Just finished the crossover.
I think that if they want to keep doing these (and while they can be fun, I'm not sure that they actually should keep doing these 4-way crossovers, as opposed to smaller crossovers spread across the season) they should just film them either during the summer, or as the first episodes of each series for the season, and then air them during the winter break. Supernatural usually does this when Jensen Ackles directs, so he has time to prep his episode before the season starts.
I agree with a lot of what all of you were saying, so I won't go into everything. The Thawne stuff makes absolutely no sense at all. I don't get why they felt a need to bring him back, and I don't get how they did it without remembering how they did it. These writers get very lazy, and it shows. He also made a reference to having fought Superman in the future. So, does Superman end up on Earth 1 at some point?
The Caitlin thing is similar. In one scene, she looked like Caitlin Frost from the end of last season (white hair, brown eyes, and Caitlin's overall posture), but they never said anything about it. It's like they just let Danielle film a scene without the contact lenses for some reason. The Snow/Frost story continues to confuse, but whatever.
There was a real opportunity for them to do interesting things with Kara's double. She would have been from more or less the same Krypton as "our" Kara, only to be found by Nazis when she crashed here. She wasn't a baby when that happened. So how did this Kara, who would have been a good person when she landed, become this monster? And why didn't normal Kara throw out a line like "Do you think this is what our parents had in mind when they sent you here?"
I also thought that Melissa's acting as evil Kara was pretty weak. Overall, the villains were pretty one-dimensional (and that is a problem, even when writing Nazis), but she didn't do the mustache twirling very well.
Sara... If I say what I want to say, I will be criticized for being sexist. So I will just say this... Dean Winchester is a slut. He sleeps around too much, has too little respect for the women that he sleeps with, and he's getting a little old for that act. They started to have him grow up around season 6, but then they stepped back and he returned to his old ways. I didn't like that decision.
Sara Lance makes Dean Winchester look like a saint. The woman can't be in the same room with another female without jumping her bones. And I get it. They want to make her Indiana Jones, and Han Solo, and all of those other Harrison Ford characters who fight bad guys and sleep with all the girls, but they took it too far. Sara used to be an interesting character (and kind of a serial monogamist, if you ask me, since it was always Oliver or Nyssa). Now she has the same problem as Kara, where they're forgetting how to make her an actual character. Her bedding all of these women throughout history is a joke, but that's all she is anymore.
When evil Lance asked her why she would side with the people that she did, she replied by saying "Because I like men, and I like women"... and that answer made no sense in that context. It's like someone asking her if she wants butter on her popcorn and her response being "I'm bisexual". She allied herself with those people because they're the good guys!
And the response she gave robbed the scene of all of the drama that could have come from her father's double threatening to kill her. (and this reminded me once again that she should be facing Laurel this year, not Dinah)
Sara and Alex actually worked together in the scenes where they weren't doing the awkward sex stuff. Why did they even have to go there? The audience would have been shipping them much harder if they didn't start off by having them in bed together!
Felicity... I remember why I hate her now. She literally interrupted someone else's wedding, so that she could get married herself!?!?! Because it couldn't wait five f___ing seconds?! The Oliver/Felicity stuff in this crossover felt really awkward and forced, like the writers needed some relationship drama, but didn't have any good ideas. I hate this pairing so much, because Felicity is so often a b___h to Oliver, and he just stands there and takes it. If the genders were reversed, would anyone be cheering for this couple? At some point, it's just a form of emotional abuse. Oliver can do better. Hell, he HAS done better, and two of his ex girlfriends, and his ex wife, are assassins!
I'm sure there's more to discuss (like why wasn't Ray at the wedding when he knew the couple more than Sara did?) but it's late. So I will just say... the politics. Maybe it's not as big a deal to the rest of you, but I'm just tired of it. In an episode where literal Nazis with the genocide and the camps, and the doomsday weapons are attacking the plant, the writers feel a need to put in Trump references. It's offensive on so many levels, not the least of which is the fact that they are reducing the severity of what the Nazis did to an insult along the lines of "poopy head". I'm tired of not being able to enjoy a stupid comic book series without having them take jabs like this, which are meant as a jab toward at least half of their audience.
Does any sane, rational, mature human being actually believe that Donald Trump is a literal Nazi? Of course not. He is a lot of things that pretty much all of us would agree on, but a Nazi is not one of them. And yet, this trend of calling anyone you disagree with a Nazi continues, along with the "punch a Nazi" (also referenced in the crossover) line, which has resulted in people who are not remotely Nazis actually being assaulted in the real world. I don't find that funny.
And before everyone says that I'm overreacting to these innocent little jabs, I'd like to remind you that these shows have established other presidents for both Earth 1 and whatever Earth Kara comes from. The Trump references have no place on these shows, and having them in there isn't just petty, it's unprofessional.
Overall, the crossover was fun, but shallow. The writing could have used a few more passes with the red pen, but that doesn't seem to happen much with these shows, and a lot of really basic mistakes are made because of it. The plot didn't always make sense (as mentioned by someone else, they never explained why they attacked Earth 1 if they had been targeting Kara all this time). The dialogue was unpolished, to the point where some conversations made no sense, as writers tried to force their way into a punchline. I agree that it was better than last year, but I'm not sure that these crossovers are worth the effort. They are sloppy and rushed, and pretty much always feel like something that exists outside of the real Arrowverse anyway. These episodes will have a lasting impact, with weddings and deaths, but I don't see how they will be anything but awkward, both when we get back to the normal shows, and when/if we rewatch these on DVD. How do they even handle these episodes on DVD? I haven't checked to see about that.
I'm being super negative, I know. The episodes were fun to watch.
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