Batwoman (Sundays at 8:00 on The CW)
The ever-expanding, semi-rote Arrowverse includes five official shows with the debut of Batwoman (not to mention its upcoming crossover event set to premiere in December brings in nearly every live-action DC television series to ever air, including the 1966 Batman, the 1990 The Flash, Smallville, and even the little-seen Birds of Prey). With a lineup of that size, it's hard for any individual series to break out, and that can be seen in Batwoman. It's equal parts exciting for its differences and kind of dull for its similarities to the established DC characters The CW has on its slate.
We've seen the superhero origin story so many times before, including nearly a half-dozen times just in the past few years on The CW, so that automatically works against Batwoman. Also working against it? How closely everything is tied to a very familiar, very well-known character and location. This is Gotham City, a place we've visited countless times in previous incarnations. This is the land of Batman and Bruce Wayne, a character we've been living with in different media forms for eighty years. It's hard for Caroline Dries (The Vampire Diaries, Smallville) to set the newest origin story apart from its ties to one of the most famous comic book heroes of all time, and the Batwoman pilot's weakest moments are when it relies too heavily on recognizable names, places, and situations, from Kate venturing into the Batcave to her personal history with both her beloved cousin Bruce and sworn-enemy Batman. That's when the show feels too much like a B-team version of a more famous story.
We meet Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) at some kind of spiritual training facility a la Batman Begins but quickly transition to Gotham City, where both Batman and Bruce Wayne have been missing under unknown circumstances for three years (and no one has put two-and-two together, but whatever). A new threat faces Gotham. Jacob Kane (Dougray Scott, Hemlock Grove) and his security firm, The Crows, have mostly had crime under control until now, when Alice (Rachel Skarsten, Reign), a deranged woman who speaks in Lewis Carroll quotes, kidnaps one of Kane's best agents, Sophie Moore (Meagan Tandy, UnREAL). This brings Kate back home when she learns of the kidnapping from her stepsister (Nicole Kang): Sophie is Kate's former girlfriend and one true love.
That's the good stuff. That's the stuff that establishes Batwoman's own specific mythology and characters. And Dries does a very admirable job of carefully and clearly drawing the supporting players in ways that make them feel more rounded than this particular kind of show would typically allow this early on. Batwoman is also surprisingly fast-paced; plot points that would (and have) taken other DC shows an entire season to reveal are plainly spoken by the end of the first episode, leaving the characters space to grow and interact without setting up a mystery or identity revelation to throw the audience off. The production values are pretty great all-around, from the fight sequences to the set pieces, and the cast is adroit if not exciting.
Rose is the only true uncertainty in the cast, which is both intriguing and unfortunate. She's got an undeniable screen presence, even when she seems to be barely trying to act, but Batwoman and Kate are not characters that can just be attractive and that's it. Kate is troubled, her relationships with everyone in her life strained (mostly due to circumstances beyond her control, like her gender and sexuality), and just having a face the camera loves is not enough to do justice to her. I have hope that Rose can tap into something deeper, something more authentic, in future episodes, but in the pilot she's merely performing the motions adequately, not living them.
In any case, I'm interested in Batwoman. Over the years I've watched all the Arrowverse shows, though I dropped Legends of Tomorrow halfway through its first season; Arrow after its fourth; and now The Flash after its fifth. But I've stuck with Supergirl and will add Batwoman to my queue, because these two shows feel different. They feel like they have more to say, and I'm curious what that will be in Batwoman's case.
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