People who have stuck with Gotham since its inception will admit it is over-the-top, over-packed, and incredibly messy but they can’t stop watching. Thankfully, an increasing number of people have gotten wise to the nonsense and the ratings dictated that the forthcoming short season five will be its last.

Gotham the Complete Fourth Season, out Tuesday from Warner Home Entertainment, presents all 22 episodes on four Blu-ray discs and you can see for yourself the chaos that masquerades as a prequel to Bruce Wayne becoming Batman (an act we’re promised we’ll prematurely see in 2019 when the series returns).

From the outset, the villains have always been outsized personalities, with grand schemes, unable to spread their criminal behavior to neighboring cities. Something roots them to Gotham even though none never clearly win. They would rather fight with or betray one another, each with some ambitious plan that seems to smack up against someone else’s plan.

Then you have the civilians with the women a collection of off-kilter kooks and the men relatively flat and uninteresting. The titular focal point, Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) spends the season regaining his moral center, setting him and Bruce (David Mazouz) as Gotham’s savior as it descends into No Man’s Land. While producers Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon will tell you, the season was loosely following the Batman Year One and Batman: The Long Halloween storylines, you’d be hard pressed to see how.

I suppose the whole Sofia Falcone (Crystal Reed) power play can be traced to the latter event, but in name only. Her scheme to rule Gotham with Barbara Kean (Erin Richards), Tabitha Jessica Lucas), and Selina (Carmen Bicondova) pits her against the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and his Iceberg Lounge, where he doles out permission to commit crimes like a lord. To fight back, he summons Sofia’s dad, Carmine (John Dorman) to handle his scion only to lose his life.

GOTHAM: Camren Bicondova in the “Pax Penguina” season premiere episode of GOTHAM.

Once the pieces are in place after the first half season, we then move things into high gear, tearing the city further apart, creating the finale as Gotham is cut off from America and everyone carves up the streets into fiefdoms. Behind the scenes, the would-be-Joker Jerome (Cameron Monaghan) casts a cackling shadow. His shooting of Selina at the end echoes Killing Joke and takes her off the board for now.

As the chaos descends. Bruce is in a teenage funk, an emo-boy as opposed to a vigilante in training, refusing help from Alfred (Sean Pertwee). Thankfully, he has enough sense also to not kill Ra’s al Ghul (Alexander Siddig), who sees something in the kid none of us do.

Thankfully, the city is large enough so there’s plenty of scenery for every actor to chew. They all get choice moments and good lines now and then, but everything is moving at such a fast clip, you’re riveted to the screen so you don’t miss a twist. And I suppose that’s the mad genius behind this wreck of a series.

The high definition transfer to 16×9 1:78:1 audio with DTS-HD Master Audio are fine for watching the madness on any screen.

The special features are scattered across the four discs starting with deleted scenes for four episodes on the first disc; and one deleted scene on the second disc; and no deleted scenes on the third disc. Disc four, though, has no deleted scenes but you have Solomon Grundy: Born on a Monday, The Sirens Take Gotham, and The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2017 (58:25).

Although Arrow set the tone and allowed the CW to grow its own integrated television universe, the series itself has been a maddening, uneven affair that always seems to take three steps forward then backslide at least one.

In what could have been a final season, that unevenness was never more frustrating as the show whipsawed characters and situations into increasingly dumb configurations that annoyed rather than entertained.

You can revisit all the nonsense in Arrow: The Complete Sixth Season, out now on Blu-ray and Digital HD from Warner Home Entertainment.

Season Five ended with Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) finally comfortable with one another, ready to resume their romance. Everyone is manipulated or kidnapped to find themselves on Lian Yu as Adrian Chase John Segara), who is excessively over-prepared, blows it all to hell.

We open the new season with the aftermath, starting with the death of Samantha (Anna Hopkins), who begs Oliver to care for their son William (Jack Moore), who has just learned of his father’s alter ego. As everyone is licking their wounds, we meet the tech savvy Cayden James (Michael Emerson), who is working to subvert Mayor Queen and ruin Star City. Not helping matters is FBI Agent Samanda Watson (Sydelle Noel), looking into the Mayor and the city’s leading vigilante.

Along the way, we have the crossover “Crisis on Earth-X” which ended with Ollie and Felicity finally tying the knot and shifting her from the geeky, fun, and intense hacker to the nurturing surrogate mother, watering her down as a character.

The producers decided their overstuffed Team Arrow needed pairing and contrived to force them into betraying and distrusting one another so they’re split into the Original Team and the New Team, none of which is convincingly handled. Neither is the internal strife between Ollie and John Diggle (David Ramsey), as they feud over which ones gets to play Green Arrow, further splitting the team.

In perhaps the most interesting twist, halfway through the season, James is killed off by the real mastermind behind everything, thuggish Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevado) who then is revealed to have somehow put every cop and judge in the city inside his suit pockets. Once more, the antagonist appears to have thought of everything while our heroes stumble into one another, blindly led into trap after trap, never growing wiser or better prepared. Aiding him is Anatoli (David Nykl), who really added little this season and was wasted while Black Siren (Katie Cassidy) seemed to play both sides against the middle with no clear agenda.

Diaz forces his way into The Quadrant, described as the secret cabal running America’s underworld but they come across as boobs, as one by one, Diaz shoots them without consequence. He, sadly, repeatedly survives near death and will remain a threat in the seventh season, commencing in October.

We wind up with Quentin (Paul Blackthorne) dead, Thea (Willa Holland) leaving to find herself, and the team reunited, saved from the FBI by Oliver giving himself up and going to prison so he has failed his city and is paying the price.

The sheer incoherence of the plotting spoils some great performances and the overemphasis on the amazing stunt fighting has long since become boring. Should the seventh be the final season, one hopes new showrunner Beth Schwartz will bring some dramatic coherence and discipline to the series.

The Blu-ray discs are AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1 with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, making for a fine home entertainment experience.

The special features are scattered across the four discs with the first offering up The Split of a Man: Deathstroke (11:48); the second gives us an in-depth Inside the Crossover: Crisis on Earth X (41:59); the third offers up Revenge in Ones and Zeros: The Story of Cayden James (10:52), which just reminds us how wasted Emerson was; and finally The Best of DC’s Comic Con Panels San Diego 2017 (58:27). No deleted scenes or gag reel this time.

Doomsday. The unstoppable engine of destruction also appears to be the unstoppable antagonist having been a regular in the comics since 1992 and brought to the animated and live-action films. The sheer power on display is catnip and allows DC Comics’ most powerful figure to go mano y mano.

The DC Animated Universe of direct-to-video films has been uneven, usually a result of either poor writing, bad directing, or off-putting character design. That they are now linked, building a shared universe is a small pleasure as the producers mine the comics for stories to adapt and weave into their mythos.

The Death of Superman story has been adapted repeatedly but the latest attempt, now available digitally from Warner Bros Home Entertainment, but this may be the most satisfying version. A large part of the credit has to go to writer Peter J. Tomasi, who brings a tremendous amount of humanity to the characters along with some much-needed humor.

Not only does this adapt the classic 1992 story, but also works within the animated universe as it uses their version of the Justice League, nicely uses the Man of Steel’s supporting cast, actively involves Lex Luthor (Rainn Wilson), and sows the seeds for the follow-up Reign of the Superman adaptation, coming later this year.

As Doomsday hurtles to Earth, Superman (Jerry O’Connell) is wrestling with the decision to reveal his secret to Lois Lane (Rebecca Romijn), soliciting advice from his ex, Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson), and the Flash (Christopher Gorham), who is about to finally marry. Elsewhere, we get glimpses of Lex working on programs despite his house arrest, making him the first to be aware of the danger to humanity.

When Doomsday emerges from the sea, he is making his way across America and the League is summoned to handle the matter but in typical animated style, we see only one member fight the behemoth at a time as opposed to a coordinated group effort, a mistake directors Sam Liu and James Tucker keep repeating. That said, it certainly was nice to see them in action, their personalities clear from Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) to Martian Manhunter (Nyambi Nyambi).

Given the level of devastation, it feels like it takes Superman too much time to get involved, but once he does, he gives it his all as the two battle across Metropolis, including a brutal fight on a bridge that endangers hundreds of civilians.

Of course, Lois and Jimmy Olsen (Max Mitttelman) are on hand for the finale, with Lois risking her life when it appears Superman was down for the count. In fact, having Superman put it all into the killing blow to save her is a great emotional beat.

And then we get the aftermath, the funeral, the tears, and the sense of loss. During the end credits, we cut away repeatedly to tease the coming of the Superboy clone, John Henry Irons (Cress Williams) forging the Steel suit, a floating Eradicator, and the Cyborg Superman entering the atmosphere.

Frederik Wiedmann delivers a strong score to match a well-written, very entertaining film, the best in the series to date. Tomasi and the team sprinkle several winks to readers and long-time fans, adding to the enjoyment. The only design issue I have is that the heroes have bull necks and Superman’s face is just wrong.

Released in the usual assortment of packages, the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray looks just fine, and the lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio mix is good.

There are just two special features, the obligatory tease for Reign of the Supermen (9:33) and  The Death of Superman: The Brawl That Topped Them All (16:23), a somewhat bloated look at the battle with martial arts expert Christian Medina, along with the usual talking heads, talk about its construction. Sadly, the only participants from the core material was original story editor Mike Carlin and artist Jon Bogdanove.

The two contributions from the DC Comics Vault are Legion of Super-Heroes, Season 2, “Dark Victory” Part 1 (22:54) and Part 2 (22:50), which were the series’ final offerings.