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TheLastBaron

Arrowverse (DC/CW shows): Arrow, The Flash, etc.

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I started watching Arrow because my friend told me he watched it and was surprised to find that it wasn't bad like one might assume. I stopped watching 15 minutes into the pilot.

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I watched the season premiere of The Flash today and I have to say that I'm pretty excited. I'm a big fan of Arrow, so I guess it's not a big surprise but The Flash is pretty much my favorite DC superhero and the way that CW seems to be handling this stuff nowadays seems really solid. I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, only that the villain in the premiere is Weather Wizard so that's pretty cool.

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I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, only that the villain in the premiere is Weather Wizard so that's pretty cool.

 

Saying "the villain in this Flash story is some ridiculous kooky D-lister" is kind of redundant.

 

Prediction: there will be an episode where Captain Boomerang or whoever has The Flash tied up and he focuses his concentration and figures out how to do that thing where he vibrates his molecules through matter. Then later in the season finale he has to choose whether to use his powers to reach inside someone and kill them. If he does it, it sets up the dark second season.

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I just watched The Flash. It was pretty good? Are all the DC live-action TV shows like this, where they just constantly drop references to the DC Universe at large and set things up in a way that's going to be super obvious to everyone who knows the source material? Professor Zoom, Killer Frost, and Vibe being set up as recurring characters is bad enough, but the huge bent cage that is clearly labelled in such a way that we know Gorilla Grodd will be appearing is just the worst (best (worst)).

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Yeah, Arrow is very much like that as well. Lots of weird one off characters or quick mentions of key words that are big in DC Universe but seemingly small or insignificant with respect to the plot at hand.

 

Gotham, on the other hand, is on the nose in a much shittier way. Still watching it though because I have no self-respect.

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Here's Captain Cold from the next episode of The Flash, this show is super dumb/great - 

 

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I'll bet Lady-Who-Will-Become-Killer-Frost gets shot with that cold gun or something.

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Is he holding a flashlight?

 

He's holding a cold gun. Primary purpose is to shoot a cold beam that freezes stuff on contact. There are a lot of weird and contrived other uses for it in the comics at various points. The idea is that it can slow Flash down because cold is slow and stuff.

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The Flash, this show is super dumb/great - 

 

Gave up on this after 7 episodes.

 

It's quite fun, but the writing is so clumsy and slow. It's all so clunky, crappy-villain-of-the-week superhero-season-1 type stuff, and the dialogue is dreadful:
 
Fireman in speeding fire-truck: "We're two minutes away!"
Dispatch:" But people are going to DIE!"
 
Stern scientist: Hey, what's that on your monitors? Are you helping Barry to save people from fires?
Lovable nerd scientist: What? No. Barry who?
Stern scientist: You know, Barry Allen who was hit by a bolt of lightning in the storm caused by our particle accelerator  explosion and then went into a coma which he came out of nine months later with super speed?
 
Episode 7 had the gang doing a name-the-scientist picture round in a pub quiz (names of scientists probably not the actual ones they used but it's irrelevant):
 
Nerd 1: I think 4 is Pasteur.
Nerd 2: No, number 5 is Pasteur, 4 is Tesla.
Cop: Are they even speaking English?!?!
 
What word in this conversation was too nerdy for you, cop? "Number"? "Is"?
 
Also, the Flash could defeat every single villain so far by running up behind them and conking them on the head. But instead he runs up in front of them, makes a quip and then waits until they start firing their fire-weapon or ice-weapon or whatever before he runs away and is like "how can I defeat this guy?!" It is infuriating. Like, we've all seen the powers on display (hero and villains) a ton recently (Matrix, X-Men etc) so we're used to them enough that this stuff is glaringly stupid.

 

Meanwhile, I'm binge-watching Once Upon A Time. The characters and dialogue can be pretty dull, but there's enough different stuff going all the time to keep it interesting. Twig's right, though, the central kid is very annoying.

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Episode 7 had the gang doing a name-the-scientist picture round in a pub quiz (names of scientists probably not the actual ones they used but it's irrelevant):

 
Nerd 1: I think 4 is Pasteur.
Nerd 2: No, number 5 is Pasteur, 4 is Tesla.
Cop: Are they even speaking English?!?!
 
What word in this conversation was too nerdy for you, cop? "Number"? "Is"?

 

Obviously "think".

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Arrow (1st season) is the worst. All the time the characters are saying all the wrong things to each other, and for some reason they mostly lead to the right results anyway. The series is constantly repetitive with the same beats every episode. The flashbacks to the island are perfunctory, nothing connects them to the present. Why are they happening, what do they help us understand?

Diggle is a constant nag at Oliver's side and is always only there to be proven wrong. I loved him in his bodyguard role in the first episodes, but since then he's only there lurk in Oliver's lair and to be someone Oliver can talk to, and to be a source of more drama.

Oh, and Thea is a selfish, judgmental, hurtful monster and at the same time a screwup of her own, and noone points out her hypocrisy. Why would I care whether or not she goes to prison?

Yet, Arrow is a good show in small dosage to waste your time with.

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Arrow is so stupid, it's fast food for the brain. And since I already eat too much actual fast food I should at least be more sensible regarding my mental intake. Just finished watching the season one finale.

It is easy to watch, entertaining but trite...well, I'm glad I haven't anymore episodes to watch for now...

It's been a while since I saw a show with such a conservative and oldfashioned worldview, too.

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Good thread!

 

I randomly started watching DC's Legends of Tomorrow and The Flash and fell into the Arrowverse hole eventually and now I can't stop. It's cheesy and fun in a way I wish the Netflix Marvel shows were sometimes. ABC's Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter were the Marvel shows I liked the most because they were fun like the CW shows are.

 

So yeah, I've grown to like Arrow and am slowly starting up on Supergirl now. The Flash has lost some of its fun lately, I feel. Whenever that show gets *really* hung up on mistrust between the main characters it gets really dour..

 

I do really wish the seasons were shorter, because with 24 episodes the shows meander a lot. Shorter seasons without some of the clunkier episodes would make me recommend these shows more often.

 

Last note: If Arrow doesn't stop doing the flashbacks after this latest season I am done with it. I can't stand those flashbacks..

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I started watching Arrow after finishing the Netflix Marvel shows up to Iron Fist.  It was a big difference jumping from the super serious and ultra violent tone of the Netflix stuff to the comic book soap opera that is the Arrowverse.  I just finished season 3 of Arrow and am working through the first season of Flash before I move on.  As usual I'm going to do a big dump of things that annoy me.  There are spoilers ahead but since this thread is for these shows specifically I'm not going to tag them unless people think it's necessary.

 

You would think by this point they'd learn not to constantly lie to each other.  It's a recurring theme in the show that lying eventually catches up to you and causes major problems, yet everyone keeps doing it.  Except Felicity, I think she's the only honest person there which makes me like her. 

 

I dislike Laurel.  She's really judgmental even when she has no real moral high ground.  Thea was a lot like that in the beginning too (your brother just got back from what you know to be five years alone on an island and you're comparing your privileged life problems to his?)  Laurel's also a bad fighter.  I get that she's a rookie hero and just starting out but she constantly has this "I'll handle him" attitude and then proceeds to get her ass kicked.  Oliver's arrogant in that way too but at least he can back up him claim.  Black Canary is supposed to be one of the best hand to hand fighters in the DC universe but this one kind of sucks especially considering she seemed able to handle herself before becoming a costumed fighter.

 

At times I think the show should have been called "Everybody loves Ollie".  Seriously, the only major female characters who don't fall in love with him are the ones he's related to or are otherwise spoken for.

 

The way people pronounce Ra's al Ghul drives me nuts.  Half say "Raz" the other half say "Raysh".  I'm pretty sure it should be "Raysh" (as the members of the League of Assassins on the show say it) but I wouldn't care as much if they'd just make up their damn minds.  It's not even like you see the name written down anywhere so I'm not sure why there even are two pronunciations on the show.

 

Sara being bi is pretty cool.  Playing into the trope of killing the LGBT character is kind of shitty.

 

The flashbacks to Oliver's time away are really getting annoying.  I would have preferred it to be more Castaway and less Lost.

 

Ok rant over.  I actually am kind of enjoying the show, I just had to get all that stuff of my chest.

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I watched the shows out of order, as in I watched a lot of Flash and Legends of Tomorrow before watching Arrow. So I spent a lot of time watching Arrow waiting for the other shoe to drop with regards to certain characters. But it was kind of fun, in a way, having gotten to know some of these characters without any backstory and then later watching their origin story.

 

And yes, those flashbacks are the worst and somehow they are still doing it five seasons in.. :(

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I am vaguely watching them in broadcast order to attempt some kind of story continuity.  I'm starting Flash season 1 which aired concurrently with Arrow season 3.  What I'm not doing is jumping back and forth between individual episodes of shows because that's too much of a hassle.

 

The increasingly unbelievable ways the flashbacks tie into the present are what bother me about them.  It's like there are two parallel timelines and something can't exist in the present until it's been shown or referenced in the past.  Hopefully the fifth season will be the last to have them since he was gone for five years.

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Good work, Chris!

 

I don't think it'll hurt to discuss Gotham in here too, as it's DC although not Arrowverse? I'll just re-post my comment from elsewhere on that:

 

Gotham is half-awful, half-amazing. When they're taking their sweet time over characters like Riddler, Penguin and Bruce, it's great. When they're rushing full-pelt through stuff like Mr Freeze, Court Of Owls or James Gordon's moral rise and fall and rise and fall it reveals its clumsiness.

 

My feelings on The Flash are above. I think my partner and I gave Arrow about 6 episodes or so too and really enjoyed the first three as they were fast-moving, pulpy and intriguing, but the show turned dull and maudlin so quickly that we gave up on it.

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I'd rather just start a new thread for Gotham if you want to talk about it, as one of the problems with megathreads is that people who aren't up to date on the thread don't actually know that the thing they want to talk about might already be in there; and if someone (in theory) wants to talk about Gotham but doesn't consider it part of the Arrowverse, they wouldn't think to come in here for it.

 

If a bunch of folks would rather this become a catch-all DC TV shows thread that's fine and we can rename the thread!

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I personally think the Arrowverse shows should be on their own, separate from Gotham or any other shows specifically because the Arrowverse shows interact with each other so much that at times they're all one big show.  If they were all stand alone then I'd be ok with this being the DC thread but because of the interconnection and crossing over of story/characters they're pretty inherently tied to each other.  It's also the reason I think there should be one Arrowverse thread rather than individual show threads because it'll be easier to reference them in one place instead of jumping between threads.

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Back on the topic at hand, I started Flash last night.  I'm about 5 episodes in.  I'm glad I have a working knowledge of the DC universe because all the foreshadowing would drive me nuts otherwise.  Arrow drops a lot of hints and nods but they're usually pretty subtle.  Flash episodes end with teasers.  Working in clues to future events is one thing, having Wells interact menacingly with a gorilla in a cage labeled Grodd is another.  I'm also pretty sure I already know who Wells is as a result of all this.

 

I kind of appreciate the attempts at science (comic book science but still) such as Cisco trying to work out the minimum speed to run up a building or on water.  But then I think about how Barry says his suit is friction-proof.  Without friction he wouldn't be able to run at all, he'd move like he's slipping on ice.  Also Cisco making a gun that achieves absolute zero would actually mean the end of the universe because that's how you get absolute zero.  I'm also a bit disappointed that this doesn't equal a lot of common sense stuff, like bringing a gas mask to fight a villain that becomes poison gas.  I admit though I was amused at their attempts to get Barry drunk by giving him super moonshine.

 

I don't totally get why he can't tell Iris who he is.  Keeping it from Joe would make sense to me since he's a cop and was already clearly concerned about his safety.  Iris is obviously gonna keep digging into it no matter what.  Telling her up front seems like the best way to get her to stop.  I guess they're gonna go the Arrow route and keep lying until it blows up in their face.

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Fair enough on Gotham, from a quick search I don't think anyone here has particularly strong views on it one way or the other...

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17 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

I don't totally get why he can't tell Iris who he is.  Keeping it from Joe would make sense to me since he's a cop and was already clearly concerned about his safety.  Iris is obviously gonna keep digging into it no matter what.  Telling her up front seems like the best way to get her to stop.  I guess they're gonna go the Arrow route and keep lying until it blows up in their face.

 

The Flash keeps doing this again and again as an attempt at drama and it drags the show down..

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Watched a couple more episodes of Flash last night.  I'm still mostly enjoying the comic-bookiness of it as a silly piece of entertainment, but there's more things that bother me so of course I'm going to talk about those.

 

It was kind of weird seeing the first Arrow/Flash crossover in reverse since I had already watched Arrow season 3.  I don't generally like superhero vs. scenarios because 99% of the time the conflict could have been resolved if they just talked for 10 seconds like actual human beings would.  Putting Barry under the influence of a rage inducing metahuman isn't a much better excuse to me since its sole purpose was to force a fight.  And that fight was the entire point of the episode.  They completely skipped the part where they actually work together and catch the guy which I frankly would have been more interested in.

 

Speaking of rage guy, they clearly identified how his powers worked before Barry went off to find him, yet they still didn't bother to come up with some kind of countermeasure beforehand.  Some light filtering lenses would have solved the problem.  Or when he fought evil Colossus he could have hit him with something harder than his fist meaning he wouldn't need to break the sound barrier to achieve equal force.  Or maybe just knocked him out with a sedative which is probably what Oliver would have done.  Barry is supposed to be more intelligent than Oliver but his solutions still boil down to "I'm gonna hit that guy real fast".  I realize I'm overthinking this but when they go to the point of trying to calculate speed and angle to produce the proper force it begs the question why aren't the simple, more obvious answers occurring to these geniuses?

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