Gotham is suffering from True Blood syndrome

I love watching Gotham every week, but I'm worried about it's long term sustainability.

True Blood and Game Thrones have/had the same basic flaw in common in my view.  They had too many characters in seemingly unconnected stories all over the place, and trying to include as many as possible every single week.

GoT is like that largely because of the Books it's adapted from, being all over the place is a bit more palpable in print.  TB is also theoretically based on a series of books, but not really.

I don't have a problem with there being a lot of characters and a lot of story-lines.  But we don't need to see everyone or even almost everyone every single week.  Not if you're having their stories this loosely connected.  Gordon and maybe Bullock are the only ones who need to appear every episode.

It doesn't help that no one in this fandom agrees on what stories are the expendable ones.

Some people hate Fish and think she's the worst most pointless character.  Others think she's the best Character on the show.  I like the character, but some characters are hurt by seeing them to much.  When Fish left Gotham after her plan against Falcone failed, that was a perfect time to simply have her be gone for awhile so her return latter could be a big deal.  Instead we have this pointless Dollmaker story-line that basically thrives on Shock Value.

Some don't like Barbara, I love Barbara.  Some don't like Tompkins, I like her but think her being a love interest for Gordon is a waste.  I'm really upset we're not seeing more of Renee Montoya lately, but I wouldn't want her there every single week either.  If the show had been an adaptation of Gotham Central she'd have been a perfect lead, but it's not.

The people at LadyGeekGirl think Gordon is the most useless character, but as much as I love them they're sometimes living caricatures of radical liberals who just hold a grudge over him being a "Cishet White Male lead".  I think Gordon's character has improved a great deal during the second part of the season, he's no longer a typical bland lead.

Gotham is still salvageable, here is why.

This all over the place structure can work out if by the Season finale everything comes together.  For Season 2 of True Blood that is what happened, the Texas stuff was wrapped up and the closing episodes were all about the Meaned.   I loved Season 2.

But for Season 3, the last one I watched to it's end, that didn't happen.  It ended on several separate cliff hangers.

You may be thinking," those shows lasted a really long time, why would it hurt Gotham?" a few key differences.

1. They had short seasons, 10-12 episodes, Gotham is getting 22, that makes a difference if your going to invest a lot of time in a story for things to never come together.

2. Gotham is a network show not a premium channel show, that makes the Ratings standards a lot different.

3. Neither of those shows seemed like followers of a Trend, rather they set trends.

4. Gotham has less respectability from the Critics and snobs to begin with for completely unfair reasons.

A season 2 for Gotham may seem like a sure thing right now, but many shows with strong first seasons drop quickly for season 2.  And next year Gotham will have more competition then just the CW in being a DC based TV show.