My name is Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive: THE FLASH tv show

so i think this show has earned its own thread.

this week, in the last episode before the season break, the reverse-flash made his first full appearance, partially solving the mystery of 'who killed barry allen's mother?' set up in the first episode.

the reveal of the reverse-flash, which comic book readers will have seen coming a long time ago, nonetheless came way faster than i was expecting it to. the show has maintained an appropriately breakneck pace over the nine episodes so far, bringing in new supervillains nearly every episode and throwing in gleeful references to the dc universe which might pay off further down the line.

they've even found time for a full-blown crossover episode with arrow, complete with the classic 'heroes fight each other' trope, after a supporting character from that show made an appearance earlier in the season.

i wasn't expecting much from this show - i watched the first few episodes of arrow when they aired and wrote it off as a try-hard imitation of batman begins. but the first episode of this grabbed me and i've really enjoyed every one since. i've even gone back and started working my way through arrow, which definitely gets better as it goes along.

i mentioned elsewhere on ilx about how weird it is that dc's tv and film universes are being kept completely separate and will eventually have different actors playing the same characters, while marvel's shows and movies are tightly woven together. in some ways i think the flash and arrow doing their own thing is actually for the best, because man of steel seemed actively embarrassed about being a superhero movie, but the flash is admirably unapologetic about how comic-booky it is. it has costumes and codenames and honest-to-goodness superpowers which actually look pretty good on a tv-show budget, and they seem to be having a fantastic time rifling through the dc comics playset without having keep big stories aside to be used in the movies.

so, who else is watching?

I didn't know this is being made again, quite like to see it. I remember the one from the 90s (?), how do both compare?

they've both got john wesley shipp in them! and amanda pays showed up in the most recent episode playing the same character she played in the earlier show.

i don't remember much about the 90s show, tbh, other than the slightly ridiculous suit and that the first show seemed reluctant to introduce supervillains until mark hammill showed up as the trickster.

I love this show, but then I'm a sucker for the flash and always have been. It existing has made Arrow better too, and they work really well as a pair.

Haven't seen the fall finale, but I've been expecting Revese Flash for a long time. The only question was, was it going to be Eddie Thawne?

well, that question does at least appear to be answered by the end of the episode...

they also did a good job of making the reverse flash look properly weird and villainous, too.

the first show seemed reluctant to introduce supervillains until mark hammill showed up as the trickster.

Which makes it great that Hamill's announced he's coming BACK to the new show as the Trickster, which is kinda amazing, really!

wait, what?! i must have missed that!

question does at least appear to be answered by the end of the episode

Kinda except the "why didn't he kill me?" question felt sort of leading, and there's definitely some barry/eddie animosity being set up at this point.

This is the most fun show on tv at the moment though, yep.

i wonder if iris' mum's missing ring from this episode will end up being a significant element in the time-travel plot they're setting up.

I've idly watched a few episodes of this - its not bad (I'm sure it's better than anything Snyder's ever done). It does feel a bit like Buffy-does-police-procedural as someone else noted. It doesn't feel particularly smart or emotionally engaging but as fluff goes it's not bad.

it does get the tone of the DC universe right - there's this mix of playfulness and archetypal stuff, which is what I appreciate most about DC

wait, what?! i must have missed that!

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/exclusive-mark-hamill-to-play-the-trickster-again-on-the-flash

cool, cheers ned

i'm like four episodes behind but I LOVE IT SO MUUUUUUUUUUUUCH

What's the take on jumping in without having seen a second of Arrow? My girlfriend is keen to check it out, but I'm anal and kinda want to watch Arrow first. What do I do?

i love how much time they spend experimenting with and geeking out over his powers - patiently approaching them with scientific curiosity instead of suggesting he's captain kick-ass over night. i love that they've made him a lovestruck dingus but one that could acknowledge genuine chemistry with that hacker from Arrow. equally earnest and enthusiastic - the energy is very "with great fun comes great responsibility." always hated tom cavanagh in tv lead roles but he's SO GREAT as the big bad, his smarm now clicks with his character's untrustworthiness. One of the "don't trust the prof" epilogues involved GORILLA GRODD. I dunno if they talk about it in a later episode yet but i love how on top of everything else A SUPERSMART GORILLA has been promised.

i saw only the first half of the first episode of arrow and hated it. it's honestly no more crucial than it would be to read a whole other comic just for the occasional tie-in

i am gonna check out the 2nd season arrow sometime though and then double back maybe

Yeah, I heard Arrow doesn't get really good until towards the end of the first season.

I haven't watched Arrow at all and have had no trouble following The Flash.

I initially figured Flash was pretty much separate until they did a crossover episode so early in its first season and I didn't know what I believed anymore.

i'm on episode 5 or 6 of arrow season 2 at the moment and it's been consistently good for a little while but yeah, it was a bit of a slog to start with.

as implied by my ecstacy over the word "GRODD" i also love the little hints at DC lore to come, i.e. the dead Star Labs dude being named Ronnie Raymond

from what i understand barry allen made friends with arrow when visiting keystone city, then got powers, but lives in central city so they're more like facebook buddies than co-workers

if this and arrow keep up the good buzz i think there's a very good chance that DC will wake up and incorporate these guys into film justice league plans. Unless Ezra Miller is all over BatSupes they've certainly got the time to come around and realize film/tv synergy wouldn't be a bad thing

honestly grant gustin could be a bonafide celeb by the time the hypothetical flash movie is due to appear

lol would love to see Grodd on this show

I haven't watched Arrow at all, totally inessential viewing in respect to the Flash

as much as i love the dc lore/rogues gallery stuff, i think the thing that really stands out is how his power isn't a problem but the way OUT of his problems. even spidey in the films always acts like being spidey kinda sucks, barry allen's a well-intentioned dude who wants to help people and now can in ways that thrill him both physically and mentally.

true, he is refreshingly angst-free.

it's weird/sad because I always stress to my daughter that Superman is not the greatest superhero because he is the most powerful, but because he always does the right thing. He's an ideal. But most contemporary superhero films depict superheroes doing the right thing almost incidentally - their real motivations are usually guilt or anger or some "this time it's PERSONAL" vendetta type thing. I'm so sick of that.

xp
Funny you say that given the dead mother retcon that spawned half the series' major plot points thus far.

I mean I like the show but a lot of it serves to remind me why I don't read DC comics anymore

yeah he's still an orphan who can't tell a girl how he feels, it's just that being The Flash is a win rather than a burden.

I've noticed references to that (the case is unsolved or something) but most of that's gone by me or I missed it

maybe this is worth watching w my daughter actually, it's had a pretty tame tone iirc

xp

Yeah my niece loves it but she's a Glee transplant and was sold at Gustin, that being said I can see it taking dark turns in search of gravitas in future seasons.

yeah his mom was killed by the reverse-flash (not a spoiler if you know what the reverse-flash looks like), with his dad thrown in jail by the weepy-eyed detective who then raised him. so it is personal but it hasn't stopped him from being a pleasant goober boy scout.

xpost yeah i'm worried the tone could change on a dime, esp if there's a change in management.

he named his quiz team E=MC Hammer

i also love that cisco looks like he could have teleported in from any hacker show over the last twenty-five years

he also looks like he could be taylor lautner's dorky cousin

has jesse l martin always looked like he's about to cry? i never noticed that until this show. granted his character has a million to reasons to be catching feelings at any moment.

dude was a single parent to his daughter and his friend's son, said friend being put in jail for murdering his wife only it turns out the wife was murdered by someone with the same magical powers the kid now uses to risk his life constantly. meanwhile the kid really wants to fuck his daughter but can't because his daughter is fucking his partner.

I like this show a lot. It's generally been better than Arrow's season 3 so far (whose story arc for this season only really started in the 9th episode) and certainly off to a better start than Arrow's season 1.

It's fun and joyous and the supporting characters are all fantastic aside from poor Iris who really needs something to do that isn't obsessing over the Flash or being lovey dovey with Eddie. Yeah okay so bad stuff happens sometimes and Barry Allen's childhood was traumatic but it's nice that hasn't been used as a reason to make another tormented hero in the vein of Oliver Queen or Nolan's Batman. Nothing wrong with those characters, it's just refreshing to have some contrast/variation.

ahahaha "absolute hot"

"It's so hot, it's like, 'How much more hot could this be?' And the answer is, none. None more hot."

man those cops were lucky cap'n cold shot his freeze ray directly at their shields rather than their almost entirely exposed legs

gotta get the clock man to team up with 'em for the full prison break reunion.

and peter stormare's playing count vertigo over in arrow!

xp that closing shot of the last episode, with the non-reveal of whoever Wentorth Miller greeted with, "Hi, sis," my wife said "If that's Sara Tancredi I'm out."

That'd be Lisa Snart, the secret identity of The Golden Glider.

Felt unusually poorly written, between the exposition-heavy dialogue (admittedly its the mid-season premiere), cold's unexplained relish for the corniest villain speak (really needed someone to call him out) and little bits like jesse l Martin saying he's going to give iris and Barry time alone, only we pan back after the convo and see he just went to the couch directly behind them.

I'm not really looking for people to point out corn, cliche and plot holes in earlier episodes. There was still bits I dug and it pushed the plot forward, this was just the first time I was distracted by flaws.

am i the only one a little bit creeped out by barry being in love with a woman who could kinda be considered his sister? i know they're not related but they did grow up together and it feels weird to me.

I wouldn't say I'm creeped out, which is probably a credit to the actors, but their family dynamic is definitely weird as fuck.

prison break dude is terrible in this

but no one would be good with those lines tbf

they're both prison break dudes, but either way you're otm

don't recall being annoyed by cold the first time, though

he was chewing the scenery in his first appearance but he seems to be having more difficulty digesting it this time around

i was like "is everyone involved too busy high-fiving over the prison break reunion to notice how inexplicably goofy they're coming off right now?" - and as i had no beef with the girder clearly i'm not asking for that much emotional grounding

if cold had expressed a jealousy of the flash - "Everybody thinks he's so cool but i'm the most awesome guy ever" that would have explained his cartoon bad boy shtick a little, but if all he cares about is being heist-puller #1 there's no reason to be acting like poochie on every network

heat wave's hammy pyro bit at least is part of a long history of hammy pyros on tv

i think the problem is that wentworth miller just isn't a good enough actor to pull off the over-the-top moustache-twirling villainy he's aiming for (or president keyes otm in other words)

yeah if it was more fun i would have been likely to forgive its randomness too

on the bright side, goddamn i can't believe how much i enjoy tom cavanagh in this compared to everything else i've ever seen him in

he's like a used car salesman who knows it's a lemon but truly believes the world will be a better place if you buy it

yeah, he walks the line between being a gee-whiz scientist and a sinister weirdo really well.

i am worried this show will be like heroes, where it will build to such a climax this season (esp if they reveal the prof's whole deal to barry) that next season won't have the same narrative thrust. hope they can find a way to give some resolution to the reverse-flash thing without turning the prof into a straight villain. i love his balancing act too much to wanna lose it.

also torn whether i want to see grodd now now now or know that a talking gorilla is still out there...waiting

xp i think that's a legit concern. i was surprised that they got to the reverse flash reveal so quickly but now that they have i guess they'll be building towards a season finale featuring the time-crisis that's in the headlines of wells' newspaper from the future?

and presumably a fight between barry and the reverse flash which goes back through time, possibly creating the lightning which struck barry on the way to the scene of his mother's murder?

Looks like there's a means to an end thing with that reverse flash.
So I wonder if there was something worse in an alternative future that he had to retcon engineer things for.
Definitely looked like without the Flash being present in the show's current day or later in that timestream some calamity happened.
Seems really drastic that they'd have to kill Barry Allen's mum to ensure he was motivated to become The Flash though?

Not 100% sure that really is a reveal that the Prof is the Reverse Flash. Just because he knows about the suit and character doesn't necessarily mean it's him. Not least because there's a charade name already in use in the series directly related to the identity of (one of) the Reverse Flash(es) in the comics...

Barry Allen's mum dying is a big thing in recent-era Flash - him trying to prevent her death is the entire premise for how Flashpoint plays out.

I thought the Reverse Flash looked like that Chris Hardwick cop dude

yeah, it does seem like eddie thawne could well be more than just a red herring.

Also the thing in the future is Crisis On Infinite Earths - the headline in the newspaper about red skies gives it away, plus use of the word Crisis. Barry Allen died during it (although beware, retcon during Final Crisis) hence 'disappeared' in the newspaper.

Not 100% sure that really is a reveal that the Prof is the Reverse Flash

to be clear, the reveal i was referring to here was the fact that the reverse flash existed and was a threat to barry, not that he was wells. i'm not convinced he's the reverse flash either (or, if he is, someone else won't pick up the mantle or there won't be some time-travel shenanigans to make it less straightforward)

man I really don't wanna see Crisis re-done for tv

xp

xxp yeah, that's what i was alluding to when i mentioned the possibility of time-travelling barry becoming the lightning bolt which gave him his powers (from that secret origins story from way back)

I don't think they'll get as far as the Crisis, but Prof Wells will be someone from the future also who knows the importance of the Crisis and has to make sure that history pans out the way it's supposed to or the Crisis won't happen.

I think that means he's the Monitor, but I'd love to think he might be the Psycho-Pirate.

ok would be down with Psycho-Pirate haha that would be p funny

yeah to be clear i don't think the prof IS reverse-flash, by his "whole deal" i just meant barry finding out he's either in cahoots, a future dude or simply not to be trusted.

i can easily see them taking flash-centric aspects of the crisis while avoiding any monitor/earth-2 mumbo jumbo

another funky plot element that i wouldn't sweat if the episode had given me tastier stuff to chew on - is Star labs still a going concern with a staff of three?

that, like, used to have a staff of four (RIP ronnie, heaven needed a guy to drop an acronym to his fiancee and then fire-fart away)

wells is actually Jay Garrick

When they whipped that F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. acronym out all I could think of was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnS1BncrYM

I'm guessing Vibe and Killer Frost will turn up in S2 and with the Prof Welles reveal also bye-bye S.T.A.R. Labs - although I could see Barry working with A.R.G.U.S. instead maybe?

I'd hope Atom will migrate from Arrow to Flash.

haha i was just about to say i'm hoping against hope this show isn't a "just watch season one" flame-out but a "oh i still liked the show when cisco became vibe in season five" gradual shark-jumper

though dc's tv plan is apparently throw everything against the wall and see what sticks so if there's a long-term game plan it's coming from the showrunners not the studio

wells is actually Jay Garrick

― Οὖτις, Friday, 23 January 2015 17:20 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh god, flashbacks to the JSA episodes of smallville

they do keep mentioning a mercury labs or mercury corporation, so maybe max mercury will show up at some point

i want this show to go on long enough for the music meister to appear - jesse l martin, grant gustin...got some singers in that cast

http://io9.com/check-out-the-flash-tv-shows-new-trickster-1682545189

GRODD! <3

Ok obv we're not supposed to think about it but the human rights violations going on in the star labs basement got a little distracting when they threw the petty criminal in a four foot long box. A giant lab run by three people now includes super-Guantanamo.

The relative juiciness of the pied piper was really comforting after the hokiness of cold and heat though.

GRODD.

Wouldn't put money on it but my new theory on wells is that he's darkest timeline Barry Allen, who stayed in the past after failing to save his mom and decided to warp his own life to change the future.

yeah, the fact that the cops seem happy to look the other way while a scientist who nearly blew up the city imprisons people without trial is a little troubling, as is the fact that clean-cut gee-whiz barry allen is apparently chill about it.

how do the inmates go to the bathroom? who's feeding them? do they get access to books or anything? is there an exercise yard? it would have been a lot better to toss out a 'dr wells improvised some super-cells at iron heights!' and then we don't have the awkward impression that our hero is basically judge dredd.

Also wtf at peekaboo's boyfriend "getting away" on foot while flash kicked out the lights, how far down that tunnel could he have gotten from THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE?

"The guy who got me in this mess has abandoned me!"

"Well you should have thought about that before you hit me with that stick! Now get in that box!"

people are forever landing hits on the flash or getting away clean when he's perfectly capable of punching them into a fine paste before they even realise he's in the same room. really, all crimes in central city should be stopped seconds after they start.

Pics of Mark Hamill in Trickster gear on the set: http://morningspoilers.io9.com/the-flash-bts-mark-hamill-photos-1684078715

man between this and grodd I am a little worried about the show peaking early

like where do you go after talking gorillas and luke skywalker in those duds

i feel like there are three possibilities for the flash in tv/film

1. dc recognizes the show's potential value and incorporates gustin into their cinematic justice league plans
2. the show gets knocked down after season 2 to make room for ezra miller in everyone's hearts
3. the earth-berlanti Flash and earth-snyder Flash co-exist, maybe even meet each other in a CRISIS

so i wonder if the tv show is unabashedly burning through its obvious storylines, which will either get enough attention to force scenario 1 (at which point the quality of later seasons won't really matter) or allow them to have as much fun as possible before scenario 2 unfolds

so i guess they went with the obvious reveal

or did they

otoh

GRODD

i'm pleasantly surprised how good the effects on grodd and firestorm look (and the effects as a whole tbh)

my wife asked how general eiling was hearing the voice in his head at the end of this episode and i explained grodd is a telepathic hyper-intelligent gorilla - a phrase i relished having the opportunity to say - and she was like 'okay that might be too much even for this show'

I'm disappointed he Golden Glider was teased and hasn't turned up yet.

I had a similar conversation to the one above when I told 'er indoors about how her skates worked,

An upcoming episode has the word rogue in the title, prob seeing the glider then

well, that was an awesome episode. time travel! death! running really fast around a tsunami! also barry kissing his sister :(

The end made me happy, as the last The Walking Dead was fresh in my memory. Down for a while on establishing and killing off enjoyable characters. One of The Flash's appeals is - mom aside - the sunnier nature of the show, and his joy in being a superhero. This episode boded a grimmer series shift, so Barry's accidental discovery that he can time travel was welcome.

For Flash comics folk, thought Reverse Flash's motivation was making Barry the best superhero he can be through trial. The show's RF seems to have a different motivation. Are they consistent?

yeah, i'm fairly sure barry's newfound time-travel ability will make cisco's death a temporary state of affairs.

Seems weird that they were off for a month and then came back with a cliff-hanger heavy episode that work have worked great before a mid-season break

okay, wait just a second here: barry goes back in time, sees himself, and then past-barry just... disappears? shouldn't future-barry have been running into his past self throughout the episode? did i miss something or was just just not addressed?

yeah, that seemed dumb

probably some "two of you can't exist in the same time" paradox that Cisco will figure out at some point

Have they hit the future point that backwards in time Barry came from yet? They aren't going to spend the next episode sorting out the results of yesterday Barry swapping over to today or however you want to put it. Like each of 2 Barrys swapping their temporal/chronologiacl location?
THink I may have been busy on the other side of the room when the episode ended so not sure if the did get past that point where he swapped yet. & the big action point has been diverted as has the reveal with Cisco hasn't it?

Damn might need to go and watch the end of the episode again.

haven't watched the latest ep yet myself but if they really just had future barry replace real-time barry rather than co-exist, that is bad. bad, bad, bad. not necessarily a deal breaker, but between that and the show's indifference to explaining the superguantanamo in the basement, it certainly qualifies as a kind of "fool me once, shame on you" where the creators are revealing their willingness to play extremely dumb without a shred of exposition to defend it.

so next time they have a glaring plothole without even attempting to acknowledge or cloak it, we'll say "well tbf his first trip back in time made no sense either"

this episode also featured a robber whose weapon is a gun apparently capable of literally turning things into gold so i guess efforts to make sense might not be at the top of the list of the showrunners' priorities

i'm also aware that we're nitpicking details on a show where we'll happily accept a man is capable of moving at lightspeed tho so y'know we're kinda our own worst enemies here

Have they hit the future point that backwards in time Barry came from yet?

Hard to tell, as none of the stuff in that future (tidal wave, sister-kiss, Wells killing Cisco) is happening anymore.

yeah really not excited to see the cornball rogues again either. trying to resist the urge to throw a whole "this is why i don't like to watch hour-long shows until they've proven themselves over multiple seasons!" tantrum but at least heroes made it through an entire season before capsizing. i don't really think this is nitpicking - we can still be annoyed to learn a show with a magical reality is so slapdash in maintaining an internal logic.

tbf, the rogues are pretty entertaining in this episode and barry has a nice scene with cap'n cold (which, that said, does involve barry invoking the threat of incarceration superguantanamo)

good to hear, i was hoping they'd figure out how to have those guys work - the episode where heat wave joined up just felt atypically cartoonish without explanation. and that's really the issue. if you're going to have a world where most superhumans are relatively emotionally grounded, and suddenly one guy is all "OOOH BABY I LIKE COLD THINGS," you need to call that out - at least have cisco say "wtf is this dude's trip" when he's macho man randy savaging on the TV. and if the flash can go back to his mom's death without taking over the body of wee barry allen, there should also be two barrys when he goes back a day. just because we buy that in this world radiation gives you magical powers depending on who you stand next to doesn't give the creators carte blanche to ignore the laws of that reality.

well, we don't know the laws yet. Maybe baby Barry will appear in the present and the rest of the series will be about him learning to crawl fast enough to get back inot the womb

i probably should have said "norms"

maybe every time Barry goes back to the past he creates a new reality, another "earth" if you will, until there are an infinity of such earths and then a crisis ensues.

I was just thinking about the infinite potential realities thing. Or at least that in changing whatever actions maybe Barry had diverted from the timeline, so if the other Barry did move somewhere else in time it would be in a different Universe.
But wasn't Wells checking for things like that? Though maybe the resulting divergence didn't impact badly on what he wanted.

Probably helped by being warned, but the time funkiness wound up not really bothering me thanks to dr wells' acknowledging the randomness of it. Like the nature of the gold-making gun its definitely underwritten but the episode was fun enough (I even enjoyed Cold!) that I wasn't mad.

I love the Golden Glider so was a bit disappointed in how it ended up on screen - like, if you have a gun that turns people to gold then why not just turn a tramp to gold every now and then and get rich that way? But I can put that to one side because this is still the best of the hero shows. Of the Silver Age Rogues I figure we just need Mirror Master, The Top, Abra Kadabra and The Trickster. the Turtle would be nice too, but that's probably just me.

The as-yet-untitled-but-may-be-The-Brave-And-The-Bold team-up series from the Flash/Arrow universe now stands at Rip Hunter, Hawkgirl, the Jason Rusch-era Firestorm, The Atom and (maybe) Black Canary with one more hero to announce.

supposedly the black canary in the new show is going to be played by caity lotz, which, given her current status over in arrow, raises a few questions... which i guess rip hunter might be involved in answering?

That's my guess. Also if it's the Jason Rusch Firestorm then that also sounds Rip Hunter-y.

i wonder if the team ends up being brought together to fight the time crisis in wells' newspaper from the future?

I assume that was CoIE (see mention of red skies).

yeah, i'd assumed that too. perhaps the black canary is a refugee from earth-2 or wherever?

During our recent two-season Arrow binge, I spent much of the first season ensuring my gf that it's supposed to get better and that I'd keep watching on my own if she wasn't into it. Four episodes into Flash and she's totally sold.

Just saw that a theater alum from my alma mater, who has been on Broadway a lot recently, has been cast as Hawkgirl in the upcoming spinoff show: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/30/broadways-ciara-ren%C3%A9e-cast-hawkgirl-flash-arrow-spinoff

And Arthur Darvill has been cast as Rip Hunter.

<3 mark hamill

"that wasn't very sanitary!"

also rip harrison wells :(

Mark Hammill gets to do the 'I'm Your father' line.
Surprised people weren't all over that. Or did I miss it.

Our sofa was all over it, at least.

https://31.media.tumblr.com/3506f1ae2d4e7f1699b2e2fb28c44b49/tumblr_n6rc1kubpE1qd2oxvo6_250.gif

Eddie, please grow a pair and tell Joe to fuck off.

GRODD

HATE

BANANA

i'm so un-used to the length of a network drama season. I can't believe there's still TWO left

thanks to cable ever since episode 12 i've been like "and now...the grand finale!"

They brought it with Grodd. They sold both the ridiculousness of the whole thing and how terrifying it would be to encounter a pissed off, intelligent, telepathic gorilla.

Cisco is the rare comic relief dude who's actually pretty funny.

Grodd looked nice for TV budget, but I was disappointed his plot was pretty much overshadowed by all the Barry/Iris/Joe drama. The "Iris must not know" thing has been one the stupidest, most dragged-out subplot in the series so far (especially since at this point every character except Iris has already learned Barry is the Flash), so I'm glad it was resolved, but this show just isn't very good at Serious Drama. The dialogue is so unnatural and corny, and almost all of the actors are mediocre and stiff, their attempts at dramatic scenes is usually teen soap level bad.

I tried watching Arrow a while ago, but I quit because of the bad acting and dialogue and weak Batman-lite plots. Compared to it, at least The Flash has had a nice positive tone and cool superhero concepts and plot twists and shit, which has kept it fun. So hopefully they won't try to add too much Arrow style darkness and drama into it, because then it'll become just as bad as the parent show, which I think this episode proved.

Basically the only they can rely on acting to carry the show when Wells is hamming it up or Cisco is being geeky and cute. Otherwise they should just focus on their strengths, i.e. fun gimmicky superhero plots. The corny character stuff actually works decently enough when its part of those kind of plots, because it has an endearing Silver Age quality. So more Grodd and less soap opera, please!

"the only time they can rely on acting"

It doesn't take me out of the show too much but everything involving Iris is basically the worst

Didn't expect them to go so dark

That was a great wrap-up - they really earned the emotional payoff over the course of the series, although Barry and Iris still have zero chemistry

(perhaps because the actors playing them realise that they're essentially brother and sister and pairing them up is fucking creepy, particularly this episode where they hammered home again that joe is barry's second father)

Great finale, though now I get to spend the next few months wondering just how much changed due to Marty mcfly's evaporation.

Esp since its confirmed Tom cavanagh is in season 2

http://33.media.tumblr.com/7fc469b87af204c40ed0ff8e650958c2/tumblr_n2zgt7RffE1savhp7o1_500.gif

I guess the obvious change will be if Eobard never existed, Wells should still be around. So presumably they'll use that to justify keeping Cavanagh (hurrah) and beyond that...well we can probably rely on this show to change anything that results in fun, and handwave away anything that'd be awkward.

Yeah, wondering deeply. Since it was thanks to Eobard trying to get back home that the first explosion happened which caused Barry to become the Flash. Am wondering if Eddie being sucked into the time vortex has any hidden effect.

Nice to leave things on such a massive cliffhanger too. But am aware that not everybody has seen it so won't give any more spoilers

I feel like they almost have to make use of Cisco's power--like some kind of time reset where everything has changed and Cisco is the only person who remembers the Flash, and he finds Wells and helps him build blah blah blah

i have a feeling eddie being sucked into the wormhole will definitely be significant, but i have no idea what the outcome will be

gotta wonder how much they can really change the show's status quo without it having a knock-on effect in arrow

Think they've given up on that since last week Oliver appeared to help Barry in Star City whilst on supposed lock down in Nanda Parbat.

just remembered jay garrick's helmet showing up through the wormhole and wells apparently recognising it - wonder what they're planning to do with that?

It does bug me that after the big reveal, neither Barry nor Caitlyn nor Cisco ever said, "Hey, maybe we should consult that supercomputer from the future that we found hidden behind a wall?"

Thought it was ridiculous how little all the characters cared that saving Barry's mother could end the world, just shrugged it off like it was no biggie.

i also struggled a bit with the implications of what changing the past would mean - would barry as we know him essentially be committing suicide by ceasing to exist?

None of this really makes any sense--if Reverse Flash was never born then he could never go back in time and kill Barry's mom & Wells or create the Flash. But then if none of that stuff happened then Eddie would probably never have killed himself, and therefore Reverse Flash would still be born.

Yeah I guessed Eddie might kill himself, but I thought the outcome would be Reverse flash couldn't return to HIS future now - that there'd be no place for him in that year as his family etc didn't exist in ANY form, making him truly a man out of time. But instead I get to spend the summer wondering does this mean Harrison wells is alive and if so doesn't that mean Barry's mom is alive and if so doesn't that mean etc etc

I'd hope they'd just rush through explaining the consequences they've decided in the season premiere and stop talking about time travel in season 2 but legends of tomorrow suggests otherwise.

The presence of martin and lack of Ronnie in the legends trailer has me worried Ronnie is in a coma after that shock, meaning he only moves around when the prof turns him into firestorm

i was amused that martin and ronnie made no move whatsoever to help barry try to close the rift at the end of the episode, just stood there gawping like a couple of dummies instead of firestormin' up

Wait was Ronnie in that final shot?

Cuz then there goes my theory

i could have sworn he was but i'm doubting myself now...

I hadn't heard about Legends of Tomorrow until just now, but considering the trailer a guy from the future who protects timelines I figure all this paradox stuff will be cleaned up

Has

Finally watched the last episode. I really wish that people who write time travel stories would sit with the thing for a little while and make sure that the rules of time travel within their particular story have an internal consistency. It might just be my own personal bugbear, but it drives me nuts. And even beyond the mechanics of the time travel, the motivations for people's actions and decisions were just all over the place and...outright stupid at times?

So, yeah, not crazy about the finale.

the time travel storylines have felt sloppy and dangerous ever since flash ran back in time and didn't co-exist with his other self. but let's not forget what this show IS good at...the feels. oh my god, barry and his mom, barry and joe...SO MANY FEELINGS

my wife is still mourning eddie. this is the only superhero thing she has any time for (unless you count Lego Batman), and was really sad to see one of her "sweet goober" go

He was like a golden retriever with a badge.

Yes, the feels were good. I did get a little choked up when the Flash had the chance to say goodbye to his mom.

'golden retriver with a badge' otm

eddie dying really highlighted for me one of the strengths of this show, which is that the heroes and supporting cast are genuinely good people - barry, eddie, joe, henry, cisco and caitlin are all honest, upright people trying to do the best they can for the good of others. the lack of a dark side to this show's main characters is part of what made it so fun and refreshing. even wells had his moments, like his paternal scenes with barry and cisco.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/mega-buzz-the-flash-multiple-universes/

"What's fun about this show is that there's going to be multiple timelines as we move forward," Gustin says. "I think we're going to start showing Earth-One and Earth-Two in the near future. There will be kind of different dimensions going on."

kinda scared about this - hoped Legends Of Tomorrow could take over the timeline talk and let Flash focus on rebooting the scooby crew post-Eobard.

i assumed maybe that rival of wells would take over star labs (maybe eobard had the place on auto-billpay) and/or hire caitlin and cisco.

though i guess since the timeshit is already getting wonky and confusing, assuming they keep the feels a-comin', they can just let the timeshit get crazier and more confusing until barry has to crisis it up

So they're really going run with this possible worlds thing.

Not gonna lie, I was fanboying like fuck when they did the 'Flash Of Two Worlds' cover.

I'm into it! If nothing else, it's a good excuse to bring on more bad guys.

Also probably means anyone who died last season is coming back

Michael Ironside = :D
How old Michael Ironside looks = ;_;

Funny, I just started watching Masters fo Sex at the time the season started and the Casanova doctor from that is Jay Garrick in this.

Is Jay Garrick the son of a WWII era hero, or is there more of the old costume than the hat anyway? That is to say the helmet is part of teh Golden Age Flash costume isn't it? I've not really followed DC so not totally up with who's in what team but I do remember seeing a Flash in that costume as one of the Justice League or Justice Society of Americas and I think they were from a parallel world though I'm not sure if they were then present day or sometime in the future. May have been late 70s or sometime in the 80s when I came across what ever comic that was in. & the whole structure of what fist where may have changed massively since then.
Is it DC that has double figures of significant parallel Earths? Each one of which has some tie to the present day of whichever teh main Earth is?

Jay Garrick is the Golden Age Flash, and is therefore in JSA. This puts him on Earth 2, since the Silver Age and in a different way in the Johnsiverse.

DC currently has 52 universes (and look, there are 52 wormholes in Flash...) which is several hundred less than Marvel ("our universe is 616, for example).

Yeah, thought he seemed a bit young to be active during WWII but apparently there were reasons for that.

This week's episode had a 10-second look at Gorilla City on Earth-2. Gorilla City! THere is nothing so silly that this show is above it, and it's great.

haha I gotta catch up with this

(So is this the thread for discussing Legends of Tomorrow?)

gave up after 3 episodes. only really enjoy cpt cold and sarah.

the bar fight in the pilot is p cool

how so?

i've only seen the first couple of episodes so far - they're okay but it's not quite the thrill-powered adventure i was hoping for. captain cold and heatwave's scenery-chewing partnership is my favourite element. kinda bugs me that the white canary's costume is really more of a dirty beige though!

This show is turning into Fringe Jr.

the crossover episode with supergirl was pretty fun!

I thought it was kind of a wasted opportunity... The episode focused too much on the ongoing Supergirl subplots and her villains, so Barry didn't have much to do in it. I wish they'd just straight adapted one of the famous Flash/Superman races from the comics, as the promo poster suggested... Now all we got was a slight nod towards those stories at the end of the episode.

And that wasn't meant to be a diss towards the Supergirl, IMO it's the best of the new DC shows on telly. It's just that I expected the crossover to be more equal towards both characters and their shows, maybe with a team-up between villains from each one too.

Also, on the Legends of Tomorrow tip, I think the quality of that series has improved notably during the last few episodes, as they've managed to do some interesting and unexpected character development for most of the protagonists. It's still not as good as Flash or Supergirl, but at least it isn't Arrow-level corny anymore.

yeah, legends definitely started shakily but it's getting better all the time

i'm not massively enthused by supergirl overall but melissa benoist is really good

wow, a lot going on in that last episode. not sure how they're going to write themselves out of the corner those last few minutes painted them into...

also GODDAMIT BARRY STOP TRYING TO FUCK YR SISTER

perhaps you have not seen his sister

also I totally love this show, and I'm glad supergirl is moving over to CW. the crossover was pretty weak but I imagine this makes it more likely that we'll have more. and maybe barry's screwing with the past is going to have ramifactions across Earths. I dunno.

SPOILERzzz

finding a way to get john wesley shipp to play the flash again was pretty clever - i totally didn't see the jay garrick reveal coming. he looks great in the costume!

it'd be good to have him around a bit more - it was super-weird that the first thing barry's dad did after getting out of prison was fuck off to live in a woodland cabin instead of, y'know, hanging out with the son he was away from for so long.

this season was a bit more uneven than the first one but i still liked it quite a bit and i genuinely have no idea where they're going next. hopefully the showrunners do!

I didn't even realize that aboug john wesley shipp until just now, having never watched that one season series. that's pretty cool; I like how this generation of DC series has brought back actors from the past (dean cain on supergirl, etc)

amanda pays and mark hamill were both in the 90s show too - playing the same characters they do in the new show!

I liked most of the season 2, but IMO the finale had too many deus ex machina type of situations, so it felt kinda rushed and definitely as good as the season 1 finale. First you had Zoom's doomsday machine, which had barely even been hinted at before this episode (the only clue was Cisco's vague visions in the pentultimate ep); how did this guy, who we know is violent psychopath who's spent most of his life in solitary confinement, even possess the scientific genius to build the machine? All his previous plans had been fairly simple and brutal (I'll kidnap someone and force the Flash to give me his speed! I'll bring all the metahumans from Earth-2 to tear shit down on Earth-1!), so this kinda superscience solution was totally out of character.

Then there was the whole time remnant thing which, sure, had been established before, but it doesn't make sense at all if you think about it a bit. So, Barry travels a couple of minutes back in time, so that there's two of him, and one Barry sacrifices himself... But if the one who died was the time traveling Barry, then once the other reaches the point where he has to time travel to create the copy, there'd be no Barry left. And if the one who died was the non-time travelling version, then the time-travelling version should disappear, because he couldn't exist anymore, just like Eobard Thawne disappared in the season 1 finale. So in any case, the end result should be that Barry died.

And the time wraiths were pretty much a deus ex machina too... Okay, they'd been established before, but the fact they were specifically after Zoom, and the reason for that, were only mentioned like 15 minutes before they took him. So it felt a bit anticlimactic.

finding a way to get john wesley shipp to play the flash again was pretty clever - i totally didn't see the jay garrick reveal coming.

I don't want to to sound condescending, but I thought the reveal was very easy to guess. We knew that the guy in the iron mask was a superhuman (since he was in one of those special cells), and obviously the writers wouldn't have given him the mask if he wasn't some familiar face, so that the unmasking would be a big twist. Throughout the season, most of the candidates who he could be were ruled out one by one, because we saw them while he was still in the cell: he couldn't be the Earth-2 version of Joe, Cisco, or Barry, nor the Earth-1 version of Hunter Zolomon. So the only real candidates left were alternate versions of Wally and Henry Allen, and when a Henry mentioned his mom's maiden name was Garrick a couple of eps before the finale, it was pretty obvious who the masked man would turn out to be.

And after it was revealed Zoom wasn't really Jay Garrick, it was reasonable to assume they'de eventually introduce the actual Jay, so it wasn't hard to guess the masked man was Jay, who was also his universe's version of Henry.

the crossover episode with supergirl was pretty fun!

― a lad of balls (bizarro gazzara), Friday, April 8, 2016 1:03 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally missed this and there is no mention of it in the Flash as far as I can see so had to look it up when I saw mentionon this thread.
It's in episode 18 of Supergirl an episode called World's Finest if anybody else has missed it.

& since it is him guesting in her show I guess it does make sense taht they continue purely with plots from her story rather tahn introducing the baggage from his.

There was a very brief scene in one Flash episode to indicate where the crossover was supposed to have taken place, but if you hadn't seen the Supergirl ep, you wouldn't have noticed it.

The crossover itself was okay, but also a kind of a missed opportunity. They were juggling too many balls (mostly relating to Supes' own ongoing plot) for one episode, so it didn't feel as epic as it should've... But Supergirl will move to the same network as Flash and Arrow and LoT next autumn, so there'll be more crossovers coming up.

Next season they've promised to do mega-crossover between all four DC shows! I guess Crisis on Infinite Earths is not too far in the horizon. (They already homaged Flash's sacrifice in it in the season 2 finale.)

We're catching up on Legends of Tomorrow pretty much from the beginning, and it's been pretty fun so far. I said something offhand about how I thought the dude playing Vandal Savage was really good, and my gf was like ehhh he kinda oversells it, and I said yeah but he's supposed to be like borderline bestial because in his comics incarnation he's an immortal Neanderthal, and she gives me a look like 'oh, come the fuck on'. And I'm like, 'really? that's where you draw the line?' and I remind her what show she's watching.

wentworth miller and dominic purcell's utterly shameless hamming as captain cold and heatwave is my favourite thing about that show

Sadly the last couple of episodes of LoT were a disappointment, after the series had picked up some steam after the meh beginning. There where way many too many plot twists where they basically introduced new rules for time travel while ignoring the previously established ones. The worst example is the way they defeat Savage...
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.
.
.
(MILDISH SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 1 FINALE!)
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...because it makes no sense within general rules of fictional time travel, nor within the rules they'd established for this series, plus if you think about it logically, even after the heroes' "victory", there should be at least one version of Savage still at large. So basically they achieved jackshit!

I decided long ago that the only way I can enjoy any story about time travel is to ignore the rules established within the story regarding time travel because I can be assured that those rules will get chucked under a bus at some point. Time travel and internally-consistent storytelling are like oil and water, apparently.

Primer is super consistent on its time-travel rules. But also sort of boring.

I've been meaning to rewatch Primer to see if I'm able to revise my initial reaction of "uh...wat?"

Primer was mindnumbingly boring

Agreed on Primer's boringness... Everyone should watch the Spanish movie Timecrimes, it has the same basic idea as Primer, but done in a much more entertaining and visually arresting way.

But I disagree that time travel movies/shows have to be internally inconsistent... IMO the best movies in the subgenre, like Back to the Future or Timecrimes, are the ones where there consistent rules from time travel are established, and the drama comes exactly from how the characters manage to solve their problems without breaking those rules (they may bend them in creative ways, but the rules still remain).

IMO it's a sign of lazy writers if they can't be arsed to stick to the rules rather than coming up with new ones whenever they feel like it. I can sorta understand this in long-running shows like Dr. Who, because after years or decades it's understandable they want to come up with fresh ways to use their gimmick... But LoT was only one short season, and the rules were still changed maybe three or four times during that, it was just stupid!

I can never understand people who are so insistent on "rules" in genre stuff.

you hate it when a long poem tells a story.

so i'm currently way behind on season three but i just saw that upcoming episode will feature a trip to gorilla city (with keith david!) and i am 100% back on-board:

When Jesse Quick (guest star Violett Beane) informs the team that her father (Tom Cavanagh) has been abducted, Barry (Grant Gustin), Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker), Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Julian (Tom Felton) voyage to Earth-2 on a rescue mission to save Harry from Gorilla City. As they trek through the forest, Barry and the team are immediately captured and brought to Grodd (voiced by David Sobolov). Grodd tells them he needs their help to stop Solovar (voiced by Keith David), the leader of Gorilla City, as Solovar wants to invade Earth-1.

this show is dopey but I'll watch that

yeah i'll ride the dumb-train to gorilla city no question

Earth-2 is usually a good time

unexpectedly i've been enjoying supergirl the most out of these shows recently - melissa benoist is really great at being upbeat and positive without being grating and the subplot about her sister realising she was gay was sensitively handled

i do kinda admire legends of tomorrow's second-season commitment to doing as much ridiculous time-travel shit as possible tho

Yeah, Supergirl is currently the best of these shows, especially because most of the cast is pretty good, and because they haven't yet fallen to the stupid overt melodrama a lot of these shows suffer from. Even the coming-out story was handled in a nicely low-key manner (well, low-key for a flashy superhero show), they could've milked a lot more drama out of it, but thankfully they didn't.

Flash is still okay, but it suffers from the same flaw what all these DC shows have in common, i.e. most of the time the characters are written like idiots, or like mopey teenagers. But unlike in Supergirl, only a couple of the actors (Grant Gustin and Tom Cavanagh) are really able to overcome the crappy writing, so whenever you have "dramatic" scenes involving other characters, it's cringe-inducing.

The newest Flash season is also kinda meh because they're yet again repeating the same arc as in the previous two seasons: a mysterious evil speedster appears, he's way faster and more powerful than Barry, Barry needs to up his game to defeat him. I wish they'd use a non-speedster main villain for change! Well, at least this time (unlike in the previous two seasons) they're not hinting Savitar is (gasp!) someone familiar to the heroes behind his mask... Though they did repeat that trope with his minion.

Legends of Tomorrow is kinda entertaining in its over-the-topness, but I do hate the fact that the rules of time travel change every week. Like, in one episode they hesitate to free a couple of slaves in 19th century USA, because that might cause a butterfly effect that would alter their timeline, but in the episode that preceded that they killed the Shogun of Japan ten years before he was due to die in real life, and no one even raised the issue whether that would have any consequences!

I do think stories revolving around time travel need at least some sort of consistency in what the rules of it are, because it's hard to feel anything is at stake when the rules change every episode to what's most convenient for that particular plot. The drama that comes from the heroes trying to avoid breaking the timeline/causing a paradox doesn't really work when there's no way of knowing what they can and can't do this week.

took me a while to get into this, because the first two eps felt like total cheese factor. After two episodes though, it turned out to be an entertaining thrill ride. about to wrap S1

It took me nearly a whole season to realize that Julian is Draco Malfoy

is there a DC TV universe thread or is this it?

Started watching Supergirl with my daughter and it is surprisingly great, even my wife likes it. Def the best superhero TV show (and a vast improvement over the DC films)

this is it iirc

supergirl is a lot of fun. melissa benoist is really great at playing wholesome positivity without being cloying

yeah, she is a v good lead, and I appreciate how it splits the difference pretty capably between soap opera mechanics, CSI cop show, and superhero action silliness

also, as i think I mentioned upthread, it features probably the most touching and sensitive portrayal of someone coming to terms with their sexuality i've ever seen on tv. it's got a real heart to it

supergirl and the flash are dev my favorite 2 superhero tv series, yes; and yes, they are better than the DC films by a fair margin.

hysterical evangelical nervous breakdowns on FB at the lesbian stuff in Supergirl this year were amusing to read.

well spoilidad I guess!

only fair, I am a couple of years behind

also, as i think I mentioned upthread, it features probably the most touching and sensitive portrayal of someone coming to terms with their sexuality i've ever seen on tv. it's got a real heart to it

― bitumen: the animated series (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, July 5, 2017 12:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

short lived bad sitcom whitney had a storyline where the sister came out as transgender that was surprisingly nice

so according to this Marv Wolfman intro to a recent Teen Titans reprint omnibus, there's a Teen Titans live action show in development w/Warner Bros...?

finished S2 of Supergirl w/my daughter - there were tears at Mon-El/Kara resolution of course. I assume what happens in season 3 is that Mon-El goes into the future and meets the LoSH and manages to cure himself/return but only after there have been a bunch of episodes establishing a new conflict/love interest back on earth so that when he gets back it's oh noes love triangle!

also I have no idea who the evil Kryptonian orphan in the finale was, not familiar with that bit of comics lore

I think I'm done with these, the season finale cliffhangers of both Flash and Legends were undone by the end of part 2 of the first episode of the new series and ghe status quo restored.

Arrow has flashback/forward/sideways to the point where I don't care what the actual time the plot is set in is, especially since they have rehashed a plot from S3 fir the first episode and a plot from S2 for the second.

Even Supergirl hasn't been much fun thus far, it seems to be falling into the problems you get when the supporting cast is just too big.

yeah towards the end of season 2 I was like wait how many storylines/main characters are there - 8? Kara, Mon-El, James, Winn, J'onn, Maggie+Alex, Lena? that's a lot.

" I have no idea who the evil Kryptonian orphan in the finale was"

it's someone called Reign.

this season of supergirl has been pretty good, the whole show seems to have slowed down a little and taken a breath. They're spending a fair amount of time developing the character that will become Reign.

Was wondering who stuck Kadee Sackhoff with an awful 'British' accent in the most recent episode, and turns out it was her own idea., because "'Everything just sounds more evil with an accent.'". Not enjoying this season's "FUNNYbooks!" vibe as much as the first two seasons. Hope it improves.

I'm the opposite, I love all the funnybooks stuff and wish it was Monster Of The Week all the time.

It could be worse, it could be Arrow. They've just introduced Benry from L O S T as the new big villain and last week...

He broke into the secure vault where The Internet is stored and tried to destroy it by "making it overclock itself until it explodes". Felicity solved it by Typing Really Quickly while the others helped by shooting arrows and bullets into server racks.

Really.

lol I just realized that I never watched the finale from last season. I thought the cliffhanger was Iris dying and never checked for another episode.

got sidetracked midseason on all of these last time around and i dunno if i've got it in me to catch up again tbh

It's not worth it. If you want to jump back in then do and if there's something you're missing then ask here or wiki. Your life will be better for it.

I'm with aldo, the more Silver Age silliness, the better. I'll take it over grimdark Savitar plotline and Draco Malfoy any day of the week.

Their take on Ralph Dibney is . . . something, though.

The Thinker could easily be overplayed and a bit G&G but if his masterplan is to reintroduce 80s throwback bad guys like the Kilg%re and Hazard then I'm totally on board with it.

Wow this last season was horrible more or less start to finish. Elongated Man was just awful. Even Devoe wore out his welcome well before his demise.

Elongated Man was

just had my first 3 seconds ever of interest in seeing a DCU TV show

New series, hope this isn't a rerun of Devoe with a twist or something.

The daughter character is great.

The disappearing Flash they've been alluding to for several seasons, is that a reference to Crisis on Infinite Earths? (Not up on DC continuity, though I own the CoIE issues). Or something developed for the show?

Waiting for Wayne Dyer to guest-star as the giver of the Motivational Speech of the Week.

Anyone else still watching? The daughter being tangled up with (spoiler) is both tedious and befitting Barry's "everyone's redeemable" outlook. Seeing a plot reliance on "let's try this" met with failure (curing Cicada's niece, getting a black market stasis field generator - the last two weeks), with a minor portion of the season's arc being advanced. Feels like filler, when they could wrap up Cicada in at least a half-season, and move on to CoIE, which is coming either this or next year. Need more character growth to justify all the padding.

Savitar, Devoe, Cicada - picturing these seasons with writers' room index cards for the first episode ("tease the Big Bad") and last episode ("our heroes win!"), with the other 20 cards being "hammy, glowering villain beats team", "character has personal crisis", "motivational speech", "heroes beat villain" plus "advance season arc by 1/20th".

That said, liked the Goldface character and was good to see Kimberley Williams (?) (who I think of as the perky Gabrielle Anwar) in this latest ep.

I'm finally caught up with the current seasons but still several episodes behind. Flash has actually kinda taken a backseat this year for me as Legends and Supergirl step up to knock it out of the park. Legends is hella fun and funny and I cannot say enough good things about them bringing Matt Ryan's Constantine into the fold (dude is like the perfect distillation of everything I love about the character). And while Supergirl's 'aliens = immigrants' plot may be a little sledgehammer, it's also on-the-nose enough to make for some compellingly uncomfortable viewing at this particular point in time. And also, mad kudos to Berlanti & co. on adding a transgender actress to the cast.

I am still on the previous season of Supergirl, which has been p good but I'm kinda tired of how drawn out this Reign plotline is.

Yeah, that was pretty wheel-spinny. The overarching 'can Supergirl's optimism overcome America's frothing rage?' plotline this season is a vast improvement. I especially appreciate that the origin episode where the new alt-right villain slowly discovered his inner xenophobe ended with his adoption of the standard Richard Spencer haircut.

It's really something that I'm currently finding Supergirl almost as anxiety-inducing a watch as Black Mirror.

I would say the silliest low point so far is when Mon-El (finally) got a costume so that he could teach Supergirl the ancient Kryptonian art of cool cape-fighting moves

Yeaaaaah, that was a little too Silver Age in a not-good way.

Supergirl's optimism is appreciated, since that was my main dislike of Snyder's Superman movies. He *should* be the big blue Boy Scout.

Along with the transgender actress, having a Muslim character on Legends was a nice move, not to mention the various gay relationships given the same screen time as straight ones.

It's nice that, with 472 shows across various networks and streaming platforms, Berlanti now has the cachet to push TV in as progressive a direction as he likes.

Benoist sells the character's plucky optimism and deep commitment to "doing the right thing" no matter what the cost, and that is a really strong anchor of the show imo. At their most basic level, the Super-family is an ideal, and the characters should be handled that way.

Could not agree more. Every 'Superman/-girl gets daaaaaaark' story prompts a 'you should not be writing this character you so fundamentally misunderstand' from me.

One of the core strengths of these shows is the casting of their respective leads.

Legends is so far ahead of the rest of the pack it's incredible and this season has been tremendous. Zari at the end of the New Orleans ep with the Constantine Reality Wave was A++++++.

Supergirl next best but could be way more Silver Age than it is BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO SEE DAMMIT. Seasons half the length would suit it much better though.

Flash has dropped right off for the reasons noted above. I want dumb monster of the week storylines and more Ralph goofiness. The relationship between Nora and (spoiler) is ridiculous and I don't think it's clear at all why it's there.

I thought I was done with Arrow but the first few episodes (the prison ones) were banging. But now it's back to shit again.

For Black Lightning, read the Arrow entry.

Lots of beautiful people on these shows but Zari is the first I've straight-up crushed on. Her Groundhog Day ep last season was tops, love the actress and hope she sticks around for a long time.

And actually if I have one complaint about Legends at the moment is that it's getting more musical chair-y than I'd like. Just when I get used to a character, they split. Stop it, you guys.

(Also re: Zari, I'm torn between wanting them to just go ahead and call her Isis and realizing that that's probably not the best idea.)

eyyy uhhh did we know beard hunter and danny the street are gonna be in this doom patrol dealie?

https://youtu.be/6wtGnnLfTqA

I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that in theory I want so much and that in reality I do not want at all.

still pretty baffled to see cyborg in there, and it’s kinda weird/lol that the ideas and character designs are largely being taken wholesale from a comic that’s now four decades in the past (gulp) but they seem to be coming at it from a place of genuine admiration of morrison/case so i’ll give it a chance

why do you have a five-person superhero team and put the same guy on twice

always good to have a backup

so this doom patrol show... it actually kinda rules?

i've watched the first six episodes and it's doing a great job of capturing the vibe of the morrison run - it's surreal, unsettling, sad and funny and the cast are really good

very unexpectedly, joivan wade as cyborg might be the best of all of them - he plays vic stone as an upbeat, capable minor-league superhero whose deep well of personal tragedy makes him both a motivating figure for the group and also a good fit for their unique brand of fuckedupness

alan tudyk as mr nobody might be veering a bit too close to hamill's joker occasionally but he's good fun

really keen to see where they go with this over the rest of the season - it's a very pleasant surprise

Yeah, it's pretty great. Apparently Flex Mentallo before the end of the season too.

The dating app Cyborg sequence might have been one of the season highlights.

Goddamn it, I was trying so hard to hate-avoid this thing, you guys. Although I'm currently 100% sold on the utterly sacrilegious notion of John Constantine as part of a time travelling superteam so maybe I can relax my crack.

I am probably one of four people in existence who are hoping they eventually pull some elements from Rachael Pollack's run.

four people seems generous tbh

it's a lot of fun, you should def give it a try, if only to see how many ways brendan fraser can utter robotman's immortal catchphrase 'what the fuck?!?'

the worst thing i can think to say about it at this stage is that it seems to be a little too in love with having the freedom to have the characters swear, which is a very small complaint balanced against the knowledge that danny the street will be appearing in the next episode

There's a lot of swearing, sure, but there was maybe as much in Titans with much less joy.

ah, i haven't seen titans yet

It was definitely... variable. The Hawk & Dove stuff was pretty good and the main Raven arc held up but Dick's search for the Wang was way too grim 'n' gritty. I didn't really care for the whole Who Is Starfire thing either, or rather it was way out of balance in that it was a very slow build then just sort of tossed away.

Obviously, the Doom Patrol ep was the highlight by some margin.

I watched like the first 15 minutes or so of DP a little while back, and it was fine as far as it went but also it looked and felt a little too Berlantiverse. Now, speaking as someone who has watched almost all 915,293 hours of the CW shows, I can clearly roll with that aesthetic in the abstract but it feels like a bad fit for DP. I was hoping for something a little more disjointed, a little more visually psychedelic. And to the extent that they overtly make mention of them as superheroes...like the tone I'd prefer is that one scene early in Morrison's run where Jane randomly enters a store by crashing through a plate glass window and Cliff is like, 'don't worry, we're superheroes'. Maybe the show totally captures that steez, I dunno. I will give it a shot, though, guys. I'm nervous but I will.

can i soothe your concerns by letting you know that at one point they enter another dimension by disappearing - in a point-of-view shot - into a goat's aesophagus?

A Paraguayan donkey.

aldo otm, i apologise for the mischaracterisation

What's a mammal between friends.

Morrison schtick best captured I think in the showdown between the Great Destroyer and the other [redacted spoiler], especially the crowd who turn up out of nowhere and do exactly what Jane told them to.

The city Cliff and Jane go to felt more like The Invisibles if I'm honest.

I also loved the Admiral Whiskers story this week.

yeah, the resolution of the decreator story was a nice twist on the version from the comics, and the show's version of willoughby kipling was good, even if i was a bit disappointed he didn't look exactly like richard e grant in withnail and i like he did in the comics

the city of nurnheim was straight from morrison's doom patrol iirc?

It's been a long time since I've read it. Might dig them out at the weekend.

Arright, okay, you can stop piquing my interest now.

Wishlist: Rhea undergoing metamorphosis, Larry becoming Rebis, Dorothy Spinner and the Candlemaker, the Beard Hunter (obviously), Cliff with spider legs. Plz don't spoil if these things have come to pass.

Mostly wrt Pollack's run, I'd like to see someone eventually do something with Coagula (afaik the first openly (and traditionally, if we're excluding like Rebis et al) transgender superhero).

beard hunter is on the way this season, apparently!

re: cliff with spider legs, did you know that morrison did a dry run for that look in an issue of the comic he wrote for marvel uk based on the zoids toy-line? it's one of those indelible images from my childhood - god knows how he got away with the very weird and disturbing image in a comic aimed at small children but hey it was the 80s, it was a different time etc

I've always been curious about those Zoids comics. Maybe I should see if I can (ahem) find them somewhere totally legit and above board.

It's real weird to suddenly have these proto-Vertigo books which were so personally impactful coming to life on the small screen. I guess it remains to be seen what they're planning to do with Swamp Thing (his recent employment as a Justice Leaguer does not bode well but we shall see).

Hey DC Direct, if you promise not to fuck them up, I would cautiously encourage you to consider adapting Shade the Changing Man and Sandman Mystery Theater.

(I know the streaming service isn't called DC Direct so I don't know why I called it that.)

morrison's zoids comics are kinda funny cause they blatantly steal ideas and images from the alien movies and the terminator and only very slightly attempt to hide their inspirations

but they're interesting juvenilia for morrison fanatics, and there's already evidence in some of the stories of the themes he'll keep returning to over and over during his career

i may well have (ahem) acquired those issues in a perfectly legal digital format and stored them on an old external drive somewhere, let me look into it

BEARD HUNTER KLAXON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwnClzXiMV0

Last week's Jane-centric ep was really good.

haven't gotten around to watching that one yet but i did v much enjoy danny the street episode

uh-oh

Production on DC Universe's Swamp Thing has unexpectedly shutdown as the show will be shortened, according to Wilmington, North Carolina's Star-News newspaper. According to several unnamed "sources within the local industry," Warner Bros. Television suspended work on the show Tuesday, April 16 and said the show was being re-written to end with episode 10. The series was announced as a 13-episode first season, to finish filming in May 2019.

According to the newspaper, Swamp Thing actor Virginia Madsen posted (but later deleted) a message on Instagram saying: "I’m beyond sad. What a terrible decision. We have been cut to the core by those who have never set foot into the Swamp. And despite the rule I am going to use the hashtag. #swampthing."

Star-News goes further, saying that the "currently in-production project is being shut down earlier than expected as its producer, Warner Bros., evaluates the future of its DC Universe streaming service".

This was updated by a different story that said it was nothing more than creative differences between DCU (who is ultimately Johns I think) and the creative team.

Of course, the same thing happened to Titans but was less widely reported because it was the first one to hit.

This week's Flash was an ABSOLUTE stinker. Nora gets worse as the weeks go on, with her mimed running my greatest pleasure in the show these days, but hats off to the makeup crew for Future Iris which made the Arrow flash-forward scenes look like Weta studios.

I couldn't possibly have allowed myself to believe that quality televisual adaptations of both Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing could coexist. It's neither right nor natural.

I'm shockingly almost totally caught up with the CW shows for the first time in about two years. Haven't seen the newest Flash ep but I'm definitely pretty over Nora and (lol) her 'running'. Is it possible that the actress* has never attempted anything riskier than a brisk walk? Supergirl and Legends remain this season's MVP shows.

*It occurred to me recently that, despite having watched hundreds of hours of their antics, I know almost none of these shows' actors by name unless I was aware of them before. An argument for the old-school 'montage of character scenes with the actor's name superimposed' style of credits, I suppose. Or an argument for me to pay attention to things. I don't know.

Haha no

Flash is Grant something
Danny Trejo was Cisco's girlfriend's dad
Arrow is Steven (might be a ph) Amell (which might not be spelt right)
Felicity is Emily Betts Rickard (because a guy I used to work with obsessed with her after the Fappening)
Malcolm Merlyn was played by John Barrowman
Supergirl is Melissa Benoist (ditto Fappening)
J'onn is David Hardwood (because he was in lots of things)
Cat Grant was Calista Flockhart
Ray Palmer is Brandon Routh (because he was Superman)
Rip Hunter is Arthur Darvill

I think that's me. After 8 years.

Some other recurring characters

Tom Felton was Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and a love interest for Killer Frost for over a season
Russell Tobey played The Ray, who appears in a lot of the alternate Earth eps
Chris something who was one of the main cast in American Pie was the big bad in Flash this season.
Biff Tannen is Steel's dad in Legends
Steven Amell's brother (Robbie?) played the Ronnie Raymond half of Firestorm
Clancy Brown has played some general who is always out to get heroes in the first couple of Flash seasons
Vinnie Jones was being set up as the bad guy (but not followed through with) in the prison episodes of Arrow

I think outside of that it's guest slots

Yeah see I was honestly unsure until just now whether the star of Arrow, a show I've watched for the better part of a decade, was Stephen or Robbie Amell. I know Laurel is a Cassidy because David is her dad. I don't really have this problem with other shows or movies.

David Hardwood (because he was in lots of things)

, as the actress said to the bishop

Regardless of whether I know their names, it's been a fun ongoing game for me to mentally rank the broad range of acting ability displayed on the CW shows. Like Chris Klein this season has, I believe, set the bar at an all-time low that I think is going to be really hard for anyone to surpass, to the extent that I'm marveling over the fact that he ever had a film career at all (aside from Election, where he was perfectly cast as a dipshit portraying a dipshit). All of the shows' leads are pretty dece imo. Upper tier in the ranking if not quite at the tippy top.

The actor who plays Flash’s dad, John Wesley Shipp, played the Flash in the 90’s tv show (1990-91) which I thought was kinda neat casting

His girlfriend(?) from OG Flash was also cast in a role on this show. Not to mention Hammill reprising his role as Trickster.

Agreed on the awfulness of this week's ep. Hated Marvel's Civil War due to pitting characters with decades of shared experience against each other, hamhandedly to drive the "superheroes "fite!" plot. This last Flash had the same bad feeling of characters who should be able to rationally talk things through instead using ill-reasoned arguments setting up poor decisions to gain a predetermined end. But with the free rein given to Chris Klein's growlybear performance, it's just high expectations unmet.

And at least they haven't had a drum-playing octopus. Now watching Aquaman and hoping Marvel takes some lessons for Namor to avoid.

TS: drum-playing octopi vs. drum-playing ants

Ha! Well-played, sir. I gave the ant more of a pass because the comedy is integral to Ant-Man and the drumming ant was a robot. Definite Marvel bias in my suspension of disbelief.

That Harewood autocorrect was a good one, thanks sic.

I spotted John Wesley Shipp (who also plays Jay Garrick, in a possibly even more on the nose role) and Mark Hammill but kind of put them in stunt casting along with Helen Slater, Dean Cain and Lynda Carter in Supergirl.

I also did not know the David Cassidy thing.

Don't forget Teri Hatcher!

Yes, another from the in-joke stunt casting basket.

And at least they haven't had a drum-playing octopus. Now watching Aquaman and hoping Marvel takes some lessons for Namor to avoid.

marvel, no weirdness or fun in yr movie about the king of sunken atlantis who cuts about in a chainmail speedo and can fly using the little wings on his ankles

You insult my sartorial forebear and you insult me, good sir (violently wrenches chainmail wedgie out of buttcrack).

Catching up on the last half dozen Supergirls atm and...am I nuts or does Brainiac Actor have seemingly no interest in maintaining a consistent vocal inflection? He sounds like a Hanna-Barbera character at the moment, which is not what he used to do. I keep expecting him to let slip with a 'Zounds! Heavens to Murgatroyd!'

the beard hunter chowing down on a big lump of plughole hair is maybe the most upsetting thing i’ve ever seen on tv

The Flash finale kind of fizzled out tbh. The idea of the Reverse Flash masterplan (to avoid spoilers) was a good one but nobody in their right mind could tolerate Nora for a second longer and her role in the plan kind of made no sense with maguffin on top of maguffin. Chris Klein only became more unbearable as the weeks went on and whatever was going on with the mind probe was just impossible to follow.

Arrow wound up with a whimper too. By the end the future makeup actually got worse than I thought it was upthread and the wigs... But everyone's story is done and Ollie has gone off with the Monitor for the truncated final season which only goes up to the Crisis crossover. Hoping for Legends type insanity on other worlds. Will probably just get 10 shades of growlybears.

But then Flash wrapped everybody up too. No idea what it's going to do prior to Crisis unless it's just Monster Of The Week in which case YAY.

Supergirl continues to impress and confound in equal measure. The Lex plot has been great but the Red Daughter woefully underused. Haven't cared about the Lockwood thing - and the President cliffhanger was dreadfully mishandled - but the fate of Braniac going into the finale is superb. Needs to pivot back to MOTW and goofy silver age shit to make me love it but it'll do.

Legends otoh has gone from strength to strength to yet further strength. This season has been pretty incredible and somehow the race to the finale has been even better than an already unbelievably strong first half. Only minus points are for Mona's arc in the second half, mainly because I think she's rotten in *those* scenes (not helped by dreadful makeup) and is/was far better as the wide-eyed innocent dreamer.

Doom Patrol has kept the standards up too, even if I think Flex Mentallo is way OP in this version. The funeral episode might have been the highspot of the season.

Doom Patrol never dipped at any point really and was great all the way through.

I've enjoyed Swamp Thing a lot, bits are very Moore-faithful although it definitely is skewed for TV (and I don't really like what they've done with Blue Devil).

Krypton has been pretty weak although Braniac has been excellent. Lobo was as predictably bad as you might think.

I can't in any good conscience suggest anyone watch Pennyworth, however, fans of the sort of car-crash wrong only US TV gets England and the atrocity which is Paloma Faith's acting may get some small comfort.

I haven't even formally acknowledged that the latter two happened (see also: Gotham). Doom Patrol has been a delight. Swamp Thing...I do want to see it eventually, but its insta-cancellation (and I guess they also had to retroactively rejigger the season to compensate for a reduced episode order?) just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

lobo? oh noes

I just googled for more info on this development and learned that they are now making a Lobo spinoff show, so that should be good and a lot of fun.

how did krypton make it to a second season before i’d even noticed the first had even made it to air

The question its existence prompts for me is: what prompted WB/DC to decide that 'television series about geographical area which will eventually spawn heroes sometime after the series ends' is a legitimate genre that people are clamoring for?

Have you watched Titans? Binged that this weekend. 11 episodes, comfortably padded, still went by fast. Liked the adult casting a lot, particularly Brenton Thwaites as Robin (who I kept thinking must be Robert Sean Leonard's younger brother) and Anna Diop as Starfire. The actor playing Gar / Beast Boy did a good job too, making his character relatable. Rachel / Raven, not bad, if a bit frustrating that the first season's arc centers around her character and seems to get halfway there. SPOILERS-ish: Trigon doesn't appear until episode 10 of 11. 12th episode was delayed for a 2nd season opener.

The Chief, in the Doom Patrol ep, was amoral, almost cruel in his "I give these lost souls a purpose for SCIENCE!". Is that a later interpretation? What little I read of Doom Patrol as a kid, he seemed more a Reed Richards paternal figure.

Yeaaaah, as you apparently haven't read Morrison's run on the title, I have some news and you should probably sit down...

I won't spoil any of Swamp Thing then but unless all the rejigging happens in the last episode then they don't appear to have done any. One very specific comics event, for example, is the cliffhanger to the second-last episode and there hasn't been any real setup to the (comics) resolution of it yet.

Krypton sort of has potential but the plotting is clunky as hell with far too many characters and plot threads. Everyone is (literally) everybody else's mother or father irrespective of their age. And although I never expected it, I was still disappointed they never used Braniac's Silver Age skull ship design.

btw how great was dalton as the chief? that guy just plays such great bastards

Braniac's skull ship isn't Silver Age, is it? Wasn't it from Gil Kane early 80s Superman?

You're right!?! It looks completely like a Binder Brainfart, but I suppose he was too busy with a lion's head and giant Jimmy Olsen.

1983, designed by Ed Hannigan

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Brainiac544.PNG

Well waddya know.

It's baffling to me that the world seems to aggressively ignore that depiction of the character. It's a friggin' design classic.

I did Pennyworth a massive disservice - after the first episode it got insanely good, massively Avengers (not that one) influenced. The episode where they get the train to the village is absolutely superb.

https://media.tenor.com/images/86eb7c00905ba5fa58b0e0bc7c7c7486/tenor.gif

Pennyworth never quite reached the same heights again, but is well worth all your time.

After the first episode of Batwoman, I can't work out whether it's incredibly bad or just terrible.

I've seen a ridiculous amount of this show since my teen son loves it, but ... I can't imagine willingly watching it alone if I had a choice. The effects are low-rent and it's all just so silly and ... then again, I've never been a Flash fan outside of early JLE (or watched any other TV comic book superhero show that wasn't Lois & Clark) so what do I know?

(Also I've always been more of a Marvel zombie at heart, so.)

Oh, who am I kidding? I did love some DC comics here and there.

gave up on Flash several seasons ago, is he still trying to save his mother?

Hey nerds, has anyone watched the new Stargirl series?

(I didnt know where else to post abt Berlanti-verse stuff.)

I’ve watched first 2 eps & its v good so far.

Stargirl feels kind of fun, in a very inconsequential way. I suppose the telling point will be how Johnsy it gets.

I'm off the bus with all of them except Legends of Tomorrow.

I intend to watch all the arrowverse crossovers…have done Invasion and am about to finish Crisis on Earth X…there is no way that I'm going to plow through like 15 seasons of each of these shows…

1. I literally cannot remember the last mainstream, produced for mass appeal— or however you describe the contemporary equivalent to standard network fare— scripted tv show I watched…like maybe in the early 90s? It is very strange to watch something in that style, despite having evolved considerably, and yet which is suffused in DC lore…

2. and as a result of that last point, it does seem that these shows are embracing the shit that the MCU and the Snyder DC/Murderverse are embarrassed by… there are secret identities, masks…I often encounter variations of "well these characters and this universe is GROUNDED" and I don't see that at all here… but I can easily imagine someone unacquainted with DC in the 70s/80s watching these shows explicating some obscure lore or going batshit with the alternate worlds and saying "man this is too much!" if there are people who get into this shit without a a prior immersion, I suppose that's an achievement…

3. Each time the narratives touch on Oliver Queen as a rich guy or Arrow as the king tough guy, I"m thinking "you guys really wanted to do a Batman show but Warner Bros wouldn't let you, huh?" To me, GA is the crusader of the left, pointer of the finger that used to be discussed on I Love Comics. And I agree that it is super suckass that Berlanti and Co. went along with the Geoff Johns directive that Barry' mom was killed… Barry allen was a good character because he was well adjusted (that is, before the Iris murder in the early 80s)…

Animated special Beebo Saves Christmas airs tonight: https://www.avclub.com/beebo-saves-christmas-is-the-strangest-holiday-offering-1848129179

This show is so astonishingly mediocre, yet my son and I can’t stop watching (and making fun of it)

(The Flash, specifically.)

couldn't find a DCU thread but I bothered to watch the Flash movie last night. First off, I was a fan of the TV show for a few seasons until it got so repetitive I got bored with it. I was also fully aware of all the strikes against this movie: took forever to come out, Miller's psychotic behavior over the past two years, criticisms about CGI-ing in Reeve and Reeves as Superman, the fact that it was a massive bomb at the box office.

So I was surprised to like it. It's really funny and fairly light-hearted. This was something I liked about the first Shazam movie too and it's more along those lines but with a bigger budget. The CGI is fucking dire but I didn't really care. It's cool to see Keaton back even if they kill him off twice unceremoniously. I thought it was hilarious they did a CGI Nick Cage Superman with long hair. Miller is great. Excellent surprise ending. Best end credits scene of any superhero movie in recent memory. I vote this the second best DCU movie after the first Wonder Woman.

that actor came to my town and terrorized a little kid and their family. very scary.

I was a fan of the TV show for a few seasons until it got so repetitive I got bored with it

Haven't seen the movie, I'll probably watch it at some point when I can stream it for free, but this was my experience as well. We really liked the first two or three seasons and it was nice to have a show to watch with our son, but even he wanted to give up about season 4 or 5 since the arc of every season was the exact same.

yeah miller has been terrorizing hawaii, vermont, and martha's vineyard for some time and seems to have avoided any actual consequences for any of this. I suspect Miller is on loads of cocaine at all times.

He's sort of like--what if Manson had actually been a successful musician?

I'm sorry-- They are like Charles Manson