DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 23 of 28)

On BATWOMAN -- the show has outmanuvered me and the fanbase.

Refusing to recast Ruby Rose with a new performer to play Kate was nonsensical and the fans were outraged. But then they cast Javicia Leslie as a new character who'd become BATWOMAN -- which means demanding that Kate Kane return (and be played by Wallis Day) is also demanding that a terrific black woman be traded in for a white girl. Calling for a recast Kate after Leslie's hiring is now an untenable position. There is no way to argue for that without arguing against representation.

The CW superhero lineup, aside from Black Lightning, is alarmingly Caucasian across the board. I want Kate Kane back, I want Wallis Day... but I also really want black women and girls to see someone who looks like them fighting crime in a cape and cowl. And I guess the BATWOMAN showrunners saw an opportunity to do that when their lead actress quit a 5 - 7 year contract on them and saw a chance to challenge their overly white image. I don't support BATWOMAN without Kate Kane. But I support women of colour in leading roles, so I'll have to swallow my frustration over Kate.

**

I think Hartley is great. The thing about Hartley is that in the hands of a more conventional actor like Jerry O'Connell, Ralph would be a collection of behavioural tics (much like Jerry on his TV show CARTER where he plays a needy, attention-demanding actor). Hartley gave Ralph this earnest sincerity and empty-headedness that seemed genuinely goodhearted but with his myopic dimness making him behave in unwitting selfish ways.

I think Hartley could probably go back to school and get his vet license and pursue another career in his passion for animals.

I finished watching the last two episode of SUPERGIRL for Season 5. They were okay. Episode 18 and 19 were terrific in providing the long-awaited reconciliation between Kara and Lena. The action was strong. The conflicts between Nia and Brainy were effective. Luthor's plans with Leviathan came to a strong climax. Episode 19 was apparently the result of combining the original episode 19 with the incomplete finale that would have been episode 20, so we had a climactic final battle with Leviathan but no resolution with Lex Luthor. In addition, Brainy's status is left unknown, the DEO is destroyed and Alex starts a new life as a vigilante but there is no real follow-up on any of those three arcs. It's a little messy.

However, because the episode had a strong shot at the end of Kara and Lena shaking hands, there was a sense of closure that was satisfactory and certainly better than THE FLASH cutting off in the middle of an arc. It was the best SUPERGIRL could have done under the circumstances and it was good enough.

**

LEGENDS, because of its short episode order, didn't end on a confused cliffhanger and it works. I was disappointed that the original Zari didn't return and we have the Instagram influencer staying on full-time. Apparently, there was some thought to keeping both Zaris, but it became clear during filming that it'd be impossible to have one actress play two roles for an entire season. It feels really disappointing to me because I really liked original Zari's deadpan nonchalance in the face of madness. When SUPERNATURAL resurrected Charlie as her alternate universe doppelganger, I was able to accept the new Charlie as much as the old one because they were so similar in mannerisms and history even if the alternate Charlie had a darker demeanor. The alternate Zari, however, is effectively a different character played by the same actress.

**

Still no word on GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES. I desperately need to see Katherine MacNamara fighting crime with a bow and arrow. Please let this happen.

Well, Berlanti is spreading out from CW - his Green Lantern series and Strange Adventures are going to HBOmax (which will also host Titans and Doom Patrol).  The CW is kind of losing its grip on DC even before this.  HBOmax is sucking up the oxygen.

I think the CWverse would have clicked on a bit longer, but it could be another victim of the pandemic.  The shut downs accelerated what was going to happen anyway.

Yeah and what's weird about the HBOMax DC shows is that they aren't connected either.  Even though Doom Patrol literally spun off from Titans with a backdoor pilot, they didn't even stay in the same continuity.  No more Titans and Doom Patrol crossovers.  Same with Stargirl and Swamp Thing.  As popular as the Arrowverse was, no one really did much with the idea of interconnected comic book shows.

I totally forgot DOOM PATROL, SWAMP THING, STARGIRL and HARLEY QUINN existed. I've been too distracted by the Marvel Unlimited comic book app and work. Thank you for the reminder.

Guggenheim leaving the Arrowverse:

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/marc-guggen … rn-series/

Well, I don't really know how much juice the Arrowverse has in it.  As it stands right now, there's:

- The Flash (going into Season 7)
- Legends of Tomorrow (going into Season 6)
- Supergirl (going into sixth and final season)
- Black Lightning (going into season 4)
- Batwoman (going into season 2)
- Superman & Lois (about to premiere)
- Stargirl? (going into season 2)

Supergirl is ending.  Stargirl is only technically Arrowverse but is moving to the CW.  Black Lightning is slightly more connected but still pretty separate.  Legends is really it's own thing.  Batwoman is either going to be revitalized with a new lead or end quickly.  Flash is dragging.

As I said before, I think the best thing to do is to keep moving in the direction of "These are all separate shows and they have a yearly crossover" - because a lot of the narrative connections in the show are over.  Now that Kate Kane is gone, Batwoman is entirely separated from the other shows (it wouldn't be hard to reconnect but that's where it is).  When Supergirl goes, that'll sever a major tie between the other shows and Superman.  Legends is already its own thing and Sara/Oliver was the main tie there.  Black Lightning has always been separate.  Stargirl is in a different universe.

I think if they make an effort (Batwoman meets the team, Superman makes new connections outside of Kara, Stargirl comes over from Earth 2, etc) then they can keep it connected.  If not, they'll essentially be separate shows, and at that point, I don't even think the crossover is necessary.

Watched the first six episodes of STARGIRL. Wow! What a fun show. Thanks to Slider_Quinn21 for reminding me that it existed.

I've never really understood the appeal of the Justice Society of America, a group of barely published superheroes from WWII who were quickly eclipsed by the Justice League -- but STARGIRL manages to distill the appeal pretty effectively by revealing that the JSA is a multigenerational family of older veterans and young new heroes awkwardly co-existing. There is a wonderfully frank presentation of Courtney Whitmore as Stargirl: she's sullen, rude, self-centered, impulsive. She's also driven, inspired, daring, and has an instinctive sense of right and wrong.

It's interesting that the character is based on showrunner Geoff John's sister who died in a plane crash when she was 18 and this is Johns' portrait of his deceased sibling's persona and spirit. There is a wonderful sense of these awkward young people acquiring the mantles of dead and retired heroes and staggering in the footsteps of their predecessors.

The effects and location filming are impressive for a show that is supposedly to be moving to the CW for Season 2. The villains are creepy in how they've assimilated into civilian life but with their cruelty and sadism and pettiness in full force. There is a gleeful joy in superheroes in STARGIRL that I never felt when reading the first few issues of the 90s JSA comic book, although I confess that I never got to the Geoff Johns issues (he only started on the comic after the first story-arc).

It's funny how SMALLVILLE was always so embarrassed to really show superheroes, having all their superhero characters where street clothes with the same colours as the actual costumes. Then Geoff Johns wrote "Legion," "Society" and "Absolute Justice," all three of which declared that SMALLVILLE was a superhero universe and had a future and a past that had contained superheroes, and the show began to feel comfortable with costumes and superhero personas. Now Johns' joy in superheroes is mainstream and he's doing a show where all of his joy in superhero legacies and superhero families is presented in full force.

Posted this last year about TITANS (spoilers) and Iain Glen (spoilers).

There was one thing that threw me off in the first episode of STARGIRL -- I thought it was an odd comedy choice for the dying Starman to tell Pat Dugan that someone would have to carry on the legacy of the JSA's heroism and then immediately declare, "Not you," as though Pat, a bold, valiant, self-sacrificing, caring friend who could build giant battle robots out of old car parts was somehow not up to the task of being a superhero.

Pat is not particularly more flawed than the average person on the show and is prepared to crash his own car to protect Courtney's secret identity and embrace the indignity of being a disrespected stepfather because he understands that the girl has been in a permanent state of grief. I don't know why Starman thought so poorly of his supposed friend or why he worked with someone he regarded so badly.

But first episodes are where the writers and actors are still working out how to combine their talents. Maybe Pat was supposed to be grossly incompetent only for Luke Wilson's performance to steer the character differently.

About the STARGIRL budget -- the effects and fight scenes are definitely more lavish than on THE FLASH. However, I have to admit, I didn't really notice the budget cut from SUPERGIRL moving to the CW. Slider_Quinn21 said some of the makeup effects on Metallo were poor. I wasn't really looking. I don't doubt that the reduced budget does show, but I wasn't trying to see it, so I didn't.

I don't know how STARGIRL will handle it. Showrunner Geoff Johns says that the most expensive part, the startup costs of developing the STRIPE robot and the cosmic staff effects have already been paid for. But maybe, as with SUPERGIRL, I won't see what I'm not looking for.

I don't understand TITANS. I understand the kind of story it's trying to tell, I just can't figure out what it's trying to say or why it would say it with these characters. TITANS is a brutalist portrayal of superheroes as troubled warriors. But I don't understand why these characters are put to that purpose -- although a lot of the confusion is also in the original source material.

There is no real reason why street level crimefighters like Robin and Hawk and Dove are in the same show as an alien princess like Starfire, a child of supernatural horror like Raven, an X-Men type character like Beast Boy and a Wonder Woman supporting character like Donna Troy, and TITANS doesn't make a particularly clear case for this odd mashup. The original comic book didn't make a particularly clear case for this either; it was simply a place to gather some underused copyrights (Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl) with some additions (Beast Boy, Cyborg, Starfire) and see if readers would go for it (and they did, for a time).

It's also unclear why a show about a teen superhero team features the characters long after the team disbanded with none of the characters being teens and nobody being particularly heroic. Jason Todd is simply interested in beating people up. Dick Grayson abandons Raven. Hawk and Dove are 'heroes' looking to acquire money to retire and not be heroes anymore. All the Titans are keen to abandon Rose to Deathstroke. The majority of the characters are not teens, many aren't super, and none are heroes.

Setting that side, TITANS is about the psychological and physical wear and tear and toll of this difficult profession, and on that level, it succeeds -- I just don't understand what this show is trying to say about it. But it is moody, compelling, atmospheric and grimly ridiculous from the characters being ridiculously calm about bodyswapping and aliens and primordial forces of evil and Dick Grayson running around town after breaking out of jail like his being a convicted felon and fugitive is about as serious a charge as an overdue library book. TITANS is a successful show, although I couldn't tell you what it's successfully accomplished.

Stargirl ran on CW during season 1 anyway, so I doubt the budget will be all that different.  I really liked the show.  I found Titans season 1 to be incredibly boring.  Haven't got to S2 quite yet.

Budget for Stargirl may not be as big of a concern as one would initially think:

https://tvline.com/2020/08/13/stargirl- … different/

They’ve already done the heavy lifting of creating the CGI models in season one, and they get to bring that with them to CW.  They’re also not moving to Vancouver, so they’ll still have everything they built in Georgia without the expense of a move.

It won’t be like Supergirl which lost some things between Los Angeles and Vancouver (and Supergirl held up pretty good even with that).

An interesting theory about what the artificial speed force wil be:

S
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https://screenrant.com/flash-speed-forc … on-theory/

I really can't blame any studio for cancelling any project right now whether it's the second seasons of TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS and I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS or the final season of GLOW or GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES. The unfortunate truth is that filming any film or show under COVID conditions is extremely expensive, filming action shows even moreso, and with GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES, the contracts for all the actors and the production team would have expired after so long a wait.

It would have been very costly to regroup everyone and come to new terms under current conditions when it might be better just to assemble a new team and do a new project. Katherine MacNamara has been fighting evil with her bare hands on TV for years and I have no doubt she will find some other project in which to run, jump, dive, roll, tackle, punch, kick, swing and inspire.

I was really upset when WAYWARD SISTERS didn't get picked up because I really wanted Claire and Kaia together -- but also because it's unlikely that Kim Rhodes and Briana Buckmaster (Judy and Donna) will ever lead a show and certainly not together.

I feel less sad about GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES. It would have been great. But GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES needed Katherine MacNamara, Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavy a lot more than they needed GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES. All three actresses are well-positioned for plenty of leading lady TV and film work, MacNamara in particular will leap into another action role.

There will likely be an episode of LEGENDS to resolve the arc.

I liked the Batwoman premiere.  I thought it was well done and was handled about as well as possible.  I liked Ryan as a character, and they did enough to make Ryan fit on the show (since literally everyone on the show was related to her).  I wonder if they'll reference any of this on Supergirl or the other Arrowverse shows.

I thought it was a bit odd that they decided to go with a CW-budget Batmobile.  Is that going to be what Ryan uses as Batwoman?

Episode 2 of BATWOMAN. Once again, the writers are in an impossible situation: they have a season of BATWOMAN and they've lost the actress who plays Batwoman and for reasons that I grudgingly understand, they do not feel comfortable recasting Batwoman at this time with showrunner Caroline Dries saying that she thought it could only be jarring if character confrontations started by Ruby Rose's Kate Kane were concluded with some other actress' Kate Kane.

And with episode 2, we have another problem: if some new person, some nobody is going to be Batwoman now -- won't the show feel totally disconnected from Season 1? But episode 2 does something incredibly clever: it observes that Season 1 was very much about an absence, the absence of Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane constantly journaling to Bruce, asking this offscreen figure if she was making him proud, if he would approve of her, if she was good enough to take his place.

Season 2's second episode makes it clear that Season 2 is very focused on the void left by Kate Kane's absence. The city demands that Batwoman stand up to the Crows and protect the people. Alice has gone crazy(er). Sophie and Julia's romance has been shattered. Jacob Kane is so damaged he's terrorizing the only daughter with whom he can still be on speaking terms. Just as Bruce's disappearance left a void in Gotham for Season 1, Kate's absence has left a hole in Season 2 that characters once again circle, gingerly step past, stare into nervously or fall into completely.

This is something I really understand. I was 13 when I watched "The Exodus" and I think everything in my life after that to 2015 was a reaction to the death of Professor Arturo. Every anxiety, behavioural difficulty and psychological paralysis was the result of having watched a father get his brain sucked out before being shot and exploded, of being unable to confront and address this traumatic and terrible loss.

Season 2 truly feels like part of Season 1 despite losing its lead character. Just like Season 1, Season 2 is about all the ways people react to another absence: Mary wants the comfort of knowing someone will be Batwoman. Alice is disturbed that the Batwoman is wiling to kill her. Jacob is angry that someone would impersonate his daughter. And Luke declares that Ryan is but a temporary substitute until Kate's return when we know Ruby Rose is never coming back. He isn't ready to confront the truth and to be fair, he has good reason to think Kate's alive.

I don't really approve of the decision to not recast Kate. Paradoxically, I would approve of these stories as a path to recasting Kate -- by having Kate disappear in the plane crash, all the characters reacting to her death, various people standing in for Batwoman -- and then having a recast Kate return after 4 - 6 episodes, and account for the new actress not having Ruby Rose's tattoos saying that the plane crash necessitated skin grafts. They're probably not going to do that; they're still using photos of Ruby Rose as Kate Kane.

But even so: Episodes 1 - 2, despite being in a difficult and untenable situation, are extremely well-written, well-performed and well-produced. Being good counts.

I've concluded that I just don't understand the CW's business model. BATWOMAN has been renewed for Season 3. It's averaging 700,000 viewers. Three episodes into the year!

Well, I adore the show, but I can't pretend I grasp the economics here.

I think they are hinting that Kate is alive because a story in which she goes missing simply demands that the characters try to find her. They can't possibly succeed. And I think Mary gave voice to that: Kate isn't coming back. Even if she survived the plane explosion, she would have had to survive the fall, then survive drowning -- the audience knows Kate isn't coming back, but if the characters don't exhaust every avenue to find her, it becomes a weird Season 4 situation where the sliders inexplicably don't make Wade their number one priority.

Even if the story goes nowhere, it's still somewhere the characters need to go -- or we'll forever be rewatching the scenes where they don't the way I rewatched "Mother and Child"'s "We don't have time" moment over and over and over again to the point of writing the Rewatch Podcast five emails about it and talking about it even today like it was the second most traumatic event of my life (the death of Professor Arturo being the first).

I think they are hinting that Kate is alive because the optics of killing off the most visible, most popular (and only) lesbian superhero on TV at the time is simply untenable. Gay people have oddly high body counts on television. And BATWOMAN's creators cannot bear to add to it even if Slider_Quinn21 would forgive them for doing it.

I also think that... once Kate has been offscreen for a while, there will be some reconsideration as to whether or not they can recast her. But I don't know that for a fact.

I think that's fair.  As neither a woman nor LGBT, I'm certainly discounting the effect that she has and what she means to people.  I think (?) Ryan is a lesbian, and there's certainly plenty of representation on the show, but I absolutely understand (better, now) the optics of just killing her off.  But I also understand that it's on Ruby Rose.  If Ruby wanted to come back and save Kate, even for a cameo so she can go on some mission for the rest of the show, she could.  Keeping her alive but never seen again doesn't accomplish a ton, does it?  I loved the character of Quinn, but I never got any sort of peace or relief out of the idea that Quinn didn't die on screen.

I think it would've been better for Sliders if Quinn had been killed, even unceremoniously off screen, so that the other characters could move on and the writers could be free to do their thing.  Same with Wade.  Having the "we don't have time!" line and her coming back as a computer didn't make me feel better.

I get that it's a hard call.  But they're setting up mysteries that they can't solve.  Maybe they eventually get the rights to use Batman and/or real Bruce Wayne.  Maybe they convince Ruby Rose to wrap up her character or recast.  But at this point, they're writing themselves into holes when they could be writing cool new stories with Ryan.  That's where I think their focus should be.

The other option would've been to have Batwoman Inc. as the idea and recast almost everyone.  Maybe Kate sends Luke to help the new Batwoman establish herself in a different city.  Maybe she goes to Star City and they get some of the Arrow cast.  I don't know.  But that's one way they could've kept Kate alive without her on the show, and at least they could have "hey, I just got off the phone with Kate" scenes.

Anyone watch Superman and Lois? I thought it was well done and didn’t really feel like anything else they’ve done in the Arrowverse.

I’d need to go back and watch Crisis, but did they age the kids up in that episode? I vaguely remember them indicating that Crisis replaced one kid with two, but fairly certain their child was originally a baby. So do Clark and Lois not remember most of their kid’s lives (when they got their memories back) or did they not get their memories back or am I forgetting something?

SUPERMAN AND LOIS was good. I liked seeing Lois as a 40 year old woman. Usually, Lois is portrayed in her late 20s, caustic and abrasive and competitive and at times unpleasant, but this is a Lois who is more well-adjusted after many years while still being insanely positive while relentlessly practical. The budget is astonishing; this is clearly not the CW budget for SUPERGIRL but an HBO MAX coproduction with the CW.

CRISIS made some odd changes to continuity that weren't entirely consistent. Lois and Clark originally had a one year old baby, but after CRISIS, Superman got a phone call from Lois: "Clark, I need you to get to Metropolis now. It's the boys."

"The boys?!" Clark exclaimed.

"Yeah, honey, your SONS," Lois said, sounding exasperated and baffled by Clark's astonishment --

Except that didn't actually make sense because CRISIS established that only paragons remembered the pre-CRISIS timeline. Superman wasn't a paragon. He should have remembered having always had Jordan and Jonathan and having had them 14 years earlier than presented on SUPERGIRL. SUPERMAN AND LOIS either ignores this discontinuity or corrects it with Clark having full memories of Jordan and Jonathan. We can handwave it and say that Superman's memories were a glitch and J'onn Jonzz' telepathy resolved it.

**

SUPERMAN AND LOIS appears to be a superhero show doing EVERWOOD (a Greg Berlanti show about a widowed big city doctor who moves his son and daughter to a small town) except EVERWOOD was lighthearted and cheery and comedic whereas SUPERMAN AND LOIS is deliberately aiming for a darker tone where even Superman finds himself intimidated by predatory banks, layoffs, a son with some mental health issues and the death of two parents.

According to SUPERGIRL, Kara was 13 when she landed on Earth and Superman found her and 25 when Kara put on the Supergirl costume. Winn in the Season 2 premiere notes that Superman looks to be mid-30s when he should be in his mid to late 40s; Superman says that as Kryptonians get older, their aging slows. From that, I'd say Clark is supposed to be at least 15 years older than Kara even if he doesn't look it.

This is somewhat emphasized when Lana in SUPERMAN AND LOIS says that Clark still looks just like he did in high school (which doesn't appear to be true as they had a young actor play the character in the flashbacks), but it may be commenting on how Clark is in his mid-40s but is played by the mid-30s Tyler Hoechlin. I'm not sure Hoechlin even really looks that young; he has a complexion where even the slightest bit of stubble is highly distinct and makes him look unshaven and removes any youthful boyishness from his face.

It's odd that Kara wasn't at Martha Kent's funeral. She wasn't there partially because of the pandemic and mostly because Melissa Benoist was pregnant and on maternity leave when the pilot was filmed. I'd probably assume that Kara was at the funeral but was called away unexpectedly for an emergency or was handling any and all emergencies so that Clark could shut off his superhearing for the duration.

**

It's a bit odd that the last time we saw Clark in CRISIS, it was a scene that established that Clark has no idea who his teenaged sons are -- which should theoretically mean that Clark has no idea who this Jordan kid is and that Jonathan was an infant -- and Clark has now missed out on at least 13 years of his sons' development and has no familiarity or rapport with them. SUPERMAN AND LOIS has Clark recounting Jordan's anxiety and Clark's struggles as a father -- and I initially wondered if part of that was due to Clark having trouble relating to two strangers as his son.

The Arrowverse Wikia proposes that J'onn restored Clark's Earth-1 memories in CRISIS Part 7. Perhaps, due to all the family difficulties, Clark asked J'onn to undo the restoration. Alternatively, it's possible that Clark's 'core' memories are the Earth-1 version but the Earth Prime memories are a supplement -- which may have also contributed to his difficulty in bonding with Jordan. It would be an interesting mind screw situation if Jordan found out that beginning one year ago, his father lost all memory of his existence.

I don't think they're going to do that, however. It's just too convoluted to have Clark remember a different continuity from the TV show he's currently in.

One of my favourite reviews Annie Fish did of SLIDERS was "Stoker" where they remarked, "We're still in 'not SLIDERS' territory."

I'm not sure what's going on in THE FLASH this week. I don't remember what happened last year. And last year's arcs weren't completed due to the pandemic shutdown, so they're finishing out their arcs from last year, whatever they were. I think I can safely report that I have a lot going on in real life right now because my brain no longer has space to remember the previous season of THE FLASH.

Anyway, I'd say we're still not back in FLASH territory. Barry has his superspeed back -- but the artificial speed force has altered his brain configuration and turned him into an emotionless weirdo to the point where I think he needs to go into a support group with the Season 4 version of Quinn. (There's an explanation for Season 4 Quinn that has never come to mind.)

Barry's brain is sped up, and as a result, he thinks at superspeed, but he no longer feels; he becomes dispassionate, manipulative and indifferent. In addition, he can now think faster than engineer Cisco and biochemist Caitlin, dismissing and working past them. I watch THE FLASH to watch a pleasant-natured geekboy (like Season 1 Quinn) work with his team to save people; this week turned Barry into a creepy robot who works alone.

To be fair -- that's the point. This is supposed to be an atypical episode. An episode where Barry is acting in direct opposition to the 19 - 20 episodes previous where he was acting normally. But this is not an episode coming at the end of the year. It's coming at the start.

I like who they're bringing in as the new Wells for Tom Cavanagh to play. That's cool.

THE FLASH is a professional product from a professional team working in a really awkward situation. The show and I are really out of sync as show and viewer and I'm not sure if we can get back. It's been two weeks and we are still dealing with last year's leftovers and I have no idea how much longer this is going to go on. I feel like I've lived ten years since the pandemic started and THE FLASH right now is a sequel to a movie I only vaguely remember from the last decade.

I remember, as a child, reading DC-MARVEL's ALL ACCESS #1, a crossover comic where Superman and Spider-Man team up to fight Venom. I thought it was odd that Venom could beat Superman up in a fight, having recently read SUPERMAN: FROM 30s - 70s where he was rearranging solar systems -- and would later read the John Byrne reboot where Superman's powers were lessened to the point where his superstrength didn't exceed other superhuman beings by that much and he would struggle to lift a plane. And it makes sense, I think, to allow Superman to be vulnerable to other superhumans or there's no dramatic tension.

SUPERMAN & LOIS has CW and HBO Max funding it. For the nuclear plant on THE FLASH, it would have been a stock shot of a nuclear plant and then studio interiors or a generic pipeworks location. For SUPERMAN AND LOIS, they could afford to find some industrial location and film the actors on site and populate the place with extras. SUPERGIRL could have filmed motel exteriors on location and interiors on a set, but SUPERMAN AND LOIS could actually build all sorts of stunt walls as well with Superman crashing through the room. They have a lot more money than THE FLASH or SUPERGIRL.

It's basically the difference between the location filming of Season 1 of SLIDERS and the studio bound filming of Season 5 of SLIDERS. :-) SUPERGIRL and THE FLASH and ARROW use their money effectively more effectively than the later seasons of SLIDERS, but they have very generic studio space or reused locations that they redress to be different And they have to stick to standing sets like CATCO and the DEO and STAR Labs and the Arrowcave. SUPERMAN AND LOIS has the Kent farm, but they can go to so many other places as well with location filming and they can build far more intricate sets for individual scenes.

**

I hope THE FLASH can wrap up last year's stuff next week and move forward. I really don't blame the writers for anything; they've been hit with a lot. Even before the pandemic, Andrew Kreisberg getting himself fired and banned from the industry left the FLASH team struggling to make the show work as he'd tethered it to his own existence and style. But he absolutely had to go.

Spoilers for BATWOMAN!!!!!! (We got her!)

They have recast Kate Kane. They have cast Wallis Day, the actress that I, Temporal Flux and everybody wanted to play Kate Kane. However, they have chosen to have Kate severely injured by the plane crash and that will in time, it seems, explain why Wallis Day's Kate Kane doesn't have Ruby Rose's tattoos or Ruby Rose's face.

I think their decision here makes sense. Season 1 of BATWOMAN ended in mid-storyline. It was too visually disjointed, the creators must have felt, to have Wallis Day's Kate Kane resolve conflicts with Alice and Jacob that had originated with Ruby Rose's Kate Kane. They didn't want to ask the actors to pretend that they'd known Wallis Day for all of Season 1. They had Kate go missing, severed all her relationships with the cast through her disappearance, gave an explanation for why she won't look the same -- and when Kate fully returns to the series, the entire cast will have to rebuild their relationships with Kate just as they're building a new relationship with Wallis Day. This is an excellent situation because the real world situation and the onscreen situation will match and the performances will be enriched.

I think it's terrific that fans get the Kate Kane actress they were rooting for and I think it's terrific that the show used the opportunity to introduce Javicia Leslie as a new Batwoman. She's an amazing performer and the Ryan Wilder character has brought a whole new angle to the Batwoman persona. I'm hoping that the end result will be a Peter Parker/Miles Morales sort of situation where both characters are operating as Spider-Man/Batwoman.

Wallis Day is brilliant. She's also nothing like Ruby Rose. Rose has a certain chilly aggressiveness; Day is more cautiously aloof and sardonic in her screen presence. Rose is boiling with frustration and rage; Day's onscreen energy is friendlier and more vulnerable. Rose's onscreen fighting style is ferocious and angry; Day's physicality is calculated and precise. Rose is a reckless brawler; Day is a disciplined boxer. Rose conveys introversion; Day is an ambivert. I wouldn't have wanted Rachel Skarsten, Camrus Johnson, Nicole Kang, Dougray Scott, Christina Wolfe and Meagan Tandy to have to pretend that Wallis Day's Kate Kane was Ruby Rose's Kate Kane. It's better that Day's Kate Kane is one who has been missing and come back from a horrific (and face altering) trauma.

Did y’all notice the CGI in Flash has gotten....really bad? That CGI giant guy looked awful. They couldn’t just find a big dude? Are there no pro wrestlers in Vancouver?

I continue to be impressed by Superman & Lois. Supergirl is back, but I have no idea where last season ended