is another thing that I absolutely love about this show. The city of Carmine Falcone (John Doman) and Sal Maroni (David Mayas) was fascinating and made a very good diversion away from the soon-to-be super villains. With Penguin creating a full-scale war between the two mobsters, and Maroni launching a massive attack on Falcone in the finale, it was almost like a breath of fresh air. Of course, it was quite abrupt when Falcone decided to retire from being a mobster and when Maroni got shot in the head by Mooney for calling her "babes" one to many times, but I love the whole world of crime within the show. It went hand-in-hand with the whole "prequel to Batman" theme.

Sure, the road throughout the first season of Gotham has been rocky, but hopefully the writers will find their feet for season two; which has already been renewed and Netflix have already stolen the rights. This show is definitely a must-see for anyone and whilst there are better superhero tv shows out there, I feel like this binge-worthy show has my immediate attention for when season two approaches.

Season two will air 21st September 2015

Pretty Little LiArs, Season 6A

[SPOILERS ALERT!]

Ever since I watched the season six finale of Pretty Little Liars on Wednesday 12th August, I have wanted to write an article about it. About the whole of season six. The reason it has took me a a while is because I didn't know - and part of me is still bemused - how I feel about it.

I was a bit late jumping on the PLL bandwagon; I started watching it at Christmas last year and ever since then, have watched it religiously. I had my own theories and my boyfriend (who I watched it with) would discuss them at great lengths. For those of you who also read all of the fan theories, I agreed with the whole 'Wren is A' one. It made sense. My theory was Wren Kingston (Julian Morris) was A, CeCe Drake (Vanessa Ray) was Redcoat and Melissa Hastings (Torrey DeVitto) was Black Veil (since I thought Melissa and Wren had to be working together).

I couldn't have been more wrong.

On the night of the finale in the U.S, I didn't go on social media at all. Not until 6 o clock the next day when I watched it. Twitter had already ruined it for me slightly when I got an update come through on my phone saying 'so-and-so and three more people are tweeting about #Aisagirl'. I should've deleted all my social media apps. I forgot Twitter sent updates. Silly me. Part of me didn't want to watch the episode after that; my opinion of the episode had already been tainted without me even watching it. But I had to. If A was a girl, I wanted to find out who, and who the hell Charles was.

The whole of season six had felt quite slow to me; all of the episodes seemed to be filler ones - just building up to the penultimate episode, 'Last Dance, and the finale 'Game Over, Charles'. The finale pretty much picked off where 'Last Dance' ended, at the school prom where Alison (Sasha Pieterse)  had just been abducted by A and A had revealed themselves to Ali. It's a man-hunt for the rest of 'the Liars' who include a art student - who is now obsessed by dolls thank to A - Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale), a was-supposed-to-be-a-valedictorian, Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario), Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell), who seems to have a crush on nearly every girl in the show, Hanna Marin (Ashley Benson) who is super smart and amazing and keeps us all entertained with her hilarious one-liners and Mona Vanderwaal (Janel Parrish), the first A who completely messed with the girls - up until season two - yet I absolutely adore her.

Whilst the Liars are in A's lair, Mona finds a link to a camera where A is with Alison and the five girls listen on (obviously with A knowing) as A tells their story to Ali.

(from left to right: Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale) , Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario), Mona Vanderwaal (Janel Parrish), Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) and Hanna Merin (Ashley Benson)

"Mona played with dolls, I play with body parts. Game on, bitches! -A"

CeCe Drake (Vanessa Ray) as 'A'

So it was revealed to us that Charles DiLaurentis a.k.a Charlotte DiLaurentis a.k.a CeCe Drake was A.  The reasoning for her being A was brilliant: she was Charles DiLaurentis, Ali's and Jason's (Drew Van Acker) brother who had always felt like he was born to be a girl, to be Charlotte. Jessica DiLaurentis (Andrea Parker) knew this and started to buy dresses for Charles but Kenneth DiLaurentis (Jim Abele) disagreed with the whole notion.

It's been said that Charlotte isn't the big bad wolf of the show, it's Kenneth. It's been his actions against Charlotte when she was younger that turned her into the person that wanted to torture and manipulate people. However, the reason for CeCe taking out all of this anger on 'the Liars' is weak. She explains to Ali that she was really good at playing the Big A game and it was like a drug to her, she loved the adrenaline. She returned to Rosewood to befriend to Liars and find out more about them, but when she found out that the Liars weren't exactly upset that Ali had disappeared, CeCe was infuriated - at the end of the day, Alison was her sister - and began to torture the Liars.

When the Liars went to New York, they thought that they had killed A, so CeCe left the country thinking that the A game was in the past. But the adrenaline started to kick in again and she started to crave the game once more, so she returned to Rosewood to try and finish what she started. According to CeCe, she only really got angry when "Ali didn't listen to [her]" and that's apparently the reason why she did any of the dangerous things like drive a car into Emily's house, or try and freeze Emily and Spencer, or poisoning Aria. She did it all to get Alison's attention. Hence the reason she tried to (almost) kill the Liars. She had seen someone wandering round in a redcoat and thought it was Alison and suspected that Alison was alive, so by starting the barn fire, she knew that Ali would come to the rescue and save the girls.

Confused yet?

CeCe then hired her own Redcoat as a decoy - who turned out to be Sara Harvey (Dre Davis) and also a very boring character and was also revealed as Black Veil. I don't understand why Harvey had to be given two of the most mysterious roles in the show. How did she meet CeCe so they could start working together? What about the two and a half years she was 'in the dollhouse?' Did CeCe really kidnap her?

A text that 'A' (now known as CeCe) sent the Liars of her Mother (Jessica DiLaurentis) buried

This is just one of the plot holes that I have picked up on after watching the finale. CeCe comes home back to the DiLaurentis house and finds her Mother dead in the back garden. She goes into a state, crying and holding her Mom in the most loving way possible. The audience feels her loss. So why, when she's so worked up about finding her dead Mother, would she send this photo to the Liars? It doesn't make sense. Like I said, that's just one of the plot holes.

I am not disappointed about CeCe being 'A', I am not disappointed in the transgender plot. I thought it was brilliant. Vanessa Ray's acting was profound but the finale was rushed and it was messy. CeCe's reasoning for being A is brilliant and moving. I'm not utterly disappointed about the finale; it had suspense, action and tearful emotion, I'm just disappointed about the amount of plot holes and about the amount of unanswered questions like, 'who killed Jessica DiLaurentis?', 'what about those tombstones that Caleb saw in Ravenswood when they had his and Miranda's faces on?', 'ARE THE LIARS MOMS STILL STUCK IN THE DILAURENTIS BASEMENT?!' and 'are Jason and Kenneth DiLaurentis ok?' See? There' still a lot of unanswered questions that the writers seem to have forgotten about.

Hopefully, these questions will be answered in the upcoming episodes in the winter. Even after a slow season six and a finale full of suspense and most questions finally answered, the ending left the audience sitting on the edge of the sofa and waiting for January to come so we can find out who the Liars are referring to when they "he's coming". So all of us who are hardcore PLL fans, we have more wonderfully intense episodes to fill our screens.

Daredevil, Season One

Daredevil is gritty. Daredevil is dark and bloody - and it's awesome.

The Netflix original series follows the tradition story of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox). Instead of showing his life story in chronological order, the show starts a lot later on in his life, when he starts up a law firm - Nelson and Murdock - with his law school friend, Foggy Nelson (Elden Hensen). Throughout the show, we are given flashbacks into his earlier life where we find out the origin story of 'Daredevil' and that's one of the things that is so brilliant about this show. It sticks to Stan Lee's origin story of Murdock very well and completely blindsides (excuse the pun) Mark Steven Johnson's 2003 adaption of the comic.

The thirteen episodes show is the journey that Murdock makes as 'The Devil of Hell's Kitchen', from a boy who is blinded by radioactive chemicals that heightens his senses, to a lawyer by day and a masked figure by night slowly fighting criminals in "his city". Nelson and Murdock's first case as lawyers, is a woman -Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) - who has been framed for the murder of her co-worker at Union Allied (a company which seems to be the common demoniator in Hells Kitchen's problems). Together, the three of them - along with a newspaper journalist, Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall) - try and take down Hells Kitchen's crime lord, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio).

Ultimately, it doesn't even seem like a Marvel show. From what I have seen over the years, Marvel has always been the light, shiny, comical side of superheroes and DC has been the dirty and dark. Daredevil is more like DC in this Netflix original. There's blood, there's shooting, there's bones crunching - everything that you wouldn't expect from the Marvel Universe.

For me, one of the most gory scenes in the show, that is so unlike anything that you would see from Marvel is a scene in episode four. Fisk a.k.a The KingPin, seduced Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) - an art dealer - into having a meal with him. The meal was interrupted by a Russian gangster, Anatoly (Gideon Emery) and Fisk was furious with him. Imagine a crime lord infuriated. It's nasty. So nasty, that Fisk decided to decapitate Anatoly with a car door. Blood sprays everywhere and you hear Anatoly's head slowly being hacked off and all Fisk says to his right-hand man, Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore) is "tell Mr. Potter I'll need a new suit." This scene builds the foundations of Fisk's character perfectly. You get to see the monster that he is and the monster that he will stay being throughout the show. He is easily one of my favourite characters in Daredevil and sometimes, Fisk's story supersedes Murdock's.

I like this Marvel, it feels like they're taking a risk and I like that because Daredevil is a dark story and I feel like they've done Murdock's story the right way. They haven't tiptoed around the bloody horror of what Fisk does to Hell's Kitchen, they haven't tiptoed around that Murdock actually needs to heal from his fighting rather than look and act like he's healed and everything is okay in five minutes. Daredevil takes the time to show Murdock's healing process and that he needs the help of his nurse friend, Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) to get back on his feet.

The show is fast paced and exciting, apart from the cliché 'to be continued' ending of episode thirteen where Murdock, Nelson and Page enter the Nelson and Murdock building all laughing and smiles. It's obvious that there's going to be a second season and boy, I hope there is. This show is brilliant, the casting is brilliant and the way it's done is brilliant. Bring on season two.