Well, at least we can think of it this way: The creators didn't get the chance to lay this crap on the Batman franchise like they originally wanted to.
Oh yeah! *phew!*
Can you imagine bruce wayne being angsty for 10 seasons? Would've nearly destroyed the character
Smallville's style of angst (which was only a minor problem with the show) certainly would have.
The real problems would be more like having Bruce Wayne's name changed because the so-called actor they would have hired thought "Bruce" was too effemininate. So he'd become something like Bruce "John" Wayne, and everyone would call him John.
The Joker would have been a transfer student who's father was a Quebecoise street mime. He would have befriended John soon after coming to squeaky-clean and bright Gotham High and would be inseperable for the first half of the premiere episode, until John got the new "class clown" in trouble with their teacher. The Joker would vow to destroy John while his nose was in the corner, and the rest of the first season would (when they remembered they had such a storyline in play) occassionally reference some deadly prank the Joker had set up. Like water in a bucket over a door. But John would see the string before it was too late, foiling the Joker's dastardly plot.
But in the season finale, John would tell him he's a jerk and give the Joker a light shove, and he would thusly be defeated forever.
Next season would be heavily commercialized to show the conflict between John and Ra's (aka "Roz") al Ghul, the son of a 7-11 mogul with unlimited funds. But he, too, would be utterly defeated with a light shove at the end of the season if, again, the writers remembered he was even the villian of the season. Which they wouldn't, except for maybe one or two episodes.
And so on and so forth, for ten years. None of which would spend any time with John leaving Gotham except on rare occasions, and then only to check out his daddy's holdings in other cities where, of course, he would find recorded journals that his father left behind to guide him on his journey to manhood. If we were really lucky, we might hear that Wayne Enterprises had a tech department as a passing wink so that we, the audience, would know that's where he gets his gadgets... but we'd never once see him use any at all. I mean, why would he need one in the first place? He can shove people just fine as is.
Oh, and his martial arts training would include a private yoga instructor in the form of a plucky blond chick, introduced for the sole reason of giving him a love triangle to angst over. And even that training would eventually be forgotten a season or two later as she went on to become Batgirl (who's name they'd have no trouble getting permission to use) before John even considered the idea of putting on a cowl. Not that he would, because it would totally muss up his hair.