Nefarious

You are a mad scientist inventing crazy machines to conquer the world; you even get your own set of minions. Can you build the best arsenal?

We’ll get back to Gru (Despicable Me) and company in a bit but let’s get the technical babble out of the way first.

The Fiddly Bits
Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino
Publisher: USAopoly
Date Released: 2011
Number of Players: 2-6
Age Range: 8 and up
Setup Time: Less than a minute
Play Time: 15-45 minutes
Game Mechanics:
Hand Management
Simultaneous Action Selection

Game Flow:

Every player starts with four of the same action cards (that denote the types of actions you can take; more on them later), five minions, three invention cards, and ten million dollars. You have to say that last part like Dr. Evil.

The goal of Nefarious is to build inventions. The first one to reach 20 victory points—or more—of inventions wins.

At the beginning of each turn, all the players simultaneously select the action they wish to take for that turn, placing their chosen action card face down. Once everyone has selected an action, all players reveal the action they wish to take.

Sample action cards

The four actions you can take on a turn are Work, Research, Invent, and Espionage.

Working gets you four million dollars. Money—money—money. Money!

Research Action Card

Research earns you two million dollars and allows you to draw another invention card. We could all use options.

Invent Action Card

Invent lets you play an invention card. You want to invent things as often as possible.

Espionage Action Card

Espionage is a little tricky. By taking the Espionage action, you can place a minion on any of the four action spaces. If someone to your left or right takes that action, you get one million dollars for each minion on that action space.

Minions split between all four actions

This allows you to either spread out your minions so you get money more often than not.

Minions loaded up on one action

Or loading up your minions on one action, so you can make a lot of money whenever an adjacent player takes that action.

Now that we have the actions out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the invention cards.

Sample Invention Cards

Invention cards have a cost, in millions of dollars, in their upper left hand corner. The victory points they grant you are in the bottom left hand corner, along with any effects the invention might have. A green arrow pointed at you means that you’re affected by the invention. Three red arrows pointed away from you are effects that affect your opponents.

Some effects can affect your and your opponents’ money.

Others target your or your opponents’ invention cards in hand.

And some even manipulate the minions on the board.

Sometimes you’ll have more than one player inventing on a turn and that’s okay. The numbers in the bottom right hand corner function as a timer: the lower the number, the sooner you can play the invention.

Timing can be important as some inventions target players’ hands and/or money. If you have a high numbered invention, you may no longer have the invention card in hand or have the money to build the invention after other players with lower timers construct their inventions.

Again, the first player to earn 20 victory points or more in inventions wins. If more than one player reaches or eclipses 20 victory points on the same turn, the player who has the most points wins. If there’s still a tie, play until the tie is broken.

Sample plot twist cards

Oh, there is one last thing. There are larger cards called plot twists. They affect the game in unpredictable ways. We get quite a few of them in Nefarious and this changes up the gameplay.

Game Review:

I love Nefarious’s theme and its plot twist cards, even though the plot twists can be brutal. Some twists can speed up the game—awesome—while others slow the game to a crawl—not-so-awesome.

Overall, Nefarious is a fun and fast game but I can see why a lot of critics rated it low during its first release. Nefarious comes in a large box for what is essentially a filler game, a short game that passes the time and cleanses ones palette between larger games. What’s worse is that the not-so-awesome plot twists can punish players too much and slow down the gameplay until Nefarious takes up as much time as a game with more meat.

Nefarious’s designer Donald X. Vaccarino, who also designed Dominion, isn’t known for very deep and long games, and Nefarious is no different. Many gamers wanted more of a departure for Vaccarino; they wanted more complexity. But Nefarious does have plenty of replayability and a different flavor than Dominion. Nefarious’s negative reviews may have been a case of an overhyped game rather than a poor game.

When it first came out, Nefarious received moderate play and sales. Now that the new has worn off, Nefarious has returned for a second printing and some gamers are finding out that it was a better game than they had originally thought.

It’s not ground-breaking like many had hoped, but Nefarious is a solid filler game that if you were to purchase it, you’d get plenty of plays and enjoyment out of it. Plus, how great is it to command your own minions?

Bob’s Burgers Review: “The Land Ship”

Kyle’s Review

“The Land Ship” featured Tina and that’s always a good thing. Of all Bob’s Burgers’ characters, Tina has the most depth—okay Bob has quite a bit of depth too and so do many others, but Tina’s the epitome of an awkward teen trying to become the adult she’s supposed to be—as she struggles between doing the right thing and fitting in with the crowd.

With all that said I’m predisposed to liking most stories that feature Tina, but I’d have to say that “The Land Ship” was good not great. This might be a case of too much of a good thing. Bob’s Burgers is in its sixth season and there are plenty of episodes that showcase Tina’s insecurities and struggles with morality. Heck, there are some that have a parallel story of Bob going through similar struggles, and that might be where “The Land Ship” falls a little short.

Bob and Linda’s side story plays up the yucks—and there aren’t that many to be had—instead of linking to Tina’s main arc; Tina’s story is the main arc as the title of the episode is “The Land Ship” and her story is the only one that directly involves the land ship. I don’t know. Something was missing from “The Land Ship.” All the pieces were there but they didn’t quite fit like we’re used to seeing them fit. “The Land Ship” wasn’t a bad show. It just wasn’t as good as many other Bob’s Burgers episodes. With a couple of good seasons in a row—and three other fine seasons before them—it might be difficult for Bob’s Burgers to maintain its streak of good to great shows, but I think they’re up to the task.

Heroes Reborn Review: “The Needs of the Many”

Kyle’s Review

Heroes Reborn introduced the event that will unite most—if not all—its principal characters, but I’m not sure what the event is. It looks like Malina, the young lady who will “save the world” along with a few other characters, spread the aurora borealis across the entire Northern Hemisphere at least and perhaps the entire world. If you’re confused as to why she’d do something like that, so am I. I think Malina is calling all evos but your guess is as good as mine.

Luke (Zachary Levi) comes clean to his evo assassin wife Joanne (Judith Shekoni) about his newfound powers. These two’s relationship and Carlos Gutierrez (Ryan Guzman) taking over his brother’s gig as a superhero are the highlights of the series so far, but with so many characters and very little to bind them, too many of these characters get lost in the white noise.

I’m not even sure what the big threat is for this mini-series. It looks as if we may have a light versus dark (the classic dichotomy of good versus evil) conflict as—spoiler alert perhaps but I’m not sure—a mysterious kid with “shadow” powers is shown at the end of “The Needs of the Many.” This shadow kid might be the sister Quentin (Henry Zebrowski) is looking for but again, I’m not sure. That’s right, Heroes Reborn hid the kid’s gender from viewers for reasons I don’t understand.

For being almost a quarter of the way through the mini-series, we don’t have a lot of clarification. There’s being subtle and hiding characters’ intentions but Heroes Reborn takes this too far. Fortunately, Heroes Reborn is a mini-series so I’ll keep watching a while longer.

Arrow Review: “Green Arrow”

Jim’s Review

Arrow returned this week, and while I wouldn’t call it a homerun of an episode, I did see a few things I’m excited about.

Much like Flash, Arrow tried to cover a lot of ground in its premier. They wanted to catch us up, and they tested my willingness to accept how much can really be covered in five months, especially where how far a city can fall without making national (if not global) headlines. In short, Star(ling?) City is a war zone now, but Oliver seems far more unaware of the situation than is believable.

Speaking of Oliver and Felicity, their lovey-dovey, kissy-kissy routine nearly sent me into a diabetic coma. I get that a lot of fans have been waiting to see this, but there comes a point where I can only believe Diggle didn’t want Oliver around because he got tired of looking at his puppy eyes.

My big hope for this season centers around the villain, or at least the fact that he doesn’t appear to be a villain of the week. I really felt this show was strongest during season 2, and part of that reason was Deathstroke. He provided a tension that was allowed to boil over throughout the season, and it looks like they could be doing that with this villain, too.

The tension between Thea and Oliver felt a bit familiar. She’s mad that he’s talking down to her again. We’ve seen that, so it feels a little stale. Diggle is still angry about Oliver’s duplicitous behavior from last season, which while understandable, is getting a little old. Even Diggle’s wife wants him to let it go now. The feud between Captain Lance and Oliver was given a slightly different angle with a surprise toward the end, which adds the possibility for that to be fleshed out and made more interesting, but the key to this season being better than last, for me, is in letting the big villain be a central, ongoing conflict. I think it could happen, and I’m optimistic after the premier.

Kyle’s Take

I like the idea of a central villain we can root against but I’m mystified why every comic book TV show has to pretend like things happened over the course of the summer. Can’t we pick up where we left off the season prior? Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. uses this device as a means to incorporate things that happened in Marvel summer movies but the DC TV universe doesn’t tie into the DC movie universe, so it doesn’t make sense to jump ahead months into the future unless you have a really good reason. The audience is left playing catch up and as a result, we get season premieres that flail around in the mud for a spell. Still, this was an entertaining episode of Arrow—I could’ve done with less kissy face, too—and there’s enough to be excited about for this season of Arrow.

There were plenty of Easter Eggs in Arrow’s premiere as well. Check out our Arrow secrets page here.

Arrow Secrets: “Green Arrow”

Cooking to Impress

Felicity wasn’t reading the Joy of Cooking while she “failed her omelets,” she’s reading Cooking to Impress, which just happens to be written by Tara Butters, the executive producer for Marvel’s Agent Carter and the wife of Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim.

Ivy Town

Ivy Town is the place Felicity and Ollie decided to semi-retire. That’s an interesting choice, considering that Ivy Town is where you can find Ray Palmer, The Atom, in the comics.

Coast City

Coast City has been mentioned numerous times in both The Flash and Arrow but this was the first time Ollie has physically been in Coast City during an episode: Barry ran to Coast City for some grub once. Coast City is significant because it’s the home of Ferris Aircraft, Green Lantern, and more.

Star City

Like every other comic book TV show this Fall Arrow pretended as if events transpired during the summer months in real time. We, the viewers, just weren’t privy to these events until now and the show is playing catch up. Starling City’s transition to Star City (to honor Ray Palmer’s memory) is one such event. You’ve gotta love the new welcoming sign.

Cisco

This is another familiar Easter Egg: Cisco, the Flash’s sidekick of sorts, spent some time in Star(ling?) City. He even had some time to concoct a jazzy new costume for Ollie, while Barry was having his alone time.

Damien Darhk

What was Damien doing in this episode? He had to be conducting some kind of black magic ceremony and that was the indication we got—that we’d have a magical being as the big bad villain this season in Arrow—before the season began. But it’s interesting to note that in the comics, Darhk sapped Adeline Kane Wilson (wife of Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke) of her life force in order to gain his immortality. Arrow doesn’t follow the comics completely but this can’t be a coincidence. Could this mean that Deathstroke will make another appearance?

Hal Jordan

During the flashback, did you notice that pilot with the Jordan name patch on his flight jacket? That may have been Hal Jordan, the silver age Green Lantern. I don’t think Arrow will ever have Green Lantern as a legitimate guest star but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.

Hal and Ollie’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow was the landmark comic that signified the transition from comic’s silver to bronze age. It also happens to be one of Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams’ greatest works.

Kord Industries

According to Rumint (Rumor Intelligence), Ted Kord will be featured in an upcoming DC movie, so we most likely won’t see Kord in Arrow in the near future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t see plenty of his products showcased in DC’s TV universe. His company’s symbol should look familiar. It was all over the boxed during “Green Arrow’s” opening action sequence.

Red Arrow

The Red Arrow did exist in the DCU. When the original Speedy, Roy Harper, grew up, he took on the mantel of the Red Arrow and yes, a red arrow also means that you can’t make a left turn at a traffic light.

H.I.V.E.

H.I.V.E. rears its ugly head again. Arrow has been building up to this secret organization of villains for a while. I’m sure the organization will differ greatly from its DC Comics counterpart but there is a beehive pattern in Damien Darhk’s HQ and the original H.I.V.E. was a group to rival the League of Assassins. That doesn’t appear to be any different here.

Green Arrow

Finally, Ollie is known by his comic book alter ego: Green Arrow.

Zoom

Ollie name dropped Zoom during the flash forward. It looks like Green Arrow knows of Earth-Two in six months. Now we’ll have to see whose grave Ollie was visiting.

If you missed our review of Arrow’s season 4 premiere “Green Arrow,” here’s a link.

iZombie Review: “Grumpy Old Liv”

Kyle’s Review

Another comic book TV show and we get yet another summer months catch up with the premiere. iZombie second season jumped a few months from the events of its first season’s finale but I guess it was necessary. When we last saw Liv, she refused to give her kid brother a blood transfusion (for fear of giving him the Zombie disease), Blaine and Major were cured of their zombieism, and Liv was all out of antidote.

Since all of these threads were fairly well interwoven, iZombie didn’t take nearly as long as some of the other Fall TV premieres to get the ball rolling. Besides, all iZombie needs is a fresh murder mystery and set of brains to work their way through Liv’s system. This week’s mystery may not have tied into all the aforementioned threads but iZombie juggled these threads very well and the brains that Liv ate gave her a delightful grumpy old woman disposition: she is the oldest zombie in town after all.

I won’t spoil this week’s mystery solution here, but it had nothing to do with iZombie’s typical supernatural themes, yet it was satisfying and welcome. This season of iZombie—or at least the first episode of this season—is focused on the human element and the episode ends with a fantastic twist. Again, I won’t spoil the big reveal but let’s say that roles change, Liv’s life is turned upside down—even more so than last season when she became a zombie—and this season’s big bad is leaps and bounds above last season’s.

Verdict:

iZombie was one of those guilty pleasures I had from a year ago. The premise sounded dumb but it surprised me with its fusion of police procedural, dark comedy, and zombie motif, so I kept watching it. iZombie’s second season may reward viewers further for their patience. It’s too early to tell, but iZombie might challenge for the CW’s best comic book based TV show this year.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Secrets: “Laws of Nature” and “Purpose in the Machine”

The Melter

Joey Gutierrez, also known as the Melter, makes his TV debut. Gutierrez isn’t a direct comic book reference but there is a Marvel character who goes by the codename Melter. The original Melter gained his abilities through devices but the second character who went by Melter, Christopher Colchiss, did get his powers genetically.

Colchiss is an obscure character from Dark Reign: Young Avengers, while the original Melter was an Avengers villain for many years. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be going their own way with the Melter as Gutierrez doesn’t fit neatly with either of these two character.

Coulson’s hand and the axe that took it

Last season, Mack lopped off Coulson’s hand with an axe to prevent Coulson from becoming a statue. Coulson used several replacement hands in these two episodes but you may have missed that the axe that took Coulson’s hand is hanging in Coulson’s office.

Lash

Inhumans are dropping like flies but it’s not a secret organization executing them. No, it’s a lone creature known as Lash who punches his fist through these Inhumans’ chests. Lash is a newer villain created by Charles Soule and Joe Madureira just over a year ago and first appeared in Inhuman #1. Lash is kind of like the Apocalypse of the Inhumans. He rids the world of Inhumans he deems are unfit to exist.

President Ellis

William Sadler reprises his role as President Ellis from Iron Man 3. Ellis is named after author Warren Ellis, who created Iron Man’s Extremis abilities.

Shout outs to 2015 Marvel summer movies

The phrase “cities falling from the sky” is an obvious reference to Age of Ultron. Fitz was also so desperate to locate Simmons that Coulson brings up one of Fitz’s ridiculous theories: Simmons was shrunk to a sub-atomic level. That’s a reference to Ant-Man and the unfortunate fate given to Janet Van Dyne.

Simmons on another planet

We don’t get any clues as to which planet Simmons is stuck but it must be a Kree planet. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a strong link with the Inhumans, who have a shared history with the Kree, and Fox owns all the other important Marvel alien races. Seriously, Fox owns the rights to the X-Men, who tell stories of the Shi Ar, and they own the rights to the Fantastic Four, who bump into every other alien race in the Marvel universe. No wonder Marvel’s upset that they don’t own the rights to the Fantastic Four.

Elliot Randolph

I like Peter MacNicol. He reprises his role as Elliot Randolph, the Asgardian warrior who came to Earth many centuries ago. Randolph admits that he’s laying low because of the governments hate for irregulars. This sounds like a lead-in for Captain America: Civil War. It wouldn’t be the first time a Cap movie affected Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Amazon Woman

A threatened Randolph referred to Bobbi, codename Mockingbird, as an “Amazon Woman.” Adrianne Palicki, who plays Bobbi Morse, starred as Wonder Woman in a terrible 2011 TV pilot. Looks like Marvel was poking fun at DC with that one.

Secret Warriors

During Dr. Garner and Daisy’s exchange, Dr. Garner refers to Daisy’s recruit of an army of super beings as her “Secret Warriors.” In the comics, Daisy starred in a comic series named Secret Warriors, where she and Nick Fury led a team of super powered folks. Coincidentally, Secret Warriors first introduced the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. was a part of Hydra all along in the comics.

Werner von Strucker

On his quest to reconstitute Hydra, Grant Ward finds a descendant of Baron von Strucker’s, Werner von Strucker. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could’ve chosen Andreas von Strucker, the Swordsman, but they chose the less exciting Werner. I kid but not really. I’m sure Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will spice up Werner and this wasn’t the first time the lesser of the von Struckers has hit the screen. Scott Heindl portrayed Werner in the David Hasselhoff engine, Nick Fury: Agent of Shield.

Let’s hope Werner von Strucker gets a better treatment here than he did in one of the first screenplays penned by David S. Goyer. I have a theory on what David S. Goyer’s middle initial really stands for but I’m told it’s Samuel. Let’s just say there’s a reason Nick Fury: Agent of Shield only got a 3.5 (out of a possible 10) on IMDB, and it can be illustrated in a Venn diagram where Goyer overlaps with Hasselhoff.

Did you miss our Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review? Here’s a link. Enjoy.

Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review: “Laws of Nature” and “Purpose in the Machine”

Kyle’s Review

Instead of picking up where it left off at the end of last season, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continued its fast forwarding past the summer months to four or five months from the events of the previous season. I don’t know if I like this storytelling method or not. Allowing time to elapse gives the writers room a chance to incorporate the events of Marvel’s summer blockbusters, and jumping ahead through the summer months of 2014 made sense because of what happened during Captain America: Winter Soldier but not that much happened during the summer of 2015.

The events that occurred during Ant-Man and Age of Ultron were given footnotes in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s season three premiere, “Laws of Nature.” With that being the case we lost a sense of who the characters were in the TV show for not much of a payoff. It’s like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to take three steps back before taking one step forward. Again, I think that idea worked between season one and two but how long can they continue this ploy?

Once my mind re-acclimated to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s waters, I enjoyed the show well enough but I don’t think it’ll ever be a stand-alone show. AoS’s purpose is to set us up for the upcoming Inhumans movie and it’s doing a good enough job of that. I just hope they—they as in Marvel—will not pull a DC TV universe and use the characters from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the upcoming Marvel movies. All signs point to yes as plenty of Marvel’s cinematic actors have made appearances on the show and Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson, is a series regular and he got his start in Marvel’s movies.

After the dust settled in “Laws of Nature,” we find that our rag-tag team of agents are once again split-up, Skye goes by Daisy and she’s the only one in peak form, and Simmons is trapped on a different plane or planet. Like I said, they take three steps back before taking any steps forward but I guess this plot device works as a means of keeping the team manageable and not too powerful before the Inhumans movie. We get a lot of catch up in the first episode and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s third season doesn’t get started in earnest until its second episode, “Purpose in the Machine.”

At the beginning of “Purpose in the Machine” we learn that Simmons is definitely trapped on a distant planet. The rest of the episode splits its focus between finding a way to Simmons, reintroducing us to Agent May and her whereabouts, Syke or Daisy trying to assemble a team of Inhumans, Hunter’s vendetta against Ward, and Ward reconstituting Hydra. If it sounds like there was a lot going on in this episode, there was, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does a good job of balancing the different threads as many of the threads weave together.

The ending was a little too convenient. Simmons had been trapped for months and she just happened to be near the portal. They explained how Simmons found the portal (she saw the flare Fitz fired into the portal) but how could she see it through a massive sand storm and why would she head toward an explosion on a strange planet. I guess it made sense but that was a lot of build up for very little pay off. Still, I don’t know how Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could’ve maintained its ensemble without finding Simmons quickly but when characters don’t suffer, we don’t fear for their safety. I thought Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. could’ve and should’ve played with that thread for a while but we may not have seen the last of it after all. Simmons may suffer from PTSD.

Verdict:

“Laws of Nature” stumbled a little bit out of the gate but “Purpose in the Machine” made up for it by speeding through a lot of plot points. Perhaps Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s third episode this year could find a happy medium in terms of pacing. I’ll still watch, at least until the Inhumans film.

We also have some secrets from “Laws of Nature” and Purpose in the Machine.” Check them out here.

Flash Secrets: “The Man Who Saved Central City”

Atom-Smasher

Atom-Smasher—his alter ego is Albert Rothstein—is a hero in the comics. He has been a member of Infinity, Inc. and Justice League International and now I believe he’s a card-carrying member of the Justice Society of America: more on them later. Albert—is it okay if I call Atom-Smasher Albert—is the grandson of the reluctant supervillain Cyclotron, from whom Albert gained his metahuman powers, and he’s the godson of Al Pratt, DC’s golden age Atom. Pratt raised Albert, but Albert does have his grandfather’s tendency to teeter back and forth from hero to villain and then back again. Well, Albert’s upbringing and his destructive power lend themselves to Albert playing for both sides. At his core, Albert is a hero but it’s his internal struggle that makes him an interesting character.

Zoom

Atom-Smasher name-dropped Zoom before he died—if he died—in this episode. Reverse-Flash and Professor Zoom started as interchangeable names for the same character but as the DC Universe expanded, the two characters became more distinct. Geoff Johns, one of TV’s The Flash’s producers, went to great pains to distance the two characters in the comics and since The Flash will retain Tom Cavanagh (Dr. Harrison Wells/Reverse-Flash) as a series regular, we should expect these two to be different characters.

I won’t go into too much detail with each possibility as to who Zoom will be—there’s a lot of origins for both Professor Zoom and Reverse-Flash over the past five or six decades—but the presence of Jay Garrick, the guy who said, “your world is in danger,” at the end of this episode, sheds some light as to who Zoom might be. We’ll cover Garrick in more detail in a bit but let’s say he’s from an alternate timeline, Earth-Two if you will.

With so much time travel in the Flash’s adventures, timelines splinter off and create different realities. Professor Zoom may be the Reverse-Flash from an alternate timeline. The bottom line is don’t worry, Reverse Flash will return and we may get even more speedsters along the way. The Flash trailer at Comic-Con showcased some blue lightning. Could those blue lightning bolts come from Cobalt Blue? Or do those blue streaks belong to Professor Zoom?

Jay Garrick

Jay Garrick was the first and golden age Flash but with Barry Allen assuming the mantel of the scarlet speedster in DC’s silver age, Garrick became The Flash of Earth-Two. Earth-Two is another Earth from an alternate timeline. To be fair, DC justified the rebooting of many characters in the silver age by turning a lot of its golden age heroes into Earth-Two citizens, allowing DC’s silver age characters to live on Earth-One. Jay Garrick and Barry Allen team up frequently in the comics as the Justice Society of America (Earth-Two’s superhero group and original DC super team) join forces with the Justice League of America during their annual crossovers.

Separating Firestorm

No, Ronnie isn’t dead, we’ll see him again in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and comic book writers have used the separation of Firestorm as a plot tool for many decades. I’m sure we’ll see Dr. Stein and Ronnie Raymond come together before too long.

Mirror-Mirror

Did anyone else catch the two mirrors conspicuously facing each other during the Channel 52 newscast following The Flash celebration? If you blinked, you probably missed a man in a white costume. Could that be another of The Flash’s main villains, Mirror Master? Perhaps.

A New Flash Symbol

Barry is about to don a uniform closer to his classic silver age one. It’s the dawn of a new era for The Flash. You might as well dress the part.

The Flash Signal

Cisco created a flood light that could summon The Flash from anywhere in Central City and said that he saw it in a comic book once. Is that a hint at the Bat Signal? I think so.

News 52

DC’s TV universe has tipped its hat to the comics’ New 52 and that homage continued with this week’s episode of The Flash.

Mayor Bellows

Even though it’s just over a year old, the new Flash has a long history of recasting former 1990s The Flash cast members, and the second season premiere is no exception. Mayor Tony Bellows, the man who gave The Flash the key to the city, was a Central City cop in the 90s The Flash, but he’s climbed the ranks in the last two decades and he’s played by the same actor.

Mercury Labs

As soon as I heard that Caitlin Snow started working for Mercury Labs, I knew we’d get another appearance by a 1990s Flash cast member. Amanda Pays portrays the head of Mercury Labs and she was also The Flash’s love interest a couple decades ago.

Weathersby & Stone

When I first saw the camera zoom into Henry Allen’s mail and read Weathersby & Stone Attorneys at Law, I wondered if that was a nod to something in the comics but found nothing. It took me a while to realize that Taylor Weathersby and Eli Stone where the couple at the center of the TV series Eli Stone and that the actor who plays Martin Stein, Victor Garber, also played Weathersby’s father. Nice touch, The Flash.

If you missed our review of The Flash “The Man Who Saved Central City,” here’s a link.

The Flash Review: “The Man Who Saved Central City”

Jim’s Review

The season 2 premier of The Flash was about what you would have expected. We spent a lot of time catching up, getting glimpses of the fallout from the events of the season 1 finale.

In terms of tone, there was everything that made the show’s first season successful. Unfortunately, I think we’re already seeing the return of the big gripes from last season, too. We had a flash-in-the-pan villain, and while there may be a payoff as Atom Smasher was used to drop a big name for the future, but Atom Smasher himself was underdeveloped, and his conflict with Barry was overshadowed by the team’s internal conflict.

Speaking of the team’s internal conflict, the whole idea of Barry wrestling with whether or not to “go it alone,” or to accept the help of his friends feels like another rehashed story line. I was also disappointed to see Caitlin’s character regress back to simply missing Ronnie, but I am interested to see if Martin will replace Dr. Wells in the team. That seems to be where they’re headed.

Aside from the name Atom Smasher dropped, I think the teaser for next week’s episode was the real exciting part. Since it’s in the previews, I’ll call it fair game to say Jay Garrick coming to the show opens up some really interesting possibilities, not just for The Flash, but for other DC screen properties.

All things considered, it was a slower start to season 2 than I would have liked, but there certainly appears to be plenty of reason to stay excited about the show.

Kyle’s Take

I guess we’re not mentioning the name dropped here. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.) We do mention the name Atom Smasher mutters in our Flash secrets page. You can check that out here.

I have to echo Jim’s underdeveloped villain comment. The Flash has a wealth of interesting villains. He isn’t the Green Arrow. Arrow had to borrow characters from other franchises to round out his rogues. Heck, Arrow even borrowed from The Flash. It pains me to see a character like Atom Smasher tossed aside, especially when he has a deep and rich past that ties into Jay Garrick’s arrival.

Still, I can’t wait to see what The Flash has in store.