DC Comics Legends of Tomorrow Review: “Pilot, Part 2”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Okay. Part of my delay with our weekly Legends of Tomorrow comes from the big snow storm knocking down my cable/internet for an extended time period. The other part for my delay is that I can’t find too many good things to say about the series besides they continue to push the special effects capabilities of a CW show as far as they will go. There were moments when I forgot this was a TV show instead of major motion picture. But there’s not much to like about the story. Since this is the second part of the pilot, I’ll cover some ground covered in the previous week’s review; both parts make up the full vision of the show’s inaugural episode.

Let’s start with characters. They didn’t have time to develop before the show or during the show, disappeared and then suddenly reappeared in contrived ways, or they grated on my nerves during the Arrow and/or Flash. The motivation for these individuals to make something of themselves rings hollow except for Dr. Stein and Ray Palmer. Everyone else on this roster either wouldn’t care (thieves want to die fat and happy, not leave their mark), shouldn’t want to be well-known (the best assassins are anonymous), or they’re Hawkpeople and they want revenge on Vandal Savage, and that’s another good—if not generic—motivator.

We’re supposed to believe that this incompetent group of heroes—I’m sorry, legends—will prevent the world from going to heck. They got manhandled by Chronos in the first episode. How are they supposed to be a threat to Savage if they can’t (as a combined team) deal with a random, solo bounty hunter? It’s one thing to lose. It’s another to lose by 30 points at home, when the visiting team is resting half their starters. Unfortunately, the legends didn’t pull their heads out of their hind quarters in the pilot’s second half.

Stein all but tells his younger self who he is and destroys his timeline in the process (only to have Rip Hunter restore it). The two thieves are sent out on a burglary mission, which makes senses, but Atom’s shocked when they grab more loot than the mission tells them to. Again, they’re thieves. Rip cites the Butterfly Effect (if you do so much as kill a butterfly in the past, you could change time irrevocably) and then the group turns Captain Caveman on the black arms market, complete with a nuclear explosion. That’s even before Atom leaves a parting gift, a piece of future tech fell off his super suit, for Savage and his vandals, which hastens mankind’s demise. They put out the fire Palmer started and go after Savage, and that’s where we get to Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

Hawkgirl is the key because she knows what the inscription on the dagger (that can kill Savage) says. The only problem with this logic is that when Hawkgirl accesses her memory of what the dagger says, she doesn’t read it to herself, she recites the poem on the dagger to Hawkman. Why doesn’t Hawkman have this memory? I thought two Hawks were one too many and (Spoiler) Legends agrees. Hawkman dies in the pilot’s second part, after he plunges Hawkgirl’s dagger into Savage’s chest and then Savage returns the favor. As he delivers the killing blow, Savage tells Hawkman that he should’ve know that he can’t use Hawkgirl’s dagger, and I agree with him. Hawkman should’ve known not to use Hawkgirl’s dagger. For being the one of the two Hawks who had the most clear recollection of their past, he knew shockingly few details. And that’s where Legends falls flat: the details.

I might be able to get over Hawkman’s death as a plot device to galvanize the team, even though the bulk of the team doesn’t know him from Atom. I may even be able to forget that Legends pulled the same plot device in the pilot’s first part with Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s son, but Legends of Tomorrow concerns itself too much with its beautiful CGI to bother with things like characters and story. I hope this was opening show jitters, and Legends rights the ship soon.

There were plenty of secrets in Legends of Tomorrow. Warp to our Legends of Tomorrow secrets page.

Arrow Review: “A.W.O.L.”

Kyle’s Take

We’ve entered the dog days of Arrow, the time of year when Arrow marches in place after the mid-season break. The episodes get mired by flashbacks trying to stay relevant in the current storyline but often get the story stuck in the mud until someone gets out and pushes the show from its rut by episode 16 or 17, which is in time for a crescendo before the season finale. “A.W.O.L.” was better than some episodes of this ilk, but it wasn’t as good as it could’ve been.

We got some Diggle family drama, and that’s usually a breath of fresh air, but the Diggle brothers’ arc was marred by the aforementioned flashbacks. I’m not sure I buy the militant Reiter searching for mystic power, paralleling the militant Darhk who searches for mystic power. And where was Darhk? Oh, right. Arrow had to add Shadowspire, another secret organization, to the growing hoard of secret organizations. Besides Shadowspire, the flashbacks show us the Diggle brothers’ history. This would be a great thing if we didn’t hear the two brothers bicker, telling us their history before showing us the same history. At least we should see fewer forced interactions between John and Andy after this week, and I move we make Andy’s codename “Little Diggle.”

Even though the flashbacks didn’t work, the present Diggles did work. Andy was more than the one note character he’s been up to this point, and that was refreshing. John was forced into a situation where he had to trust his brother, and his faith was restored. I don’t know if Diggle would’ve ever given his brother the chance if he wasn’t placed in a no-win scenario. It was a plot device, but it was effective in moving that conflict forward. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Andy backstabbing his kin.

It also looks like Lyla, Diggle’s wife, will take over A.R.G.U.S. because Team Arrow will need the intel A.R.G.U.S. has on Darhk and H.I.V.E. so they can take them down. This was another obvious plot device, but we’ll have to wait for Arrow to pull the trigger before we see exactly how A.R.G.U.S. helps the Green Arrow. The Rubicon might play a role in combating Shadowspire, should Shadowspire have a part to play, but they may be season 5’s big bad.

Okay, I’ve put off talking about Felicity for as long as I could. It’s official; she’s paralyzed. In a turn akin to Barbara Gordon she’s Team Arrow’s Oracle, only her codename is the cumbersome Overwatch. While I like the name change, Arrow can’t borrow everything from Batman, I don’t care for Ollie’s explanation of the name change: Oracle was already taken. Does Batman exist in the CW universe? Barbara Gordon was Batgirl before she became Oracle. Now I hear Supergirl admits that there’s a Superman because you can’t have Supergirl without Superman. But Batman still doesn’t exist in the CW shows. How is the codename Oracle already taken? Can you have a Batgirl without Batman? Getting back to Felicity’s story arc, she faced her teenage goth self in “A.W.O.L..”

I liked the idea of Felicity tripping on her insecurities, fears, and good pain meds, but I don’t know what Goth Felicity was trying to accomplish. Was she trying to use reverse-psychology to get Felicity back in action, or drive her away from her current life and back to her previous one, or send her packing to a third undisclosed life? At times Goth Felicity wanted all of these things at once and at others just one or maybe two. I get that she’s not in her right mind but something tells me Arrow didn’t give her arc that much thought. Regardless, it didn’t take long to resolve this and for that I’m grateful. I don’t know if I could’ve handled five to six episodes of GothyContin Felicity.

Do you want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page. Thanks for reading.

The Flash review: “The Reverse-Flash Returns”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Flash has always been flexible with its dealings with time travel and its consequences—didn’t someone say something about time travel being another Lazarus Pit last week?—so it should come as no surprise that the Reverse-Flash, whose ancestor Eddie Thawne killed himself so there would be no more future Thawne’s, would make his triumphant return. Okay, Flash gave us a reason. Eobard was stuck inside the Speed Force (the extra-dimensional source of super-speed that exists on a plane of existence, which Geoff Johns the series producer thinks is silly) when Eddie killed himself.

I think many fans shrugged off this explanation and liked seeing Reverse-Flash’s return. Others snickered at how goofy Flash handled its plot holes and Reverse-Flash’s origin story. Still more viewers would moan that the show pulled a fast one and betrayed its audience with a flimsy, pseudo-science reason for Eobard to exist. For the most part I laughed at the absurdity. I don’t know where Jim falls on this sliding scale of reactions. Regardless, this was a source of irritation, and yet there was one good development.

Barry’s culpability in his mother’s death (by returning Thawne to his timeline and fixing a time paradox) and putting the rest of Season 1’s events in motion added some weight to the message Eobard/Harrison left Barry: you’ll never be happy. The video’s contrived and didn’t work for me at the time but the events of “The Reverse-Flash Returns” sold the tape a little more than Season 2’s premiere and better yet, Flash didn’t beat us over the head with “Barry can never be happy.” Well, sort of.

I’m glad the Barry/Patty relationship has flown to Midway. Barry was stupid for not telling Patty he was the Flash last week (when I thought he would) and Patty was dumb for insisting the two of them talk after she invoked the silent treatment just a few days ago because he wouldn’t talk to her. After that Barry goes full on martyr and cries, “Everybody I love always leaves me, so I’m used to this sort of thing.” If you listened real close, you could hear a violin play until the moment Detective West slaps Barry upside his head reminding him that not everyone he loves leaves him. Then we had to suffer through Patty giving Barry plenty of last chances, even though she packed her desk last week. People can change their minds and they can fight for a relationship they think can work but this back-and-forth-and-back-again was torture.

Applying the salve was Cisco and his going full on Vibe. I also liked the bickering between Cisco and Harry as they work together. What we found in “The Reverse-Flash Returns” is that Harrison Wells, from any Earth, can serve as Cisco’s mentor. The fact that Cisco doesn’t trust Harry adds an extra layer. We also saw Barry choose to save or help others even if it costs him personal happiness. Understandably, Barry wanted Eobard to rot in his cell but he freed his nemesis to save his friend, and I liked that Barry, who wallowed in his own self-pity for the majority of the episode, could look beyond himself and be a hero.

Jim’s Take

I’ll start by answering Kyle’s question right off the bat; my reaction to the sleight-of-hand that brought Thawne back into the fold was a negative one. Because Wells/Thawne made mention of the Speed Force last season, when he was talking Barry through the process of phasing through solid objects, I can’t say it’s exactly a cheat. They’ve established that the Speed Force is a thing, but it’s something shown to be drawn from, not trapped inside of. You might say that’s a nitpick, and you might be right, but the explanation for Thawne’s survival is unsatisfying to me. It’s the thematic equivalent of having the bad guy survive the destruction of his secret lair because he was in the crapper down the hall.

This show has gone the direction of a young Barry Allen. I was skeptical at first, but Grant Gustin has done a marvelous job, so it’s worked. When they have him whine, though, when they have him feeling sorry for himself and moping they run a very high risk of giving us an emo Flash. I don’t think we quite hit those lows with this episode, but it’s something they need to keep in mind. The audience needs to always be able to cheer for Barry, but if he starts wearing guy-liner and quoting Holden Caulfield, I’m switching my allegiance to Zoom.

I’ve said in a number of reviews now that I think the time came, sat down, had coffee, chatted about the weather, fell asleep on the couch, and drove away in the morning for Barry to tell Patty about his identity. It went from the right thing to do, to the only thing to do, and somehow he still hasn’t done it. For me, that makes their relationship officially uninteresting. I can’t root for Barry to get the girl here, or for the girl to get the Barry because he doesn’t deserve her, and she deserves better. I’m glad we got her saying his name aloud, clearly demonstrating that yes, she does know his big secret anyway. I can go back to taking her seriously as a detective, but at this point, I want them to drop the relationship from the story, and I know they won’t.

I’m not sure I understood or bought Cisco’s condition this week. By that, I mean how he fell into seizures because of the temporal changes. This isn’t even the third time that’s happened, and as for Thawne not “belonging” there, neither do Jay or Diet Dr. Wells. I don’t doubt this was explained and I missed it, but I still felt like another cheat to force Reverse-Flash back into play.

I think the strength of this show continues to be its characters. The story is tripping on its own lose ends and falling into its own gaping plot holes, but the fact remains that I like these people. If they can keep the emo off of them, I think I can hang with it.

Want more Flash? Zoom to our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

Agent Carter Review: “Better Angels”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Hollywood has provided a new space for Agent Carter to explore, Howard Stark gives the show levity, and there are more nods to history—both Marvel and actual—than Meryl Strep has Oscar noms, but I’m worried the show doesn’t know where it’s going. Agent Carter’s second season will only last ten episodes, so we’re a third of the way through the season already, and it aims to link into Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s third season, which returns in early March, and the upcoming Doctor Strange film.

Agent Carter’s trying to do too much in a small time period, and I wonder when we’ll reach comic book film/TV show critical mass. I love that so many comic book TV shows and movies exist, but the cast of characters gets bigger and bigger and that causes the storylines to become unruly. Agent Carter may be the victim of such an unruly storyline. And that’s a shame because Agent Carter is improving in other areas. Not the least of which is the historical references.

Kid Colt, a Marvel Comics Western series that ran for over 30 years, made an appearance, and that was fun. Plenty of the physical comics made their way on the screen but when we first meet Howard Stark, he’s directing a Kid Colt movie. This, in turn, led to a not so subtle dialogue exchange between Howard and Peggy, opining that America isn’t ready for a female cowboy. Does that sound like modern critical responses to Marvel’s lack of leading ladies? Yeah. Agent Carter lacks subtly, but when it doesn’t preach to us about equal rights, it can be fun.

This week’s ubiquitous female rights announcement came in the form of Howard crashing a gentleman’s club with a throng of women in tow (Peggy slips behind the scenes to conduct a little sleuthing) and when the club’s president calls for security, he orders a Code Pink. Again, this isn’t subtle but it’s fun and in keeping with the characters. Where I get tripped up in this instance is in calling the situation a “Code Pink.” The year is 1947, just after World War II, and that’s when the shift from pink as a boy’s color to pink as a girl’s color started. It takes a little suspension of disbelief to think that this color shift had taken hold of the country.

(Note: no one knows for sure how or why the gender color shift occurred but one of the most popular reasons is that Rosie the Riveter wore blue overalls and when the men returned from war, the women were told to take off their blue overalls and put on pink dresses; the feminist movement embraced pink as their protest color after that. This places the “pink is a girl’s color” movement in the timeframe of 1947-50, so Agent Carter is stretching believability.)

Howard Stark is the fictional counterpart to Howard Hughes—I wonder how long it will be before Howard Stark becomes Tony’s grandfather instead of father—and now Agent Carter gave us a fictional version of Hedy Lamarr, the actress who invented a radio guidance system that also paved the way for modern wireless technology. Both Stark and Frost, Lamarr’s fictional doppelganger, flip their real-world equivalent’s careers. Hughes was a director turned inventor, while Stark was an inventor turned director here. Lamarr started as an actress and turned inventor, and Whitney Frost started out as an inventor and turned into an actress. I liked how Agent Carter incorporated history into this season.

The story’s a word jumble at this point. The gentlemen’s club Howard, Peggy, and company infiltrate rigs elections and pulls other strings (could be Hydra-influenced), zero matter has to be a callback to the monolith in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Dr. Wilkes’s transformation to the ethereal doesn’t harken social commentary about race, unless Agent Carter is deploying a softer approach. I doubt that. Agent Carter’s fun but I don’t know if they’ll pull out a full story in seven episodes or less, especially if they intend to tie the show into every other Marvel property that sees a release this year.

DC Comics Legends of Tomorrow Review: “Pilot, Part 1”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Well, there was a lot of action in Legends of Tomorrow’s pilot. While that may work for plenty of folks, I’ll paraphrase one of Jim’s favorite terms and say that you have to suspend disbelief to go along with this story. I’d take it one step further and say you’d have to be pretty gullible to believe this disparate group of misfits would form a team under any circumstance. If you did buy this malarkey, I have a great rich idea I’d like to share with you.

If you think that last remark was too harsh, just know that one half of Firestorm literally roofied the other half into going: the perfect Quaalude to this mission. Two other team members are thieves and there isn’t an upside for them continuing with the team, and to make matters worse, Rip Hunter left them in the ship to guard the stuff: they’re thieves. Two more characters are intrinsically linked with the big baddie Vandal Savage and they don’t factor in any way into a future where Savage is front and center when you’d think Savage would sacrifice them publicly to illustrate his dominance. Anyway, look at the lights—they’re pretty.

Okay. I’m done bashing the show—for now. Let’s get to some pleasantness. Legends of Tomorrow represents the CW’s most ambitious show yet. There are nine characters in this group and the show juggled equal screen time for most of them, and the graphics are the most impressive this network has ever produced. Honestly, I don’t care for the story as it stands but there’s a chance it could get better and since the CW is pushing its boundaries with this program, I can’t wait to see what they’ll have in store with the rest of their DC Comics shows.

Legends of Tomorrow’s pilot wasn’t all bad. It watched like one of the annual DC crossover episodes; you fill up on empty calories. Let’s hope the show takes its foot off the gas and expands on this sprawling story and its many characters.

There were plenty of secrets in Legends of Tomorrow too. Check out our Legends of Tomorrow secrets page.

Agent Carter Review: “A View in the Dark”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Agent Carter found a way to connect to the greater Marvel cinematic/TV universe with “A View in the Dark.” I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing but the monolith makes its first chronological appearance in this episode—actually it made a cameo in the previous episode of Agent Carter “The Lady in the Lake, but who’s counting?—and we could either get background info on Hydra’s exploits to grab the monolith and get a Star Wars prequel approach to Agent Carter or we could get a new story entirely. Fortunately, it looks like the latter.

I’ve been on record saying that I didn’t want this series to function as grout between the ending of Captain America: the First Avenger and the modern Marvel cinematic universe. We need something a little more and it looks—for the time being—like Agent Carter could be giving us something more. I’m withholding judgment.

The thing I noticed in “A View in the Dark” is that Agent Carter has committed to a location shift from the east coast to the west coast. I guess this was inevitable since Tony Stark starts in Los Angeles and then relocates to New York City but I’m wondering if this is more a function of the ridiculous taxes and fees associated with filming in NYC. Perhaps it’s a little of column A and B. The new locale works for Agent Carter. The color palette shifted to a warmer and inviting one and it feels like a different creature but I think the show would benefit from globetrotting and if it does, it should continue to make each location its own entity. Agent Carter also branched out from its theme of sexism to issues of race but it didn’t harp on the issue as much as did sexism last season. We got one full scene to drive the point home and that’s good.

I would say more about the main arc but I’m afraid we’d get into spoiler territory. For now let’s say that it holds my interest and it works with what Marvel has planned for the rest of its universe. In short, Agent Carter continues to deliver a fun, watchable product that features one of Marvel’s few leading ladies.

Arrow Review: “Blood Debts”

Jim’s Thoughts

Arrow came back from break rather sluggish, I’m afraid. The Felicity cliffhanger they leaned so hard on wasn’t much of a cliffhanger at all, and given the flash-forward to the scene with Ollie at the side of a grave, it really felt like a cheap attempt at a cheat of the audience anyway.

I think one of the bigger problems with this episode was that Darhk was expected as the focus, and while he appeared, he was watered down with Anarky, and other story elements I’d actually forgotten about during the break. I didn’t remember Speedy’s budding romance with Ollie’s campaign manager, or Captain Lance’s with Felicity’s mom, and that shows how little I was invested in those subplots.

While I’m on the subject of Anarky, seeing him go toe-to-toe with Ollie and Speedy at the same time just underlined the growing problem of believability this show is creating. I can suspend disbelief to a point, but Anarky didn’t earn that level of credibility in terms of hand to hand combat.

Diggle and Andy’s progress came without much prompting, and that rang false. Diggle beats on him until his knuckles bleed, and Andy says nothing, but Diggle finds the right way to ask nicely, and Andy gives him information? That’s just not easy to take.

The flashbacks to the island continue to do nothing but bring the show to a grinding halt, and seeing Ollie take the same approach to attacking Darhk, getting beaten up and having to withdraw is giving me a stagnant feel in the present story as well.

I still have hope that the back half of the season will be strong, but I was hoping for a much more convincing first step than what I saw tonight.

Kyle’s Take

Olicity fans wouldn’t allow Felicity’s death—Arrow’s been in full CW soap-opera mode for a while now—so Arrow’s bait-and-switch shouldn’t have fooled anyone. That said “Blood Debts” got bogged down by side-stories even more than this week’s The Flash.

Diggle and Andy’s relationship hasn’t interested me since Arrow introduced it. Bringing Andy back from the dead is a lot like resurrecting Uncle Ben for Spiderman: John loses the impetus he needs to do what he does. Diggle is a family man and he lost someone he loved, his brother. If he gets his brother back, what keeps him on team Arrow? But beyond that I agree that Arrow hasn’t handled this relationship well and that’s not the only one.

Speedy and Ollie’s campaign manager’s love affair is on snooze. I’d just as much see Speedy dating Anarky. Oh, I’d forgotten Anarky was even in Arrow—that’s how strong of an impression he made—and I wonder how many other Batman villains will grace Arrow’s screen. The Green Arrow doesn’t have the best rogue’s gallery but the show has developed Damien Darhk, a Teen Titans’ villain, into a solid adversary for the man in green and Anarky jacked what should’ve been a Darhk episode. And did we lose a cinnamon challenge? Is that why we’re getting so much screen time with Felicity’s mom? Papa Lance was a good character but he’s fallen and he can’t get up.

Speaking of Felicity, I’ve joked off-line with Jim about Felicity knowing more than the Oracle and not the DC comics’ Oracle but Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi. Now it looks like she may be paralyzed—for a while at least—just like DC Comics’ Oracle. But if Felicity does turn into an alternative DC Oracle, that’ll be yet another something Arrow borrows from Batman.

For every step forward, Arrow insists on taking one and a half to two steps back: look no further than the tired flashback scenes. I’m with Jim that I think Arrow can still turn things around but it better do it soon.

Do you want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page. Thanks for reading.

Agent Carter Review: “The Lady in the Lake”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Agent Carter’s “The Lady in the Lake” did a nice job of hinting at Peggy’s disadvantage in the workplace (the first season slathered “this is a man’s world” like Orville Redenbacher’s layers on the butter in their triple the movie butter popcorn) and showcasing her as a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D..

It might not make sense up-front but I’m making a Star Wars reference; bear with me. I thought Star Wars miss-stepped with its prequels because it told us Darth Vader’s story, a story we already knew, while Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic went far enough back in time to make the series exciting. Agent Carter splits the difference between these two approaches. It doesn’t go back as far as Knights of the Old Republic, but we don’t know as much about Peggy’s past as we did Darth Vader’s. “The Lady in the Lake” gave a nice tip of the hat to the Marvel cinematic universe’s past, while giving us something fresh.

It didn’t take long for us to catch up with Dottie Underwood, the late 1940s version of the Black Widow. In fact, it took less time for me to pick up where Agent Carter left off last year than it did for me to figure out what was going on with the DC Comics shows this week and Agent Carter had a much longer hiatus than either Arrow or Flash. That speaks to better writing.

Agent Carter captures the fun (humor and action) of a Marvel movie and puts it on the smaller screen and yet it connects with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I won’t say how but Agent Carter could be a missing link a thread or two for Marvel’s other TV series or it could add to a growing tapestry of story threads. We’ll have to wait and see but I can definitely say Marvel TV shows tend to fall flat their first season only to find their footing in their second. Okay, it’s too soon to tell, but “The Lady in the Lake” is a good start to Agent Carter’s sophomore effort.

The Flash Review: “Potential Energy”

Jim’s Thoughts

Flash did a good job this week of dropping us back into the action. As I’ve said before, the first half of the season suffered from having to set up Legends of Tomorrow, and I’ve been hoping with that done, they’d have freedom to refocus on their own arc. This episode did that well enough.

Joe has been one of my favorite characters on The Flash, and while I’m excited for what introducing Wally West could mean, I didn’t really connect with his part of the story. I suspect it’s just that Wally’s anger feels forced, especially given that he came knocking on Joe’s door to begin with.

I’ve liked Patty much more than any other CW show’s love interest, and I’ve thought she and Barry have great chemistry. I’ve thought for some time, though, that Barry should have already told her about being The Flash, and this seemed like the episode where that was going to happen. What’s even more than that, it’s getting really hard to suspend disbelief to the point where Patty hasn’t figured it out. Barry suddenly disappearing, Flash appearing to save the day, being told by The Turtle that she’s what Flash values most, the clues were stacking up in front of her this week, and they’re really undermining her character if she genuinely hasn’t put two and two together now. My one hope is that Patty has figured it out, and she’s simply upset that Barry hasn’t come clean.

There isn’t much to say about The Turtle. He was another villain of the week, and he’s apparently being used as a plot device for Harrison, and the fight against Zoom. He was effective in those roles, but not particularly memorable.

The big reveal at the end offers more possibilities for the alternate dimension exploration, and it’s definitely got my attention, but The Flash needs to take care that they don’t kill the stakes with “alternate earth” versions of existing characters, in essence making that The Flash’s version of the Lazarus Pits.

Kyle’s Take

“Potential Energy” showed promise but I don’t know if The Flash converted as much of the episode into kinetic energy as it could have. The Flash is turning the corner toward full CW soap opera this week—it’s all about artificial teen angst and relationships, baby—so forced emotions bogged down the main story.

I guess I agree with Patty and Barry as the least objectionable relationship on a current CW superhero show but that bar is as low as a limbo stick after The Atom has a turn. I also agree that secret identities went out of style in the DC TV/cinematic universe after Alfred let Vicki Vale into the Batcave in 1989’s Batman and yet I didn’t have an issue with Patty not learning Barry’s secret until this week. (Note: she may or may not know that Barry’s The Flash and she’s not much of a police detective if she doesn’t know after this week’s events.) Iris’s ignorance of The Flash’s identity bothered me more because she wasn’t just a love interest: she’s Barry’s pseudo-sister.

Could The Flash have used The Turtle better? Of course but he’s another example of The Flash taking a forgettable and pathetic DC comics villain (Rainbow Raider in last year’s crossover episode) and making them palatable as well as plot devices. The Flash may not have taken Turtle Man to the next level, but he didn’t stink and he lost the Dana Carvey Man of a Thousand Faces vibe. “Am I not turtley enough for you?” Yes. I could do with a little less turtle, and The Turtle was a little less turtle.

Before I get to the big ending, let’s cover some of those other pesky side-stories. I’d forgotten about Wally West (another piece of fan service eye candy) and Caitlin and Jay as an item, and I wasn’t too thrilled when The Flash reminded me that these two things were things. Earth-2’s Harrison Wells recapping the kidnapping of his daughter is good, that factors into the main arc, but I don’t know what the payoff is with a lot of these story scraps or if there even is a payoff.

And there isn’t much of a payoff when you have a spare of every character on Earth-2, and yet The Flash has two potential Lazarus Pits not just one. Time-travel is always an option. The Flash is treading dangerous water here, but I trust the writers room won’t dip into the bring people back from the dead well too often and “Potential Energy” got The Flash back on track with Zoom.

Want more Flash? Zoom to our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

Arrow Review: “Dark Waters”

Jim’s Thoughts

Well, Arrow is done until January 20th, so we’re officially at the mid season point. Damien Darhk has definitely been the strength of the season. This has been the closest the show has come to recapturing that slow burn we had watching Slade and Ollie’s relationship develop while waiting for the big confrontation we all knew was coming. It’s really as simple as having a single villain be built up as opposed to the baddie of the week formula.

Unfortunately, ever since last season, the Ollie/Felicity “Olicity” love angle has weighed the show down, and the midseason finale had that in spades. I found myself checking out during their scenes. I’ll go so far as to say I’ve begun to turn on Felicity as a character, and I think doing away with their romance would work wonders toward getting the show back to what made it most successful.

The angle with Diggle and his brother isn’t necessarily bad, but there’s still no payoff to it. We just got more angry exchanges between bars without telling us anything new or moving any plot forward. I like Diggle, and I like the idea of giving him a separate storyline, but it’s being buried under everything else happening on the show, and it’s beyond repetitive at this point.

The flashbacks this season have been another underwhelming element of the show. We’re meant to feel Ollie is in danger at this point. He’s been discovered, and that’s intended to leave us on a cliffhanger. The nature of flashbacks, though, is that we know Ollie survives the experience, so there’s no tension there. It’s not an effective cliffhanger, and the entire thing is just another waste of screen time.

If you haven’t seen the episode yet, I’ll tread lightly here and just say the show wants us to believe we know who is in the grave now, the grave Oliver was flash-forwarded to earlier this season, but I smell misdirection there. I think we’re being set up for a fakeout, and that made it an unsatisfying close to this leg of the season.

Kyle’s Take

But if the character Jim thinks is in the grave actually is in the grave, it would fix the show. I didn’t even preface that with a spoiler alert, so spoiler alert: the possible dead character is Felicity. If she was six feet under, we wouldn’t have the all-consuming Olicity melodrama. But I don’t think she’s dead either, and even if she or anyone else was, death ain’t nothing but a thang on Arrow. On a somewhat different note, I laughed when I saw Ollie climb through the car’s cabin and not get a scratch, while Felicity hunkered on the backseat and got hit. That type of logic may work on Earth-2, but it doesn’t work on this planet. Ollie was the bigger and easier target. When did HIVE sleepers become Stormtroopers?

Moving on, I’m liking the slow burn with Damien Darhk too. The scene we get of him hugging his wife and child contrasts Ollie’s personal life and colors Darhk as Ollie’s mirror opposite. The Darhk family revelation—possibly the only great revelation—also makes what Darhk does for HIVE all the more chilling because he knows how to be a caring human being. Does he kiss his daughter goodnight right before he kills hundreds of people? On one of our recent Arrow secrets pages, I joked that Darhk watched Brave because he called Thea, Merida, but the truth is that he probably did watch Brave with his daughter, and that’s down right creepy.

I buy into Jim’s premise that there must be a villain a comic book show builds up toward every season. The Batman TV series of the sixties used the villain of the week formula, but so did the Batman comic book at that time. Comics have changed and the shows that portray them should adjust to the source material, but I’m not sure a villain of the week formula can’t work on any show; it just doesn’t work for Arrow. But I like something else Arrow is doing for a recurring character: Malcolm/Ra’s al Ghul. He’s playing nice for now—he even dressed as Green Arrow in “Dark Waters”—but I see him throwing his hat back in the ring as a potential big Arrow villain in the not-so-distant future, and that’s a fun development.

As far as the rest of “Dark Waters” is concerned, I averted my eyes and ears whenever the Olicity storm rolled onto the screen. Did we really have a scene where Felicity and her mom shrieked like high school girls? I don’t know; I blacked out. Diggle-to-Diggle isn’t going anywhere. John yelling at himself in the mirror would be more productive than what he’s doing with his brother. And those flashbacks don’t work. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if Arrow wants to show us flashbacks, give us the time we missed between seasons.

I’m sure we’ll see what the grave scene is all about when Arrow returns. But even though Jim and I could do without it, Olicity is a popular item for many Arrow fans and whatever the fallout from “Dark Waters” is won’t be as profound as the show let on this week, and if nothing comes from what happened in the midseason finale, it would mar an otherwise good beginning to Arrow’s fourth season.

Want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page here. Thanks for reading.