We’ve been liveblogging Arrow for a few years now, and Gotham has become popular around here quickly as the show has found its footing and come into focus as a vast, complicated corruption drama with plenty of black humor. But each show has a character a lot of viewers seem to actively root against; in Arrow‘s case it’s Laurel and in Gotham‘s case, it’s the future (?) Barbara Gordon. So we thought we’d put it to the test: Who’s worse?
It should be noted that we need to fault the writers, not the actresses, for this. Katie Cassidy and Erin Richards, playing Laurel and Barbara respectively, are capable and talented actresses both. The issue here is that they’ve really got nothing to work with.
It’s particularly bizarre because both shows have well-written female characters. Arrow has Emily Bett Rickards (who essentially turned a guest role into the fan favorite Felicity), Susanna Thompson was great as Moira Queen, and as the show gave Willa Holland something to do, Thea became somebody we don’t mind seeing. Gotham, meanwhile, has women of every stripe, from Jada Pinkett Smith as the scheming Fish Mooney to Camren Bicondova as the future Catwoman and Zabryna Guevara as the conflicted (and quite funny) Sarah Essen to guest stars like Carol Kane as the creepily funny Gertrude Kapelput. So it’s not just that these shows don’t know what to do with women, they don’t know what to do with these women.
Laurel in particular has been a victim of this. Katie Cassidy had to start as a whiny self-righteous doormat, slowly becoming an annoying self-involved alcoholic, and now she’s an inexplicably self-righteous ADA who’s about to become a vigilante. This season marks the first time they’ve given the character anything interesting to do across fifty episodes. Granted, it came at the expense of Caity Lotz, whom we miss as Sara, but at least Arrow‘s trying.
So, as much as I joke about Laurel being the worst, I actually have to edge towards Barbara as the more useless character. Probably the best symbol of this is the fact that she almost never leaves her apartment; she’s had scenes outside of it a grand total of twice. Hell, most of the time, the show doesn’t even have her clothed; go ahead, count the number of times she’s wearing pants.
Her entire job is to be Jim Gordon’s love interest, which is a thankless job for any actress on any TV show. And in a show this sprawling, Gordon’s romantic life isn’t even on the back burner, it’s on a stove in another kitchen in another state, possibly in a missile bunker, that’s how irrelevant it is. The show tried to make Barbara interesting by making her a bisexual with a creepy lesbian stalker, which failed, and they’re now trying to add the drama by making her dump Gordon. So congratulations, Barbara, you’re pretty much the worst.
