Series star Ben McKenzie directed tonight’s new installment of FOX’s Gotham as the story steamrolls through with the escapes of Jerome, the Mad Hatter, and Scarecrow.
During a Q&A after a screening of tonight’s show, McKenzie talked about how the show has become serialized over time, and why it’s a good thing.
“We basically did a weird detour in Season 1 after the pilot,” McKenzie recalled of Gotham’s origins. “If you watch the Pilot on its own, you would think ‘oh, it’s a serialized show.’ Then all of the sudden we got into these one-off episodes with things like Balloon Man and individual villains of the week who would come in and go out, and I think that was – in my opinion, humbly speaking – a mistake. I don’t think we should have done that,” he continued.
Instead, McKenzie felt Gotham should have always been serialized — something it certainly has become by this point. “The fans of Batman and this world are dedicated and want to see these characters in a new context, in a place in their lives they’ve never seen them, in the early stages of their lives. Why ruin it by jamming a TV cop procedural show on it? If it’s like any other cop show and set in the world, it’s like Gotham Central, but it shouldn’t be one-off villains. We like the villains. They should be around for a while,” McKenzie continued.
You can see photos of tonight’s Gotham, titled “One Of My Three Soups,” below… and just wait until you find out how and why the episode got its name.
