The Flash

[jimhines]

I need to geek out about The Flash. We started watching the show with episode one, and after so much bleak and dark DC comic adaptations, The Flash is an absolute delight. It’s fun. It dives unapologetically into the comics universe, and doesn’t shy away from the more “out there” aspects. For example, one recent instance gives us a cameo of Grodd.

Comments

[mt_yvr]

Really like the show, want to love it. But the whole "Every woman is unrequited love of/for" bit is annoying. That needs to get fixed. I'd like to see Caitlin develop more, outside of the boys. In fact she's got tonnes of space to do this, script-wise.

But yes. The second image of the walk of shame to the cells... Wayne and I died laughing. We had to hit pause.

And yes, it's nice to have a] the Anti-Smallville of superheroes (willing and wanting to use/explore his powers) and b] the FUN side of things. Like.. Barry geeks out over things, genuinely enjoys what he can do.

I mean what do some of these writers think? If I woke up with superpowers I'm fairly certain at some point I'd be all OVER the place going "cool! did you SEE that?!"

[jimhines]

Yeah, I *really* hope they fix that soon. They're doing so well in other areas, it's weird that they keep dropping the ball there.

[mt_yvr]

It is. I mean they bring in a woman from Arrow and the only thing I remember is "super smart, unrequited love for Oliver". It's weird how badly they do women. In some ways it feels like, sometimes, that if they have a cool 'thing' about them (smart? teleport? AWESOME) then that's 'character development'. Um. No? If Caitlin was more than nurse who patches Barry up (you can feel the 1950's white dress hovering over her in the script, with all the attending stereotypes), that'd be a start as she's bio-engineer. We've kinda skipped over her actually, oh I don't know, being smart as advertised.

[starcat_jewel]

Are there any women on the writing team? If so, I agree with your assessment. If not... that probably explains it; they don't have anyone to remind them about this stuff.

[bookzombie]

We are loving it and props to Grant Gustin for making Barry someone you can root for. Though, yeah, get your act together folks on the female characters.

(Regarding The Librarians, we also enjoyed this but it took us a few episodes to tune into the tone - particularly as I'm a huge fan of Leverage by the same production team, which hits the ground running in a way The Librarians doesn't.)

We're now binge-watching the first season of Arrow which, while it doesn't have the goofy tone of The Flash, is actually also enjoyable.

[jimhines]

Librarians is one I suspect people will either love or hate. It's pulpy, cheesy fun, and that doesn't work for everyone. But I liked it, and I'm very interested to see what happens now that it's been renewed for another season.

Arrow is sitting on our pile of DVDs to watch. I'd tried it once before, and it didn't really work for me. But having seen the crossovers, I'll probably give it another shot.

[bookzombie]

Yes, we've had Arrow on the DVD pile for some time and it was the crossovers with The Flash that pushed it to the top.

[lenora_rose]

Arrow's first season lost my husband early, and I kept watching despite some eye-rolling. Then it hit a point where it clicked.

That being said, I have yet to watch a single third season episode.

[jimhines]

"And it's nice to finish an episode of anything on TV right now and feel upbeat."

Yes!!!

[jayene]

I love so much of it, especially since it is tonally so different from Arrow, (which I loved... until this season and some of the dumb, dumb, and dumb choices they seem to be making over there, but that is another rant).
My biggest issue was the whole *spoiler alert if you aren't caught up to about the second to last episode* Barry dating Linda debacle. I get the whole, it's funny to make him have to choose between his social life and superhero life, but the thing with the ghost pepper... creepy.

[neotoma]

I do like the show a lot, partly because I'm a long-time fan of the Flash in the comics (Wally West, though, not Barry). And the show has great father-son relationships in Barry & Joe and Barry & Henry.

But the shows handling of women does bug me, and I keep getting creeped out by the causal "oh, we'll keep the supervillains in boxes downstairs" -- the Flash and crew have their own prison that the police don't know about and that's supposed to be okay instead of icky?

[jimhines]

I've read that there's some backstory to the prison that got cut out of an episode. Basically, STAR worked with the police/Mayor/etc. on this, because they were the only ones who had the facilities to hold these prisoners. I guess it talked about food services and laundry and such.

But if so, I really wish they'd add it back. Because yeah...without more explanation, Secret Prison is creepy.

[swan_tower]

Even with the backstory, it's still an extralegal secret prison that holds people indefinitely without trial. Which has rather unfortunate connotations very much at odds with the perky four-color tone of the show.

[yendi]

The show's Barry reads, to me, like he's largely Wally personality-wise from the comics (even if he's got Barry's job and name and love interest).

Agreed completely about the handling of women (I do expect that the prison situation will become a plot point, though).