The Awesomes Review: “The Gayfather”

Kyle’s Review

The Awesomes packed a lot into twenty minutes. Most of what happened worked but there were some forced moments. The villain of the week, the titular “Gayfather,” worked for the most part. Frantic gets dumped and dates a supervillain who wants to make people who are in the closet come out of the closet whether they want to or not by irradiating the water supply so that all gay people glow blue. This story shines a light on how some folks can focus too much on one thing and not see the bigger picture. Frantic lectures the Gayfather and his Gay Mafia that you can’t force people to come out of the closet before they’re ready and that’s why they must be stopped, while Impresario admits that’s a bad thing but insists that irradiating and killing hundreds of thousands of people might be a little worse than some people getting outed. The Gayfather portion of the story worked for me but the other half to this week’s The Awesomes fell a little short.

Mr. Awesome wants Perfect Man out of the way, in order for him to do some evildoing at Awesome Mountain, so he ships Prock and Perfect Man off on a road trip to retrieve some incriminating evidence. Okay, that works. Then, we’re shoved Perfect Man’s backstory and how never knew his parents. That was a little rushed but I didn’t mind it. And then we’re left with a reveal at the end (no spoilers here) that goes against everything we knew about some characters. That was forced and somewhat predictable. Anyone who follows The Awesomes could guess what the big reveal would be—it was that choreographed. Still, I liked “The Gayfather” well enough despite its hiccups, and The Awesomes are chugging along to another solid season. “The Gayfather” did end in a great place: Dr. Malocchio’s back on Earth and he knows he’s going to be a grandfather. Things should heat up next week.

Bob’s Burgers Review: “The Hauntening”

Kyle’s Review

We’ve had some more technical difficulties so our reviews are a little behind again but let’s get to it.

I released a sigh of contentment after watching “The Hauntening.” Bob’s Burgers needed the shot in the arm that a great Halloween episode can prodive and “The Hauntening” had just about everything you’d want.

Louise laments that it’s Halloween and she can’t get scared. Come to think of it, she was the only one cheering when a candy cane truck ran the Belchers off the road. Anyway, Bob and company come to the rescue. I won’t say how they make a haunted house work (no spoilers here) but they do and it leads to some great belly laughs.

I love it when Bob’s Burgers uses plenty of puns, play on words, and Gene spouts nonsensical phrases. They haven’t done that too much this season but they made up for lost time. I won’t spoil too much but here are some of the better jokes:
Breaking Radish Burger (Ah, Breaking Bad)
Linda greeting the kids at the haunted house: “Nice to creep you. Allow me to introboo myself.”
Gene (on turning the tables on his parents): We’ll turn them from parents into scarents.
Gene (after a jump scare and terrifying vision in a bedroom): That’s not a good use of that room.
Gene (after someone said an interior door slammed because of inside wind): I know about inside wind…sorry about that one, guys.

Often, Louise finds herself alone—in fact, she likes being alone most of the time—but shows like “The Hauntening” prove that Louise needs and loves her family. So we got laughs and the show ended with a heartwarming family hug and a Boys 4 Now music video and sing along. Nice job, Bob’s Burgers, nice job. “The Hauntening” is by far the best episode of this early season.

Arrow Secrets: “The Candidate”

Curtis Holt is your Mister Terrific

Okay, in the comics Mr. Terrific is a middle-aged man named Michael (last name remains the same) but even though Arrow changed Mister Terrific’s age and his given name to Curtis, Holt has been given the green light to create something that could save Palmer Technologies and that something could easily be Mister Terrific’s trademark weapon/gear: The T-Spheres.

We also know that Echo Kellum, who plays Curtis Holt, was cast as Mister Terrific, so it’s only a matter of time before we see this brilliant another awesome—er, terrific—super hero grace the screen.

Anarky in Star City

Lonnie Machin is a Batman/Robin villain who rose to prominence in the eighties and nineties. Why does Arrow borrow so many Batman rogues? Machin calls himself Anarky—yes, that’s not a typo—and he wears a flamboyant red and gold costume. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Anarky. He got burned half to death, fought his way out of an ambulance and he could very well show up in Star City dressed in his signature cloak and mask.

Star City’s Mayoral Candidate

Jessica Danforth’s run for mayor didn’t last long but Jeri Ryan, the actress who played Danforth, had a much longer TV series run on Star Trek: Voyager. Arrow may have tipped their hat to Ryan’s more prominent Star Trek character, Seven of Nine.

We’ve seen plenty of press conferences on Arrow and each time only one microphone appeared on the podium. Danforth had a second mic that read, Seven6. If Danforth were to look down, the 6 would be a 9, and so her second news station would’ve been Seven of Nine.

Star City’s Next Mayor

Sure, Oliver Queen has run for mayor—and even served as mayor—in the comics, but during a recent interview, Marc Guggenheim, Arrow’s showrunner, insisted that Ollie would never serve as Star City’s mayor because he didn’t want to alienate viewers who might share different political views and the show would run the risk of getting boring.

I’m sure Ollie’s platform of saying no to terrorists and maniacs won’t rub too many people the wrong way and so long as Arrow doesn’t go the way of Star Wars’ senate, we shouldn’t be too bored with Ollie running for office.

Vertigo Comics

Dennis, that one vocal board member of Palmer Technologies, could be named after the longtime DC Comics/Vertigo editor Will Dennis. It’s probably a long shot but Arrow likes to namedrop writers and editors from DC’s past.

White Canary

We’ve known for some time that Sara Lance was returning for some time. Like Thea, Sara’s personality will shift as a result of Lazarus Pit exposure. Sara’s going to be a series regular on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, a CW mid-season replacement show planned for early 2016, so Sara’s resurrection isn’t a huge surprise. Still, a partially decayed corpse found in Sara’s coffin was a nice touch.

Baron Reiter/Baron Blitzkrieg

I almost didn’t catch this one at first. In the comics Baron Reiter is a German, who served the Nazi party during World War II and had numerous battles with a predominantly patriotic themed superhero group called the All-Star Squadron. Reiter also changed his name to Blitzkrieg after the German military tactic. Baron Blitzkrieg has shown up in more recent DC events but he’s synonymous with the Nazis and World War II so it’s easy to not place his name in “The Candidate.”

From what we’ve heard Baron Reiter won’t turn into Baron Blitzkrieg on Arrow but it looks like Arrow’s setting up Reiter’s origin. Reiter was a vicious German army officer who was blinded and disfigured by a concentration camp prisoner throwing a bottle of acid in his face. It may not be a German concentration camp but Reiter has a somewhat similar set-up on the island.

Just in case you missed our review of Arrow’s “The Candidate,” here’s a link.

Arrow Review: “The Candidate”

Jim’s Review

This was a stronger episode for Arrow. It had some of the same old problems. A lot of the groups internal tension still seems forced, and some of that may be that there’s so much of it going on at once. I can’t help but feel like if they’d settled Diggle and Oliver’s issues before having Thea go haywire, it wouldn’t be so much, but the show handled it better this week by at least picking one thing to focus on. They made it clear Diggle is still angry at Oliver, but they devoted the screen time to Thea, and making it a little clearer that the effects of the Lazarus Pit are what have her out of whack is a good way to make the conflict more believable.

Some of the show’s minor conflicts seemed to crop up and find themselves settled much too easily, and too soon for me to care about them. The layoffs at Palmer Technologies, and the Danforth mayoral campaign are what come to mind specifically. They weren’t bad ideas, they just happened to quickly.

Dialogue was a trouble spot again. Going back to the layoffs at Palmer Technologies, the exchanges between Felicity and the layoff victims felt contrived, and that’s putting aside the fact that there’s no way a CEO does their own firing. That just does not happen, but it’s a minor thing to pick on.

Maybe the most egregious bit of bad dialogue came near the end, when Captain Lance was cued for a dramatic reveal of this week’s villain’s name, that being Anarky (it’s spelled that way in the comics, really). What I found annoying was the cop who said she had no idea what the insignia meant. Frankly, there’s no way a cop doesn’t know that an “A” spilling over the boundary of a circle means anarchy. Has this cop never seen graffiti? It’s not a huge deal in and of itself, but it’s emblematic of some of the sloppiness the show has displayed when shoe-horning in bits of a dialogue.

The flashbacks were entertaining enough, even if they feel like a backward step, putting Oliver back on the island. My big concern is that it’s not really going anywhere at this point. If the show wants to continue using flashbacks to introduce elements of the comics, or to setup current story lines, that’s okay, but it runs the risk of slowing down the pace of the episodes.

Oliver running for mayor is interesting enough, but it stretches believability. I’m not sure he’s supposed to be thirty yet in the show, and it’ll be a tough sell to have him run the city by day and be Green Arrow by night. Something will have to give there.

Finally, the big tease for the next episode was interesting. I won’t spoil too much, but I do like that they seem to be addressing one of the show’s big questions, at least for me, since they first introduced the league and Ra’s.

All in all, I think this week’s episode is a step in the right direction.

Kyle’s Take

Comic book shows need to rethink the skipping ahead several months to account for the summer break plot device. It doesn’t work most of the time and the improper use of this device rears its head in Arrow again. Felicity would’ve never met—let alone fire—those employees because she left Palmer Technologies to sit and spin for five months. Companies don’t hemorrhage money for five months before cutting employees and they certainly don’t wait an additional six months to see if things turn for the better. Yes, we saw a little bit of Thea’s descent into Lazarus Pit induced madness but most of her turn occurred in the five months we missed, so there was a lot more telling instead of showing in that regard. And that’s before you get to all the other threads that are rushed because we lost time. If DC/CW wants to continue the jump ahead, I don’t know why Arrow doesn’t use its flashbacks for the summer months. We could’ve seen some of these issues deepen worsen during these flashbacks and it wouldn’t slow down the pace too much.

I know it doesn’t sound like it but I, for the most part, liked “The Candidate.” I have many of the same reservations as Jim and I totally called the Lazarus Pit about a year ago. Whenever you introduce something like that, you run the risk of bringing back characters from the dead at an alarming rate. It took longer than I expected but I knew the end of this episode (no spoilers here) was going to happen sooner or later. Still, that moment was well done.

If you want spoilers, here’s a link to our Arrow secrets page.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review: “A Wanted (Inhu)Man”

Kyle’s Review

It doesn’t take much time to spot the difference between Marvel and DC’s television script writing: DC (Arrow and The Flash) focuses most of its writing efforts on the folks with powers, while Marvel centers its writing with the folks without powers. Non-powered characters in the DC TV universe are likely to be written like pod people, but Quake (aka Skye, aka Daisy) has little going on besides assembling a super team of inhumans. Yes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. insists on shipping—that’s shorthand and verb form of relationship—Daisy and Lincoln but let’s face it, that ain’t happening. I’ve seen more onscreen chemistry between two rocks. To be fair, those were two sexy, decorative rocks, but the fact remains that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s human characters have more substance.

And we get a lot from those human characters in “A Wanted (Inhu)Man.” Fitz helps Simmons readjust to life on Earth—that’s going to be a long, difficult, and rewarding process. Simmons reveals that she needs to go back to her distant planet prison for some reason—that should be interesting. Coulson has to make a deal with the devil, better known as the U.S. government agency tasked with hunting down inhumans—that’s gonna get hairy in places. Bobbi struggles with her rehab and her relationship with Hunter: she wants to be in the field to help Hunter on his mission but she can’t—aww. And Hunter kills an old chum in order to infiltrate Hydra, and the wide-eyed moment he realizes his friend is gone has to be one of the best moments in this early Fall television season.

As you can see there’s plenty to love in “A Wanted (Inhu)Man,” but we know the story will shift from the human element to the inhumans the closer we get to the Inhumans movie, and there isn’t a lot to like on that front for the time being. I’m sure Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will step up its character development of Daisy and the rest; I’d just prefer a more immediate sign that things will change for the better.

There weren’t that many new elements added this week, so we don’t have an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets page for “A Wanted (Inhu)Man.” But I did find the following logo for the upcoming Secret Warriors.

Looks like Skye (aka Daisy aka Quake) will be busy in the coming months.

The Flash Review: “Flash of Two Worlds”

Jim’s Review

Well, if you followed my live tweets of the show, you can probably guess I found plenty to pick on this week. That doesn’t necessarily make for a bad show, but in the case of this one, it sort of does.

The biggest thing that bugged me this week was the dialogue. Having Barry talk about Wells, and Caitlin about Ronnie was sloppy. Essentially, we had characters simply tell us what their motivations and emotional statuses were. Barry being a jerk to Jay felt forced, and it shows the writing team still needs to work on its lighter touch.

Joe’s new meta-human squad sidekick felt tacked on. Her character wasn’t developed, so it wasn’t that tense to see her strapped to a bomb.

What I liked about this episode was Cisco moving closer to his superhero fate. I didn’t buy his unwillingness to investigate or reveal it to the group, but it’s some much-needed character development.

All in all, I think this week was a step back. The season still has some potential, but I’m hoping next week we get some real momentum.

Kyle’s Take

“Flash of Two Worlds” tried to do too much too soon. Dr. Stein spoon fed us the multiverse theory, and that was okay, but the lectures didn’t end there. Every character, including the ones we just met, vomited their life story at the slightest provocation. Storytelling of this nature would feel out of place even if you didn’t skip ahead five months from the events of last season to the beginning of this one but it’s especially out of place here.

I think you’d know if you had 52 rifts in space-time well before a five month period. And what was Jay Garrick doing during that timeframe? Garrick came out of the largest rift, which happened to be in STAR Labs. Did it take Jay five months to find the floor Barry was on? Fortunately, there were a lot of comic book mentions in “Flash of Two Worlds” (here’s a link to our secrets page) but it’ll take more than good Easter eggs to message the kinks in The Flash’s storytelling. I’m still hopeful for this season.

The Flash Secrets: “Flash of Two Worlds”

The Flash of Two Worlds

Even the title of this week’s Flash is an Easter egg. “The Flash of Two Worlds” was the name of the first crossover between Barry Allen (Flash of Earth-One) and Jay Garrick (Flash of Earth-Two). The picture above shows the original comic book cover and a promotional picture for this episode side-by-side.

Two Earths are better than one

The Flash hasn’t been hinting at Earth-Two, it’s been screaming about Earth-Two at the top of its lungs and this week Dr. Martin Stein explained the multi-verse concept to Team Flash, much to the chagrin of Detective West. Yes, the same people inhabit each parallel Earth but they can make vastly different life choices. For instance, Bruce Wayne, who still fights crime as Batman on Earth-Two, is married to Selina Kyle (Catwoman).

Wayne and Kyle’s shipping is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the wacky things that can happen in the multi-verse. DC rid itself of the multi-verse with its Crisis on Infinite Earths event (in the mid-1980s) but the multi-verse is back and so are the countless characters who stem from it. We mentioned last week that the Justice Society of America resides on Earth-Two and that bears repeating. We would cease to have new stories about Jay Garrick and the rest of DC’s golden age heroes if there wasn’t an Earth-Two.

DC produced an interactive map of its Multiverse. Here’s a link to DC’s interactive map.

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2014/08/18/the-map-of-the-multiverse

Given Dr. Stein’s lecture, we aren’t looking at a 52-world multiverse. DC only recently reinstated an infinite multiverse so The Flash is staying current with the DCU—maybe. We did learn that there are 52 breaches between the world of The Flash and 51 other worlds, so while there may be infinite Earths, we should only be concerned with 52 of them.

Jay Garrick: The Flash of Earth-Two

Did we hear that Jay Garrick received his powers by experimenting with heavy water? Yep. That’s how Garrick got his super speed. Well, sometimes the writers referred to it as hard water and other times heavy water but no matter how silly the origin may sound, The Flash honored the source material.

War of Americas

Jay Garrick says that he obtained his signature helmet during the War of Americas but DC comics fans were most likely scratching their heads over that reference. That’s because the fictional conflict known as the War of Americas occurred in the world of Jack & Bobby, a 2004 television show by Arrow and The Flash executive producer Greg Berlanti. Green Arrow writer Brad Meltzer was another producer of Jack & Bobby and one of the writers of the series was none other than Marc Guggeinheim, Arrow’s showrunner. The War of Americas may not have a DC comics link but a lot of the creative people behind DC’s TV universe were involved with Jack & Bobby.

Patty Spivot

Patty Spivot may have shown up out of nowhere, but she isn’t a made-for-TV character. In the comics, Patty helped Barry in the crime lab on numerous occasions, so don’t be surprised if she stays on the show for quite some time.

The Mardon Brothers

Patty is the first of many folks whose lives have been altered by the various meta-humans and that is—according to the dialogue—what fuels her interest in the meta-human task force.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

You’re alright in our book if you can quote Monty Python, and Patty Spivot’s alright in this instance. Plus, Patty dropping some Monty Python and the Holy Grail lines gave us an excuse to post a pic of the movie poster.

Hudson University

Patty Spivot mentioned going to Hudson University when she pressured Detective West to give her a job on the metahuman task force. Plenty of over DC Comics personalities attended Hudson University besides Patty. Dick Grayson attended for one semester but Professor Martin Stein, Crysal Frost, Louise Lincoln, and Duela Dent (Two-Face’s daughter).

Zoom or Black Flash

Zoom was portrayed as a black version of the Flash and while there is a character by the name of Zoom, there’s also a Black Flash but the Black Flash isn’t so much a villain as he is a force of nature. The Black Flash is the grim reaper for speedsters. It’ll be interesting to see if The Flash alters these characters to make a new one.

The Zoom in The Flash wants to be the best speedster on any Earth, so he sort of is the embodiment of death.

Sand Demon

Eddie Slick is also known as Sand Demon in the comics. His powers are similar and comparable to Spider-Man’s rogue Sandman but instead of beginning his career as a Flash villain, Sand Demon went toe to toe with Firestorm, having first appeared in Firestorm #51. Slick only lasted two years before he died in Firestorm #75, so I guess his death at the end of this week’s episode makes some sense.

Blackgate

Slick mentioned being locked up in Blackgate penitentiary, which is a lesser used prison in the DC Universe. If you’ve ever played the Arkham series of video games or—heaven forbid—watched the Gotham TV series, you’ve heard of Blackgate plenty of times.

Green Arrow

You’ve gotta love it when the two DC comics TV shows mention each other and Green Arrow was a nice touch. I especially liked Cisco response of “I hate it when they add a color to the name.” Nice, Cisco.

Vibe

Ah. Cisco summons his “vibe” powers and channels them in order to defeat this week’s villain. I don’t know why Cisco wouldn’t want to use this power to help the team but this won’t be the last time he uses these abilities. I guarantee it.

The Fluoronic Man

I feel guilty for including the above picture from 1997’s Batman and Robin but that was the first time The Fluoronic Man made a screen debut and apparently, Central City has a greenhouse named after Jason Woodrue, the Fluoronic Man’s alter ego. I don’t know if we’ll catch a glimpse of the character in The Flash. He was mentioned but never seen in the Swamp Thing TV series so this could just be a name drop.

Harrison Wells

We caught a glimpse of Earth-Two’s Harrison Wells at the end of this week’s episode but who’s to say whether Wells of Earth-Two is good or evil. Only time will tell.

Just in case you missed our review of “Flash of Two Worlds” here’s a link.

iZombie review: “Zombie Bro”

Kyle’s Review

Liv ate some frat boy’s brain this week and she developed a nasty case of the “bros,” bro. I’m serious, bro. Every other word out of her mouth was bro, bro, so “Zombie Bro” is a great title for this week’s iZombie episode…bro. It’s hard to stop once you get started—bro.

Anyway, iZombie took a break from the usual take down Max Rager arc and spent some time in Blaine’s World whenever it wasn’t marinating in Liv and Major’s strained relationship. The marinade of choice was a massive kegger for Liv, while Major and Ravi tripped balls on Utopium. The two threads led to some hilarity but the humor was undercut by what Liv and Major have kept and are keeping from each other. Ravi may be conducting a scientific experiment—yeah, right—but Liv and Major are running from their problems.

“Zombie Bro” could’ve taken the easy route and made a frat boy the perpetrator of the crime but it went in a different direction: a son avenging his father’s death at the hands of a drunk driver. This added another layer of substance abuse to this episode and substance abuse awareness was the real message iZombie left its viewers. We may not have seen the last of this message either as Major was left alone in his room taking another hit of Utopium.

iZombie had the best season premiere of all the comic book based shows on the CW and its streak of strong shows continued with “Zombie Bro.” I loved how comedy undercut the serious topics touched in this episode but at the same time, humor didn’t cheapen the points iZombie made.

Blindspot Review: “Bone May Rot”

Kyle’s Review

Another week of Blindspot and we get another plot to destroy the world—or at least a large portion of the human population. Blindspot might need to ease off the throttle just a hair or else its viewers may get fatigued. Don’t get me wrong, “Bone May Rot” isn’t a bad episode by any stretch but there’s only so much world in peril we can stand before we cease to suspend disbelief. Take a page from Arrow season two, Blindspot, and give us a villain that has a slow burn, allowing the story to build up to a maniacal plot to destroy the Earth. Blindspot could be getting us there soon—I hope.

As for “Bone May Rot,” this week’s clues from Jane’s body were pretty clever. I don’t want to spoil anything here but the moment at CDC headquarters was a nice touch. I also liked the reason for why these bio-terrorists would unleash incurable diseases on the populous, even though the reasoning is a little old hat: there are too many people on this Earth and Mother Nature can’t support them all. And the recurring characters—many are still unnamed or their names are seldom mentioned—are gaining some depth. There’s some sexual tension between the African-American male agent (I guess his name is Edgar but I had to check IMDB) and the Latina female agent (Tasha, according to IMDB). Tasha has some additional issues—I won’t spoil them either. And then there’s Ashley Johnson’s Agent Patterson—I actually knew her character’s name without checking IMDB—may be in some hot water with the higher ups. She shared a scene with her beau, a puzzle nut, where she divulged files from the team’s classified mission. If you served a second in military intelligence, you’d know she’d be making little rocks out of bigger rocks if her supervisor caught wind of Patterson sharing secrets with a civilian, and Patterson reeks of stink.

Despite the massive suspension of disbelief needed for Agent Patterson’s side story, I enjoyed “Bone May Rot,” but I’m left wondering how Blindspot intends to update the info on Jane’s body. Chuck had a built in method of updating the intersect: upload intersect 2.0 into Chuck’s brain. But who would spend the time and money to knock out Jane Doe, laser remove her tats, and give her fresh ones? I don’t know but I’m sure they’d have to be one sick son of a—I guess we’ll have to keep watching for the big reveal.

Oh, and the last few minutes of “Bone May Rot” may have dismantled everything built between Agent Weller and Jane Doe. Okay, maybe not. Blindspot hasn’t done too good of a job hiding Jane Doe’s true identity and the final minutes use a hokey plot device to throw viewers off the scent. I’m not buying it.

The Awesomes Review: “The Awesomes Reloaded”

Kyle’s Review

“The Awesomes Reloaded” takes on a superhero trope by having a villain hypnotize the team and create an alternate, utopian reality for each team member: Prock is a cop and a hero, Frantic is a high school track coach and respected, Impresario is an artist, and Concierge is a librarian. Okay, that last one’s a little off but Concierge does like a place for everything and everything in its place so she’s down with the Dewey Decibel System.

It’s fun to see The Awesomes in different roles and the roles The Awesomes choose for their characters work on a comedic level. But what makes “The Awesomes Reloaded” well worth the watch is that it doesn’t skimp on the ongoing story arcs. Perfect Man still prefers Prock and company to the new Awesomes, Livewire and Prock’s impending parenthood takes center stage with a new extended family member learning the good news, and the villain behind this episode’s whole mess is none other than this season’s big bad.

In short, everything worked with “The Awesomes Reloaded,” The Awesomes are well on their way to another solid season.