[TV] The Flash

Welcome to The Flash as a character since forever.
That's one of the things I like about the show. It's willing to do this kind of crazy stuff, and it's fun giving the actors chances to go back to old stuff, be different, etc.

On a meta level, anytime the writers write themselves into a corner, it's totally believable that some stupid time travel would get them out of it because Barry is an idiot.
 
It's just nice to have a superhero show that feels like a comic in the best ways. Supergirl had a pretty good first season and I'm hoping season 2 works out as well.
 
It's just nice to have a superhero show that feels like a comic in the best ways. Supergirl had a pretty good first season and I'm hoping season 2 works out as well.
I read a lengthy article yesterday, don't know where it is now, where Berlanti and others mentioned that they were struggling to figure out what Supergirl was as a show at first, and it took them until about halfway through the season to really find that. Their aim for season 2 is less speeches, more leading by example.

As for The Flash, we watched the last two episodes of season 2 and got on CWTV.com to watch the first season 3 episode. I stand by what I said above--Barry is an idiot.

Questions that probably have no answers because as much as I love the time travel stuff, it's highly inconsistent:

Eobard Thawne doesn't know anything about the timeline Barry traveled from, so either Barry filled him in or he's making a lot of assumptions.

Also, "Flashpoint" is something Eobard also created, because in their original future timeline, he didn't go back to kill Barry's mom. In fact, according to the AI future-Barry invented, the whole Justice League existed in the original timeline before Reverse Flash kills Nora Allen. Granted, he made sure the travel-back event still happened via the newspaper in season 1. Again, he wouldn't necessarily think of it this way.

That said, one of the big points in season 1 was that killing Nora Allen = no more Flash, therefore Eobard loses his speed powers and has to do the whole not-Wells shtick to get things situated again. So how does he have his powers enough to bring Barry back to the present, and then ... either he's going back to the future or has decided to stick in the present and fuck around? But either way, Nora Allen is dead, so he should've lost his powers.

I'm guessing we are to assume everything else happened the way we saw in season 1 since it showed all those flashes of events when Eobard fixes the timeline, BUT then that would still mean he was erased from existence when Eddie killed himself ... except that always violated the time rules established by the show.

In short, what the fuck? I guess we'll have to see what fresh hell Barry has made now in the coming episodes, but the Nora death/no more Reverse Flash powers eems odd unless I'm missing something crucial.
 
ANOTHER fucking speedster as the big bad? Seriously? Fucking SERIOUSLY?

They know Flash has more than just speedsters for big bads in his rogue gallery, right?
 
ANOTHER fucking speedster as the big bad? Seriously? Fucking SERIOUSLY?

They know Flash has more than just speedsters for big bads in his rogue gallery, right?
We're annoyed too, especially when it was said that wouldn't be the direction they were going this season, and ...

Julian is Alchemy. FFS now three season in a row it's guy they know is secretly villain, and three seasons in a row the big bad is a speedster. The Flash has so many great villains, come on.

I'm not comics expert on the Flash, but I thought Savitr wasn't faster; he had some other deal that let him work around the Flash's speed?
 
We're annoyed too, especially when it was said that wouldn't be the direction they were going this season, and ...

Julian is Alchemy. FFS now three season in a row it's guy they know is secretly villain, and three seasons in a row the big bad is a speedster. The Flash has so many great villains, come on.

I'm not comics expert on the Flash, but I thought Savitr wasn't faster; he had some other deal that let him work around the Flash's speed?
I don't think he was faster, but he DID know more Speed Force tricks that Wally (who was Flash at the time) didn't know. Like healing yourself immediately or absorbing the speed from oncoming objects like a thrown knife or a bullet.

And sadly, I saw Alchemy coming miles away. As soon as they revealed his name as Albert Desmond, I knew it'd be him because that's Alchemy's real name in the comics. I thought they might do a curveball, but NOPE.
 
I don't think he was faster, but he DID know more Speed Force tricks that Wally (who was Flash at the time) didn't know. Like healing yourself immediately or absorbing the speed from oncoming objects like a thrown knife or a bullet.

And sadly, I saw Alchemy coming miles away. As soon as they revealed his name as Albert Desmond, I knew it'd be him because that's Alchemy's real name in the comics. I thought they might do a curveball, but NOPE.
I didn't know the name from the comics. I just thought, new character, villain out of nowhere, it's obviously him ... a little too obvious, so it can't be him. But then it was :/
 
Saving grace is that we're not even to the halfway point of the season and a lot has happened, so there's likely to be more interesting developments.

I really want Grodd to be the big bad for a season.

But I'm pumped for the big crossover next week. Supergirl, Flash, Legends, and Arrow vs alien invasion--this is gonna be fun :D.
 
But I'm pumped for the big crossover next week. Supergirl, Flash, Legends, and Arrow vs alien invasion--this is gonna be fun :D.
Am i the only one wondering why the Dominators are naked?

I mean at least with the Martians it made sense in that they're shape-shifters.
 
Am i the only one wondering why the Dominators are naked?

I mean at least with the Martians it made sense in that they're shape-shifters.
I haven't watched promos; I just assumed it was going to be Thanagarians since they've been mentioned on Supergirl, not just shows with Hawkgirl.

Maybe nudity is why they're invading.
 
Maybe nudity is why they're invading.
An alien invasion whose motivation is to force us to let go of our compulsion to hide our bodies with dead animal and plant matter?

Like some sort of nudity zealots on a crusade through space...
 
I just finished season 2 on Netflix and have seen none of season 3 (I doubt I will watch it...read on!)

This show drives me crazy. It is trying to stay afloat purely on the charisma of the actors. And they no doubt have lots of it (until they get mopey). But the techno-wizardry is completely off the scale in this show. I can believe the speed force and metahumans, etc., but they lean so hard on whatever is convenient to move the (sometimes nonsensical) plots along, that I end up rolling my eyes through half of the episode. On top of all that, their rules for time travel are convoluted (and contradictory? Probably. It is hard to tell, but if it serves the plot!) He can pop back in time on a whim but cannot run faster than Mach [whatever the plot calls for]? Grrr... And the time wraiths were such a deus ex machina, which they invented out of thin air for the show, then used just keep the hero from doing something wrong
directly...he still got them to come drag off Zoom...great idea, Barry! Let's bring more of those things into the world!
Of course, they end season 2 with the promise of more time travel shenanigans, so I am probably out. The characters are pretty darn likable but they never let them off the leash to grow or be truly challenged, except for Barry sometimes. It starts to feel a little claustrophobic when every plot revolves around the team and team work and we're stronger as a family. I so want to like this show but I think on balance I don't. I might check in and see if season 3 is worth it, but my hopes will be low.
 
I just finished season 2 on Netflix and have seen none of season 3 (I doubt I will watch it...read on!)

This show drives me crazy. It is trying to stay afloat purely on the charisma of the actors. And they no doubt have lots of it (until they get mopey). But the techno-wizardry is completely off the scale in this show. I can believe the speed force and metahumans, etc., but they lean so hard on whatever is convenient to move the (sometimes nonsensical) plots along, that I end up rolling my eyes through half of the episode. On top of all that, their rules for time travel are convoluted (and contradictory? Probably. It is hard to tell, but if it serves the plot!) He can pop back in time on a whim but cannot run faster than Mach [whatever the plot calls for]? Grrr... And the time wraiths were such a deus ex machina, which they invented out of thin air for the show, then used just keep the hero from doing something wrong
directly...he still got them to come drag off Zoom...great idea, Barry! Let's bring more of those things into the world!
Of course, they end season 2 with the promise of more time travel shenanigans, so I am probably out. The characters are pretty darn likable but they never let them off the leash to grow or be truly challenged, except for Barry sometimes. It starts to feel a little claustrophobic when every plot revolves around the team and team work and we're stronger as a family. I so want to like this show but I think on balance I don't. I might check in and see if season 3 is worth it, but my hopes will be low.
Without giving too much away, season 3 seems to be promising an end to time travel shenanigans and now only dealing with the consequences of their last hurrah that season 3 begins with.

Do not watch Legends of Tomorrow though. They can't keep their time travel rules straight within a single episode.
 

BananaHands

Staff member
Please no more speedster villains.

Flash has a great rogue gallery. Why do I have to keep seeing seasons full of "I NEED TO GET FASTER"?
 
This'll probably be a spoiler for both shows for me (all three? Was Arrow involved too?) but how did the cross over work? different universe?
 
This'll probably be a spoiler for both shows for me (all three? Was Arrow involved too?) but how did the cross over work? different universe?
They had the crossover from last season with Flash and Supergirl. It ended with a promise for her to come help. So Flash got in over his head and went and got the invincible girl from Earth 38.
 
Anyone who doesn't already watch Supergirl doesn't need to; the part of her episode that relates to the crossover is repeated in this Flash episode.

The Supergirl crossover night should not count.
That's probably why it's not even named Invasion. I think Supergirl was in production earlier than the other shows so they could only wiggle it in here and there without disrupting the Supergirl season. I expect her trip to Earth Prime will be barely referenced in later Supergirl season 2 episodes, much like Flash's trip to Earth-3 was barely referenced in the rest of The Flash season 2.
 
Just finished the crossover event. I'm a sucker for this stuff so I thought it was Super Friends Fun.

I'll admit that these shows are kind of just a shadow of what season 1 of Arrow and Flash showed us they were capable of. It'll never be that good again but these few episodes I felt were good for what they were. The arrow episode, for example, was both really good and really bad in some ways. The whole idea of

Putting them in a fantasy world where they get to be the people they deep down wish they were with the life they deep down wish they had was done in season 1 of Supergirl and THAT's just a rip of the Justice League cartoon where exactly that happened. HOWEVER I still like those moments of the heroes having to rip themselves away from what could be a perfect life for themselves for the greater good. I will admit that they figured it all out hella fast.

But it was really cool to see things like

The Hall of Justice! And everyone working together! And Dr. Stien has a daughter that he has to learn to love real quick! Neat!

but yeah it was dumb how like..for what I'm sure was mostly budget reasons we didn't actually have all hands on deck for a friggin' alien invasion. Like we have to believe that for an alien invasion they'd only take Supergirl from that earth and not Superman as well or Martian Manhunter or even Guardian. Again, budget and probably even just script concerns but still. I feel like this gave some hope for a possible larger team up type show in the future. It would be cool for Legends to maybe get re-branded into a proper JSA or even JLA show.
 
I like how even the crossover knew how inconsequential the Arrow episode was and skipped to the end for the recap, only for it not to matter thanks to Cisco.

It seems like the people making Arrow these days just don't know what they're doing, because the moment the sane characters pop into other shows, they're enjoyable. It didn't surprise me to read that while the other shows saw a 30% boost in ratings for the crossover, Arrow had 82% ... because it was already so low to start that reaching the others is a significant increase.

But the fun stuff was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the character interactions most of all.

And now Supergirl can come back any time, so yay!

My only goofy superhero disappointment was when Vixen

channeled an elephant--awesome--but then just went to roundhouse kicking an alien instead of charging through them. What a waste.
 
I was largely disappointed with the big crossover, honestly. I'd heard they repeated Supergirl's scene in Flash, so I skipped her episode. And honestly, Flash had the best episode of the bunch. The Legends episode had a lot of unnecessary filler, like going back in time to grab an alien when there were clearly plenty around Earth in their time. It's like they had this time-traveling group of heroes, so they had to come up with an excuse to do some time-traveling. Arrow could've easily been skipped except for the last 10 minutes or so. Since I only watched two-thirds of the first season of Arrow, all the callbacks and references were meaningless to me. I guess for Arrow fans, the episode was pretty cool? But at the end, when Ollie looked back and saw - I assume - the people he lost, I didn't know who most of those people were.

The other thing was, there was no introduction for many characters for someone like myself who only watched Flash. Characters like Mr. Terrific, Rag Man, Wilddog, Captain Steel, and Vixen all just sort of showed up with little introduction or fanfare. I didn't know who the first three were until they finally showed them in their costumes. And we only really saw action from Wilddog, so what was the point of the other two being there and suiting up? Then again, I guess for someone who doesn't watch Flash, you might be a bit confused by Wally participating. Compare this to, say, Captain America: Civil War. You didn't really need to see Ant-Man's movie because they introduced him relatively well (I think).

Most of the character interaction and moments were fun or cute. Although, even if the Supergirl/Heatwave exchange was funny, it seemed like an odd place to put it right before they walked into the warehouse. It just felt like an odd time to have the exchange, killing some of the tension or momentum before the action scene.

And then the big climactic finish was...a big brawl with everyone on one rooftop? Why? I get it was for the cool group shot (which WAS cool), but it made no sense. Why are you fighting an isolated group of Dominators on one rooftop when they're all over the planet? Not to mention that if Captain Steel took out one Dominator with a single punch, why couldn't Supergirl or Flash mop the floor with one whole group? That relates to Zero Esc's point about Vixen doing this big fancy shot. I got all excited to see what she'd do...and then she just ran into the battle and didn't do anything special. Why waste that much time with a cool (and expensive) special effect if you're not doing anything special with it?

Plus, why couldn't the Dominators wear their long green robes? That would've set them apart from looking like generic alien invader #59569.

So yeah, I don't know. As someone who only watches Flash, this was largely disappointing for me. If you're someone who watches all three (or four, if you count Supergirl), this might've been more enjoyable. If they hoped to use this to get people to watch the other shows more, they definitely missed the mark on this guy.
 
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That relates to Zero Esc's point about Vixen doing this big fancy shot. I got all excited to see what she'd do...and then she just ran into the battle and didn't do anything special. Why waste that much time with a cool (and expensive) special effect if you're not doing anything special with it?
According to others who've been watching this season of Legends, this is apparently the usual for this version of Vixen. She'll get rhino spirit going, and then just go do kick flips and punches. SO lame when the special effect is more expensive than having her fighting style change to reflect the animal spirit she's channeling.

So yeah, I don't know. As someone who only watches Flash, this was largely disappointing for me. If you're someone who watches all three (or four, if you count Supergirl), this might've been more enjoyable. If they hoped to use this to get people to watch the other shows more, they definitely missed the mark on this guy.
Supergirl's was a good Supergirl episode, but yeah, had nothing to do with the crossover except to delay Alex coming out to her mom and distracting Hank Henshaw. Otherwise, the scene where Barry and Cisco appear in Kara's apartment is the exact same scene as at the end of the Supergirl episode.

It has made me consider giving Legends season 2 a chance. Watched season 1, wasn't too impressed, but season 2 apparently has Eobard Thawne as a recurring villain, so I feel like I'm making a mistake by not checking it out. Definitely not watching Arrow though.


Also, we saw Kara reviewing everyone's names to make sure she knew them (which--wow, really impressive memorization skills), but we didn't see her first learn them. How did Barry introduce Iris? "Hey Kara, this is Iris, my sister/girlfriend." :p Like, it's really getting hard to ignore this when Joe says to his new flame "my kids" and he's including Barry and not in an in-law or future in-law or my daughter's boyfriend kind of way, but as a child he raised ... because that's what happened.
 
It has made me consider giving Legends season 2 a chance. Watched season 1, wasn't too impressed, but season 2 apparently has Eobard Thawne as a recurring villain, so I feel like I'm making a mistake by not checking it out. Definitely not watching Arrow though.
Yeah, season 2 is better. Also, it's not just Eobard Thawne as a major villain. It's a group that (at least in the promotional material) is known as the Legion of Doom.
 
I kinda get the feeling that they weren't sure if they were going to be able to use Supergirl, so her part was added rather than being essential to the plot. And it was kinda annoying, because there were a lot of moments that could have used her abilities.
But there was one thing that bugged me most, and admittedly, I've never watched Arrow or The Flash, but all of Supergirl and most of the first season of Legends of Tomorrow, but

What the hell was up with Ollie's bullshit, "I'm not feeling sure of myself, so you need to be side-lined, Kara"? What logic was that? You want the most powerful person on your team to step back because you're feeling impotent? I really, really wanted Kara to super-kick him in the nuts right there. And I know Barry wasn't reliable after "Flashpoint", which they mentioned 50 MILLION TIMES OKAY WE GET IT, but he was clearly smarter than Ollie to bring her in. Ollie needs to sit back and shut the hell up, angsty Batman-wannabe.
 
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