Well, here's the thing about the show. The writers said they're not going to exactly show the Joker's origins, but they're gonna have a whole bunch of people who very well COULD be the Joker, a bunch of red herrings, but we might never really know for sure who he is. And, obviously, the comedian was the first red herring. That's an idea I really like because they're basically allowing me to choose what kind of origin I want the joker to have, and since I love his backstory in The Killing Joke, I automatically hand-picked that comedian to be the joker. Heh.
But I gotta agree with all these pre-riddler, pre-poison ivy cameos. It's alright if it's just that, cameos, but I don't need to see these people on a regular basis. Then they enter Smallville territory. Focus on the mob, or create new, interesting villains for the show. One villain I would like to see from the Batman mythos in this series is the early years of victor Zsazz. I'd love for him to be some kind of Zodiac-like serial killer who Gordon doesn't catch, or he ends up catching the wrong guy thinking it's Zsaz, thus taking someone like Batman to come in and truly put a stop to him. The thing that I like about the series is that you know Gordon's not gonna win. The man is destined to fail, and it should be heart breaking because at the end of it all Gordon might be completely hopeless and defeated before Batman shows up.