Gotham the Untold Story: Decent into Madness

Hello again Gothamites,

It’s been a few days since the season two premier of Gotham and I have some thoughts about the first episode. I would like you all now to join me for an episode of Gotham the Untold Story.

What is Gotham the Untold Story you ask? Well let me explain. There are many times in an episode of a show where I find myself asking what if this had happened instead? This is going to be where we will explore some of those potential show alternate storylines.  This week I will be discussing the scene where Barbara calls Jim from Arkham, as the subject of our first Gotham the Untold Story.

Gotham the Untold Story: Decent into Madness

Okay so as we saw in the Season Two premier “Damned If You Do”. Barbara Kean calls James Gordon from Arkham (like ya do) and tells Jim that Dr. Leslie Thompkins has lied about her confessing to the murder of her parents. After James doesn’t believe her and hangs up, a moment later Leslie’s phone rings and Barbara leaves her a charming message where she tells Leslie (kindly) to die. But let’s rewind. What if we took out the second call? What if Barbara had just called James and not Leslie?

Okay let’s think about this, how incredibly amazing would that story line be?! If we take away the second phone call we bring a completely different story line about. A Story where James doesn’t know whom to trust, is Barbara wrongfully imprisoned? Why would Leslie lie about that? Who is the potential bad gal?

If we only have the first call, there is an “Inception” like thought placed into James’s mind about Leslie. Jim might start to question: What are her motives for doing such a thing? What kind of person does that make her? How can he possibly stay in a relationship with a woman who is crazy enough to lie about Barbara, a woman who just watched her parents be murdered in front of her, and accuse her (Barbara) of said murder?

With Barbara, reasonable doubt is brought into the picture. Is she innocent? Is she being framed? Is the real woman that James should be in love with in Arkham surrounded by crazies having been wrongfully accused of a heinous crime that the Golem committed?  With the Golem dead, we may never really know who killed the Kean’s (unless maybe the super-rich Kean family had installed a nanny cam to catch those pesky servants stealing. But without that nanny cam footage we will never know.)

I know this is something we see a lot in soap operas and telenovelas but it’s a classic “he said, she said”. Barbara never admits to killing her parents to anyone other than Leslie (pre-Jerome). And how is James to know that Leslie isn’t lying. (Other than the fact that he loves her and all that ooey gooey jazz) and I mean come on! We first meet Leslie while she is a doctor at an insane asylum! And in that exact same episode a crazy inmate pretends to be part of the staff of Arkham! Come on folks are you as excited as I am about what that story line could have been!

But sadly the story took a different turn and Barbara called Leslie and because of that, we will never know how awesome these story lines could have been.

This was Gotham: The Untold Story, join us next time to read another fun adventure into what-if-land.

Throughout this season I will ask you guys to throw out possible “What If’s” and if your idea is selected we will discover what could have possibly happened together, on another episode of Gotham the Untold Story.