From its earliest episodes in 2014, Gotham has been on the borderline.

The first season of Fox's Batman prequel saw solid ratings shrink in the face of a dull and dark procedural format. And while it improved in fits and spurts across its sophomore year, the DC Comics drama failed to draw the kind of passionate fan base that its superhero counterparts on The CW universe had whipped into a frenzy. When Gotham's third season wrapped in the spring, the series was on the bubble for renewal – squeaking through primarily due to the promise of future syndication even as it delivered a finale meant to serve as a potential series ending.

RELATED: Gordon Hunts the Mad Hatter in Deleted Gotham Scene

Along the way, Gotham has been a creative mess. Week to week, it swings from the inspired lunacy of its best performers (villains Penguin and Riddler are at the top of the list) to the gruesomely bland turns of its core story (anything involving Jim Gordon) and from occasional flashes of fun fan service (waves of oddball guest stars and character cameos) to bewildering breaks from basic canon (Bruce Wayne as a straight-up killer).

If you're still following the series into its Season 4 premiere on Thursday, you're likely conflicted about whether Gotham is worth another 22 hours of your life. But all hope is not lost. If the series is able to hold on to its better demons and unleash the charms of its blackest humor, it may give us reason to tune in to its new Bat-Time of 8 p.m. Thursdays.

Below, CBR counts down five ways the producers can tweak the show to deliver the Dark Knight TV series the city deserves.


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Give Up the Pretense and Go Full Cartoon

Gotham has sometimes been described as a mash-up of the 1966 Adam West Batman series and Tim Burton's 1989 film. If only that were true, the series would be in great shape.

In truth, despite some killer production design Gotham has tried too hard to veer away from the madcap tone of those stylish Bat stories. Instead, the series has grabbed onto bland melodrama again and again. There was the Season 1 plotline about Barbara Kean's alcoholism. And that was outdone by Jim Gordon's repeated attempts to comfort the orphaned Bruce Wayne when the cop rarely portrays more emotion than a pile of gravel. Even when legendary performers like Carol Kane get roped into would-be tearjerkers, stories like the death of Penguin's mommy dearest packed all the punch of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

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Whenever Gotham tries to deliver "serious" drama, the results are always flat and forgettable. So why keep trying? The show is at its best when it's a showcase for scenery chewing. The otherwise-interminable romance between Gordon and Lee Thompkins rose from the grave last year thanks to the wacky twist of a "darkness virus" that made everyone wear to much eye makeup and talk in slow phone-sex voices. That kind of pure genre-celebrating strangeness is the only time this show feels like the Batman projects we remember and love, and Gotham would be well advised to own those influences above all others.

Hell, even Bat-nipples would be a welcome wink to the audience at this point. But leave the attempts as genuine human drama to HBO.

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Only Make Changes That Matter to Fans

Season 3 undeniably included some of the show's most iconic and exciting moments, but it also drove a few classic elements of the Bat mythos off a cliff.

When the series delivered, it did so in one of two ways. First were the first-pumping scenes where pure pieces of comic book homage that could have jumped from a back-issue bin. Bruce Wayne's midseason showdown with Gotham's own Joker (aka carnival clown Jerome) was only topped by the boy billionaire's pitch-perfect vow to never kill in his quest for justice. But the second kind of triumph came when Gotham pushed classic characters into all-new territory that could actually inspire the audience. At the top of this list was the storyline that saw the Penguin come out as queer – a shift in canon that offered a long-overdue mirror for fans hoping for more diversity from this world.

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Where the show really falls apart is when it tosses off plotlines that are halfway between these two approaches. Late in Season 3, the Court of Owls stepped out of the shadows only to brainwash Bruce into becoming the city's dark protector with some kind of ... magic acupuncture? The whole storyline was DOA 1.) because it failed to give a version of the Court that had the menace and coolness of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's comics; and 2) because the Bruce twist stole his entire character's reason to exist as a self-made superhero.

The lesson here is simple: If the producers want to make a change to what fans love about the comics, don't just do it for a cheap thrill. Make alterations in a progressive and positive way. Otherwise stick with what's worked for the better part of 75 years.

Have a Villain Plan and Stick the Landing

While the main cast of Gotham bad guys like Robin Lord Taylor as the Penguin or the increasingly strong Cory Michael Smith as the Riddler are the  obvious all-stars, the series has had a continuous problem with season-long "Big Bads."

Each year, this drama carts out some comics-familiar villains with great fanfare only to see them fizzle by season's end. The great BD Wong was mostly wasted as Hugo Strange, only appearing to "unleash" rafts of forgettable also-ran mutants. Mr. Freeze was in focus for all of three episodes without an ounce of the pathos of a 22-minute episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and he's since been demoted to a hired goon. The Mad Hatter keeps hanging on, but all he's accomplished is getting Michael Chiklis to dress up in an armored gimp suit. And the mysterious, all-powerful Court of Owls took off their masks and then were murdered offscreen. Even decent villains like Jerome and Azrael have had only brief moments of triumph amid stretches of mediocrity.

RELATED: The 15 Most Annoying Plot Holes on Gotham

Perhaps the biggest swing and miss on the villain front was what Gotham failed to make of one of Batman's biggest foes. In Season 1, the show cast talented actor Nicholas D'Agosto as Harvey Dent, and then proceeded to use the young district attorney practically never. The closest we got to seeing the raging persona that will be eventually unleashed as Two-Face was Dent playing with a coin in the background. And by now, they've lost the actor to NBC's "wacky wife murder" sitcom, likely never to return.

But all hope is not lost. Gotham is stepping into Season 4 with loads of promising bad guys. There's the return of a fully-fledged Scarecrow who was last teased in one of the few memorable episodes of Season 1. Cult-favorite goons like Solomon Grundy and Professor Pyg are on tap to terrorize. The great sci-fi actor Alexander Siddig will step into the part of Ra's al Ghul (even though his debut at the end of Season 3 was rather anticlimactic). And fans still pine for a Harley Quinn debut ... eventually. Most of those villains have the potential to be solid primary antagonists, but in order to pull that off, the series will need to do what it's never done before: Deliver a final battle worthy of the foe rather than pull the rug out from under them at the last minute. Gotham's track record there doesn't bode well.

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Give Harvey Bullock ANYTHING to Do

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of Gotham is that it has employed one of the most underrated and downright best actors in America for three whole years and has given him nothing to do.

Is it possible the producers weren't aware that Donal Logue played perfection in the tragically brief crime series Terriers? Did they somehow miss his five seasons as the acerbic-yet-heartwarming patriarch of Grounded For Life? Did the page of his resume detailing countless scene-stealing turns in the likes of Blade and Sons of Anarchy fall off before his audition? Have they never even heard of The Tao of Steve? Hell, that movie is still on HBO Zone at least once a month!

RELATED: Gotham Star Wants to Play Damian Wayne in DCEU

Whatever the excuse, Gotham's writers have never given this fine thespian more to do as Harvey Bullock than burp up exposition, drop a few third-rate snarky clichés and make eyes at Jada Pinkett Smith for three minutes. It's a damn tragedy.

So please, Gotham producers: Give Harvey a real storyline this year, or maybe a girlfriend. Even a dog. Just give him something! Donal Logue is too good for you; show some respect.

Make It a Batman Show, Dammit

By far, the best episode Gotham has ever delivered came at the midway point of Season 3, an adventure that not coincidentally saw Bruce Wayne take on his clown nemesis in all-out war.

At the end of the Bruce/Jerome saga, we got a glimpse of the Caped Crusader whose name will eternally be withheld from this series when the boy and Alfred realized that to beat back the darkness in Gotham, a hero has to rise above it. This is the story arc that has somehow eluded Jim Gordon again and again. And while Ben McKenzie has more than enough potential to be an affable, attractive leading man, this series has failed to make his Gordon a compelling main character for too long. So now it's time to shift things over to being a story of how Bruce can save Jim – not the other way around.

And so far, early trailers for Season 4 have shown that this is a direction Gotham is leaning in. Images of Bruce gearing up for action with the aide of Lucius Fox and hitting the streets as a vigilante are all over the promos, and we say let that story take the lead for a while. Gordon still has his place, but he should be a shining beacon for Bruce's quest from here on out. Pairing these two together as the last bastions of hope in a city on the brink of total madness might be the only way to save Gotham as a series once and for all.

So while the show can't speed up the timeline of events to make actor David Mazouz into a fully adult Dark Knight, Gotham should give up on its extended origin story idea and just let its superheroes be superheroes.


Returning Thursday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox, Gotham stars Ben McKenzie as James Gordon, Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock, David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne, Robin Lord Taylor as Penguin, Cameron Bicondova as Selina Kyle, Erin Richards as Barbara Kean and Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth.