DC Superheroes on TV (CW & HBO Max) (Page 15 of 15)

I think the problem with THE FLASH in Season 7 is the same problem as S5 and S6: it's too slow. In Seasons 1 - 4, THE FLASH would complete in six episodes what other shows would take an entire season to do: powers were learned, secrets were revealed, identities were exposed, hidden agendas were unveilled. Season 5, however, had a new showrunner and THE FLASH spent an entire season with Barry being unable to stop one guy with a magic knife. Season 6 did something neat: it split the season into two arcs. However, the individual scripts were still extremely slow. Characters wander around; they hesitate from taking action, filibustering until a commercial break, then filibustering again until somebody gives somebody else a sappy emotional speech.

The writers are struggling to write for a speedster because a speedster demands that each episode have at least three situations that can only be solved with clever application of superspeed and the current team can come up with about ten situations per season. Superspeed is extremely hard to write and the one person who was quite good at it was also crazy abusive and rightly fired off the show and blacklisted from the industry.

I think THE FLASH needs a certain mad sci-fi inventiveness at the helm, but all the writers I can think of would not be considered by the CW or WB because they don't have any TV experience.

**

BATWOMAN is in a difficult position with its fans. After Ruby Rose quit the show, the fans cried for Wallis Day, but the showrunners felt that swapping Rose for Day would be visually nonsensical and instead found a new character to wear the Batwoman costume. A few episodes into Season 2, they decided that they would recast Rose's role after all but offer an explanation for why the face was different. But even after casting Wallis Day, BATWOMAN delayed and prevaricated: she was wearing a facial covering in a cameo and then absent for several episodes, then she was wearing a wooden mask, then she had her face restored but altered to look like Wallis Day instead of Ruby Rose, then she was possessed by Circe Sionis.

It reminded me a bit of what Slider_Quinn21 once said about HEROES where Bryan Fuller delayed until nearly the end of Season 1 before having Peter and Sylar fight and then it was just flashing lights with all the action off-camera -- a warning that there wasn't really much content there with two invincible beings fighting to a stalemate.

BATWOMAN delayed having Wallis Day play Kate Kane until the Season 2 finale -- and having seen Day play the role, I can see why. The story claims that Kate is the same person as Ruby Rose but with Wallis Day's face, but Day's performance is simply wrong. Day could be a great Kate Kane, but she can't play Ruby Rose's Kate Kane. Ruby Rose's Kate was distant, troubled, secretive, withdrawn. She was uncomfortable making eye contact with Mary. She was guarded with Luke, trusting him fully as an ally but hesitant to think of him as a friend and determined to make him subordinate when Luke considered himself her boss.

In contrast, Wallis Day's Kate Kane laughs with Luke and winks at him. She unreservedly hugs Mary and touches her face sweetly. She warmly shakes Ryan Wilder's hand. This is not Ruby Rose's Kate Kane. This is a much more tactile, friendly, open, trusting presence than Ruby was at her warmest.

I suspect that BATWOMAN's writers have never had a firm grasp on Ruby Rose's Kate Kane. As originally scripted, judging from the audition pages, Kate Kane was supposed to be a sophisticated socialite, a smooth-talking high society elite who felt she didn't belong anywhere but in the US Army which had rejected her. Rose auditioned for the role and ignored Kate's scripted sauveness, making Kate Kane an angry punk girl, a seething leather-clad rocker with two angry fists and a glowering scowl as her default expression. The BATWOMAN writers seemed content to write their Kate and let Rose interpret the scripts as she saw fit.

Wallis Day's Kate seems to be the originally scripted version of Kate without Ruby Rose rewriting her dialogue and reinterpreting the words, and I recognize this as a variation on the comic book version of Kate Kane. I do not recognize it as the Ruby Rose version of Kate Kane. And I think the BATWOMAN writers also do not recognize this version of Kate Kane, don't know what to do with this version of Kate Kane -- so they sent her away on some offscreen quest.

I don't know if Wallis Day will return. If Kate could be offscreen for half a season and then come back, then Wallis' version of Kate could work as Kate having changed after her travels. But Day recently retweeted a podcast titled, "How BATWOMAN Failed Kate Kane." This would indicate that Day is not contracted for Season 3, not happy that she isn't contracted for Season 3, and not concerned about upsetting BATWOMAN's writers and showrunner with her retweet because she doesn't believe there will ever be an offer for Season 3.

I'm sad about that. But the version of Kate Kane that Ruby Rose played is gone, has been since Rose left the show, and she can never come back. Wallis Day may have been a fan favourite, but when I saw her playing Ruby Rose's Kate Kane onscreen -- fairly or unfairly, she wasn't Ruby Rose's Kate Kane, she wasn't Wallis Day's Kate Kane. She was Ruby Rose's body double at best. It was the equivalent of body double Maria Stanton playing Wade in "Requiem"; it is an obvious mirage and utterly unconvincing.

Wallis Day auditioned to play Ryan Wilder. She was up for being the lead of BATWOMAN's second season and the writers could have brought her in as Kate Kane right away. They must have considered it. And it's clear to me why BATWOMAN's creators decided to bring in a new character instead and it's clear to me why they delayed having Day play Kate for as long as possible. They knew it wouldn't be the same.

I suspect that the situation with Bruce Wayne is that BATWOMAN's team can request clearance to use the character and their requests have been granted twice a season: once for CRISIS, once to use an imposter Bruce at the end of Season 1, once to wrap up the Hush arc and once for a dream sequence.

**

LEGENDS has been super-fun. SUPERMAN & LOIS is like a movie.

There was a period where Geoff Johns, producer on the Arrowverse shows, was also DC's Chief Creative Officer and the head of the Warner Bros. division for DC films. You'll recall that on ARROW, the Suicide Squad and a teased Harley Quinn appearance were abruptly curtailed along with Deadshot's character. However, Johns was later promoted to running DC films in 2016 at which point ARROW's showrunner Marc Guggenheim directly contacted Johns and requested permission to use Deadshot in a Season 5 episode and Johns granted the request.

It's likely Johns who loosened the chains to allow more use of Batman properties. At this point, Johns has been dismissed from the DC film division due to the crash and burn of JUSTICE LEAGUE. However, he's still employed as a producer on individual shows and individual movies and likely still has a degree of influence to encourage letting BATWOMAN use Bruce Wayne -- although he no longer has the power to approve licensing requests.

Spoilers for Superman & Lois

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So the Diggle arc is so far a big tease.  It's nice to have John back, and its good that Ramsey is getting some work.  But most of these stories could be anyone.  Diggle showing up on Legends was an easter egg more than anything.  Him showing up on Batwoman was a cameo at best.  I think his story on Flash was good and it was nice to see him suit up again, but his guest spot on Superman and Lois was nothing.  He doesn't seem to be in any different place than he was after Flash.

Maybe the Supergirl appearance will tie everything together, but I don't know if we have any more information than we had before.  I was hoping the extra budget from Superman & Lois could allow them to do *something* but I guess not.

At this point, I assume we'll finish this year with just as much info as we had before the year started.  John found something.  He has to decide what to do.  Blah blah blah.

Just watched SUPERMAN AND LOIS. I totally agree with Slider_Quinn21 that Diggle didn't add anything to the story nor did the story add anything to Diggle. David Ramsey is a bottomless well of warmth, charisma, humanity and decency and he makes a meal out of the morsel he's given, having Diggle remind John Henry Irons that he has a choice in whether or not to kill Superman and that it's a choice he can make in the moment, not at the outset.

Aside from that, this episode strikes me as a thinly veiled rebuke, repudiation and rejection of MAN OF STEEL, BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN and Zack Snyder's plans for the JUSTICE LEAGUE sequels. Lois declares that having an armoured human fight Superman or kill Superman is totally pointless; taking down one Kryptonian isn't going to matter if there's an army of superpowered beings planning to take over the Earth.

The possessed Superman hears Lois through the Steel armour's communications system and hesitates; rather than battling on just to win a fight and establish his superiority in combat, Superman pleads for John Henry Irons to kill him to save the world and John Henry Irons pleads for Superman to live and save his family. An enemy becomes an ally; an antagonist becomes a friend and nobody had to kill anyone.

In fact, killing anyone would have been self-defeating: killing a Zod-possessed Superman would have meant no more weapons against Tal-Rho. Killing Tal-Rho would have prevented Superman and John Henry and the Department of Defence from learning of his plans and assets around Earth. Force and violence aren't solutions in themselves; Superman and John Henry need to work together to learn how to solve the problem. This is what superheroes are for. SUPERMAN AND LOIS is wonderful.

I liked the FLASH finale up to a point -- that point being when the Flash and the Reverse Flash and Godspeed began fighting with lightsabers.

...

I'm all for repurposing and drawing on other people's ideas for inspirations -- such as in one story where I copied Chris Chibnall's mystery cubes from the DOCTOR WHO story "The Power of Three" and presented the Doomsday Clocks, chronometers counting down to doomsday. But the image of people fighting with laser swords is so firmly, fundamentally identified with STAR WARS that I think it's absurd to try to co-opt it or present it in a way that isn't very obvious and clumsy in being a ripoff. SMALLVILLE often ran into similar problems in Seasons 8 : they would devote an episode to pastiching a movie and there were many in each season: SAW, RESIDENT EVIL, CLOVERFIELD, SAW again, THE MATRIX, SPARTACUS, THE HANGOVER -- but there was at least a shift into that specific genre: the horror-trap movie, the zombie film, found footage, cyberpunk, gladiator trials, bachelor parties.

When Barry and Thawne and Godspeed become Jedi Knights, it doesn't feel like a homage to a genre. It's simply lifting the iconography from some other work instead of having THE FLASH create its own. There was no rationale -- none -- for why Barry has previously thrown lightning but now holds it in a solidified form in his hands or why one end of the energy is harmful but the end of which Barry holds it is harmless.

Bart and Nora were fun, the show is still being written as a series of characters filibustering with whiny emotional issues until somebody gives them a sappy motivational speech. It's nice that unlike SLIDERS, THE FLASH bid farewell to mainstays Carlos Valdez and Tom Cavanagh but both are happy to return for a few episodes a season and that good relationship has been maintained. But it's clear to me that THE FLASH is simply existing to fill a timeslot at this stage.

I didn't think THE FLASH was a mess this year, but it also wasn't very successful. Following up on Season 6's unfinished arcs in three episodes (I think) was difficult for me; I couldn't remember who any of these people were. It was also laughably awkward to have Ralph make a final appearance with a bag over his head.

Then Season 7 launched into an intriguing arc: Barry having created new superhumans and the Speed Force manifesting as his mother -- except the characters all started referring to the new superhumans as Barry and Iris' children and this insistence on a familial bond was clumsy, awkward and unearned. But I understand that they were trying to get into the themes of family even though they did so with new characters who were effectively strangers.

The Speed Force as a threat -- that's a great idea, but hopelessly muddled by the bizarre need for these adults we'd never seen much of to address Barry and Iris as "Dad" and "Mom."

There was a bizarre two episodes where Barry was calling out to Iris and never hearing back from her because Candice Patton took two episodes off to see family and had to re-quarantine -- except the show did something clever by actually having Iris absent without Barry's knowledge. That was very clever and funny. Then we come to a finale where Godspeed is an attempt to have another speedster villain. But Thawne was terrifying as Barry's mentor who knew Barry better than Barry knew himself. Zoom was terrifying because of his sadism and cruelty and ability to plant himself on the team. Savitar was somewhat frightening in being "the future Flash."

But Godspeed was just a booming voice, a neat costume -- and ultimately not that frightening because Godspeed spent more time fighting other Godspeeds than menacing the team. It was great to see Nora and Bart. The casting for Bart Allen was superb. Making Bart the son of Barry Allen as opposed to a distant descendant was exactly the right change of simplicity that I would expect for a TV show.

Ultimately, Season 7, like everything since the middle of Season 4, lacks a certain craft and finesse. It's very well-intentioned, but the skill is not there. I didn't mind Season 7, but it was rather uninspired.

Yeah, I totally agree with you on FLASH. That said -- I really liked SUPERNATURAL even in the middle years. Yes, the show was in a holding pattern. But I would argue that SUPERNATURAL made Sam and Dean so vivid and distinct and their relationship so powerful that just spending more time with them was worth it. THE FLASH has not defined its characters and their relationships with nearly the same depth that SUPERNATURAL gave Sam and Dean. THE FLASH's relationships are extremely thin: someone has to do something obvious and immediate but hesitates and prevaricates until someone else offers a sappy motivational speech. In contrast, Sam and Dean have a complex relationship that existed long before the show even started.

So we had the end of the Diggle arc across the shows.  Spoilers for all those episodes:

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So....what was that.  I get that David Ramsey was available, and it was easy to get a deal to get him on board.  But his character is essentially in the same place it was when Arrow ended.  Or maybe even a bit less clear. 

One episode was just one of Diggle's relatives so that one doesn't really count.  But the other episodes didn't accomplish much.  They established that Diggle is having headaches - I guess turning down the ring gave him headaches.  So he bounces from hero's city to hero's city trying to figure out these headaches and never did.  The Batwoman episode seemed like an intro.  The Flash episode moved the plot along a little but seemed more like a tease of things to come.  The Superman and Lois one was nothing.  I had hopes that, since Superman probably knows at least one Green Lantern, that might be where he talks about it.  And the budget is higher so they could maybe afford to do some Green Lantern CG.

And when nothing happened, I thought maybe they were saving it for Supergirl.  They have a) a bunch of characters that can fly and b) a bunch of characters that would probably know of the Green Lanterns.

And although we got Diggle explaining that he turned it down because he didn't want to leave his family, it ends with him deciding to do it?  All without really discussing it with anyone?

Maybe they aren't even allowed to say Green Lantern.  And maybe they're hoping that Diggle can appear on the Green Lantern show or something.  But, man, this was something I was excited about and I don't think they did much with it.  He wasn't bad, but I was just thinking they might spend more time with Diggle and moving his plot along.

I apologize, I am so behind on the Arrowverse right now; I am three episodes behind on SUPERGIRL. I will catch up to BATWOMAN this weekend if working on Saturday for a Project doesn't get in the way.

*sigh* Really letting our community down here.

*sigh* I'm only on Episode 14 of SUPERGIRL this year. Still three behind. In terms of Kara getting sidelined -- she was sidelined for the first handful of Season 6 episodes, but there was no way around that, the actress was on maternity leave.

However...

I feel like COVID and Melissa Benoist's unavailability and this being the final season has hit the writing staff hard and they didn't cope well with a difficult situation. Zor-El's decision to combat climate change in one episode should have been a fascinating and twisted moral conundrum of the superfriends potentially having to fight the person trying to save the planet -- but the show backed off and had Zor-El say he was having a nervous breakdown and gave the nonsensical message that climate change is a top priority but to do anything about it would be going too far.

This is yet another situation where SUPERGIRL desperately wants to be relevant and confront real world situations and current events but wants to get in and out in one episode and get back to capes and tights next week and doesn't want to say too much of anything. Previous examples include the gun control episode where non lethal armanents are chosen over handguns except non lethal gear in SUPERGIRL's world tends to be much more reliable than on our planet. And that episode of ARROW which Slider_Quinn21 hilariously described "The one where Wild Dog gives up his child for adoption and declares himself an unfit father because he spilled a bowl of soup."

And yet, paradoxically -- Supergirl fighting a fifth dimensional imp for her final season isn't really doing it for me either because SUPERGIRL is a social justice show. That label may be viewed as an insult by those who have mercifully left us and gone to Parler, but I see it as a compliment. I'm a pretty social justice-invested person myself, so it's possible that SUPERGIRL really should have committed to Zor-El as a Season 6 antagonist (if not villain); Zor-El becomes a terrorist targeting all causes of climate change and the superfriends have to figure out whether to help him or stop him.

I quite enjoyed the episode where Supergirl has to fight both explosives and urban sprawl destroying low income housing. That was really strong, as was the return of Mxyzptlk. But then we get another social justice hour that was once again oddly artless with Kelly Olsen giving nonsensical monologues about how all her white friends have blindspots and aren't hearing her and aren't paying attention to her and laying out how white people need to respond to black outrage and black priorities. I don't disagree with anything that actress-turned-screenwriter Azie Tesfai says in her story, but I find it really clumsy for Tesfai to put her public service announcement into her own character's dialogue for Tesfai to deliver on camera.

There is a certain craft and skill to writing dialogue and Tesfai either doesn't understand it or does a very convincing impression of someone who doesn't. There is a stilted unnaturalness to Kelly's every conversation in the episode being her delivering a lecture on white privilege; there's no sense of an actual conversation or argument or any natural flow of human interaction or conflict; it's Kelly giving a lecture on white fragility. This dialogue would be terrific if delivered by Tesfai at a public speech or workshop on being more sensitive to people of colour.

These words would be perfect if performed in a one-woman show onstage. But when put in a TV conversation between characters, it exposes the artifice of TV conversations in the first place; it becomes a single person monologue that fumbles to give the other characters a reason to be in the season. It's important to address how white people ignore or fail to notice black concerns and crimes on blacks being ignored, but a TV episode needs to show it rather than have Tesfai write her character as describing it in dialogue; it's a visual medium, not an audio drama.

Lena being a magical witch is an odd choice for a character who has been previously defined as a methodical and at times ruthless scientist. It's a bit like handing Quinn a magic sword and having him fight a dragon; it's a very strange direction that doesn't tap into the character's strengths.

I think William is effective at representing the average National City person and that his role as an embedded reporter fulfills that role really well.

Anyway. I think that in all the struggle to try to figure out how to make SUPERGIRL episodes without getting anyone sick; to make episodes without extras; to make episodes of SUPERGIRL without Supergirl being available -- well, there seems to be less energy available for figuring out what these episodes are even about.

I think that's fair.  But at the same time, outside of those episodes, what is Kara's overall arc?  What does she learn?  What does she struggle with?  What does she want in life?  I feel like I could answer those questions better with most of the characters on the show before I could with Kara.  She does seem like she's just kinda there at times. 

Have we had any scenes with Kara in her apartment?  I feel like we're at Kelly and Alex's apartment a lot these days.  She got engaged and adopted a kid and went through some major character changes.  Kara hasn't done much of that.  And it doesn't have to all be about love interests and moving on in life.  Kara doesn't need a boyfriend to experience growth, but she does need something.  All she's done in the last couple episodes is switch to pants.

I think CW fans are a bit toxic, and I think a lot of their outrage has to do with (POTENTIAL SPOILER FROM THE SERIES FINALE) but when I think about it, Kara doesn't seem like the main character in Supergirl.

Yeah, I think it might make some sense, but I think the Alex and Kelly plot was both introduced and strongly leaned into to try and appeal to the LGBT angle.

It's hard to accuse Supergirl of being anything other than inclusive.  I'm sure there are more inclusive shows on TV, but it's pretty inclusive.

I thought the Supergirl finale was....fine?

I thought all the returning faces were nice and showed some of growth of the show.  I also think any season 7 they would've done would've been much better than many of the last few seasons. 

I was also wondering about Batman in the Arrowverse.  The movies are going to have at least three Batmen (Affleck, Pattinson, and Keaton), so why can't there be another Batman on TV?  They've already connected the DCEU to the Arrowverse and cast Batman, so I don't know why they couldn't do it.  It would need to be its own thing, but I think a Batman show alongside Superman & Lois could rejuvenate the Arrowverse.  If they're going to do it, now's the time.

I ended up spoiling more than I thought so I'll put a tag up just in case:

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Yeah, I think it's totally fine that Kara didn't have any romantic subplot for most of the last few seasons, and I think it's fine that they didn't force something with Mon-El after he was gone for so long.  I think sometimes these shows focus too much on romantic subplots, and people don't have to be defined by their relationships.

I just think that a lot of her decision to reveal herself wasn't really built up.  It kinda felt like Seven and Chakotay - this is fine and maybe makes sense but when did this happen?  And in a season that started with Kara dealing with PTSD, having that wrapped up pretty quickly, and then having Kara face off in these "gauntlets", the idea that they never really set up "I'm going to reveal myself to the world" is a bit weird.  They had time and room for a plot like that.  I just felt like the last season was clunky, and Kara's development kinda suffered.

I also thought for a little bit that Mehcad Brooks didn't come back.  When Guardian showed up fully suited with an augmented voice, I wondered if that was going to be a workaround, but I was genuinely glad to see him.  And Winn.  And it was fun to see the "original superfriends" get a scene together because they've really come a long way.  I loved the scene with them and Barry when they learned about the multiverse.

I'm sad about the fact that, with no pandemic, we probably would've had more cameos.  Maybe a Kate Kane (either version I guess), probably a Clark and/or Lois, maybe some/all of the Justice League.  I know that they have to be able to deal with their own problems, but one of my favorite moments in Arrowverse history is when Oliver and Firestorm showed up to fight the Reverse Flash.  Why have a combined universe if they can't rely on each other for threats that are otherworldly?

But it was good and I'll miss Supergirl.

THE FLASH: What has gone wrong? I was rewatching the FLASH pilot this morning and I've come to realize something: THE FLASH was fundamentally a show about transformative trauma, but that is no longer the case.

In the pilot, Central City has been traumatized by the particle accelerator explosion. Dr. Caitlin Snow has been traumatized by the death of Ronnie Raymond. Cisco has been traumatized by his prize invention blowing up and killing people. Barry Allen has been traumatized by the horrific and inexplicable murder of his mother with his innocent father jailed for the crime.

When Barry encounters the Weather Wizard, the Wizard kills a man and the sequence ends with Barry crawling out of an overturned car. Barry is reeling, spiraling, tells his foster guardian and police officer Joe what he's seen -- and Joe howls at him that he's delusional, that his father is a murderer, that there is no such thing as a superpower. He retraumatizes Barry.

Barry stumbles into STAR Labs and blames Dr. Wells for the metahuman crisis and the murder and Wells accepts all blame, but tells Barry he has no business getting involved in the situation or trying to save anyone or stop any threat whatsoever. "You're not a hero. You're just a young man who was struck by lighting." He tells Barry that he's nothing more than a trauma victim. Barry tries to run away from it.

It doesn't work: even at superspeed, he flashes back to the night he saw his father forced into the back of a police car in handcuffs. The night he found his mother's dead corpse, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Then he flashes back to the present; his jacket has burst into flame from the friction of his speed. THE FLASH, at least for Seasons 1 - 2, was about trauma. About experiencing savage, violent, dangerous, threatening, disturbing and mind-breaking event which form crippling, self-destructive memories that might not ever fade. And about Barry trying to outrun them.

But even at superspeed, Barry can't escape them, so he goes to see the most damaged, disturbed, broken and traumatized human being in the Arrowverse; he goes to see Oliver Queen. Barry tells Oliver: Barry is scared, unskilled, just a random person struck by lightning. But Oliver tells Barry that he has something special, a desire to protect people and shield them, that his speed will allow him to guard others from harm.

"I don't think that bolt of lighting struck you," Oliver tells Barry. "I think it chose you."

Barry confronts the Weather Wizard again but this time with a suit to permit his speed and with a support team to advise him. He unravels the Weather Wizard's tornado and defeats him; this time, Joe is present to witness it. Joe apologizes for his outburst and pledges to help Barry locate any other criminal metahumans and to find the truth about the murder of Barry's mother; Joe will work through Barry's trauma with him.

In Season 1, Episode 12, "Crazy For You," the teaser shows a car accident with a husband and wife inside the car. Barry arrives, superspeeds the husband out. The husband turns back to the car which explodes. The husband screams for his wife -- only to find that she's standing right next to him; Barry got her out in the seconds it took for the man to turn his head.

I remember watching this scene and feeling deeply moved. I was watching it with a girlfriend who told me she found the scene bizarre; it had nothing to do with the Peek-a-Boo villain of the week and her teleportation, no relevance to the plot. Why was it there? Seeing it again now: it was about a potentially traumatic moment that Barry averted.

THE FLASH is a show about transformative trauma. Season 1: the traumatic murder of Barry's mother. Season 2: the trauma of Wells' betrayal. Season 3: the trauma of Barry's father being murdered and the Flashpoint timeline. Season 4: all of the S1 - S3 traumas collectively risking that all of Barry's progress and the life he's built since will be unraveled with his (wrongful) murder charges.

And then in Season 5: there was no trauma. Barry had recovered. Barry had his family. Barry had moved past the murder of both parents and giving him new traumatic episodes was too repetitive to keep doing. It's possible that once THE FLASH resolved its core theme, it should have ended.

Seasons 5 - 7 of THE FLASH are not about trauma. Seasons 5 - 7 of THE FLASH are not about transformative trauma. And Seasons 5 - 7 of THE FLASH are not about the wish to outrun trauma. This is why THE FLASH has lost its unique voice.

I thought part one of the Armageddon 5-part premiere was really fun.  And Ray Palmer's appearance was really fun and exactly the kind of thing I love about the shared Arrowverse.

Sorry if that was a spoiler.

He seems like a genuinely good guy, both on the show and in real life.  I was just thinking...there isn't really an episode of any of the shows that Ray has been on where he's had a "dark arc" is there?  It was a thousand years ago, but when he was originally on Arrow, I think he was a rival to Oliver but never really a villain.  And once he got to Legends, he was always just really nice, upbeat, and dependable.  That's pretty cool.

I wonder what would've happened in an alternate world where the CW ordered a "The Atom" show instead of Legends of Tomorrow (and I'm sorry that I keep writing out Legends out of existence when it's easily the most consistently good Arrowverse show going).  I think it would've been interesting to have Ray as the lead in a show and to see what they'd do with him.  What kind of team he'd put together, etc. 

I haven't thought about it much, but I'm now picturing a "Dick Grayson and Damien Wayne Batman and Robin" vibe.  Ray meets an angry orphaned young man who has a knack for science, and Ray has to soften his rough edges.

No worries about the spoilers. I'm about to sit down with a bottle of red wine (okay, club soda) in my private home cineplex (alright, fine, it's my tablet on a lap desk on my bed) with surround sound (okay, it's bluetooth headphones) to watch FLASH and BATWOMAN. But I would like to say something about Kara:

I would say that Kara has an extremely detailed, well-considered, thoughtfully presented and calculatedly performed character. Her defining moment in the show -- well, there are two that immediately come to mind. The first is in Season 1's "Falling" when three schoolgirls are mocking a classmate for wearing a red cape and an S-shirt. "You look so stupid!" one of them snarls. "Everyone thinks so, that's why you don't have any friends."

Kara descends from the sky. "I wouldn't say that," Kara tells the cape-clad girl. "I think you look pretty awesome -- " and after X-raying the girl's backpack to read the name on her notebook, Kara adds, "Laura."

"You know Supergirl!?" the mean girl sputters.

"I'm friends with all the nice girls," Kara says, pats Laura on the shoulder and flies off.

The second is in Season 5, Episode 18 when Lena Luthor knocks on Kara's door and stands in the hallway awkwardly, Lena having recently betrayed Kara, tricked her into thinking they were still best friends, manipulated Kara into stealing for Lena, stolen stolen Kryptonian technology from Kara, sent Kara into the Phantom Zone, teamed up with Lex Luthor and stopped taking Kara's calls for deep and meaningful girltalk.

Lena, with a shaky voice and on the verge of tears, says "I have made a terrible mistake. I was hurt. I was so hurt. And I thought I could get rid of the hurt. But I was wrong. I know what I said and I know what I did, but I am... I am really hoping that you will believe me right now -- Lex is working with Leviathan, and they are going to use Obsidian to do something terrible. Using the system that I made with my project. I didn't know I was helping them, but I did. And now I want to help stop them, so please, okay? I want to help stop Lex and Leviathan."

Kara stares at Lena with suspicion. Exhaustion. Grief. And then resolve. And then Kara pulls a chair from the table and asks Lena to sit down.

Kara Danvers is not "really nice." Kara Danvers is superhumanly nice. Kara Danvers is nice to a degree that it could conceivably be some sort of mental illness.

This characterization does not necessarily lend itself to character arcs beyond giving Kara an anxiety disorder in Season 1 and a panic attack in a Season 3 episode. Kara Danvers being superhumanly nice to the point where her friendship with Lena didn't end in some GAME OF THRONES type bloodbath is something that is hard if not impossible to find in the real world. Did you read the Return of Sliders thread, did you see me blow a gasket on Transmodiar? Have you read my status updates where in a fit of rage, I told my favourite actress that I'd found someone else to be my favourite actress and replaced her? Kara Danvers would never do anything like that. It is not easy to be nice in this world.

I freely admit that this isn't a complicated character and that Kara isn't exactly Olivia Dunham from FRINGE or Wanda in WANDAVISION. But, I mean, entire religions have been founded around one character who was defined as "nice to the point of being superhumanly nice," so Kara Danvers is in rare company.

It's okay for a lead character to be very simple and straightforward. Not every character should be so simple and most characters who lead TV shows aren't, but surely in a world of Dexters and Ryan Wilders and Dr. Houses, there's room for a character as plainly defined as Kara Danvers. Kara Danvers isn't just "really nice." Kara Danvers is superhumanly nice, so nice that she's either a Mormon out to recruit or she's Supergirl.

In my view, Kara Danvers having a very simple, straightforward, uncomplicated character meant that SUPERGIRL had a lot of range for a wide cast of characters and could incorporate a lot of identities and social justice themes into the show.

I'd consider that an asset, but I totally agree that the simplicity of Kara's character also made it impossible for SUPERGIRL to have only Kara carry the show or the season-long character arcs.

In contrast, Oliver Queen on ARROW was such a damaged, twisted, troubled story whose life was filled with such incident and trauma and grief and horror that he only ever needed one supporting character (and it didn't have to be anyone in particular, just someone he could talk to for expository purposes). Kara's character, however, could not have functioned without a large supporting cast.

Is Kara Danvers, being so simple, a boring character? I think there are plenty of people out there who consider Kara Danvers bland, uninteresting, flat and predictable. I think there are plenty of people who found Kara Danvers uplifting, inspiring, stirring, and that even if the character didn't have a lot of personal drama, the charisma of Melissa Benoist's performance made her a pleasure to have in the living room every week.

Certainly, regardless of where you fall on that scale, the Kara character was highly dependent on Melissa Benoist's performance to make a potentially dull personality into a warmly engaging onscreen presence. Kara Danvers was a total non-entity in a number of Season 4 episodes when Benoist was doing a musical and out of Vancouver. For those episodes, Kara was onscreen a lot but trapped in a lead-lined spacesuit with a helmet and Benoist filmed insert shots later of Kara's face under the helmet. Without Benoist to fully infuse the character with vulnerability and interest, there was no way to connect to the character.

A simple lead character can be handled poorly or well. I feel SUPERGIRL handled Kara's simplicity very well, but some shows don't.

SMALLVILLE's seventh season, for example, had a completely de-complicated version of the Clark Kent character: he wasn't in college studying to do anything, he had no parents onscreen anymore, he had no job beyond supposedly maintaining his farm, he had no ambitions for becoming a superhero, he wasn't actively looking for people to help, he wasn't actively looking for villains to stop. He wanted to do nothing but wake up on his farm next to Lana, harvest crops, milk cows and there was absoutely nothing there. The character seemed to drain energy from the stories when he appeared. The Season 7 Clark existed only to grant Tom Welling his contractually required screentime and Oliver and Lex became the de-facto lead characters. Thankfully, Season 8 gave Clark some actual goals again: to be come a journalist and to become a superhero.

I think Kara's lack of complexity was in SUPERGIRL's favour, but if handled poorly, it could have become a liability.

This has bothered me since Batwoman started, as you know, but if I were running the show, I would've gotten a meeting with the highest-up person at DC I could get a meeting with and I'd ask for a direct answer - will I ever get to use Bruce Wayne as Batman on my show?  If the answer is no, I kill off Batman.  Having his ghost around is too much.  I'd also have his villains die too.  Maybe a Superman-level villain wiped everyone out in some sort of battle royale and then Superman fixed it.  Or Kara.  Whoever.

Because having Batman just out there not doing anything is too big of a shadow.  I also wouldn't have set the show in Gotham but that's a different argument.

If there's a chance, I'm fine with running out the clock until they let Batman be on the show.  Putting Superman on Supergirl didn't hurt Supergirl, and I'm sure having occasional Batman visits would be fine for Batwoman.

I also think it's dumb that DC has three Batmen currently (Pattinson, Affleck, and Keaton) but thinks that one on TV would confuse people.

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I think Armageddon has been really fun.

Hunnh. BATWOMAN's seventh episode is its mid-season finale. Season 3 won't resume until January 12 and there are only six more episodes left in Season 3; BATWOMAN will only have 13 episodes this year. I guess that was to make the economics work considering its ratings and sales.

I've been meaning to write on BATWOMAN for weeks, but I've been so busy with upscaling Season 1 of SLIDERS and the other thing, what is it, that thing I do during the day, that job, the day job, but really upscaling Season 1 of SLIDERS.

Slider_Quinn21 is quite correct to point out the absurdities of Ryan Wilder somehow running Wayne Enterprises on Kate's say-so; it's also ridiculous that Kate was running what was described as a multibillion dollar corporation. Wayne Enterprises would not be a family business for Bruce's cousin to take and then hand over to her stepsister's roommate; there would be a shareholders' board and a hiring process.

There's also the fact that across the first two seasons of BATWOMAN, Wayne Enterprises *never* seemed like an actual business and Wayne Tower *never* came off as a workplace of any kind. I was shocked to see Tom Lenk guest-starring as the Wayne Enterprises crisis communications worker. I had been under the impression that Wayne Enterprises was just a holding company for various patents and businesses at this point that had outsourced all its work to smaller firms since Bruce had left Gotham in a fit of something or other. I didn't think anyone did any actual work there and figured that while Kate had access to the executive floors of Wayne Tower, the rest of it had probably been rented out as office space to other businesses.

Also, if we accept -- and you may not -- that superheroes are written and watched or read by predominantly left-of-center creators and viewers, then there has never been a more unfashionable time for a superhero to own or run a multinational corporation. In my head canon (and no one else's), Bruce Wayne would not run a multinational corporation. Bruce Wayne would run a not-for-profit foundation; Bruce's wealth would have come from his father having invented various small medical patents in surgical technologies and real estate investments.

The writers of BATWOMAN are obviously left-of-center creators, and they have deliberately left Wayne Enterprises vague and undefined. It's partially because Wayne Enterprises doesn't really matter except as a thin justification for how Batwoman can afford all her hardware; it's primarily because the writers don't really want to show their heroic lead character running a corporation of any kind but felt compelled to maintain that part of the mythos.

What exactly does Wayne Enterprises buy or sell or offer?

Also, what business was Queen Consolidated in, exactly? And what does STAR Labs do any more after the particle accelerator explosion? Of all the fictional 'businesses' in the Arrowverse, the only recurring ones that have ever really made sense are the dating app Upswipz, the CC Jitters coffee shop, the Big Belly Burger fast food chain and Palmertech (which at least had a self-explanatory name).

**

I find it interesting that BATWOMAN has accepted that it can't do what it set out to do in telling Kate Kane's story; BATWOMAN has become BATS OF GOTHAM: THE NEXT GENERATION, creating a second generation Batwoman, a second generation Joker, a second generation Poison Ivy and I assume that any day now, we'll get a second generation King Tut and a second generation Marsha Queen of Diamonds. It's all about the fragments and pieces left after Batman departed and... it's not the original plan and I'd have been baffled to watch the Season 1 premiere of BATWOMAN followed by the Season 3 premiere of BATWOMAN. BATWOMAN has become as alien to its starting point as SLIDERS. However, its heart is in the right place and the writers are making the best of a very strange turn on an unmapped road.

**

Caroline Dries, showrunner, worked on SMALLVILLE for many years. One of the more baffling things about SMALLVILLE: the way the manipulative, evil Lionel Luthor had a sudden redemption arc in Season 4/5 that made little sense where Clark briefly inhabited his body and suddenly, he was a good guy, trusted by Clark and treated like a father figure, welcomed at the Kents Thanksgiving dinner, etc..

Something similar but better has happened with Alice joining the team; BATWOMAN has a crazy but oddly sensible contrivance with Renee Montoya forcing the Bat-team to help her track down the villains' artifacts and making Alice help. But Dries also does a great job of showing how Alice is not accepted as a member of the team and will turn on them if it suits her; she's a ticking time bomb that still blows up when the gang least expects it.

**

I love Ryan Wilder, but with the mid-season finale of BATWOMAN, I have to ask if she is quite possibly the *worst* superhero to ever feature in the Arrowverse. She was handed the mantle of Batwoman by the original; she was given full control of Wayne Enterprises; she was given a personal physician; she was given a tech genius as her IT support; she was given a home; she was given billions in financial resources; she was given the Batcave; she was given the Batmobile. Seven episodes in, she has somehow managed to alienate her doctor and sign the rest away.

I find this highly relatable; if I were a superhero, I'd probably screw up in much the same way. I'm not knocking Ryan, but I do cringe for her self-esteem this year.