Maybe … to give the police a red herring? 
Assuming it was a hit after all.
Yes. So what? The original version of the story had Bruce be inspired by a bat flying through his window. Original doesn’t mean best.
Wouldn’t that leave no doubt it was a targeted killing and not a plausible street robbery gone bad, though?
Seriously: What would you suggest as an alternative?
Not any more than using some fancy-schmancy bullets. I like the show but the one sour note was that. If you are trying to make a hit look like a robbery, then use a cheap ordinary gun.
So the butler did it?
That strikes me as a plausible bit of carelessness (like the shiny shoes) – the assassin has a perfectly good gun that isn’t registered or otherwise easily linked to him, and it doesn’t occur to him to use a different one (certainly not a cheapo one that might fail at the critical moment).
I agree. At least we know he will have fond memories of her 
With regard to the Waynes’ murder. That is one of the pitfalls of the show. One of the things that make Batman Batman is his parents were killed by a thug with a gun (and in many incarnations it is even unsolved). Making it part of a vast conspiracy (if that is what they are indeed even doing which is not a given) sort of works against that.
Plus it more or less works. Other then Gordon, no one seems interested in questioning that it was a mugging, regardless of the fancy gun. That wouldn’t really work if the couple was taken out by a sniper.
Plus what would be the advantage of doing it with a sniper rifle? Its not like Thomas Wayne is some super badass who has to be taken out with extreme caution. Just walking up and shooting him seemed to work fine (other then Bruce noticing the shoes, but presumably the assassin didn’t realize a 12 year old kid was going to be a hyper-observant future superhero detective).
Also, I’m not sure there are any other fictional characters I’ve seen murdered more than poor Thomas and Martha Wayne. Poor characters seem to exist only to get one minute of screen time before being murdered infront of their son, over and over again with only minor variations. Its like some sort of Greek mythological punishment.
Hmm, well I guess they added them later because there wasn’t any lesbian subplots in the first season of any of those shows. And House just had a bisexual doctor, not really a relationship storyline that I recall. But ok.
Eta: oh yeah! One of the detectives was a lesbian right from the start in The Wire. Didn’t feel too obtrusive when I watched it but ymmv.
The guy who played Penguin reminded me of a younger Michael Emerson.
Deadwood–Joanie Stubbs was definitely a lesbian in the first season. Kristen Bell’s teenage grifter character sniffed that out right away.
I don’t remember any lesbian plots on the Sopranos.
The Nolanverse version, where they were going to see Der Fliedermaus on the night the Waynes died, or the Silver/Bronze age thing where the costume was inspired by one that Thomas wore to a Halloween party to give it a connection to his parents (and thus the trauma).
Or:
The Earth-1 (graphic novel), Nolanverse, and Year One version where he had a pre-existing massively traumatic experience with bats due to falling into the Batcave when it really WAS a bat cave, which explained why it would be his go-to fear-inducing image, and in E-1 made it a symbol of his own strength to overcome. (Actually, I think in Earth-1, it was in a crypt for some extra scariness, not what would become the Batcave, but I don’t have my copy handy to check. In either case, it’s the only example of this one where the introduction of the bat-imagery into his psyche came after his parents’ deaths - though not long after…it may well have been immediately after their funeral.)
Any of that is better than ‘oh, hey, a bat…that works.’
You’re not the only one I’ve seen comment on that today…
One advantage of the ongoing comics over movies, tv and one-shot graphic novels is they’ve got a lot of opportunity to deal with the Waynes before their deaths, and they’ve been exploiting that a lot over the last…decade or thereabout? Including a pretty long arc about how they met (which also reminded us that Alfred was a special ops soldier before he went to work for the Waynes).
Barbara was Jim Gordon’s first wife, the mother of Bat Girl, who was also named Barbara. They divorced, and Jim married Sarah Essen, who is supposed to be on “Gotham” soon, too.
“Kids”?
She’s already been on. She’s the Homicide captain, so she’s the one who put her foot down on Bullock’s attempt to drop Jim as a partner.
(Re: the Two Barbaras…for a good while, Barbara the Younger was actually Jim’s neice (who may have been his biological daughter, from an affair with his sister-in-law) that they took in when her (legal) parents died…but they’re back to her being Jim and Barbara the Elder’s bio-daughter. So both parents passed their names on to the kids - they also have a son (a few years younger than Babs) named James.)
I liked it, although it will rearrange the ages of virtually all the usual characters. They have the advantage with something like this that the characters are all really well developed already and they can pick and choose from variations.
Dear God I hated Alfred Pennyworth with a Cockney accent that strong. Yeah, Caine did it, but it wasn’t quite so rough. Alfred should be Received Pronunciation.
It was okay. I’ll give it a few more episodes, but I certainly wasn’t wowed. I did like Falcone’s reasoning for framing the guy, though.
Some of the ‘future villains’ felt really shoe-horned in. Didn’t like Catwoman being present at the Waynes’ murder. And Poison Ivy isn’t even the right character (she’s supposed to be a scientist named Pamela Isley, not the daughter of a dead felon named Ivy Pepper). And can’t stand Alfred’s accent.
Well… I wasn’t wowed by this, but I’ll give it another episode or two.
Odd things:
- Ben Mackenzie reminded me of Martin Freeman, which kept taking me out of the moment
- the show was so unrelentingly dark. No-one can be trusted, and no-one is terribly likable.
- it’s disconcerting to have so many of the Batman Collection of Villains represented in the first episode.
- I liked Sean Pertwee’s take on Alfred, but I hope they keep it in the background
- hope the kid Bruce Wayne doesn’t show up every episode
- Worked as a pilot; it introduced (what I assume are) the major characters, and gave a couple of hints as to relationships between them.
- I found myself not caring about any of the characters. For me, there was no “hook” to get me in the episode
Hope it gets better, or it’s coming off the TiVo
Anyone who says this wasn’t comic-booky hasn’t read any comic books lately. The only way they could have made this more comic-booky would to have panel borders between the scenes.
It was also needlessly stupid, unbelievable, obvious, and overdone. In other words, it was everything I’d hoped it would be and more! 
I’ve been a huge fan of Arrow with all it’s stupid plots and guilty-pleasure comic-book soapiness, and I was hoping this would hit the same sweet spot for me. And it did! My favorite on-screen version of Batman is Michael Keaton, and this has exactly the same tone.
I like fiction (when it’s well done) that’s as amusing, awful, and artificial as St. Paul’s Cathedral. For reasons I can’t entirely put my finger on, Doctor Who has been letting me down this season (even though I love Capaldi’s acting), and this seems like it will fill that niche very nicely. I may even like this better than Flash (which I’ve seen the pilot of, and also really enjoyed).
My only complaint is that it can’t really go anywhere. All the bad guys (and good guys, for that matter) have to be almost exactly where they are now when Batman comes on the scene. It was especially troublesome when Gordon had to shoot Oswald Cobblepot, and I knew exactly what would happen, not because Jim Gordon isn’t a murderer, but because he has to become the Penguin. That said, they wouldn’t start a series like this without having some ideas about the kind of arcs they want to do, so I imagine they must have some surprises up their sleeves.