DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 3 of 28)

It was the nightclub scene that really creeped me out. Kara was so indifferently cruel and unnervingly predatory towards James and spoke with a casual cruelty about Lucy and Jimmy's breakup. It scared me. It was like Faith from BUFFY in Season 3 - 4 at her most deranged and homicidal.

I know, intellectually, that Kara's geeky, awkward nervousness is a performance. It's not Melissa's real voice, posture, bearing or facial expressions -- but to me, it doesn't come off as a performance, it's just Kara's natural behaviour. When she's in costume, she's still Kara -- she's just a version of Kara who isn't struggling with her interpersonal dilemmas, and the interactions she has with others are largely restricted to their grateful praise or homicidal malevolence. Which is why, whenever that persona drops, I'm really disturbed. But I take it you don't like Melissa's performance at all?

Something I had forgot to remark on, but the latest episode of Flash had Jessie leaving for Opal City; it could be just an Easter egg, or it could be a set up for something more.

Opal City is the home of Starman who had powers somewhat akin to Green Lantern but based on technology; he was originally an Earth 2 character who fought alongside Jay Garrick in the Justice Society.  After Starman became an old man, he passed along his equipment to his more respectable son only to see him shot and killed on his first outing as a hero.  The more rebellious son then took up the mantle in his own counter-culture style, and it went on to become a really great comic based in both science and mysticism.

One of the main characters in the book was The Shade - an old Jay Garrick villain who was possessed by some kind of shadow entity that fell from the stars.  While giving The Shade the power to manipulate shadow into solid forms, it also made him immortal and thus hundreds of years old in present day.

In any case, Opal has many ties to Earth 2 and even Jay Garrick, so I'm thinking we'll be seeing much more of that.  This version of Starman was also considered to become a tv series for ABC many years ago, but ultimately they passed on it.

Jessie becomes a speedster too, right?

I'm not a Felicity hater, but the team was so much more fun with Curtis in the "Overwatch" role.

I would guess we'll see the reference in the next Flash episode.  I notice that this week's ep reintroduced us to the device Flash was wearing on his chest when he arrived on Supergirl's earth.  Flash doesn't usually keep us waiting on use of plot devices.

As for future references, I'm sure they'll throw something in on the rare occasion, but they'll probably focus on just doing more crossovers.  In the end, Flash also has a built in way to permanently get all the toys in one box - that future newspaper headline that mentioned the red skies.  During the Crisis on Infinite Earths, those red skies were actually the bleed between universes as the walls of reality were starting to break down.  With most of the multiverse destroyed, the final remaining earths merged together to form a single prime reality.

This could happen with the Supergirl / Arrowverse / Earth 2, etc realities if CBS decides to let it happen.  The universe merger certainly had a great many hiccups in the aftermath, though; but that just gives story to explore.

There were parts of the crossover that were fun. The goofy interaction was enjoyable, and Kara had more chemistry with Barry than pretty much anyone else on the show. Having him there exposed a lot of the show's weaknesses, because it was awkward to see him in something so far beneath the quality of his own show. The writing and directing were horrible. It felt like a last minute attempt to save the show, which has failed to reach the level of acclaim of the other DC shows, and which hasn't yet been renewed. It didn't feel like a real event crossover, as it should have.

I wouldn't mind seeing Kara show up on The Flash if her show is cancelled (like Constantine did on Arrow) but if they did that, they should use Melissa to bring in Power Girl, and avoid having to rebuild this version of Supergirl from scratch. Though they could use her if they get to the Crisis point in the story.

Legends took some risks this week, after the first 1950's episode completely failed to hit the mark. It was a really interesting episode, having three characters stranded for two years and revealing Rory to be Chronos. It makes me think that they will be switching up the cast next year, but we will see.

Arrow was horrible. So, so horrible. They took one of the worst Flash villains and put her on Arrow, and made the plot revolve around a silly McGuffin that shouldn't exist in the first place, for so many reasons.
I agree that the team was better without Felicity. I don't necessarily like the Curtis character too much, but at least he isn't a whiny, annoying, self righteous, horrible CEO, which Felicity has become.

The Flash was really interesting. Barry changed the past. How does that alter his present? How can he live in a world that he knows is wrong? I know that technically, his entire timeline was wrong to begin with, but the world he knows is essentially gone now. He is like Quinn Mallory seeing his dead father walk through the door.
It's interesting that Sara messed with her past too, on Legends this week, but those changes were used to create the timeline that she already knows.

So question... Will Talia be used in the future, or was her introduction just a wink to the audience?

With Supergirl... I think it will probably be renewed, but the network definitely isn't as happy with it as they'd like to be. It wasn't included with the early renewals, which is telling. But more than that, the Flash crossover tells me that they were looking for a boost from a fan base that they don't see tuning in. The show isn't generating much heat.

I don't think that Legends necessarily needs to have a full overhaul of the cast, but I'd like to see some swapping out each season. Stein is married. He needs to go home (while remaining a part of this overall universe).

It's isn't really that I hate Arrow, it's just that I don't feel like the writers are present there. It irritates me when solid potential is wasted. I liked seeing Laurel and Oliver showing an actual friendship. It makes sense, and it always seemed awkward when they weren't closer (usually because they were trying to force Oliver to interact with Felicity all the time).
I don't really care who is in the grave at this point. By that, I mean that the buildup was useless. It was a waste of time, because there were no clues and none of the mystery had a purpose. I would hate to see a couple of the characters die. I'd be upset if they killed Laurel, because Black Canary isn't a throwaway character. I'd be upset if they kill Diggle or Thea. Other than that... they have killed Oliver and it meant nothing, so they have to earn back the emotional response. My prediction is that it will be someone who doesn't really matter. Curtis' husband, Alex, Donna or even Quentin don't really matter.

Barry discovered time travel much earlier on The Flash now. Has he used it more than before? They could pretty much use that change to alter anything. Ronnie could walk through the door next week and it could be explained with a shrug and "Time travel!"

Talia would be older, but she might not look older. She could be Ruve Darhk... but would that be too much?

Agreed.  It is hard to believe that this show is produced by the same people as The Flash or Legends.

That is true, but a lot of the weaknesses are just in the writing and directing. There is no excuse for having Alex shouting Kara's secret in a public place.

A lot of writing for television involves finding ways to work with what you have. You can't just throw your hands up and blame the network for every little thing.

Though to be fair, CBS does have remarkably bad shows. They must be messing things up somewhere.

Sometimes, it's enough to like the cast of a show. As much as I've had issues with Arrow lately, I do like the cast a lot. I want the show to be better for them.

In the crossover, it was fun to see Kara's reaction to Barry. Her reaction to getting the ice cream. The fun of it. I think that's an interesting element for the character. She could be fun and happy and enjoy this life, but the world they've put her in doesn't allow for that. She is either being yelled at by a boss that she's scared of, or she is stuck in a poorly lit cave, surrounded by super soldiers. This is the problem with the show. They've tried to make her something that she isn't, and the character is rejecting the story. Sadly, being a CBS show likely means that there will be no drastic changes to the formula, so this is what she is stuck with for the rest of the series.

There were times when I was reading the Supergirl comics that I thought she acted a lot like Buffy Summers. She was a badass, but she was also fun and quirky. The show would be so much better if they did away with the government element and put Kara into a world where she could have some fun. I'm not saying that it has to be a comedy, but there isn't much that can hurt her. She's already lost everything she loved. She watched her home blow up. The worst things imaginable are already in her rear view mirror. She should either be more traumatized and messed up, or she should lighten up and be fun. I'm just not sure how I'd go about restructuring the series at this point. It would probably require a massive cast overhaul. I'd get rid of the DEO entirely. Martian Manhunter would be cut back to an occasional guest star (he can't stay on the show as he is. He is too big of a character to be a supporting character to a secondary superhero). I'd ditch Jimmy. He just doesn't work on the show. And Lucy would go too.
There might be a way to stay at CatCo, but I'm not sure how. Kara needs to stop living Clark's life, so how would she go about doing that while remaining at a massive media outlet?

I don't know... Isn't the DEO just a super fancy police department for aliens? And technically, she is just a consultant there, since she isn't an agent and gets no money from it. So... Yeah, it is pretty much every procedural on TV, with an S on the chest.

This is pretty much the attitude of Sony towards AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. It never works. Yes, SUPERGIRL made mistakes out the gate where it needed to choose A or B and it chose both. But what's done is done. Rather than try to turn SUPERGIRL into a different show, it would be best to identify the strengths of this mis-mash and make the best of it now. Retooling at this point would only deepen the creative dissonance. What works about SUPERGIRL?

The cast is superb: Melissa Benoist, Chyler Leigh and David Harewood have terrific chemistry, Benoist bouces off Mechad Brooks and Jeremy Jordan nicely, Callista Flockhart is a good foil.

While there are filming issues, the superpowers are for the most part well rendered. The costume and flying effects are terrific, the fight sequences, outside of odd lapses, come off well. It's the superhero action show SMALLVILLE wasn't.

The tone is appealing. This show embraces the goofy, earnest fun of superheroes and presents Supergirl's morality and compassion as intrinsic to her nature and reflective of the potential of all human beings to behave responsibly and well.
Humour: the scripts are full of fun jokes and great wisecracks.

Legacy: the show is respectful of SUPERMAN's cinematic and televisual history, casting Helen Slater and Dean Cain in major roles, and also reflects familiar for the source material with its use of the Martian Manhunter, Toyman, Silver Banshee, etc..

What does not work? I would say that the problem is not that SUPERGIRL doesn't work; it's that all the aspects that work well also work in opposition to each other. Supergirl is a determined and easily intimidated little bookworm of a thrillseeker who works as an intern at a media agency as a highly placed agent of a top secret government agency who is in her late twenties but has no experience dating, making friends, holding down a job or using her powers and has feelings for geek icon Jimmy Olsen who is played by a six foot tall basketball player type.

.................................

I think the only option here is to turn into the swerve. First, it's time to move Winn. When you have Jimmy, you don't need another male friend at Catco, but since the actor's on contract, relocate him to the DEO and make him Alex's associate more than Kara's.

Second, Mehcad Brooks is Jimmy Olsen, deal with it. It's time to shift him from being on the executive staff at Catco to someone whose role is working the streets of National City, gathering stories that will lead to the grounded, ordinary people plots of episodes while Winn and Alex serve the fantasy plots. When Jimmy wanders into a DEO plot, the show should highlight how he feels like he's stumbled into a different TV series.

Third, I think the dissonance in Supergirl should be embraced as representing the schizophrenic nature of Supergirl's life. The series should develop three distinct and separate visual styles: crisp, still filming for the DEO/fantasy plots and documentary style camerawork for the mundane side of the series at Catco. For Season 2, Kara can develop multiple personality disorder as a result of the schism and the show really mine that for drama rather than pretend it doesn't exist.

For better or worse, this is SUPERGIRL. Attempting to turn it into a different show at this stage would just make a bigger mess; one might as well just cancel the series and do a reboot and there's no need to do that. There's plenty to enjoy with SUPERGIRL. SUPERGIRL could be a lot worse.

It could be an ugly, nasty series like GOTHAM or take itself far too seriously like the first 13 episodes of ARROW or be crassly objectifying like Seasons 2 - 7 of SMALLVILLE or be incapable of rendering superheroes like LOIS & CLARK or be a depressing bore like BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN or be witlessly self-important like that WONDER WOMAN pilot or be visually inept like the first 13 episodes of SUPERBOY or be unable to choose a tone like PUNISHER WAR ZONE.

The tone of SUPERGIRL is good. The spirit of the series is strong. The details just need some selective refinement. Choices must be made.

I don't think the DEO stuff works at all. I think that, like ARGUS, it would be okay to have them exist and sometimes work with Supergirl, but having her work with them all the time isn't right. There is a reason why Superman isn't a member of the military. It's because having someone like that work as a government agent is a scary thought. It's one thing to have the flag waving behind Superman, but it would mean something else entirely to have him marching under the President's orders. He is the everyman, not "the man". So, I strongly believe that they need to go. And honestly, the soldiers running around in the background as Kara fights bad guys are just silly. The whole thing is just there because every CBS show needs a poorly lit, techie looking facility where the walls are lined with flat screens.

So if I were executive producing the series, I would get rid of that facility. I'd have Alex leave them behind and go into a more intellectual field (it is ridiculous to have her act as a soldier next to Kara). Maybe with the mystery of her father solved, Alex can let go of her anger and go work for a university or a tech company or something.

J'onn can't be a sidekick. His role is unsustainable on the show. He needs to resolve his role as guardian of the Danvers girls and move on to find a life of his own.

Jimmy... I honestly don't see any chemistry between him and the rest of the cast. I would get rid of him too.

I don't think this is a complete overhaul of the series. I think that it could all be natural progression over time. The Cadmus storyline could make Kara rethink her role as a government agent pretty easily. Same with Alex. And Jimmy could decide that he'd rather be a photographer in the field, and go off to take pictures around the world. He could come back to National City from time to time, but he wouldn't be a regular.

Winn and Kara work well together. Kara and Alex work well together. Kara and Cat work well together (though the dynamic needs to change, because I think that Kara needs a job that means something to the character). Basically, as much as I hate that they used Clark's story for Kara, most of that stuff can stick around. Getting rid of the DEO will allow Kara to be her own person and would allow more of her fun personality to come through. I want her to be the girl who flipped out when Barry handed her ice cream, but I want that excitement to be about her own role in the world.

Unlike Clark Kent, Kara Danvers is a cover persona (not to the extent of Bruce Wayne, but more than Clark). We aren't being shown who the real Kara is.

Well.....damn.

I'm not sure I'm as upset as some (there's a really big #NoLaurelNoArrow hashtag going on now) because I'm not all that familiar with Laurel from the comics.  I don't like the idea that a character should be off-limits because they're a big deal in the comics.  If they need to kill Oliver (for real, not like last time) and it serves the greater Arrowverse story, then that'd be fine with me.  But I think the problem for me is that Laurel was never a great character on this show.  I don't think the writers knew what to do with her, they stumbled on this female character that was easier to write (Felicity), and then that grew into a monster.  Guggenheim basically said tonight that they did all they could with Laurel/Oliver, and they needed to close the book on it.

I still say the death should've been Diggle.  I think it would've meant a lot more to the team because Laurel barely felt like a team member in the first place.  She meant more as an ADA and a reason to keep Lance around.  Now....I don't really know what this changes.

Well, here's the situation they had in front of them - kill a regular or cop out and kill someone less significant.  Prior to this, you said you were most worried that they would kill someone small - like Lance or Felicity's mom.  I was in the same boat.  Is this better than that?

So if we are talking about regulars, it's Oliver, Thea, Felicity, Laurel, Diggle.  Technically Lance and Merlyn are regulars, but we're talking about Team Arrow here. 

Oliver - It wasn't going to be him.  They sorta tried it last season, and it was a mess.

Thea - You could make the same argument with Lance women and Queen women.  Oliver lost his dad, lost his mom, and this would be losing his sister.  Stripping down his character would be fine, but you'd see a lot of the same criticisms with a Thea death as a Laurel death.

Felicity - Let's face it - this is the one you wanted.  And I don't necessarily disagree with it as the choice.  But these guys aren't idiots.  They see ratings, they do polling, they do focus groups, they sell DVDs, they look at social media - while there are definitely people who hate Olicity, enough Olicity fans exist that they had to know that Felicity is a major force in their success.  I'm with you - I don't get it.  But there are hardcore fans on both sides of the Olicity debate, and if they were going to kill a primary member of Team Arrow, there was a 50/50 chance it was going to be one side of the Olicity debate.

Diggle - This was my vote.  Diggle is awesome.  He's cool.  He's funny, but he's also the backbone of Team Arrow.  Hell, Oliver is the badass star of the show, and DIGGLE IS HIS BODYGUARD.  Diggle is his right hand.  But imagine if last night's episode had gone the same way, but it's Diggle that dies.  Because Oliver didn't do enough to prove that Andy was a traitor.  Diggle dies because Andy betrayed him.  I can see the anger in Oliver's eyes.  But also the fear.  Whenever Oliver was in a dangerous spot, Dig had his back.  Now he's got to face the most dangerous foe he's ever faced without anyone watching his back.  He's going to look behind him and realize, "holy crap, my backup is my sister and my ex.  Both have been in the field for only a couple of years.  If Diggle can die, ANY of us can die."

Laurel - And here's the last one.  If Oliver is off the table and Felicity is too popular, then Laurel was the easy choice.  I didn't think they were going to do it because I thought Laurel was the Lois to Felicity's Lana.  That Oliver had to go through Felicity to get to the real love of his life.  And that's why I was surprised - moreso than I would've been for anyone else.  I thought she was safe.

But if this show only has one more season left, even if they killed Felicity, do you think there was enough time to salvage Laurel's character?  Even if Felicity was gone and replaced by Curtis (who you also don't love), haven't they already burned through enough of your goodwill?  Could the show really ever be salvaged?

What's crazy to me after looking at the #Olicity and #NoLaurelNoArrow hashtags last night, is the VITRIOL on both sides of the debate.  I guess it's good that people care enough, but Olicity fans were cheering the death of Laurel while I saw Laurel fans throwing away DVDs, burning merchandise, condemning the show and its writers.  All over a fake romance?  That just seemed bizarre.

And that's why I would've picked Diggle.  I know I would've been declared racist, and I know people would've left then.  But is Arrow like Walking Dead now?  Where the show simply isn't good enough and so people are only watching for one or two characters?  So the show was literally damned no matter who it killed?

Yeah, they could've just had someone leave, but how many times is Team Arrow going to hit the streets and come back unscathed.  In these action shows, I think people need to die, or the action pieces become pedestrian.  Roy left the show alive and well.  If you also have Diggle or Laurel or Thea leave, then Team Arrow becomes indestructible.  I think Oliver really needs to learn that he's putting himself and his closest family in danger.  And that's why I would've picked Diggle.  I would've kept Andy good (or brought in someone else) who could serve as a surrogate father and take baby Sara out of harm's way.

I honestly don't hate Olicity.  What I don't really like is the drama.  So if Laurel's death gets rid of a character that the writers had no use for and pushes Oliver and Felicity to a better place with no drama, then I think it could be fine.  What's odd is that Curtis is getting promoted to a series regular next season, and he fills in the same role as Felicity.  So unless he's going to train and become Mr. Terrific, then I don't know where he fits in.

Well, Felicity was shot in an ambush.  That's not really what I'm talking about.  What I'm talking about is this team going out, week after week, with no one coming back even injured most of the time.  Thea made a joke about excuses for bruises, but it was in reference to sparring with Oliver. 

To compare it to Walking Dead again, the regulars on that show are all basically Navy SEALS at this point.  They come up with a plan and execute it perfectly every week.  The problem is that there's no drama there.  And I've found myself more and more likely to look at my phone during a fight scene because there's no longer any drama to it.  It's just going to be Team Arrow or whoever doing some punching or kicking, and then we're on to the next scene that might mean something.

I was thinking last night that Thea and Laurel got ambushed by League of Assassins and came out okay.  These are the top killers in the world, and Thea and Laurel fought them off like it was nothing.  Yeah, the League got what they came for, but that's where Laurel could've easily been killed.

If the League of Assassins or these Ghosts are supposed to be so tough, they can't be relegated to Puddies from Power Rangers.  We have to see what they can do, and the best way to do that is to show them kicking one of our guy's butts.  And that's, honestly, yet to happen.  Ra's, Merlyn, and Dahrk have been able to win against our guys, but that's about it.

No that's absolutely true.  But they, at least, know that Dahrk is more dangerous than anyone they've faced before since he's actually killed.  Ra's never managed to do it.  Merlyn's killed before, but his murder of Sara was sorta roundabout.

I just think there needs to be consequences.  It actually could've been an interesting creative move if they'd had someone like Laurel die out on a routine night out via one of the Ghosts.  Maybe Oliver has them out there working too hard, and Laurel gets tired and gets lazy (sorta like Batman in Knightfall).  At the end of the day, this is Oliver's story, and Laurel's death should advance his story.  He should intensely go after Dahrk, but he also has to be careful about who he sends in.

Another thought on shipper outrage -- I think it's stupid. I'm a shipper in a sense -- I enjoy seeing certain pairings of actors. I love seeing Quinn and Wade bounce off each other. I got really annoyed when the Clark/Chloe pairing was broken up on SMALLVILLE, but my issue was not that they weren't a couple. My issue was that the show rarely put these two characters in the same scene for various behind the scenes reasons that ultimately served to drag the show down.

Dan Harmon has a hilarious Season 6 commentary on an episode I can't recall where he briefly does an impression of a Jeff-Annie shipper whining that Jeff and Annie had an argument, and that he hates the show now because he measures it only in terms of a specific romance; no other character or storyline on the show has any value and that the show exists only to produce this one isolated element of its plots and characters.

Ultimately, that's how I see the more militant shippers. Regardless of whether Oliver was paired with Laurel or Felicity, he interacted regularly with both characters. Given how the majority of the series has had Oliver single and those fans kept watching, the appeal was not Oliver being in a romantic relationship with one or the other but simply being in scenes with those characters. And whether or not the show is currently supporting an Oliver/________ pairing, it shouldn't be the only measure of quality.

Here's the thing for me... I liked the first two seasons. I liked the show being serious, the fight scenes being well choreographed and all of that. The characters had some issues, but overall, I liked it. They committed to the show, so it was comic-booky enough, but you could tell that they actually took it seriously. And the arc of the first two seasons, with Slade, was nicely done. The group dynamic was nice. There were layers to the Oliver/Felicity relationship. I liked having her swoon over him while he just kinda tolerated it. He relied on her and loved her, but it wasn't wishy-washy. And Diggle was an equal partner then.

I didn't like that they were holding off telling Laurel's story for so long, because she was a series regular (and the female lead) and not having a clear arc for her was just unacceptable. For two years, she had nothing but placeholder plotlines. But it was okay, because it was leading somewhere and we all knew it.

Then season 3 happened and they stopped taking the show seriously. They stopped caring about trying to make the plots feel plausible. Oliver became completely incompetent as a fighter and strategist. Felicity was moved into the role of female lead, which she has no business being. They stripped the Oliver/Felicity dynamic of every layer it had and made it into the most bland pairing on TV... it is essentially what was wrong with Laurel in the first two seasons. They're forcing something that doesn't feel right. Diggle can't possibly be an equal in the Oliver/Felicity relationship, as he once was.

The show has become more about servicing fangirls than it is about the stories. The producers think of Black Canary fans as a "vocal minority", which shows how little they even think about the comic books anymore. The team never wins a fight, because they have to fight the same enemy week after week, for a whole year (no more villains of the week). Oliver has to be dumbed down in order to make room for the rest of the team. An the writers care about the stories they're telling so little that small things like Oliver being stabbed through the chest and thrown off a cliff, or Damien's totem being smashed, are completely forgotten.

My issue isn't really about hating Felicity or loving Laurel. It's about wanting to smack the writers in the face for blowing a job that so many writers would LOVE to have the chance to take on. They just don't care, and I sinceriously don't understand why.

You look at Ra's on Legends of Tomorrow and he is actually interesting, in the few minutes that we actually see him. He is played as strong, but smart. He doesn't just kill because he's evil, he has thoughts and an understanding of what's happening. His relationship with Sara is intriguing.
Or you look at Felicity on The Flash, and she is the same character that we know and love from the first two season of Arrow. She puts her foot in her mouth. She is geeky. She is part of the team, but not forced into a leadership role that she is completely incapable of pulling off.

Then you look at the crossover and Felicity is such a selfish, arrogant, petty woman. How did they get there with her?

For a long time now, I've wanted to see Oliver and Laurel actually interact as the friends that they've been for a very long time. The producers haven't wanted to do this, first because they wanted to play the anger of their history, but then because they wanted to push Felicity as the love interest and having Oliver interact with Laurel would threaten that. So we never get to see them reach a place where they are close friends who have a long history and can actually lean on each other. Green Arrow and Black Canary were not only not a couple on this show, but they didn't even like each other for most of the show!
Then, in the last couple of weeks, since Felicity has been away, Oliver and Laurel have been talking. Growing closer. Showing their history. It felt natural and good, and it seemed like the writers were finally allowing them to be natural around each other.

I'm not a shipper. I just ask for natural interaction. Forced stories are like a hammer to the head. So this was nice. There was something right about them being closer... And then they kill her. They were just allowing them to be friends because the threat would soon be gone. And in her final moments, she pushes Olicity. After all of their years and all of their history, the last words that she speaks to Oliver are about f***ing Felicity!

And why avoid the threat? Why not have Laurel reveal the picture and have Oliver find out that he was the love of her life, and allow that story to actually play out? It doesn't mean that he has to end up with her. It just means that for once in her damn life, Laurel is allowed to be true to her character.

Was it Tracy Torme who said that when he watched Exodus, he was baffled by the way the show missed its chance to play the obvious drama in having families separated, with some living and some dying? Children being torn from their mother's arms. I think it was him. It is a vague memory, but it's a lesson that stayed with me. Those small, natural moments are the things that make a story feel real, even if it is complete fantasy. Deny that true moment of feeling, and you destroy the only reality you have to work with.

Legends of Tomorrow is a ridiculous show. It is a Saturday morning cartoon in live action. It's plots are thin, but what makes the show interesting to watch is that they explore the characters. The characters make that silly TV show more interesting than most of the Marvel universe.

Will Laurel come back? I don't know. Katie is still working in that circle, I know that much. Would her return be completely stupid? Yes. But does that matter at this point? The show, like Supergirl, needs to be seriously overhauled. They should take after the comic books and have a new showrunner come in, with a vision of what they want to do with Green Arrow. A plan. An arc. I'm tired of the show just being on TV because it hasn't been canceled yet. I want it to be on TV because there is a story to tell. And there is a story to tell! The character has been around forever. They have to have some ideas beyond Batman villains and Olicity.

I think people are probably upset by the fact that Laurel was an unkept promise. Everything you say about her early on is true. The question was always supposed to be, how does she get to a place with Oliver where you could see them drinking coffee and talking about nothing in particular? How do Laurel's path in life and Oliver's path in life eventually bring them to a place where they have more in common?

We don't get the answer now. We saw them getting a little closer, but it was still a work in progress. Laurel telling Oliver that he was the love of her life was something that shouldn't have been a death bed confession that occurs midway through the character's arc, which is all we will ever get.

And on top of that, she never really became *the* Black Canary. She was just a sidekick... It is like killing off Bruce Wayne while he is still learning how to fight.

Laurel should have left the show for a while, and then come back as the full version of Black Canary, who can stand as Oliver's equal and not just a trainee on his team.

If she really isn't dead, I suppose they could still do that. But if she is dead, I get the outrage. For me, it is just frustrating to watch the show these days.

I'm fine with the show. I enjoy it well enough. I can't say it's not a challenge to try to review the story someone set out  to tell rather than the story I wish they'd have told, but I generally manage. Laurel's character was always a problem; they did some neat stuff with her and I would have been happy to see her remain a regular, but I can't say that killing her off deprives us of a great love story or a great superhero character as rendered on this show.

The character ARROW wrote was very obviously created as a version of Rachel Dawes from the Nolan BATMAN movies during Season 1 when ARROW was trying (and failing) to be a Nolan pastiche, and that template was all wrong for being the Black Canary from the comics. She became the Black Canary of ARROW, but ultimately, she was Oliver's friend who knew him before he became a warrior and could still be friends with him even after he cheated on her with her sister. She was the person who could see how much Oliver had changed.

I sometime suspect that a lot of the shipping wars are actually fanned by Katie Cassidy herself, who would post clips or trailers on Twitter with text complaining about the Felicity/Oliver scenes or declare in interviews that Laurel would be Oliver's first and last girlfriend and that Felicity was a fling. Stepping back from the fan rage, all that strikes me as Cassidy deliberately provoking fans and pretending there's some great rivalry between her and Emily Bett Rickards -- a rivalry certain segments of fandom have adopted. In reality, the two women are friends.

My issues with ARROW's first season was the constant tonal dissonance -- the scripts were humourless and had Oliver grimly intoning about saving his city, but there were silly things like Oliver being bizarrely confident that his list of names was meaningful even though he had no information to accompany it. Then there was Oliver creating his HQ through what appeared to be one day of intensive sledgehammering. It was ridiculous.

Season 2 -4 have gotten much more fun. Season 2 was solid, but Season 3 crashed hard with Oliver's nonsensical resurrection and the League of Assassins having no clear motive, goal, purpose, philosophy or much of anything beyond wanting Oliver to join them because.

Season 4's been fine. I see all the issues Informant raises, but I don't feel them as severely; Felicity being upset because Oliver having a son was the latest in a long line of crazy revelations was pretty understandable to me. The idol being disabled by Vixen but suddenly stored in the base was absurd, but no moreso than Speedy being an oxycontin addict whose issues faded away after a few stern talks and a date with Roy or Oliver deciding to investigate his mother's involvement in the Undertaking by crashing into her office, threatening her once, fleeing when attacked and then refusing to get into it any further.

I've enjoyed Laurel's arc. Season 2 put her on a hilariously self-destructive path from becoming the Arrow's archnemesis to her totally justifiable rage at Sarah for faking her death and returning to a happy homecoming. Season 3 was neat where she sought to honour her sister and spare her father the pain. Throughout all of it, I liked how Laurel kept it prominent that Oliver was not born a driven, hardened crusader against evil but was a shallow and unfaithful little creep and how she didn't truly realize how much he'd changed.

I never found her interesting on her own, but she was an interesting figure in how she related to Oliver. I never felt like Laurel was less than what she needed to be; she was written as a civilian and an office worker, not a superhero, and when she became a superhero, it was in a somewhat misguided effort to keep her sister alive in her heart. I thought they did a nice job. I was quite relieved that the romance was dropped after Season 1 and Laurel had her own motivations and goals even if they were designed to bring complications to Oliver's life rather than Laurel's life. No complaints on Season 2 - 4 Laurel for me.

Oh, I'm cool with bringing Barry back in the comics. Wally was my Flash, but I realize that Barry was important too.

I just strongly dislike them changing Wally's race along with his story. That isn't just altered history or a reboot, it is a new character being given an old name in order to sell him to the audience. I think that Wally deserved better than to essentially be killed off and then shrugged off as this new person took over his character.

Legends of Tomorrow is fun, but this show is entirely predicated on the idea that everyone is dumb.  They land somewhere, everyone decides to leave for "reasons" and they get in a mess.  Curiosity is fine, but Rip Hunter needs to get things under control.  I mean, hell, they *kill someone* in the past in this episode.  He turns out to be a gang member who, I assume, never amounted to anything.   But they don't know that when it happens.  For as much as they know, that could be John F. Kennedy's relative. 

I know there has to be something for them to do week-to-week, but making the main catalyst for every episode "stupidity" is going to get tired soon.

Agreed.  I'm not really sure what the solution is, either.  There's been talk of Arrow only being five seasons.  So maybe Arrow ends next season.  I still think Legends should be / should've been an anthology mini-series.  Maybe even a companion piece to Arrow and Flash like Agent Carter is to Agents of Shield.  Three full series seems like a lot, and it doesn't seem like they're finding the writers to write all three effectively.

Thinking way outside the box, what if they merged all the shows into one big show called "Arrowverse"?  Sign everyone to contracts of X number of episodes, and every story takes place somewhere in the Arrowverse but every episode is essentially a crossover.  Maybe one episode is Oliver, Sara, and Cisco taking down a gang of criminals in Star City, while another has Rip, Barry, and Diggle taking down some time traveling metahuman.  Instead of 69 episodes of three shows, maybe you do 54 episodes of one

When I saw the fireball coming down at the end of the episode, I really thought it was Fort Rozz falling back to earth because she didn't fly it far enough away; I started laughing at that one.

Supergirl really seems like it's written for kids; I don't know if that was their intention, but it's what they accomplished.   On that note, I have an idea what was in the Kryptonian ship in the cliffhanger.   I place my bet it's either Krypto the super dog or Supergirl's classic pet Streaky the super cat.  That would fit with the tone they've set, and kids would probably love it.

I don't know, I don't feel like its any more "for kids" than Flash.  I feel like it's about the same level of fun/goofy as Flash.  Definitely not as serious as Arrow used to be, but I don't think it's too silly or stupid.

I absolutely agree that they need to do something about Clark.  Superman is too much of a distraction, and they can't stay in this weird zone where he's on the show but he's not.  It's cool that he's out there, but if they aren't going to use him, they need to send him away or something.  They're trying to have their cake and eat it too, and it doesn't work.