‘Gotham’ on Fox has devolved into a complete disaster

Once a very interesting take on the origin story of Batman, Fox’s Gotham has deteriorated into an incomprehensible mess of storylines.

I want to be a Gotham fan… but watching it these days makes my head hurt.

Recently, the Fox network aired the Season 3 finale of its Batman series Gotham. Basically Smallville but with Bruce Wayne, the series aims to show just how young Bruce came to be the Caped Crusader. With great actors portraying compelling characters, I was sucked in pretty quickly.

After three seasons in, however, I’m feeling mentally exhausted watching this series. It seems they have since traded in every ounce of realism that they had, replacing it with outrageous storylines. Presumably in its quest to constantly outdo itself, Gotham has fallen into the trap of basically “jumping the shark” in every single episode.

The Season 3 finale recently proves this point very well, as it’s one of the worst offending episodes. First of all, I’m getting really sick of all the fake-out deaths on this series — if somebody dies, we know right away that they’ll be back soon. Characters literally die over and over again, as if death is more of a minor inconvenience than anything else.

Setting up this extravagant storyline with this “Tetch virus” has also been a complete disaster. Having Bruce be responsible for unleashing it on Gotham has turned out to be the real reason for him to become Batman, evidently. Showing Bruce don the black suit at the end of the finale should have been an incredible moment for the show, but with how quickly they rushed it immediately after Bruce’s complete mental brainwashing felt so cheap and hokey.

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Gotham WILL be coming back for Season 4, because enough people are still watching, despite the show’s problems. I’ve seen every episode so far, so I’ll be giving the Season 4 premiere a chance. But if things don’t improve, I’m not sure I can stick around in the fandom for any longer.