The pilot episode of Gotham was a little rough. Tonally it was all over the place: one minute it was extra, deadly serious like an exaggerated cop show, and the next minute Jada Pinkett Smith was chewing the scenery like a pro, leading it down the path into camp. The faux cop-speak dialogue fell flat: as much as I love Donal Logue, I just don’t buy him calling criminals “mopes.” And the nods to Batman continuity were almost overwhelming. We get it. This is set in Gotham City.

Episode two, “Selina Kyle,” takes steps to course correct while at the same time making mistakes of its own. One expects a new series to take a while to find its footing, and that’s fine (necessary, even), but this show comes from Bruno Heller, creator of HBO’s Rome and CBS’s The Mentalist. If that guy doesn’t know how to avoid writing a bad episode of television, then I don’t know who does. I don’t expect perfect television in the second episode of a fledgling show, but when it comes from Heller I do expect it to avoid the really obvious storytelling issues this episode exhibits.

Gotham seems to be trying to balance between a case-of-the-week and a larger, overarching narrative. That’s good. It gives the series a sense of carryover from one episode to the next, which is useful in creating real and believable characters, while the case-of-the-week aspect gives it a sense of breadth and fun that might sometimes be missing in heavily serialized storytelling.

This episode’s case-of-the-week has to do with a kidnapping ring: a middle aged man and a woman are nabbing kids off of the street, and they even name-check the Dollmaker in the process (apparently he wants the kids shipped to his overseas hideout). The two kidnappers are gleeful psychopaths, smiling cruelly as they drug and abduct homeless kids (and, in one of this episode’s most darkly funny moments, give each other a high five when they manage to grab an entire bus full of children). Those characters are stock villains, overly sweet and smiley while willing to murder someone in an instant, but they’re gamely played, and they work.

Selina Kyle, who really annoyingly wants to be called “Cat,” manages to escape the villains once, but not the second time, leading her to display some pretty sneaky moves (I get it, she’s Catwoman) in order to attempt to escape the warehouse in which she and many other children are held. But wait, in the process of escaping, the locket that she holds all the time falls out of her jacket pocket at precisely the wrong moment, inviting the female kidnapper to look up and see her crawling on top of a shipping crate. I’m sorry, but that’s just lazy storytelling. Just as the kidnapper’s about to shoot Selina (I refuse to call her Cat), Jim Gordon comes barreling in and saves the day. How did he know where to find them? Well, the kidnappers used a van with a shipping logo on it to grab the kids. A legitimate shipping logo. The logo of the shipping company which is going to smuggle the kids to Europe. Really dumb. What kind of villains wouldn’t even bother to try and hide their tracks? Lazy, poorly written ones.

Not only that, but Selina’s part in the story didn’t really show more of her character other than the fact that, wow, she can move real quiet when she wants to. Her role was mostly to be a character that we as the audience have (possibly) connected with, hopefully causing us to care about the kidnapping plot. She essentially served as emotional bait for the audience, and was much more in service of Jim Gordon’s plot than her own. I find that disappointing, particularly as the episode is called “Selina Kyle.”

The other major issue in this episode has much more to do with the overall storyline: Bruce and Alfred are cut off. 98% of the plot has to do with kidnapping, and Bruce and Alfred have essentially no way of connecting with it, or any of the case-of-the-week stories, stranded out there in Wayne Manor. They can’t even interact with any other characters. Jim Gordon has a semi-plausible reason to visit them, but otherwise Bruce and Alfred are stuck having conversations with each other. If the writing team can’t find a way to integrate those characters into the season a little bit more, the scenes with Bruce and Alfred are going to become awfully boring, and awfully unnecessary. The little plot that they do have (Bruce cutting/burning/whatevering himself) is fairly clichéd. How do we know that Bruce is having emotional issues? We see him hold his hand over a candle flame. We see him drawing weird pictures and we hear him listening to heavy metal. We’re told by Alfred that he’s cutting himself. To me, that just seems like angsty, teenagery kind of stereotypical stuff.

But it’s not all bad. The terrible dialogue of the pilot episode, usually coming from Harvey Bullock, is hemmed in a little bit. In fact, Harvey Bullock has immediately become my favorite character. Donal Logue is great as Bullock: Logue plays him very physically, swaggering around threatening people, and I believe him. There’s something just a little bit dangerous about his portrayal. Random other people still have bad dialogue, but Bullock has quickly become much closer to a real character. (And thank God they’ve toned down Edward Nigma’s Riddler shtick.)

The villains of the piece, Jada Pinkett Smith’s Fish Mooney and John Doman’s Carmine Falcone, are easily the best characters on the show. Smith brings a level of insanity and cold menace to Fish Mooney that is equal parts funny and scary, and she gives the show a shot in the arm whenever she’s on screen. And John Doman, an alumnus of The Wire, brings a sense of heaviness to his portrayal of Carmine Falcone. His calmness as his boys beat the hell out of Fish Mooney’s sexual plaything was a strong choice. He’s a heavy: his actions are heavy; his choices have consequences; even his words are spoken in a deep, calm, heavy voice. He doesn’t startle. He’s Carmine Falcone.

So it’s a mixed bag this episode. Characters work but plots don’t. I’m going to watch this show because it’s main characters are Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock, I’m just worried that it’ll get to the point where I’m dreading Monday nights.

Season 1, Episode 2 Overall Score: 6/10