I’ve spent more of my life watching TV/movies than I have probably doing any one other thing besides sleeping. I like TV and movies and entertainment because it’s an escape. That’s hardly some unique, world-changing thought (shut up), but there’s more. What if TV is real? I don’t mean documentaries. Or the news. Or sports. But what if TV shows and movies themselves are all real?
I realized this was true because there is no escape in life. Despite all my rage I am still – oh, shut up, weirdo. I see the same faces on different “shows” and they (The Matrix robots, one presumes) think I’m going to just accept that they’re all just human beings on some sound stage, usually in Vancouver. I’m supposed to believe that western Canada is real?
Poppycock. WE will expose these lies. There are simply too many coincidences. Things make too much sense. The truth is out there. Now it is here. Here we go!
Jim Gordon from Gotham.
Gordon wasn’t always Gordon. When he was born, he was a street orphan named Ryan Atwood. He’d found his way to the west coast and began hanging around The O.C. (“don’t call it that”). He was rough around the edges but there was a goodness to him. A rich family eventually adopts him. He becomes friends with the nerdy kid who loves comic books. (And you have the theme song stuck in your head.)
Atwood even falls in love with a crazy woman who eventually dies because she, well, … she sucked.
Life After The O.C. – on his way to Gotham
Anyways. After spending years living in The O.C. Gordon knew he had to give back. After all, he was still a kid who once had a mother and father so useless that he was living on the streets. He knew how dangerous they could be. Thus, he became a cop, working the streets of Los Angeles, specifically those called Southland.
Seriously, they expect me to believe this is an actor? I’m supposed to believe that a guy who was a street tough, who got a good education, and would want to give back to his community was an actor and that his next acting gig was: to play a cop just a few miles away from where his previous “character” lived. Right. The department Gordon, sorry, Officer Sherman, works in is corrupt. There are cops who look the other way but he doesn’t. He keeps trying to do the right thing. He fights injustice inside and outside the walls of city hall.
Gordon Arrives in Gotham
Jim Gordon was not from Gotham. He was always known as a cop who came to Gotham after doing police work elsewhere. He says it’s Chicago (usually) but he has every reason to hide part of his past. Gotham makes LA look like Disneyland. (Smacks forehead.)
So, we have a guy, with years of training, who has dealt with corrupt police forces before, and who lived with a rich family wherein his best friend was a lonely rich kid. And what does Gordon see when he arrives in Gotham? A lonely rich kid’s family gunned down in front of him. And he makes a vow to help that kid.
Jim Gordon is a cop. Cops, sad as it is to say, see all kinds of people suffer. There’s no reason for Gordon to single out this one kid as special – especially a rich kid. You want to help someone? You help the poor kid who lost his mother and is now on welfare. Richie Rich? You only make that vow if he reminds you of your childhood best friend.
And what about Gotham City and all the weirdness? It’s a city with a man who looks like a penguin, psycho killers who act in ways you’d only act in a comic book (no real killer keeps a tally of his victims on his skin), a guy who kills people using complex balloons (ugh), and will one day be host to a grown man wearing a leather suit who looks like a bat and who fights crime. You and I would see this and think it surreal. Gordon though always takes it in stride. Why? Because his best friend growing up was soooooo into comic books that Gordon was prepared for this life.
Gotham and Gordon make sense because of Gordon’s past. He’s attracted to a self-destructive crazy woman? Check.
He feels a connection to a lonely rich kid? Check. He inherently knows how to stick to his guns and deal with a corrupt police force? Check.
Ben McKenzie? What kind of name is that? A fake one, that’s what. Jim Gordon is real.
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