Warning: Fullfor FOX's first season of Gotham follow...

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Ben McKenzie and Donal Logue in Gotham.

For the sake of succinctness, I won't fully go into the minutia of my criticisms of Gotham, FOX's high-profile Batman-verse TV series set fifteen or so year before the Caped Crusader's canon debut. For specifics, you can check out my reviews of the individual episodes if you'd like. Here, I'll try to address broad strokes so as to not get too nit-picky.Gotham never really felt, throughout this entire first season, like it had stopped struggling to find itself. As if it was crumbling under the daunting shadow of what's to come later on -- down the line on a Batman TV show that will never air -- Gotham had severe issues with tone, story and character consistency. And, to a much greater degree, it had ensemble issues. As in, it felt the need to include certain characters on episodes when it didn't have to. And the needless overcrowding became a huge detriment to the show.There were many times when an episode didn't need Penguin. Or Fish. Or Bruce. Or, in the case of the finale, Selina. But they were shoved in anyhow and usually given hacky morsels of story. It all smacked of a series doing its best to stretch things out to 44 minutes, 22 times. The most arduous example of this was Fish's entire side adventure with The Dollmaker. Totally unnecessary. Especially since when she did eventually show back up in Gotham it felt like more than a few story beats were skipped. We could have NOT seen her entire Dollmaker arc and she he could have still just shown up with those new henchman, dressed all ridiculously like that, and the overarching story wouldn't have felt any different.The show also spun its wheels quite a bit, even repeating many of the same beats over and over. Gordon getting in over his head with an investigation that targeted his fellow cops. Gordon asking Penguin for a favor (multiple times, never learning a lesson that the show seemed to insist he'd learned). Penguin playing Falcone and Maroni against each other. It all bogged the series down.Payoffs were also a big problem as both the midseason and season finales faltered in big ways. What was left then, after Gotham had basically established its M.O. in the first 10 episodes (and would then repeat that blueprint) was a show built around Easter Eggs. About quirky, winking nods to fans regarding famous villains who -- as per prequel rule -- often showed up in kid form. All so that we could say, "Boy, it'll really be cool decades from now when this villain's fighting Batman."Gotham's also not really an "adult" show. Sure, Penguin stabs people. Yes, there was a scene featuring bondage gear. But none of it is really meant to stretch beyond a kid's mentality. The murder cases were rudimentary, the love stories were simplistic, and the gangland plots were often dull and/or half-formed. I don't accept "it's a comic book series" as an excuse though, and neither should you. This is no longer a genre to write off. Gotham is built, at its core, more for 12-year-olds than older fans. It dabbled in darkness (again stabbings, serial killers, etc) but everything sexual got glossed over as if the show was blushing. The Ogre's BDSM gear was just window dressing and no mention was ever made that he sexually abused his victims for months. Barbara's bi-sexuality was brought up and then dropped (along with the Major Crimes Unit completely).And that's why honing in on a specific tone is important. Gotham never could decide if it was dark and demented or tween-cozy and cartoonish. Ed Nygma, for example, never felt like he belonged in the same world as Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock. He felt like he was from a different show. And so by trying to be, almost, every incarnation of this world, Gotham became way too burdened by all that'd come before it in movies, TV and comics.Now, let's focus on what did work here. Gotham looked good and had a healthy, vigorous physicality. Ben McKenzie and Donal Logue made an appealing duo while Robin Lord Taylor gave us a really cool, unique Penguin. Likewise, Sean Pertwee's younger, scrappier Alfred was a nice stray from the usual. I know Jada Pinkett Smith's Fish took a lot of flack from some fans, though I never minded her character until the show decided that it needed to follow her after the midseason finale, outside of her original story of trying to topple Falcone. I liked her devious ambition at first, but she was never a character who warranted extended focus.Don't run away from that. Embrace it. I'll use Maroni's death as an example here of how getting as far away as possible from the established Batman norm could do wonders for this series. In fact, I say ditch Batman. Don't even lead up to Batman. Drop all hints and foreshadowings to him. He's crippling this series. Do Joker now. Do Riddler now. Don't give us these long, baby-step lead ups to characters we'll never fully be able to enjoy in their final form.Have Jim Gordon be this show's Batman. Let him deal with all the villains who would normally oppose Batman. Make him fight Two-Face and Mr. Freeze. Do something else with Bruce Wayne. Hell, kill him off. Gotham can be its own thing entirely. This show isn't connected to the DC movie universe in any way so why even keep it a "Batman prequel show?"