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Now that Flash is going to guest star on Supergirl, I started watching it.  Pretty good.  Although I hope Barry has to travel to a parallel Earth to get to her.  I don't think "Earth 1" meshes with the world on Supergirl.

Interesting.  I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to the Malcolm line.

Regarding the writers, I think this is the problem with spinoffs.  You have a strong group of writers for one show, and you split them up to do two shows.  Both shows suffer because neither show has the strong writer's room the original show had.  Add a third group, and it gets even more diluted.  I don't think Arrow is as bad as you think it is, but it's definitely worse since they spun off Barry's show.

My problem with Legends is that the show isn't streamlined.  I get that these are a bunch of people with wildly different goals, but it's really odd to have three stories in one episode that aren't really connected.  Snart is out trying to fix his own past, Ray and Stein are connecting about their shared past while saving Kendra, and Rip is trying to take down Savage.  They're good stories....but they aren't a team.  There are too many characters in the reality of the show (Rip goes to kill Savage by himself at least once...what's the point of even bringing a team when half the team is off doing their own thing) and on the show (they have to find something for Jackson to do, for example, so he tags along on the Cold/Heat Wave story).

If it was me, I'd leave Heat Wave and Firestorm out.  Let Ray be the brains.  Let Sara be the muscle.  Cold is the wild card.  The hawks are the secret weapons.  The other characters are unnecessary if you ask me.

I'm sure I've said this before, but long-running series have benefited from this immensely in the past.  The two best examples that I'm aware of are SNL and the Simpsons.  Both were able to have renaissances once the kids/teens that grew up watching the show get old enough to write it themselves.  SNL had a revival in the late 80s/early 90s when people who grew up with the late 70s gang.  Same thing with the Simpsons, as episodes became more about the thing that people loved when the show was new.  A lot of people say the Simpsons sucks now, but they're mostly talking about a similar lull that SNL had in the early/mid 80s.  I've watched the last 3-4 seasons pretty religiously, and the show still is able to hit pretty high notes these days.  It was also harder to notice as much of a dropoff when the whole "Every Simpsons Ever" happened on FXX.

Tonight's episode of Arrow is exactly why there's issues with merging Oliver's world with Barry's.  It's fun to put them together, but Barry is a Deus Ex Machina that Team Arrow is irresponsible for not using more.  I get that Barry has his own life and his own problems, but tonight's situation at the end was the perfect time to call Barry.  Or at least bring up how that's not an option - especially since they made the "just because you're wearing red doesn't mean you're the Flash" joke with Arsenal.  There was plenty of time to radio STAR Labs (which there'd certainly be a communication line open at all times with) and see if Barry could speed down there.  It's been established that Barry could've been there in plenty of time to either detonate the C4 and get out or carry Roy out.  There was simply no reason to risk Roy's life there.

Logistically, I get why they didn't.  And maybe it's better left just left alone and not open up that can of worms.  But, realistically, they need to be calling him if it's life or death and a problem that Barry is specifically set up to defeat.

"Cisco, it's Overwatch!"
"What?  Who?  Felicity?"
"Overwatch!"
"Okay.  I didn't sign off on that one!"
"We need Barry.  Now!"
"Barry's dealing with this week's villain of the week.  No can do."
"It's a matter of life or death."
"So is ours.  Sorry.  We owe you one.  Good luck."

Something like that.  Or even truncated without including Cisco.  "I checked with Cisco.  He says Barry is busy with his own life or death matter.  And he hates my call sign.  Sorry, you guys are on your own."

Well I guess the Arrowverse got a directive to keep things from getting confusing with the new Suicide Squad movie, huh?

What if they'd just set the reboot in 2012?  Do the lead up to December and colonization.

Or what if everything from season 1-9 happened the way we thought, but between the end of the show and 2012 the humans won?  What if the human conspirators found a way to defeat the alien colonists, and then they took over whatever operation the aliens were doing?  So there were aliens but now it's all a bunch of shadowy humans that have already out-smarted more-advanced aliens?

So is Jay Zoom or is "Hunter Zolomon" Zoom?

Wow, that would've been great.

Almost certainly

I don't think it's that bad, but I see your complaints.  And it worries me that the writers don't know who's in the grave or who Zoom is it.  I have NO idea how you can write like that.  My friend and I wrote a TV pilot with TONS of seeds planted, and we had answers for all of them.  Even stuff that wouldn't even be answered for a while.

When they say they have no idea, you have to think it's just a disagreement in the writer's room, right?  Like they were sitting around in the room and they each have who they think would be best to move the story along, but they couldn't agree (it should be Felicity so we can bring in Barbara Gordon to fill her place!  No, it should be Diggle so the danger is real!  Thea!  Take the last family member Oliver has left!)

It reminds me of when the Simpsons said they were going to kill off a major character, and it was Krusty's dad.  I mean he was a somewhat-emotional character, but it's a side character to a side character.  Hardly newsworthy.

Well I've been thinking about it.  If it's Donna, I think Barry would show up for emotional support.  Remember that going to Star City would be like walking down the block.  He could get in a suit in a second and be there in a few minutes.  And Felicity is his friend, so he'd be there to support her.

And maybe it's Donna and Quentin.  They're together, and it'd be emotional for Laurel and Felicity.  But it'd be minor in the grand scheme of things.  If it's not Felicity, then I guess the next best emotional gambit would be Diggle.  It'd be personal but also raise the stakes since Diggle is such an imposing figure.  But I doubt they'd do that.

I felt like maybe some of the better writers went to Flash, but if they don't know who Zoom is then they aren't much better.  I just think they might've spread themselves a bit too thin with two (now three) shows.

Okay, that's *exactly* what this needs to be.  They could focus on some characters that really need focusing on.  Although if that's the case, it's a little strange that they're doing it with such a big cast.  It might've been a little more fun to do a Captain Cold/Heat Wave crime miniseries on their own.  Sort of a focus on villains in the Arrowverse, which could be interesting.  Like why metahuman villains seem to stay away from Star City.

I watched the pilot for Legends of Tomorrow.  It's okay, although I think they're pressing their luck with this one.  Could be really fun, but it could be an absolute mess.  I really think it should've just been a miniseries or maybe a series of miniseries to fill in the winter gap (sorta like Agent Carter but maybe a smaller scale).

One thing that's bothered me about Hawkman/Hawkgirl: what is the current mythos for them in the comics?  Because in the DCAU, they come from a different planet (Thanagar).  But the origin in the Arrowverse is totally different.  What's the more-correct answer?

Suicide Squad does look fun.  It looks crazy, and I hope that carries over.

My big question is: does it appeal to the general public?  Was Guardians of the Galaxy successful because it was fun, or was it successful because it was in the Marvel brand (so far, there is no DC brand)?  Is Will Smith enough?  Is buzz going to be enough?

Because I see a ton of comics people getting excited, but I wonder if that extends beyond comic people.

BvS seems to be touching a lot of the right bases, but have you heard that Jesse Eisenberg based his Luthor on Max Landis?  I'm a big fan of his and that's still super weird to me.

I've read what you've wrote, and I've really been unable to get enough emotion together to really be upset or disappointed in the series.  It's not good, and it hasn't improved on the mistakes that made seasons 2-4 the disasters they ended up being.  It's television that's entertaining but forgettable. 

"Company Woman" seems to cross over the line to just plain bad.  And it does some things that this show simply doesn't need to do.  I'm invested enough in this series to follow along and not much else.  I don't remember character names, even main ones.  I don't remember what happened to HRG except that he disappeared in the storm.  Was it someone we knew?  Was it clear who it was?  Why hasn't he been mentioned the last couple of episodes?  Isn't he the reason most of us are still watching this?

And in a show like that, when we don't care enough to learn the characters' names, why are they trying to make a 3-dimensional bad guy this late in the game?  I don't care about Erica (whose name I know because it's mentioned 10 times an episode).  When Tommy (a name I had to look up and he's a lead) asks her if it's true that she's been behind everything, she goes "Does it matter?" with an evil grin.  And I thought, okay....at least she's a bad guy now.  But then you throw these weird flashbacks in that makes us try and relate, but it's way too little way too late.  A villain can't be 1-dimensional all the way and then made interesting all the sudden.  She's not an interesting character, and this stuff didn't make her any more interesting.

The sins of the first season finale was that they set things up too well.  We'd seen everything and knew what was going to happen - we were just waiting for the puzzle pieces to finally land.  This one seems like a total mess, and there's just 40-minutes left.  And now that it seems pretty clear that this is the end, I don't think we're going to get any sort of resolution.  It's just another 13-episode glimpse into a world that has a lot of potential that it's failed to tap into over and over again.

Matt as a bad guy?  Is it a betrayal of the character?  Honestly, I don't know.  Or care.  We're talking about a 4.5-season show that has been good for most of one season.  There's probably 30 episodes that are good, and almost all of them were in season one.  Almost every character has been run through the ringer, and I can picture any of them going crazy and evil.  There's no consistency.  Heck, when it was hinted that Mohinder was a terrorist, I believed it.  Why not?

(Side note - I've made same argument about Sliders - there are only a handful of good episodes, and they're all basically the first season, if you count season 1-2 as one season).

Heroes:Reborn was just a bad idea.

SQ21 Complaint 9548 regarding Old Bruce / Young Clark:

In the universe, Bruce can call Clark "son" and it's not super weird.

Ugh.

Yeah but Han was around when Jedi were still active and plentiful.  I have no idea what Han's backstory is, but even if he was raised in a place with no Jedi, Chewie has for sure experienced the Force.  Maybe they never talked about it, but that didn't seem like the first time Han had given that speech.

Ha, don't give me my opinion.  But I certainly value yours.

I watched it a second time today and focused on some of my gripes.  My feelings haven't changed but still had a freakin' blast watching it.

Nah.  I mean being a good pilot seems like being a good driver - most people can do it on some level.  The problem with Rey is how she's instantly amazing at things - she makes several comments about things being luck.  I think it's completely supposed to be Force-related, but the movie doesn't make any attempt to explain that.  She doesn't think she can fly the Millennium Falcon.  She crashes against a bunch of things to start - something that would be expected if she hadn't flown anything before (think a private pilot trying to fly a 747 with no assistance).  The problem is that instinct seems to take over and by the end of the flight, she's making really expert moves.  It's not that she's a pilot - she becomes an expert overly quickly (IMO).

(Note: I haven't seen the Original Trilogy recently so I'm gonna make some points that might be incorrect.  Please correct me).

Does he?  If I remember correctly, Luke doesn't do much in the first movie.  Nothing extraordinary, at least.  It isn't until the final trench run that he finally gives in and trusts the Force, right?  He does the Force grab of the lightsaber in Empire, but he'd at least had some teaching on how to use the Force at that point.  And it was a couple years later.

My main point on Rey is how everything is instinctual for her.  I'd be willing to bet that she has latent training somehow.  If she's Luke's daughter and he trained her and then wiped her memory somehow, then all of this would make sense.  She's acting on instinct using "muscle memory" - the problem is that the movie doesn't try and explain any of that. 

If they're holding onto some sort of "Rey is Luke's daughter" twist, that's fine.  But if they're hoping it'll be a big twist....well, most people have already guessed it.  And if they'd just said "hey, Rey is a Skywalker" then it'd pay off the mysteries in this movie.  Especially this day in age when people crowdsource theories.  It's what ruins twists on TV all the time - there was a twist on Dexter that people crowdsourced weeks before it was revealed.  Basically ruined the whole season.

Well I mean, honestly, did either of those guys have anywhere near the level of Force-based instinct that Rey has?  Like whether or not she's completely unrelated, she does things that we haven't seen anyone do.  I don't think Luke or Anakin use the Jedi mind trick at all in either trilogy, do they?  I saw a video the other day that showed that the trick only works twice in the first six movies - Obi-Wan does them both - to the stormtrooper in ANH and to the sleezeball in the cantina in AOTC.  So for Rey to successfully do a Jedi Mind Trick when she doesn't even know what that is is a little bizarre.  The only thing I can think is that maybe she leeched it out of Kylo's mind when they were connected, but even that's weird because Kylo doesn't use the Jedi Mind Trick - he does something completely different to suck information out of someone.

(EDIT - Okay, I did some research and Luke does do it in Return of the Jedi - but, again, he'd seen it done before and had training)

Fixing things is fine.  Being a pilot is fine.  These are things that would make sense in Rey's world.  But she thinks the Jedi are a myth halfway through the movie.  She didn't think Luke was real.  She'd never seen a Jedi or a Sith before (Kylo isn't a sith).  She'd never seen force powers before her encounter with Ren.  And yet she's able to use a jedi mind trick and force pull (not accomplished by Luke in his first movie and only accomplished by Anakin after training with actual Jedi) expertly.  And she defeats a disciple of Luke pretty handily minutes after turning on a lightsaber for the first time.

It didn't ruin the movie for me.  At all.  But the problem is that Rey is an incredibly more-boring character if she's already a master in just about everything.  Superman is boring because he's great at everything.  It's why Superman movies suck.  The movie is good on it's own, but it would be better if we saw her grow through the films.  Luke gets his ass kicked in his first fight with Vader.  And Vader is clearly not trying.  I focused on Kylo in her fight with Rey and he is *absolutely* trying to kill Rey.  He's absolutely trying to kill Finn.  And while he defeats Finn, it's a decent fight and Finn hurts him.  And Rey clearly wins the fight with Kylo.  Yes, Rey can fight - yes using a lightsaber probably isn't that different than a regular weapon - yes Kylo was wounded and isn't finished with his training.  But the whole movie was Rey doing incredible things and people complimenting her - whipping the new bad guy's ass just adds to the Superman factor.

Again, I liked the movie.  It was fun.  But there were some creative choices that made the movie flawed in my opinion.  I don't think its anywhere near as good as Empire or A New Hope, which work in so many different ways.  It's on par with Return of the Jedi and has a lot of the same problems that movie had.

I'm absolutely not trying to make the movie less enjoyable for anyone else.

He's getting torched for it, but I pretty much agree with Max Landis' perspective that Rey is a bit of a boring character because she's already good at everything.  I'm not going to use the phrase "Mary Sue" because I think there's an uneven description on what exactly that means. 

At the end of the day, she was cool, but she's only cool in a Superman way.  She's shown to be *great* at scavenging, fighting, piloting, using the force, and using a lightsaber.  All without any mention, on-screen, of any lineage or training she might've had before the movie.  And while, yeah, she's probably Luke's daughter and might've even had prior Jedi training that was mind-wiped, that doesn't really help her characterization in *this movie*

Han's death also bothered me.  The first act implies that he abandoned his family after Ben went to the dark side.  Fair enough and fitting with Han's character - he was always the rogue, and it's hard for those guys to be daddy.  But there doesn't seem to be any indication that he's really worried about it since then.  Then he sees Leia, sees Ben, and that's what opens him up to be killed?  I'm not saying that he didn't love his son or that he was a bad father - I just didn't think the movie set him up for that to be his weakness.  But it was still very tense - my heart was beating out of my chest when it was happening.

I don't know.  It's way better than the prequels, but it felt more like a prologue to another movie than an actual chapter in the series.

Well, identical doubles is something the show used.  It'd be *very* unlikely that you'd instantly recognize any of your doubles.  For there to be an identical double of you, the same sperm and the same egg that created you would've had to have created your double at the exact same time.  Anything else changes and you'd be a "fraternal double" like Mallory.  Or the opposite gender.  You'd be more like siblings than doubles 99.9999999% of the time.  And that's if exist at all.  Or if your parents exist, let alone if they found each other.  If your grandfather doesn't go into the right bar at the right time, maybe he never meets your grandmother.  So you don't exist and one of your parents doesn't exist.

Even if your double was identical, think of all the things that could've happened to make you look not identical.  Maybe you get really into bodybuilding and put on a hundred pounds of muscle.  Or you decide you don't care if you get fat and weigh 400 pounds.  Maybe you decide to grow your hair out.  Or shave it off entirely.  Maybe you decide you look better with a beard.  Or you live on a world with a smaller food supply and are skinny and weak.  Maybe you're born male but end up as a transgender woman.

Sliders seemed, most of the time, to work on the idea that certain things are similar to Earth Prime.  They stayed in the same block in the same city of the multiverse.  So even though the Russians took over America, Quinn's parents 1) still exist 2) still fell in love and got married 3) conceived Quinn the same exact time they did on Earth Prime and 4) Quinn's physical features stayed the same for him to be virtually identical.  Same with Wade and Arturo.  The odds of that are impossibly small, but they exist.  And that's just sorta the rules the show lived by.

SPOILERS

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Well, you might've gotten your wish, Informant.  Not sure if it's a tease of a tease (and if all the "you know I'd do anything for my little girl" talk means Lance is the guy who dies), but it certainly looks like Felicity is in trouble.

Solid winter finales for both.  Definitely fear both Zoom and Dahrk.

Okay so I finally watched last week's "Heroes Join Forces" - I liked the threat they faced.  Vandal Savage was good, and it used both casts very well.  It's always cool to see Oliver hold his own alongside Barry, and I think the worlds mesh way better than I thought they were going to at first.

But something was off.  I wasn't a huge fan of using time travel again - especially since Barry still hasn't cleaned up the mess from the last time he did it.  I still think it's weird that Oliver discovers he has a child on the Flash (just like we discovered it last year on the Flash) - I know it was mostly done on Arrow, but actual reveal was done on Arrow.  The show seems to assume that people watch both shows (and I know at least two people who only watch one). 

And I felt like Barry was underused.  It's like when Batman and Superman are fighting - they tend to depower Superman so that it isn't ridiculous for Batman to be fighting the same villain(s).  Barry just kinda stood around for a lot of the same fight.  I still think he could've fought Vandal by himself.  He was an exceptional fighter but still just human.

I also feel like the show is doing a lot to set up Legends of Tomorrow instead of focusing on their own stuff.  I like the crossovers that are a little more organic (like when each Oliver/Barry called the other when they needed help with a specific overwhelming task).  Leaving Kendra with Team Arrow seemed a little forced, especially since Barry knows that Oliver has his own problems (although this was also written into the show).

All in all, I'm really enjoying both shows.  I think Arrow Season 4 has been a big improvement.  I just thought the crossover series was a bit underwhelming.

Yes.  I think Dick Grayson is a great character that needs a spotlight.  Like I said a while back on the older board, I was hoping we'd get the full gambit.  Original Robin leaves, Teen Titans, Jason Todd, Death in the Family, Barbara/Killing Joke/Oracle, Tim Drake, etc

My fear is that there's one Robin, Dick Grayson, and he's the one that's dead.  Robin hasn't been in any of the promotional material outside of the vandalized suit.  A Robin is dead.  Now maybe Bruce doesn't want to include Dick (if Jason is dead) in his war on Superman, but he brings Alfred.  And even if Bruce/Dick had a falling out and he's out there Nightwinging it - Bruce has been working on this plan for years in that case.  Dick's a smart guy.  He'd figure it out, right?  And just show up?  Which is maybe what happens but if Dick Grayson shows up in a weird blue/black costume randomly, I think that's gonna confuse the heck out of some people.

Yeah I think the world as a whole would be pretty split on someone like Batman.  In a lot of ways, J. Jonah Jameson should be in Batman comics instead of Spider-Man comics.  It's easy to see Batman as a criminal.  He's violent, and he's a textbook vigilante instead of a costumed superhero.  I think most adults would be torn on whether or not he's good for the city, not even including the thought that Batman is the *reason* many of his villains are created (which wouldn't necessarily be public knowledge).

But a 12-year-old?  He'd love it.  There'd be no politics.  There'd be no shades of gray.  There'd be a badass ninja who dresses like a bat and beats up criminals, and boys that age would love that.  Absolutely love it.  So if we're looking at Clark's childhood happening while Batman's career is at it's peak, I can virtually guarantee that Clark dressed up as Batman for Halloween.  Or he had close friends that did, and Clark didn't because he didn't want to look like a follower.

I know I harp on the age thing, but part of me is convinced that Superman should WORSHIP Batman because of that part of his childhood.  That he should trust that the Batman would never be bad.  Because it'd be his hero.  And that would be a cool thing to add to the movie - the reason Batman and Superman is such a "fair" fight is that it *kills* Clark to have to fight his idol growing up.

And I just don't think stuff like that has even been considered.  Batman would've been the only costumed hero in the world.  No powers.  Just a guy out there doing his best to clean up the streets.  Clark would respect that.  Especially a young Clark without a full grasp of the world.  And Clark's a nostalgic guy - I think he'd have a soft spot for Batman - not hate him.

The timeline is just weird to me.  I hope it makes more sense than I'm fearing it does.

Yeah and there's enough from the trailers to show that they're going to do some work with the timeline to explain what's going on.  Not only are there newpaper clippings of what Batman's been up to, there's a couple actual shots from Batman fighting crime in Gotham (or at least fighting street-level crime somewhere).  There's at least one scene in Gotham (riddler question marks would only be there, right), and we saw the DCCU's version of the Thomas/Martha Wayne deaths.  Not to mention seeing Man of Steel from Bruce's perspective.  So they'll explain who Bruce is and what he's been doing and how it relates to Superman.

And what's funny, it's the the way the question is phrased that bothered me - and that could be fixed in editing or taking a different take (which happens all the time).  "Mr. Wayne, what do you think of the reappearance of the Batman?" is a question that seems to cover all Clark's bases within the true context of the movie.  Batman disappeared.  Now he's back.  Let's ask the biggest man in Gotham about that.

I can break down my other issue in SPOILERVISION

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Lex's characterization.  I don't get it.  He's worn the wig in every appearance, and he just comes across as a goofy character.  I don''t see Lex that way.  Even when he's trying to be scary, it doesn't come off as intimidating, and I just never really bought Eisenberg's casting (I didn't buy Ledger's casting either so this one is just a thought now).  I've always thought Lex should be the same size or bigger than Superman.  Where Lex is an imposing man who still looks at Superman and thinks he can take him.  Someone who might shatter his hand trying to punch Superman.  I actually thought Kevin Spacey was cast correctly, and I thought he did a great job.

Now the Doomsday thing really didn't bother me.  It's just a tease.  I think the Zod twist is kinda cool.  Doomsday is a guy who can realistically fight the DC Trinity on his own.  And unlike the Avengers movies, we're going to see 3-on-1 as opposed to 7-on-150 or whatever.

But Affleck's Batman voice?  Isn't it just as bad as Bale's?  And just like the end of Dark Knight Rises, where Bruce is using the voice even though EVERYONE THERE knows who he is, Batman is using the voice when talking to Superman in a scene that's gotta be in Act 3 - when Superman has to know his identity by now.

I'm going to see it.  And it's going to get it's full chance.  But, man, that trailer brought up a ton of concerns.

That was pretty cool.

I've always thought about a Sliders video game.  It'd actually be relatively easy to do, I'd think (I'm not a programmer).  But you'd just need to create one area of town/city and then alter it for however many levels/worlds you want.  Maybe one is old west, one is Nazi, one is Confederate, etc.

I imagine the plot would be some sort of "Chasing a Rickman-like character" and/or Kromaggs.

Outside of the last ten minutes of this last episode, I don't think the Olicity stuff has been bad.  I thought Felicity has been a pretty fun character again, and I thought the chemistry has been pretty good.  I even struggled to remember whether or not Olicity was even together until all the lovey dovey stuff this week.

Someone needs to put "you bet on a game you don't understand?  you're an idiot!" on youtube.  I love that scene so much.

Did you watch the trailer?  Trailer seems pretty clear cut what the show is supposed to be - Netflix might just release trailers later than other networks, which is why they resorted to the other marketing campaign.  I don't remember how soon before the show the Daredevil trailer showed up.