Gotham gave network television an accurate — and rare — portrayal of police violence
Network television is filled with cops. Between Chicago PD, the ever growing list of CSI’s and Law and Orders and scores more, it is hard to find a place on TV where the police are not the protagonists. This makes sense, as the nature of the job can often put the main characters in the midst of danger and drama.
Fox’s Gotham is another one of those shows, but it does stand out from the rest. The city of Gotham is filled with corrupt cops, and in season four the corruption took center stage. The police department was bought off by Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin, as he is known, one of the cities most influential mobsters. Crime becomes fully legalized. A serial killer who refers to himself as the “Pyg” soon arrives in the city to clean up the “dirty” cops. In the episode A Day in the Narrows, Pyg kidnaps three dirty cops in “The Narrows” — Gotham’s most dangerous neighborhood — sending the police on a quest to find their lost officers.
This leads to a tense scene where the police, alongside Penguin’s henchman, storm into an apartment building. They go door to door, beating up everyone they can find, hoping that one of them will tell them what they witnessed near bye when the cops were kidnapped. Harvey Bullock, partner to our protagonist James Gordon, gives a rousing speech…
