The Flash Secrets: May 15, 2015

Ferris Air is Missing a Test Pilot

Oh, Flash. You may not be able to mention Batman or Superman but this was a not-so-subtle nod to a former Ferris Air test pilot, Hal Jordan a.k.a. Green Lantern. But that must have been one heck of a road trip for the Flash gang. They traveled from Central City to Coast City in order to make it to Ferris Air (here’s our map of the DC Comics Universe Cities). Yikes!

That’s a Lot of Blue…

Okay, Eddie Thawne isn’t a part of the DCU but his family’s everywhere. Then I wonder about Eddie’s choice in clothing. He wears a lot of blue. Could Eddie be the comics’ modern-day ancestor of Eobard Thawne, Malcolm? Malcolm Thawne is the alter ego of Cobalt Blue and Rick Cosnett (Eddie in The Flash) does look good in blue.

Prison Break

Ha-ha, very punny. Dominic Purcell (Heat Wave) and Wentworth Miller (Captain Cold) starred in Fox’s TV show Prison Break and this episode featured a prison break.

One Good Pun Deserves Another

Leave it to Miller’s Captain Cold to drop lines like “Freeze,” while holding a cold gun. He’s also a “Jukebox Hero” for feeding enough quarters so Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” would be playing while Barry asked for his help. I see what you did there, Flash.

Lian Yu and Nanda Parbat

We get a couple of name drops from Arrow in this week’s Flash. Oliver’s island gets a mention as well as his League of Assassins’ HQ. I wonder what Nyssa’s doing on her wedding night, while Ollie steps out, and apparently, Lyla Michaels doesn’t have to worry about the League of Assassins anymore. That’s a plus.

In-Fighting Among the Villains

This is a classic superhero trope. Any team of villains have trouble defeating a hero because they’re too busy fighting amongst themselves. We catch a glimpse of this in the back of the truck before the meta-humans got their powers back. We’ll have to see if Snart can bring this group together. He’s already calling them his Rogues, but he may get a little distracted when Rip Hunter asks for his help in the Arrow/Flash spin-off.

The Flash Ring

We saw the Reverse-Flash use the fabled ring in this week’s episode and that was a splendid thing.

The Satellite Era of the Justice League

Okay, it’s not likely that The CW will use the name Justice League but we’ve seen (or heard about) several members of key JL members from the Satellite Era. Green Arrow, The Flash and Firestorm played significant roles during this time and we’ve seen Ray Palmer (The Atom) and Black Canary as guest stars.

Then if you add that Green Lantern was hinted at with the Ferris Air test pilot (see above) in this episode and Hawkgirl makes a cameo in next week’s season finale, The Flash has made a reference to almost every major figure from this period of the JLA besides the big three: Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

Here’s our Flash review if you missed it.

iZombie Review – “Patriot Brains”

Kyle’s Review

iZombie killed off a character in this week’s “Patriot Brains.” I won’t say who dies but the death makes for a compelling scene and sets a few things straight, sending iZombie into the home stretch with a good stride.

Per the better episodes of iZombie, we didn’t get much of Liv’s narrative voice, the week’s victim has an interesting backstory, and the abilities and neuroses Liv gained from the victim played well with both the mystery’s solution and the ongoing story lines. A lot came into focus and the slow boil of the zombie underground could make a good season finale.

I also liked that Liv’s love life will take a backseat. Perhaps we’ll see a slower build toward future zombie lovin’. If you’ve followed my iZombie reviews up to this point, you’ll know that I need a little time to wrap my brain around a zombie love story. I can get there but iZombie will have to work for it and “Patriot Brains” put in a lot of work this week.

Orphan Black Review – “Newer Elements of Our Defense”

Kyle’s Review

“Newer Elements of Our Defense” continued the entangled genetics of the male and female clones with delicious results. This week’s Orphan Black ended with a cliffhanger, so I won’t be able to go into too much detail, but believe me when I say you won’t be disappointed and if you haven’t been following Orphan Black, “Newer Elements of Our Defense” would be a difficult entry point.

Orphan Black found a way to give all the main clones – both male and female – even screen time. That doesn’t happen in most episodes – it may have never happened in a single episode – and it’s nice to see here. We pick up where we left off last week with Sarah in a cornfield with Mark, who’s bleeding out. They dance a Tango of I don’t trust you and we’re family all the way to unearthing something every organization on Orphan Black has been looking for since the first episode. I won’t spoil the surprise but the two clones were good dancing partners and their little dance factors into the show’s cliffhanger.

As for the rest of the clones, they filled certain roles for a well-rounded episode. Cosima give us our romantic angle as she moves on from Delphine and hits the dating scene. Allison has great comedic timing with her bumbling husband and they give us a break from the heavier scenes. But Helena shows off her stealth abilities. While Sarah delivered some great psychological thrills, Helena had the physical thrills on lock down.

After a slow start, Orphan Black has reached its stride with this week’s “Newer Elements of Our Defense.”

Telestrations

What would the offspring between Pictionary and the Telephone game look like? It’d look something like Telestrations. This hilarious party game gets you asking how did you get that from this, and what were you trying to draw here?

We’ll get back to the drawing board in a bit but first, let’s sketch up some tech speak.

Designer: Uncredited
Publisher: Magellan and USAopoly
Date Released: 2009
Number of Players: 4-8
Age Range: 13 and up
Setup Time: little to none
Play Time: 30 minutes or so
Game Mechanics:
Line Drawing
Paper-and-Pencil
Real-time

Game Flow:

Each player receives a dry-erase sketch pad and a dry-erase marker. Players begin each round by selecting a key word that they’ll have to draw in their sketch pad. (The main game suggests that you use a card and die system to select the word but I like picking a theme like movie or book titles and having players choose their own key words.) Once everyone writes their key word in the front of their books, you flip over the 90-second sand-timer and you’re on the clock with trying to draw your key word.

When players are done, they pass their sketch pads to the next player and it’s these players’ jobs to guess what the first player was trying to draw. The second player writes down their answer and passes the sketch pad to the next player and these players must draw what the second player guessed was the answer. Play continues in this manner (with players alternating between drawing and guessing) until every player gets their original sketch pad back and they can see what happened to their key words.

Here’s an example of a round of Telestrations.

Game Review:

Telestrations is a fun game but you need at least four players—and it’s better with more than that. I played the four-eight player version several times and I think the twelve player version would be even more fun. There’s a scoring mechanism (that I didn’t add to the Game Flow) to the game but it’s a subjective scoring system, which I don’t like, and it doesn’t matter who wins. The people who laugh the most win.

This is certainly not a game to play with certain people. You know the type. Those folks who don’t have a funny bone in their body, so Telestrations isn’t a game for everyone but with the right group of people, it’s a blast.

As mentioned in the Game Flow, I prefer key word selection by means of theme (you use a single theme for a game round like song titles or famous sayings) instead of using the cards, but that’s because the older versions of Telestrations had boring key words. Oh, your cat became a dog or your chair morphed into a table. (Yawn.) The newer Telestrations cards have phrases on them, so they might play better but I’ve gotten used to playing with themes.

No matter how you play Telestrations, you’ll have fun with a goofy set of gamers.

Line Drawing

Any game that requires you to draw lines uses the line drawing mechanism.

Grimm Review – “Headache”

Kyle’s Review

“Headache” brought Renard’s story arc to an abrupt end but continued the build with the Juliette/Adalind’s child storyline. It’s clear that Juliette and the royal baby will drive Grimm into its finale but I was disappointed that Grimm tossed the Renard story so quickly.

Let’s get something straight, I was never as invested in the Renard story but that’s because Grimm did nothing with the arc and then things escalated too much two episodes ago. And now, it’s over. This was a missed opportunity. Grimm could’ve weaved Renard’s story into the web of the other ongoing arcs, but there should’ve been more repercussions. As it stands, folks will forget this arc happened over the summer.

The other threads fared much better. Juliette may have taken her villainy to a place where she can’t return. I’m good with that if Grimm commits to Juliette as a big nasty. My fear is that they’ll find some false way to get her back to the character she was before this season. I’d be ticked if this happens but until that does, I’m liking the darker Juliette and I’m liking the royal baby (toddler?) story a lot more. Despite suffering from the same fate as the Renard story (Grimm forgot about it for a while), the royal baby story was integrated a lot better than Renard’s.

The last nit I’ll pick is Nick’s mom’s severed head in a box. Did Grimm have to copy Se7en? And there’s a reason why we never saw Gwyneth Paltrow’s head, it would look fake and some things are better left to the viewer’s imagination.

Bob’s Burgers Review – “Housetrap”

Kyle’s Review

Even when the jokes fall flat, Bob’s Burgers gives us some of the craziest, comedic scenarios. “Housetrap” takes some time with the setup but delivers one of Bob’s Burgers’ best.

We knew we were in for a wild one when Teddy takes his burger to go—usually, Bob has to drag Teddy out of the restaurant. Then we leave the Belcher’s run-down burger joint and home for a posh, sea-side mansion. Teddy has been tasked to make repairs but the Belchers crash the house as only the Belchers can. The main course begins once we make it to the mansion.

You’ve gotta love it whenever Louise fuels Linda’s paranoia. Teddy has fallen in love with the widow, Helen, who hired him for the mansion repairs, and Linda believes that Helen pushed her husband off a widow’s walk. Things go nuclear fast. Linda, with the help of Louise, concocts an elaborate backstory for Helen and she reenacts the murder by pushing Bob and throwing out his back. Now, the Belchers are trapped in the mansion when Teddy and Helen escape the rain and enter the home’s living room to find Bob on the couch.

It doesn’t matter whether or not Helen killed her husband (signs point to yes) because It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Katilin Olson tears into her unbalanced character with glee. Helen is chipper one moment and malevolent the next. Punctuated with sinister music and an unsettling sense of humor, Olson’s Helen is the best guest voice actor Bob’s Burgers has had in a while. We also get treated to a medicated Bob – always funny – trying to keep his friend Teddy’s chances with Helen alive, while Linda and Louise tear the two apart because they don’t want Teddy to date a killer. Both sides want what’s best for Teddy and the execution is flawless. This is one of the best Bob’s Burgers episodes this season.

Top 5 Sentinels of the Multiverse Villains

Okay, this list may be a misnomer. I guess I should call it the Top 5 Worst Sentinels of the Multiverse Villains or the Top 5 Sentinels of the Multiverse Villains not to play on your first game.

These are the baddies that you don’t want to stumble upon in a dark alley, and unlike our Top 5 Sentinels of the Multiverse Heroes list, we’ll allow for more than one villain from a single expansion, so let’s see which expansion has the nastiest villains.

A couple of notes, I didn’t include any villains from the Vengeance expansion as they have to be played together to function properly and I just opened my copy of Wraith of the Cosmos, so I haven’t had a chance to play those nefarious villains. But with no further ado, here we go.

5) Grand Warlord Voss

Grand Warlord Voss is the only villain from the base game to make our list but he’s a great place to start a Top 5. He combines the worst parts of Citizen Dawn (minions galore) and Baron Blood (nasty weapons) and throws in a win condition of “If he gets 10 or more minions in play, he wins the game.”

It’s not as if you’d want more than three of Voss’s minions in play, but it stinks when you automatically lose the game if he gets 10 of them on the table. That makes one tough Sentinel’s villain.

4) The Chairman

The Chairman comes from The Sentinels of the Multiverse’s first expansion, Rook City, and is actually two villains in one—or maybe more than two villains. As a result, I had a difficult time placing The Chairman. He’s not particularly hard or complicated, but you have to defeat The Operative before you can deal any damage to him.

Underbosses and henchmen make matters worse and they can distract you from dealing any damage to The Operative which in turn, drives you nutty as you enter a cycle of taking a licking, drawing more henchmen and underbosses, and failing to deal any damage to The Chairman himself.

With The Chairman, you’re not facing a villain as much as you’re taking on The Organization. I’m thinking this won’t be the last time we’ll see a villain team on this list.

3) The Ennead

Oh, look what we have here: another villain team. The Ennead blazed onto the Sentinels of the Multiverse scene with the second expansion, Infernal Relics, and we’ve been cursing Greater Than Games ever since. Sorry, guys. We love you.

The Ennead plays like a hydra and good luck with chopping off enough of the hydra’s heads. Even when you do take down one of the ten villains, they grant powers to their teammates, so they can hurt you from the beyond.

Not to worry. We gave you a sequence with which to defeat these baddies in our Guide to the Sentinels (here’s a link), so you can improve your chances of beating these Egyptian gods but just because you have a blueprint, doesn’t mean you’ll beat these guys. Did I mention that there’s ten of them? Ten!

2) Iron Legacy

I don’t even know where to start with Iron Legacy. He’s tough.

He comes from the third expansion, Shattered Timelines, and can take out a team of heroes in ten minutes or less. Seriously, I ordered a pizza before we started playing against him and we got our butts handed to us twice before the delivery guy showed up, but the key to defeating him might be the opposite of The Ennead (at three on our list). You may want to enlist heroes for their incapacitated (knocked-out) side, so you’ll gain the abilities they give their teammates.

Maybe, just maybe, you’ll stay alive long enough to deal some damage, but under no circumstance do you want to play as any of Iron Legacy’s nemeses. Tachyon, Absolute Zero, Tempest, The Wraith, Unity, and Bunker receive additional damage with each of Iron Legacy’s deadly attacks. On the positive side, you could play those heroes and finish five games before the pizza got to your house.

You’re probably wondering which villain could possibly top Iron Legacy and believe me, there is one.

1) The Matriarch

Rook City was filled with hero hate. The environments were brutal, the heroes weren’t as supercharged, and the villains kicked some tail. The Chairman (The Organization) already made our list at the four spot, but The Matriarch sits atop her perch as our number one Sentinels of the Multiverse villain.

She plays her entire deck in two to three turns. No fooling. She literally plays her entire deck in two or three turns—sometimes in a single turn. With that many cards on the table, The Matriarch chokes the battlefield, making it almost impossible to beat her.

Furthermore, she has abilities that negate the awesome abilities of even the most daring global hero effect. I don’t know how it’s possible, but The Matriarch hasn’t gotten much easier with future releases: she was introduced in the first expansion.

We mentioned a potential way to defeat her in our Matriarch Spotlight, but defeating her usually comes down to dumb luck.

Did we get the list right? Let us know how we did and feel free to give us more ideas for future Top Fives.

The Flash Review – “Grodd Lives”

Kyle’s Review

“Grodd Lives” delivered on the psychic, super-intelligent gorilla front but The Flash fell short in a lot of other ways this week. The acting was over-the-top for many of the characters but none were as onion-strong as Iris. She channeled her inner Season One Laurel.

I get the angle The Flash took (with Iris), even though I wonder how it took her this long to figure out that everyone was lying to her, but her tears were larger than her eyes, and I’d believe her getting an echo of the alternate timeline (when Cisco died), giving credence to Cisco’s timeline echoes, before I believe her figuring out Barry’s identity by means of static electricity. I shared (visible and audible) static electricity with my wife Jen before, so she must be The Flash. She’s hidden her identity so well. I suggested Iris figuring out Barry’s secret by means of a timeline echo last week because I wanted to trust The Flash’s writer’s room. Thanks for upholding that trust, guys. This was far worse.

Going beyond the painful choices above, we were treated to a lot of bizarre choices. Why would the Central City Police Department have the Ice Cream Truck (that secretly held gold bullion) play its music? I’d think Detective West would’ve pictured children walking up to the disguised, armored van ahead of time. And humans can survive two months without food? I get that Wells is from the future – and this might be possible – but humans have been on this planet for millennia and we haven’t evolved to the point where we no longer need nourishment. Mahatma Gandhi once survived 21 days without food but that’s a far cry from two months. This sounds like the staff didn’t realize how long humans can live without sustenance.

But the meaty part of “Grodd Lives” was Grodd himself. I loved how Grodd played out, even if I question our last glimpse of him in this episode. Grodd can be a very goofy character, but The Flash has done a great job with their special effects, and this week was no exception.

Verdict:

“Grodd Lives” gave us the psychic gorilla goods but some of The Flash’s other elements fell a bit flat.

If you didn’t catch our Flash–Arrow Spin-Off preview, here’s the link.

Not enough Flash. Zoom to our Flash secrets page.

The Flash Secrets: May 8, 2015

Revolving Door Policy

Iris just strolled into STAR Labs to visit Team Flash this week. Seriously? Did no one see her descend hundreds of floors? That’s lax security for a place housing a lot of ill-tempered, meta-humans.

Coast City

We get another mention of Green Lantern’s home town this week.

So, Eddie Thawne’s Forgotten by History

That sounds a lot like Booster Gold and the Carter Family, to an extent. Booster Gold was “forgotten by history” because all his kin joined the police force and protected cities for thousands of years. There was only one “black sheep” of the Carter Family, a young man who would become known as “Booster Gold.” Booster Gold was the only documented Carter to have ever been a fraud, a failure and a fool. Those last couple of lines came from the comics and its description matches what Eboard said of Eddie in The Flash but in reverse.

I mentioned at the beginning of the season that Geoff Johns, The Flash’s executive producer and former writer of the Booster Gold comic, wanted to include Booster Gold, who has yet to appear in more than the occasional episode in previous DC Comics TV shows. We’ll have to see what happens but things are looking good for the “glory hound” Booster Gold—and Gold’s glory hound-ness could stem from Eddie trying to make his mark in history.

Cisco

I like Cisco’s pop references and “Grodd Lives” gave us plenty of them. Every other line out of his mouth was a reference to one movie or another.

(In regards to Grodd’s mind possession) “You’ve seen the Exorcist, right?”

(Planet of the Apes) “I think we all know what happens when an intelligent ape gets pissed at humans.”

(After witnessing sewer water shake from Grodd’s movements) “I’m not that easy to scare because I’ve seen Jurassic Park.”

Then there were the name drop references: C.H.U.D.S., ROUSes (The Princess Bride), Goldfinger, and of course a few King Kongs.

Grodd climbing a tall building at the end of this episode was yet another King Kong reference.

A.R.G.U.S.

This secret organization got name dropped again, and we didn’t even get a cameo from John Diggle or Lyla Michaels. A.R.G.U.S. has to become a bigger player next season for both The Flash and Arrow.

If you didn’t catch our Flash-Arrow spin-off preview, here’s the link.

Did you miss our Flash review? Check it out here.