The Mean Streets of Gotham

It's particularly fitting that the premiere of Gotham aired just before Sleepy Hollow, as the origins of that New York moniker go all the way back to 1807 and Washington Irving himself - though it wasn't his intention to flatter. "Gotham" can be traced back to medieval England, and tales of a village called "Gottam," meaning "Goat's Town" in old Anglo Saxon - a village of fools, as the goat was considered a foolish animal. The residents of Gotham were also thought to only be playing the fool, a put-on to avoid the anger of their evil King. Gotham City will be forever associated with Batman, and has come to represent the noir side of New York, with DC's Metropolis being the more hopeful reflection.

Fox's Gotham pretty much knocked it out of the park last night. Beginning with the iconic depiction of Bruce Wayne's parents being gunned down in front of him, we're plunged right into a Gotham City defined by its moral corruption, exemplified by crooked detective Harvey Bullock - Donal Logue in an inspired piece of casting. Logue's unrepentant with a decayed moral center - so when he's saddled with war hero James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) as his new partner, he knows he's either going to have to lose him or break him. For Bullock, the gangsters who run Gotham are more like partners or wholesalers with whom he's taken great pains to maintain relationships. Gordon is The Last Honest Man, and idealistic. He doesn't hesitate to sit down next to a bereft young Bruce Wayne and offer him a compassionate ear. He's Frank Serpico, slowly realizing that the department he's come into is far from innocent. Setting up a dupe to take the fall and close a case is standard procedure here.

Gotham's premise is to show us the evolutionary early days of the neophyte miscreants who will eventually become Catwoman, The Riddler and The Penguin. Robin Taylor is particularly effective as the oily Oswald Cobblepot, already struggling to rid himself of the Penguin nickname. He's an underling for unlikely crime boss Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith). I was kind of dreading this character when I read about her (unlike Bullock, et al, she's not part of the comic mythos), but Pinkett Smith nails this character and make her fierce, disturbing and unpredictable. She's a link in a much larger chain, wielded by crime boss Carmine Falcone.

Making the Wayne murders into something potentially more conspiratorial than an apparent back alley robbery is a terrific choice and serves as Gordon's entry into a maze of corruption and necessary alliances. The location work in Gotham is superb, a sprawling noir New York that seems to be all alleys, diners, tenements and docks. I don't even remember seeing a car in the pilot, just detectives on their feet, muscling their way in and out of tight situations. Choices like these make Gotham feel like it's in some undefined age, as contemporary as it is on the surface.

If Gotham has a weak link, it's Gordon's girlfriend, Barbara Kean (Erin Richards). Believability gets sucked out of the room in all of her scenes. While there are slight intimations that there's more to her than meet the eye, she's the one thing in the pilot that doesn't fit.

The uneasy partnership between Gordon and the ridiculously entertaining Logue as Bullock promises to drive the series and keep us coming back for more. As the pilot ends, Gordon's been forced to make his own deal with the devil, and like young Bruce Wayne, something has been lost he'll now forever be trying to make right. Kudos to series creator Bruno Heller for giving us a new perspective on these old familiar streets. Gotham may be peopled with fools and ruses, but it's clear that forces on both sides have long memories, determined to either see justice served - or just get even.