One thing seems to be clear as we head into Monday’s season two premiere of Gotham and that is, it’ll be a very different show. Aside from the large amount of villains that will be featured in the world this time around, it looks as if the formula for the series will be changing as well. Instead of the procedural aspect which dominated the majority of its first season, EW is reporting that this time around, Fox is “dividing the season into two, 11-episode halves.”
The procedural narrative still dominates most network television shows but with the serialized subject matter for the series, Fox hopes a serialized drama will better appeal to viewers:
“It is a very, very different show,” star Ben McKenzie tells EW. “It is almost completely serialized. We’re aiming for a grander, saga-type construction in which we can actually sit with the characters and understand their motivations and how the turbulence of their lives affects the greater landscape.”
A greater landscape may be what the show needs to capture the nature of what a Batman prequel series truly needs. With the Arkham video games, the multiple movies, comic books, animated series, and other iterations which exist in the canon, one thing is definitely for certain and that is the show cannot solely survive on a procedure based monster-of-the-week format. If comic book shows like Daredevil and The Flash have proven anything, it’s that viewers are savvier than most networks give them credit for.
That’s not to say there won’t be plenty of monsters to deal with moving forward, and according to Executive Producer Danny Cannon, they have really “upped the ante” this time around:
“Now that we have the confidence of the world, we can start to add characters. So when we call this season the rise of the villains, it’s very much that. More villains move in to take their piece of the pie and Gordon has to go to very extreme measures to quell the chaos that ensues.”
Speaking of extreme measures, the above featurette finds Gordon exploring more of his dark side to fight the rising evil around him. Here, we are given a further glimpse at the regretful decision Jim Gordon ends up making with Gotham’s new crime king, Oswald Cobblepot.
If anything, there’s a lot of hype behind these new episodes and the addition of so many bad guys into the world may feel like the network is throwing too many ideas at the wall to see what sticks. However, with a new look and scope, there may just be a place for everyone of these villains to exist in the story. We’ll soon find out how it all will work as Gotham premieres its new season this Monday September 21 on Fox.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
