The CW’s Gotham Knights “Pilot” Review

Usually, when we review shows, we structure them into our likes and dislikes and then provide our verdict. I simply couldn’t do that today. You will understand why as the article progresses.

This show never got off to a good start. The trailers looked awful. It was obvious why. You attach the Gotham Knights name to the show and give us a bunch of random characters that have nothing to do with the Bat side of things, people are going to get their backs up, and rightfully so.

First off, our main character is Turner Hayes. Bruce’s adopted son. Bear in mind, this is a character that has never been in comics and was created purely for the show. Forget about Dick, Jason, or even Damian. They gave us a character with no bearing on the family which gives one huge issue – attachment. You don’t hold an attachment to this character because you instantly don’t care.

We have Harper and Cullen Row. We’ve got the Joker’s daughter. We’ve got Harvey Dent who’s the District Attorney. We’ve also got Carrie as Robin. You know what, I don’t care. I’m sorry, I just don’t.

The dialogue in this episode was perhaps the worst I’ve ever seen, I couldn’t help but cringe throughout. If I hear bat prat one more time I’m just going to hurl something at the TV.

Then there’s the acting which is almost as bad as the dialogue. You can tell the acting is poor when the 4 of them are in a cell, a fight breaks loose, the police intervene and one of the cops hits Turner with a baton. I say hits but it was so far away it looked beyond fake. I get it, it’s a TV show. Of course, it’s fake. It was just so far away it didn’t even LOOK real.

What I love, and I mean LOVE more than anything was that Bruce was simply pushed out of a window. That’s how he died.

I mean, the story means Bruce has to die but come on. He’s BATMAN. His office in Wayne Tower is packed with tech and security. It’s also difficult to believe someone could just sneak up to Bruce and push him out of a window. It’s also hard to believe that Batman can step up to powerful heroes in the comics but nah, just push him out of the window. At least in the game, he went out with a bang, pun intended.

All hope is not lost though, we’ve got a Robin who by the way, just happily reveals her identity to 3 criminals, one of which is the Joker’s daughter. The suit is also trash.

Fair, she’s the only one with proper training it seems since Turner didn’t know about Bruce being Batman or was even trained outside of fencing classes. She did make a pretty good entrance to free the group from the GCPD but I can’t understand why they’ve chosen this when we’ve got Jason, Dick, or Damian they could’ve chosen from for Robin. It makes no sense.

They even teased the Court of Owls in this. The Court has had a terrible time in live-action, I cannot even believe for a second that this show will do them justice. There’s simply no way. Gotham was the closest to getting them done right.

The only good thing to pull from this is the world is brilliant. The bat cave, Gotham itself, Wayne Manor, and the tower were all designed perfectly.

I had no hope going into this and I was correct to think like that. I’m sorry but this episode was trash. There’s no way this can remotely get better. They canceled shows like Legends and Batwoman for this.

This should have been left in the production phase. I’ve lost all hope in The CW making a good new superhero show. They failed with Naomi and this will fail too. I will categorize the show into “limited-time shows” because there’s no way this makes it past season 1. What a waste of time.

Rating: 1.8/10