While I was a bit skeptical when I first started the series, the last two issues made it obvious to me. Frank is writing this series in a way that should obviously be read in a collection and doesn't lend itself very well to monthly comic form, especially with the delays.
First look to the context of the story. It's meant to take place right after Year One, while Bruce is still getting control of the ropes of being the entity of the Batman. Most comic fans have the image of the controlled, calm, precise Batman lodged into their mind that they forget that this is Early Batman. The Batman in this series could very well BECOME the one everyone knows, but he isn't. Not yet.
This story isn't just of Dick becoming Robin, but of Bruce solidifying himself and his methods of being Batman. He makes mistakes, because he obviously hasn't been doing it long. He becomes a caricature of himself, and it takes Robin nearly killing Hal to make Batman realize that. He is just now beginning to see what he has become in Robin's actions, which scares him. In the last issues, he knows he's wrong and look for him to start portraying his intellectual side, to influence Robin.
The story is obviously a character-driven physiological piece. It's not the conventional Batman, because it's not meant to be. You don't like the 'Goddamn' Batman because you're not supposed to. It's not just another Batman story: It's the story of a man driven by revenge, that through his failures and mistakes, eventually becomes the conventional Batman. Frank views the story of one like a human life: You aren't the same man from 25 to 30.
Frank just chose to delve into the Batman's most conflicted period of his life. Once the arc is finished and you see what I'm seeing right now, it was start to look like a original masterpiece of character development.
