The worst thing about this show is that it is not absolutely terrible. It is sometimes pretty good.

If it sucked, then it might get cancelled and we could all stop watching. Instead this show is a stark blend of good and bad elements.
It has some pretty decent noir detective style stories, where the main character, Gordon, is the only honest cop in a totally corrupt town. Then a guy called Penguin eats sandwiches after he randomly stabs people. Gordon is a cop so committed to doing the right thing he will literally sort through the shit to find the truth (evidence in the sewer). But later a guy asks a bunch of Riddles and everyone says he Riddles too much.
The other main cop, Bullock, is an interesting mix of corrupt cop but still has decent sense of justice. Then a young rich orphan is sad a bunch, while people tell him he will do great things one day (that we will never see).

Even though the "Gordon cleans up police alone" is the best part of the show it also has contradictions, for instance there is already another whole department of honest cops. And he also has a super successful, rich, and supportive fiancé who could completely take care of him if he quit being a cop. So he isn't really struggling with his life in any way. It makes him copping about look more like a whimsey, as opposed to a duty.

This show has a pretty decent core narrative, it's all the auxiliary stuff dragging it down. It also does a good job of not being entirely episodic. Often minor plot points from previous episodes will impact the next one.

For a show based on Batman, the worst parts of the show are the Batman bits. Like when young Bruce Wayne, or Selina Kyle ("Cat"), or the Penguin or the Riddler show up. If they cut out all the Batman things in this show, it would be much better.

I want to either love this show, or stop watching. But I can't do either. Instead I keep watching a mediocre series and hoping it improves.

Season 1 of this show was fantastic television. Sure, it had its issues, but for the most part I found it to be an intense, gripping show. Penguin was fantastic, as was Falcone and all the stuff relating to the mob. However, once season 2 came around the show just went overboard with villains. But worse than going overboard with villains was the fact that most of the villains weren't very good. Jerome as a joker like character was excellent while he lasted, but even he suffered from the poorly written plot. After season 1, the show lost all sense of danger. The characters are never actually in trouble. In the first season it really did feel tense, it felt like characters were in trouble. But after seeing the GCPD be taken over for the fourth time in x amount of episodes in later seasons, all sense of danger just vanishes. How many times can Penguin or Riddler have one another held hostage only for them to escape? It really is nonsense. The supernatural/magic stuff in the series really doesn't work well either. I think it could work, but it's just poorly implemented.

I think the show suffers from short sightedness. There doesn't seem to be any stretching plot to most of it other than Bruce Wayne being on course to become Batman (which is actually one of the worst parts of the show). It also often feels like certain plot points are dragged on for far longer than is necessary - probably to fill all 22 episodes of each season. I really think that the show would be much better if the seasons were shortened to around 13 episodes. I'm confident that by cutting down on the number of total episodes that the creators could fill those 13 episodes with good content, rather than having to stretch any good content they come up with out over 22 episodes.

I mean, I've made it this far, so might as well keep up with it. But for the entirety of the third season I was constantly on the verge of dropping it, and more-or-less continued out of a mix of bile fascination and habit.

Ivy being aged up was the first time I felt truly irked by how utterly desperate it's been getting to fast-forward to the more ostensibly Batman-ish material, when in reality the most likable aspect of the show *was* its initial desire to exist in its own little world and approach all these characters from more subversive angles. Also, the transition from a procedural about gang warefare and a corrupt precinct with a theatrical twist to DUDE FREEZE RAYS, NUCLEAR BOMBS AND SUPERPOWERED BLOOD VIRUSES LMAO could not have been more jarring; like, I get that they sort of tried to segue from more realistic crime scenarios to all the zany shit by using Galavan's cult as an intermediary of sorts, but it still feels like too short a space of time to gradually build towards it. This is in addition to the myriad of other writing mishaps that I could probably spend all day on, but it's best just to amount it to all of the writers having majorly limited contact with each other and a general feeling of writing-on-the-fly (I can't be the only one who thinks something like the Tetch Virus reads as a one-off for like two episodes or something, not a plot device you build an entire season around and comes completely out of nowhere)

I'd be more optimistic about Bruce going full-on caped crusader as adding a different spin to things, but then this is a show that's been throwing different spins and twists every other ten minutes in the hopes that it'll distract people from how aimless it all is, so I doubt much will change in that regard.

God I miss forensic scientist Ed