While she didn’t get a lot of focus as well dialogue in the pilot, this week’s episode of Gotham was all about Selina Kyle aka the future Catwoman.
I didn’t get as much Selina as I wanted in the pilot, but as mentioned in that review, it’s difficult giving every single character equal amount of focus and dialogue in a pilot. This week however, it was about her and we got to learn a lot more about this incarnation of Selina Kyle. I’m happy to be able to say that whoever the casting director is for this show, they did the right thing by casting Camren Bicondova.
Having seen this character in several incarnations (comics, movies, TV shows) in adult form, it is fun to get to explore a teenage version of her. Bicondova nails every part in Selina which is being feisty, mysterious and of course, cat-like. Even though I wanted some more dialogue from her, I actually didn’t have a problem with some of the times when she was just quiet because the situation required her to be that.
The thing that I wasn’t expecting to learn was that Selina’s mom is still alive and somewhere out there. If this information is 100% accurate, can we please just get Michelle Pfeiffer to come on to the show for a few episodes as her mom? The cool thing about Bicondova is that she looks like a younger Pfeiffer so it would be pretty epic if we could get the actress who made Catwoman so iconic in 1992, to guest on the show.
We learn throughout the episode that the Dollmaker is the one who is responsible for the child-trafficking ring that takes place in the story. While we don’t actually get to meet him, he is mentioned by his minions and it will be interesting to see how different he will be from Arrow’s version that was in season 2.
The B-story of “Selina Kyle” is about Oswald and what happened to him after the events of the pilot. Maybe this was just me, but it seemed like he took a pretty big step towards the darkness and by “big”, I mean too big. This is a character that captured my interest on every level in the pilot and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if his road towards his destiny actually had a slow pace. It may just have been the case for this episode, but hopefully the pacing of where he is going will be slightly slower next week.
We get to meet, for the first time in any medium of Batman, the mother of Penguin, played by Carol Kane. Since I have never seen her in the comic books, there was so much they could do with her for the show and they pretty much gave us a great character. She is twisted in a calm way and you don’t really know if she is going to snap or not and let’s not forget the fact that she looks insane. I hope to see a lot of her this season because it would explain another side of Oswald that I haven’t really gotten to see a lot of over the years that I have read Batman comics.
There is also the focus on Bruce who is continuing to test himself as he is trying to gain control over fear. Even though it isn’t a pretty sight to see him burn his hand on purpose, I love this arc. We are getting to see a 12-year old Bruce starting to train already to become the man that we know he will become one day. His relationship with Alfred is further explained and we are continuing to see a lot of the Alfred that we met in the graphic novel, Batman: Earth One by Geoff Johns (great book that I would recommend if you haven’t read it).
This is an Alfred that isn’t afraid of getting frustrated with Bruce, just like the version we saw from Michael Caine in The Dark Knight trilogy. This is a relationship that is so iconic to a lot of Batman fans out there and seeing David Mazouz and Sean Pertwee play off each other so well, is very cool to see.
Towards the end of the episode, Selina gets to talk to Gordon (at last!) at GCPD station and she reveals that she has been watching him for quite some time now. But most importantly, she saw who killed the Waynes, “clear as day”. How is it even possible when she was first running away stealing milk in the first minutes of the pilot and then was seen sitting up on a fire escape and witnessing the murder?
Are we meant to believe that between that the stealing and getting to that alley, she may have seen the guy unmasked before he killed them? That’s my biggest question right now and that is one of the many reasons why I loved this episode. Even though there could have been a couple of more scenes with her since it was titled “Selina Kyle”, I’m happy with the capacity that we got.
Second week in and Gotham is continuing to be one of my favorite new shows of the new fall season.
Gotham airs on Monday nights, 8/7c on FOX.
[Photo via FOX]
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