When the pilot for Gotham first aired on September 22, its reception was an awkward mix of muted disappointment and undeterred optimism. "Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly a great episode," many of us thought to ourselves, "but it definitely has potential. Maybe we just need to give it a few weeks to find its legs. Maybe by then it will be the show that we'd hoped for." That was four months ago. And in that time, Gotham has not only displayed a persistent denial to recognize its own obvious flaws, but worse, it's upped the ante: the humor is as flat as it's ever been, there's close to zero tension, the dialogue is positively sour, and even the one consistently strong element that Gotham has going for it - its production design and visuals - has become less than dazzling in recent weeks. If Gotham was just a complete and utter disaster, it would be relatively easy to simply write off; but the truth is that while it's a show with a ton of problems, it's also a show that regularly displays glimpses of being something better...and that makes it tougher to ignore. There is an amazing, sweeping comic book epic inside of Gotham that's but a few key fixes away from becoming a reality. Listed here are ten such fixes that Gotham has to make if it truly wants to be a show worth watching.
