Review: Gotham Girls, Season 2

Well, I've gotten through the second batch of ten episodes. One would hope that since the first batch, the creators have honed their skills and improved their product.

That is, one would hope. So let's take a look at Season 2 as a whole.

While we continue to wonder how this ever got a comic book spin-off.

Themes

Uh....

Subplots
Um....

Characters
Ehh....

Animation
Ugh.

Okay, look. Gotham Girls ain't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.

In terms of ongoing story, character development, and anything I can critique with any sort of depth, it'd be easier for me to review a banana. The only way to discuss this season in a way that matters is to compare it to the first season.

Improvements
First and foremost, the animation has improved greatly. Whoever was working on this finally learned how to use motion tweens instead of relying on a frame rate of 2 per second. Or maybe new people were animating this. It’s possible that the animation company for this season (Noodle Soup Productions, who went on to do The Venture Bros.) worked on the previous season, since they’re credited for it on Wikipedia, but I can’t find any other information to back that up.

Story-wise, it's still hit and miss. For every webisode that seems like it could be an actual short film with a little tinkering, there's a webisode that elicits nothing but a "meh" from me. At the very least, though, there's definitely some creativity in the premises. Harley writes a detective novel. Harley becomes a baby. Batgirl turns evil. A super-villain Miss America pageant. It seems like the writers were trying to have a bit of fun with their plots, which is definitely a step-up from last season's rather generic plots.

Best Episode: "Gotham Noir"
Harley's hard-boiled detective story was a fun little tale that certainly stood out from the other episodes.

Worst Episode: "I'm Badgirl"
By the end of the season, the episodes kept getting more and more "meh," with a few exceptions. Some went above and beyond the call of duty. This one, on the other hand, seemed like the minimum of effort, despite a potentially cool premise.

Most "Meh" Episode: "Baby Boom"
I don't have many criticisms of it, but that's not to say that it did anything particularly well.

Best Character: Poison Ivy
The characters may be less interesting than their Batman: TAS counterparts, but Ivy's deadpan snark is enough to set her apart from the goofy Harley Quinn and rather boring Catwoman.

Worst Character: Catwoman
While the transition to Gotham Girls robbed the characters of most of their depth, Catwoman got hit with this the worst.

Catwoman is supposed to have many aspects to her personality; a dangerous sexuality, a cat theme, a penchant to steal for the thrill of it, et cetera. These aspects are all still there, but only at a surface level.  Harley and Ivy might get one personality trait each, but at least Ivy's snark and Harley's goofiness are interesting enough traits to carry a short webisode. Catwoman had to get a time travel episode to be even slightly interesting.

Heck, Zatanna only appeared once this season, and totally stole the show.

Best Thing About the Season
Actual effort was put into production this time around.

Worst Thing About the Season
Some of the shorts have pretty solid premises... that end up wasted in the watering down process of Gotham Girls.

Final Thoughts
I told people to avoid Season 1 like the plague, since it not only wasn't good, it wasn't so-bad-it's-good.

Season 2?

Well, I can't exactly recommend it. It's certainly not the worst thing ever, but I doubt that anyone is going to come out of that season saying "I'm glad I watched that." Gotham Girls is turning out to be more of a curiosity than anything.

I'll be taking a break before Season 3, mainly because the third season is just one long story.

Until then, it's time to set my sights on a show that I've been meaning to look at for a long time.

See you then.