DC Superheroes on TV (CW & HBO Max) (Page 8 of 28)

Yeah, but I thought Man of Steel was much worse than this.  "On my world, it means hope."  Owning the language is one thing....in Man of Steel, he only knows of Krypton as a concept.  It's not his world at all.  Did that not bother you?

In the defense of that line on Supergirl, he would've had to say "in English" - if he'd said "our language" it would've been construed as being Kryptonian (since he's standing with Kara when he says it).

And I thought the chest looked bad throughout (on both actors).  I wonder if they made it, realized how bad it looked, and couldn't afford to fix it.  They should've just done a Tony Stark and had the green glow through his shirt most of the time.

I mean, I see it.  I thought the whole interrogation scene, maybe because of the way it was lit, made him seem alien.  Later in the movie, he admits he was born in Kansas so I thought it was odd that he referred to Krypton as his world.  "Where I'm from" or "Where I was born" might have been a little more honest to his situation.  Maybe at that time he was trying to appear more alien, but I feel like both those lines are about equal in terms of alien-ness.

But I'm with you on this.  Clark should only embrace parts of his Kryptonian nature because at his core, he should think of himself as human.

It's their thing. I can't say they really do anything for me or greatly bother me. Occasionally it's interesting to see them change to fit something that's happened on the show because they aren't always static throughout the season, but since they don't really have theme songs, I just go with it.

Do they type up Supergirl scripts with their hands, or do they use sledgehammers?

I'll skip discussing their childish characters and paint by numbers political message, but I will say that the introduction of the alien bar brings us into Angel territory. That show made the same mistake, which not only destroyed the uniqueness of their main character, but sacrificed the "reality" of the story. It sounds like a fun way to bring in more aliens on paper, but in execution, it is just a bunch of extras wearing bad makeup, acting stupid.

Have you checked out The Expanse, 12 Monkeys or Black Mirror?  There's not a lot out there I enjoy but the first two are solid and I've liked what I've seen of Black Mirror.

SUPERGIRL has been a lot of fun and I find the grousing about Superman saying "your language" in one sentence to be incredibly pedantic, and I say that as someone who spent two weeks trying to come up with an in-universe explanation for SLIDERS episodes airing out of order. I was enjoying the Metallo fight scenes too much to worry about the makeup, although J'onn giving up all his Kryptonite and Superman being so unhappy about the DEO having it struck me as absurd. I liked the third episode too and while I did indeed think Winn was going to be gay, I guess it's going to be Alex and the Maxwell Lord fauxmance is truly over. I found Lynda Carter's performance oddly charmless and lacking in layers, although that may have been the point. Regardless, the President's appearance finally explained why the hell J'onn was permitted to continue operating the DEO on her command back in Season 1's finale.

**

I think the voiceovers at the start are cool, but I say that as someone who continues to think that the SLIDERS Season 2 opening is the coolest piece of television ever created. I wonder what SLIDERS would be like with a Berlanti voiceover and since I did an X-FILES pastiche of a SLIDERS voiceover, let's have a Berlanti pastiche:

My name is Quinn Mallory. When I was in college, I created a gateway to parallel universes. But then an accident ripped me out of reality itself. Today, the world at large knows me as an ordinary engineer at a hamburger company. But secretly, my friends and I use our knowledge to protect our world and find other visitors like me. We saved the multiverse from total destruction, but in doing so, we opened all realities to new threats. And we are the only ones who know what's out there; we're the only ones with any hope of stopping them. We are the Sliders.

Man, I did too.  I thought it was really bland.  I haven't seen her in much, but it just didn't do anything for me.

I think the alien bar is lazy, but I don't think it means they're out of ideas.  If anything, I feel like they're throwing out a ton of ideas for this season.  Maybe too many, honestly.

This wasn't established terribly well, but Kara is trying to emulate Clark a bit more by dressing like him in her civilian life. But regardless. I'm not blind to SUPERGIRL's faults, but it has a certain earnest love for humanity and superheroes that makes leaves me untroubled by its flaws.

The Lynda Carter performance was seriously off and no reviewers seem to have picked up on how poor her acting has become. The truth is that Carter was never a great actress, but what skills she had -- being comfortable in a ridiculous outfit and projecting effortless confidence on camera -- were uniquely suited to playing Wonder Woman in a TV show as Carter's somewhat distant screen presence was suited to Wonder Woman being a stranger in a strange land.

But the President is a very different role and Carter can't be an offbeat outsider; the script requires that she be endearing and charming on sight and that she can recite hollow platitudes about hope in a completely convincing, totally earnest, utterly sincere fashion. It doesn't come off that way; her line, "How can hope be false?" gives me the impression the actress doesn't really grasp the subtleties available for her delivery; her speech made me feel like she doesn't grasp how to weigh and pace words and sentences for oratory.

This is not a role for a former model and singer who hasn't received any real training in acting, who hasn't refined her abilities with experience. For this role, production either needed to hire Carter an acting coach on how to be convincing as a politician or hire someone else -- someone like Allison Janney who can come off as an experienced, world-weary politician who can be heartfelt and truthful. Or Gina Torres, who can present authority and regality while being totally earnest. Or Dina Meyer or Carrie Anne Moss. This is a job for a real actress and Lynda Carter is awesome in many ways, but she's not an actress.

Another thing I liked -- they wrote Cat out really well. Obviously, it's because they were losing the actress as a regular and it wasn't a natural story direction. But it really made sense of why Cat could be so caustic and unpleasant in Season 1 despite clearly having a lot of integrity and care in her. Her exit story makes it clear: Cat was bored. She wasn't being sufficiently challenged at Catco.

As a result, she had begun to regard nearly every aspect of her work and staff with tired disdain. I wonder if it was intentional or not, but Callista Flockhart's irritated line delivery when Kara bring Cat a latte and Cat sarcastically saying "That'll be new and different" completely fits this exit plot. Did they plan it all along? (Of course not.)

So Talia is coming to Arrow.  That could be interesting.

My impression out of the latest episode is that they're setting up Malfoy to be the man who steps into the vacant Wells role on the team (because the current version of Wells just isn't filling that spot).

Vixen knows there are more animals than just gorillas, right?  I think 90% of her "animal powers" have been a gorilla.

I thought the zombie idea was lame, but I thought they actually missed an opportunity to tell a real story.  What if the Union officers, not the Confederate ones, got bitten?  Instead of telling another stereotypical "all Southerners were racists" story, what if they'd flipped it on its head?

Imagine the time pirate lands and bites the Union officers.  Instead of "the Confederacy wins the war", the more realistic scenario is that the zombie apocalypse happens (which fits in with Stein's paranoia).  Because, you know, the confederates probably wouldn't have been able to win the war either since their soldiers are all mindless zombies.

So now the Legends have to work with the confederates.  Jax and Amaya would be outraged, but they would have to figure it out.  The confederate soldiers might be outraged to have to fight with Jax and Amaya, but they'd get over it when they realized how much danger they were in.  Jax and Amaya would learn that the confederates were people, and the confederates would have a greater understanding of how equal everyone really is.  There could still be the slave stuff if they wanted (confederate soldiers kidnap Jax and return him to a plantation, etc), but it wouldn't all be so cliche.

Well, I mean it's easier to believe that all Germans were evil in World War 2, that all Muslims are evil, and that all Confederates were evil.  It makes us feel like the wars we've fought were worth it.  Justified.  Glorious. 

But easy isn't always necessarily the truth.  I wouldn't expect a CW Superhero show (especially the fourth one in terms of ratings/success) to conquer such a controversial topic, but it might be the perfect type of show to handle something like that.

They've extended Legends of Tomorrow four more episodes.  First, I thought 13 was fine for them, and I wonder if 17 is going to be too many.

Second, I've always wondered how that worked.  Episode 10 of the season went into production two days ago per Marc Guggenheim.  I imagine the first ten episodes were building toward, what I would have to think, a conclusion by episode 13.  So would an extension this late in the game mean episodes 13-16 are just going to be filler?  Or are they going to drag (original) episodes 11-13 into (new) episodes 11-17?  Or is this something that they've planned for all along (where the producer tells the CW that they need 17 episodes to tell their story, and it just got approved), and if it hadn't worked, they would've actually crammed episodes 11-17 into 11-13?

But do you know how this would work on a perfectly run show?  If something like Mr. Robot got additional episodes?  Did the show ask for them because they need to tell more story, or did the network ask for them to fill space and the writers have to adjust?

Are November sweeps still a thing?  I've seen less and less coverage of that in recent years, and networks don't seem to place their big event shows during those times.

These days, sweeps is big, but the "winter finale" is also a very hyped event for a lot of series.

Really happy with SUPERGIRL's take on Alex's sexuality. I thought "Crossfire" was really fun, but a lot of production issues are still apparent, like Kara and Mon-El loudly discussing their secrets in a crowded newsroom (unless the joke is that the newsroom is so busy that they have no need to worry anyone bother to listen in). That said, pretty much every superhero show on the air is a bit detached from physical reality.

ARROW is also going very well this year. I think the problem with Seasons 3 - 4 was that there were too many fantasy elements in addition to the crime in the city stories. The earthquake machine of Season 1 was crazy but workable. The supersoldiers of Season 2 were a bit more detached from reality, yet effective. The key is that these threats exist on an extremely physical, ground-level setting.

But with Season 3, you had immortal leaders of assassin cults, two separate methods of resurrecting dead characters, bafflingly unmotivated characters (R'as is obsessed with Oliver because... ? He wants to destroy Star City because... ?) and then you have Brandon Routh playing Iron Man and flying around in a metal suit.

With Season 4, your villain has magical powers. Somewhere around there, Felicity has become a perfect fantasy woman. The fantasy elements got out of control, although I understand it's hard to tell what's too much and what's not when your lead character's secret identity doesn't wear a mask. I think this season has found the right balance: Ragman's surrounded by otherwise street-level vigilantes, Prometheus fits into ARROW's world of bows and arrows rather than THE FLASH's world of magic and mutants. Church is a thug rather than a faith leader. Felicity has been de-romanticized significantly.

FLASH has recovered nicely from "Flashpoint," but the loss of Tom Cavanaugh as an effective mentor is really unfortunate. Harrison Wells has always been the father figure of the series and it's tough to adjust to him playing the annoying cousin who tests your patience and whose eventual departure is a relief. Wells in Season 1 was like Arturo: the glue of the group. The wise mentor who was too good to be true. And the fact that it was all a lie was heartbreaking.

Wells in Season 2 was a genuine leader and father figure, but with a bitter, caustic edge that was redeemed by his talent and compassion. I would rather keep him around.

Thawne did kill Barry's mom. At the end of the season premiere, Barry took Thawne back to let him Kill his mom. It was the only way to undo the Flashpoint timeline. The timeline we're in unfolded slightly differently than the original, which is why we have Killer Frost and Cisco's brother is dead, but Nora Allen is dead. Presumably, Thawne went on to kill Wells, take his place, and create the accelerator accident.

Yeah, they haven't exactly been clear about any of that. I don't think they have an answer, to be honest. In the original timeline, Thawne lost his speed and couldn't time travel on his own. I'd forgotten about Thawne mocking Barry in the present, doing it in the past would have made more sense. Still, it's pretty clear that somehow Thawne ended up needing to kill Wells and turn Barry into the Flash the same way it originally occurred, or at least close enough to it.

"Flashpoint" was a terrible, incoherent, confusing episode and I'm not surprised that Slider_Quinn21 got lost. In terms of what subsequent episodes indicate: after Thawne killed Nora Allen and then mocked Barry that the present would be different, he sped off -- only for his speed force to deplete from his body, just as it did in the original timeline. As a result, the Season 1 - 2 timeline unfolds as we saw but with differences where events and outcomes that depended on random chance experience a second round of variability.

The reason why this does not come through properly: "Flashpoint" has Thawne taunt Barry and then speed off, leaving it completely unclear if he engages in some other villainy or if he loses his speed as he did in the original timeline due to too many time jumps. This is also problematic because the episode that showed Thawne losing his speed in the year 2000 didn't really provide a strong rationale for why his speed vanished, and if the jump to 2000 ran him nearly dry, he shouldn't have had any speed left in "Flashpoint."

I honestly can't believe "Flashpoint" aired the way it did. It should have run in a two hour timeslot. As for Thawne's appearance in LEGENDS -- I'm assuming up to this point that we're seeing the Reverse Flash *before* he killed Barry's mother and got stranded in the 21st century.

Well, in Season 1, Thawne said that he and the Flash were enemies who had fought across time and he'd hoped that murdering Nora Allen would traumatize Barry so much that he'd never become the Flash. Thawne's goal has always been to alter his own destiny, although when Barry asked Thawne to explain why he hated Barry so, Thawne replied, "It doesn't matter." This would suggest that all of Thawne's adventures have been to alter his fate of being Barry Allen's antagonist whether it's through killing Barry or changing his timeline.

Season 2 establishes that Thawne's motives are out of jealousy. He was a fan of the Flash, but when travelling back in time to meet him, Thawne discovered history remembered him as his hero's greatest enemy and Thawne's love for Barry became hatred. So, pretty much anything he does in terms of time travel can be considered trying to alter history, alter his destiny.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/38588 … e#/slide/1

They're moving Legends to Tuesday to pair with the Flash. 

AND HEY, LOOK, THEY MOVED SUPERNATURAL

FWIW, Frequency isn't getting a full season order. Neither is No Tomorrow. I guess it's still possible to get canceled on the CW after all.

http://deadline.com/2016/11/frequency-n … 201855687/

OK, so neither has technically been canceled yet, but realistically they're dead shows walking.

Well, I meant none of the Arrowverse shows were in cancelled territory.  I'm guessing one of them would have to drop below 1MM viewers to get cancelled, although I wouldn't mind seeing Arrow or Legends drop off after this season.

And I'd like Legends to do something next year either way.

From the most recent episode of Flash, I'm surprised H.R.'s disguise device didn't alarm the team more than it did.  After all, it turned out badly the last time they saw a Harrison Wells with a false face.  Even with H.R., how do we know which face is really the disguise?

I also can't help but notice that every device H.R. has is shaped like a wand.  He even carries a drum stick around with him (which one could argue is wand-like).  The Flash villain Abra Kadabra still hasn't made an appearance yet...

One thing I forgot to mention - H.R.'s idea may have been a nice bit of foreshadowing. A Star Labs museum wouldn't really make much sense as a cover for team Flash, but what about a Flash museum?

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Flash_Museum

The Flash museum has been a staple of Flash lore for decades, and it's always housed trophies, working villain weapons and even the actual cosmic treadmill for when Flash needs to use it.  The Flash museum in the comics is very much like Star Labs is on the show; Cisco and co just haven't dressed it up for the public yet.

Supergirl --

Got bored. Thought about the upcoming crossover and figured that maybe the show would be better if I watched a few episodes really close together.

It didn't. It's just so bad. It's like they took scripts from other Superman shows and movies, and put them into a machine that now randomly generates Supergirl scripts. And it's so needlessly bad. It could have been so good!

The show is a lot like the Lois and Clark type of tv writing. It's fun when it's some silly show from the early 90's that I can enjoy because TV really didn't do much better back then. But times have changed. There is no reason for this show to be as bad as it is. There's no reason to be playing the Lex/Clark/Lionel dynamic with Lena/Kara/Brenda Strong. There's no reason to have Kara walking around in the DEO in her Kara clothes, or in an alien bar in her Kara clothes. There's no reason why they should have an alien bar, and aliens walking around on the street with blue skin, and yet act as though Kara is something special because she's an alien (this is the mistake they made with Angel, and it's still a mistake here).

An this "Alex is a lesbian!" story is so tired and played out, and has no place taking up so much screen time on a show like this. If they'd just had her start kissing that other woman, I don't think anyone would have even cared. It's not like the character was super well developed in the first place.

It's frustrating to me, because the show doesn't need to be bad. It really doesn't. I just don't think the writers care about it enough to take it seriously, so they're just mimicking what other writers have done in the past.