My name is Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive: THE FLASH tv show

Legends is so far ahead of the rest of the pack it's incredible and this season has been tremendous. Zari at the end of the New Orleans ep with the Constantine Reality Wave was A++++++.

Supergirl next best but could be way more Silver Age than it is BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO SEE DAMMIT. Seasons half the length would suit it much better though.

Flash has dropped right off for the reasons noted above. I want dumb monster of the week storylines and more Ralph goofiness. The relationship between Nora and (spoiler) is ridiculous and I don't think it's clear at all why it's there.

I thought I was done with Arrow but the first few episodes (the prison ones) were banging. But now it's back to shit again.

For Black Lightning, read the Arrow entry.

Lots of beautiful people on these shows but Zari is the first I've straight-up crushed on. Her Groundhog Day ep last season was tops, love the actress and hope she sticks around for a long time.

And actually if I have one complaint about Legends at the moment is that it's getting more musical chair-y than I'd like. Just when I get used to a character, they split. Stop it, you guys.

(Also re: Zari, I'm torn between wanting them to just go ahead and call her Isis and realizing that that's probably not the best idea.)

eyyy uhhh did we know beard hunter and danny the street are gonna be in this doom patrol dealie?

https://youtu.be/6wtGnnLfTqA

I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that in theory I want so much and that in reality I do not want at all.

still pretty baffled to see cyborg in there, and it’s kinda weird/lol that the ideas and character designs are largely being taken wholesale from a comic that’s now four decades in the past (gulp) but they seem to be coming at it from a place of genuine admiration of morrison/case so i’ll give it a chance

why do you have a five-person superhero team and put the same guy on twice

always good to have a backup

so this doom patrol show... it actually kinda rules?

i've watched the first six episodes and it's doing a great job of capturing the vibe of the morrison run - it's surreal, unsettling, sad and funny and the cast are really good

very unexpectedly, joivan wade as cyborg might be the best of all of them - he plays vic stone as an upbeat, capable minor-league superhero whose deep well of personal tragedy makes him both a motivating figure for the group and also a good fit for their unique brand of fuckedupness

alan tudyk as mr nobody might be veering a bit too close to hamill's joker occasionally but he's good fun

really keen to see where they go with this over the rest of the season - it's a very pleasant surprise

Yeah, it's pretty great. Apparently Flex Mentallo before the end of the season too.

The dating app Cyborg sequence might have been one of the season highlights.

Goddamn it, I was trying so hard to hate-avoid this thing, you guys. Although I'm currently 100% sold on the utterly sacrilegious notion of John Constantine as part of a time travelling superteam so maybe I can relax my crack.

I am probably one of four people in existence who are hoping they eventually pull some elements from Rachael Pollack's run.

four people seems generous tbh

it's a lot of fun, you should def give it a try, if only to see how many ways brendan fraser can utter robotman's immortal catchphrase 'what the fuck?!?'

the worst thing i can think to say about it at this stage is that it seems to be a little too in love with having the freedom to have the characters swear, which is a very small complaint balanced against the knowledge that danny the street will be appearing in the next episode

There's a lot of swearing, sure, but there was maybe as much in Titans with much less joy.

ah, i haven't seen titans yet

It was definitely... variable. The Hawk & Dove stuff was pretty good and the main Raven arc held up but Dick's search for the Wang was way too grim 'n' gritty. I didn't really care for the whole Who Is Starfire thing either, or rather it was way out of balance in that it was a very slow build then just sort of tossed away.

Obviously, the Doom Patrol ep was the highlight by some margin.

I watched like the first 15 minutes or so of DP a little while back, and it was fine as far as it went but also it looked and felt a little too Berlantiverse. Now, speaking as someone who has watched almost all 915,293 hours of the CW shows, I can clearly roll with that aesthetic in the abstract but it feels like a bad fit for DP. I was hoping for something a little more disjointed, a little more visually psychedelic. And to the extent that they overtly make mention of them as superheroes...like the tone I'd prefer is that one scene early in Morrison's run where Jane randomly enters a store by crashing through a plate glass window and Cliff is like, 'don't worry, we're superheroes'. Maybe the show totally captures that steez, I dunno. I will give it a shot, though, guys. I'm nervous but I will.

can i soothe your concerns by letting you know that at one point they enter another dimension by disappearing - in a point-of-view shot - into a goat's aesophagus?

A Paraguayan donkey.

aldo otm, i apologise for the mischaracterisation

What's a mammal between friends.

Morrison schtick best captured I think in the showdown between the Great Destroyer and the other [redacted spoiler], especially the crowd who turn up out of nowhere and do exactly what Jane told them to.

The city Cliff and Jane go to felt more like The Invisibles if I'm honest.

I also loved the Admiral Whiskers story this week.

yeah, the resolution of the decreator story was a nice twist on the version from the comics, and the show's version of willoughby kipling was good, even if i was a bit disappointed he didn't look exactly like richard e grant in withnail and i like he did in the comics

the city of nurnheim was straight from morrison's doom patrol iirc?

It's been a long time since I've read it. Might dig them out at the weekend.

Arright, okay, you can stop piquing my interest now.

Wishlist: Rhea undergoing metamorphosis, Larry becoming Rebis, Dorothy Spinner and the Candlemaker, the Beard Hunter (obviously), Cliff with spider legs. Plz don't spoil if these things have come to pass.

Mostly wrt Pollack's run, I'd like to see someone eventually do something with Coagula (afaik the first openly (and traditionally, if we're excluding like Rebis et al) transgender superhero).

beard hunter is on the way this season, apparently!

re: cliff with spider legs, did you know that morrison did a dry run for that look in an issue of the comic he wrote for marvel uk based on the zoids toy-line? it's one of those indelible images from my childhood - god knows how he got away with the very weird and disturbing image in a comic aimed at small children but hey it was the 80s, it was a different time etc

I've always been curious about those Zoids comics. Maybe I should see if I can (ahem) find them somewhere totally legit and above board.

It's real weird to suddenly have these proto-Vertigo books which were so personally impactful coming to life on the small screen. I guess it remains to be seen what they're planning to do with Swamp Thing (his recent employment as a Justice Leaguer does not bode well but we shall see).

Hey DC Direct, if you promise not to fuck them up, I would cautiously encourage you to consider adapting Shade the Changing Man and Sandman Mystery Theater.

(I know the streaming service isn't called DC Direct so I don't know why I called it that.)

morrison's zoids comics are kinda funny cause they blatantly steal ideas and images from the alien movies and the terminator and only very slightly attempt to hide their inspirations

but they're interesting juvenilia for morrison fanatics, and there's already evidence in some of the stories of the themes he'll keep returning to over and over during his career

i may well have (ahem) acquired those issues in a perfectly legal digital format and stored them on an old external drive somewhere, let me look into it

BEARD HUNTER KLAXON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwnClzXiMV0

Last week's Jane-centric ep was really good.

haven't gotten around to watching that one yet but i did v much enjoy danny the street episode

uh-oh

Production on DC Universe's Swamp Thing has unexpectedly shutdown as the show will be shortened, according to Wilmington, North Carolina's Star-News newspaper. According to several unnamed "sources within the local industry," Warner Bros. Television suspended work on the show Tuesday, April 16 and said the show was being re-written to end with episode 10. The series was announced as a 13-episode first season, to finish filming in May 2019.

According to the newspaper, Swamp Thing actor Virginia Madsen posted (but later deleted) a message on Instagram saying: "I’m beyond sad. What a terrible decision. We have been cut to the core by those who have never set foot into the Swamp. And despite the rule I am going to use the hashtag. #swampthing."

Star-News goes further, saying that the "currently in-production project is being shut down earlier than expected as its producer, Warner Bros., evaluates the future of its DC Universe streaming service".

This was updated by a different story that said it was nothing more than creative differences between DCU (who is ultimately Johns I think) and the creative team.

Of course, the same thing happened to Titans but was less widely reported because it was the first one to hit.

This week's Flash was an ABSOLUTE stinker. Nora gets worse as the weeks go on, with her mimed running my greatest pleasure in the show these days, but hats off to the makeup crew for Future Iris which made the Arrow flash-forward scenes look like Weta studios.

I couldn't possibly have allowed myself to believe that quality televisual adaptations of both Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing could coexist. It's neither right nor natural.

I'm shockingly almost totally caught up with the CW shows for the first time in about two years. Haven't seen the newest Flash ep but I'm definitely pretty over Nora and (lol) her 'running'. Is it possible that the actress* has never attempted anything riskier than a brisk walk? Supergirl and Legends remain this season's MVP shows.

*It occurred to me recently that, despite having watched hundreds of hours of their antics, I know almost none of these shows' actors by name unless I was aware of them before. An argument for the old-school 'montage of character scenes with the actor's name superimposed' style of credits, I suppose. Or an argument for me to pay attention to things. I don't know.

Haha no

Flash is Grant something
Danny Trejo was Cisco's girlfriend's dad
Arrow is Steven (might be a ph) Amell (which might not be spelt right)
Felicity is Emily Betts Rickard (because a guy I used to work with obsessed with her after the Fappening)
Malcolm Merlyn was played by John Barrowman
Supergirl is Melissa Benoist (ditto Fappening)
J'onn is David Hardwood (because he was in lots of things)
Cat Grant was Calista Flockhart
Ray Palmer is Brandon Routh (because he was Superman)
Rip Hunter is Arthur Darvill

I think that's me. After 8 years.

Some other recurring characters

Tom Felton was Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and a love interest for Killer Frost for over a season
Russell Tobey played The Ray, who appears in a lot of the alternate Earth eps
Chris something who was one of the main cast in American Pie was the big bad in Flash this season.
Biff Tannen is Steel's dad in Legends
Steven Amell's brother (Robbie?) played the Ronnie Raymond half of Firestorm
Clancy Brown has played some general who is always out to get heroes in the first couple of Flash seasons
Vinnie Jones was being set up as the bad guy (but not followed through with) in the prison episodes of Arrow

I think outside of that it's guest slots

Yeah see I was honestly unsure until just now whether the star of Arrow, a show I've watched for the better part of a decade, was Stephen or Robbie Amell. I know Laurel is a Cassidy because David is her dad. I don't really have this problem with other shows or movies.

David Hardwood (because he was in lots of things)

, as the actress said to the bishop

Regardless of whether I know their names, it's been a fun ongoing game for me to mentally rank the broad range of acting ability displayed on the CW shows. Like Chris Klein this season has, I believe, set the bar at an all-time low that I think is going to be really hard for anyone to surpass, to the extent that I'm marveling over the fact that he ever had a film career at all (aside from Election, where he was perfectly cast as a dipshit portraying a dipshit). All of the shows' leads are pretty dece imo. Upper tier in the ranking if not quite at the tippy top.

The actor who plays Flash’s dad, John Wesley Shipp, played the Flash in the 90’s tv show (1990-91) which I thought was kinda neat casting

His girlfriend(?) from OG Flash was also cast in a role on this show. Not to mention Hammill reprising his role as Trickster.

Agreed on the awfulness of this week's ep. Hated Marvel's Civil War due to pitting characters with decades of shared experience against each other, hamhandedly to drive the "superheroes "fite!" plot. This last Flash had the same bad feeling of characters who should be able to rationally talk things through instead using ill-reasoned arguments setting up poor decisions to gain a predetermined end. But with the free rein given to Chris Klein's growlybear performance, it's just high expectations unmet.

And at least they haven't had a drum-playing octopus. Now watching Aquaman and hoping Marvel takes some lessons for Namor to avoid.

TS: drum-playing octopi vs. drum-playing ants

Ha! Well-played, sir. I gave the ant more of a pass because the comedy is integral to Ant-Man and the drumming ant was a robot. Definite Marvel bias in my suspension of disbelief.

That Harewood autocorrect was a good one, thanks sic.

I spotted John Wesley Shipp (who also plays Jay Garrick, in a possibly even more on the nose role) and Mark Hammill but kind of put them in stunt casting along with Helen Slater, Dean Cain and Lynda Carter in Supergirl.

I also did not know the David Cassidy thing.

Don't forget Teri Hatcher!

Yes, another from the in-joke stunt casting basket.

And at least they haven't had a drum-playing octopus. Now watching Aquaman and hoping Marvel takes some lessons for Namor to avoid.

marvel, no weirdness or fun in yr movie about the king of sunken atlantis who cuts about in a chainmail speedo and can fly using the little wings on his ankles