Saturday, October 15, 2016

Oh, The Metahumanity! (Oct 11-13)

DON'T JUDGE ME. OK, judge me a little.
SO MUCH CW. All the CW. Well, not Supergirl. I'm still not willing to commit to Supergirl. But so much else. Agents of SHIELD is still winning overall, but only because there's no time for more Luke Cage right now.


Agents Of SHIELD: "Uprising" (15% Stupid)

Let's get this out of the way right away. The Watch Dogs have, according to this episode, caused blackouts in seven cities in eight ours. First Miami, then London, then L.A. The Miami blackout happens when it's dark. The L.A. blackout happens in full daylight. If there's a way to rectivy that, I cannot think of it, and thinking about it distracted me for most of the episode.

This episode also featured the classic trope of "if they stay dead for more than X minutes, they'll have permanent brain damage", and then aren't resuscitated for at least X+5 minutes and are just hunky dory afterwards.

The rest of the episode was really good, though, from old fashioned math being used to save the day, to Daisy drama, to the reinstatement of SHIELD, to the creepy teaser. And next week we maybe learn more about the mystical origins of Ghost Rider's powers, which should be good.

The Flash: "Paradox" (30% Stupid)

So last week, I said this: "It'd be ballsy for the show to go with something that affects the relationships between the characters without changing the kind of large-scale status quo that would fuck with the other shows, but I don't think that's in the cards."

And I was sort of right and sort of wrong. They're staying in the changed timeline, but they're putting all the relationships back to where they were in the old universe. Iris and Barry had a third first kiss. Cisco was sad and angry but it's OK now. Joe and Iris were sad and angry but it's OK now.

The only permanent part of the timeline changes are characters and superpowers. Caitlin has the cold powers. Cisco has the full Vibe powerset but isn't gonna use them yet because emotional trauma. The new big bad (Dr. Alchemy, in the most contrived "give them the comics name" sequence in Flash history) is creating metahumans by bringing them over from other universes, including, of course, an evil speedster (Rival Flash) because they know how to make colored lightning race around buildings to indicate a fight and they're not gonna give that up. According to the teaser, Jessie Quick gets her speed, presumably, again, thanks to the timeline change. Wally probably won't be far behind.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want Sad Cisco and Angry Iris. But the reset was so fast and forced that I think I would have preferred a time-travel deus ex machina over an emotional one.

Legends Of Tomorrow: "Out of Time" (55% Stupid)

Yeah, I know. But last season ended with the Hawkpeople gone and a promise of the Justice Society of America. And I never deleted it off the DVR, so it was just sitting there. Taunting me. Daring me to watch it.

But it was the same old Legends of Tomorrow. Dumb time bullshit, the world's most incompetent team constantly being told how great they are, wildly inconsistent plot, weird conflict. And then there was that awful, awful Einstein.

Which is a shame, because some of it is very appealing. Sara Lance: TIME LESBIAN is a show I would watch. The Damien Dhahrhkh/Eobard Thawne teamup presaging the promised Legion of Doom is great. Heat Wave is the best.

And, of course, there's also the problem of an entire show about preventing alterations to the timeline in a shared universe where another show just threw up its hands and said "fuck it, stop trying to fix the timeline, just leave it changed". Why aren't the Legends trying to show up on Barry's porch to warn him about saving his mom? And why did Hourman give them a dire warning about visiting 1942 when the only consequence was a dumb Time Scatter that was resolved satisfactorily in a 10 minute montage? Sure, they never found Rip Hunter, but I'm including that in "satisfactorily". Stupid, stupid fucking show.

Arrow: "Legacy" (15% Stupid)

I knocked 5% off the score for this episode due to the show's overall success in keeping Ragman's status as a member of Ollie's new team as a secret while revealing Wild Dog and Artemis and Mr. Terrific. Tying his origin to Felicity's nuclear decision from last season is a great choice, even if I can predict how the reveal will go because it's the kind of thing that;s played out about a dozen times over Arrow's past four seasons.

i'm not sure how much more of Grief-Blinded Ollie I can take, though. His decision to train his new team the way he was trained by the Bratva makes sense up to a point, and that point was the point where the Bratva murdered the three people Ollie figured out the power of teamwork with. I'm betting Ollie wasn't actually going to murder three of his new team members for succeeding, but it's still deeply weird for him to re-purpose that training method given how it ended.

The other big plot in this episode features Diggle paying a very harsh price for his decision to leave the gray world of vigilanteism for the black and white world of the military. Diggle's Military Misadventures will probably bring him back to Star City sooner rather than later, which would be nice.

1 comment:

  1. I thought Legends started well and ended well but yeah, the middle was the usual "must preserve the timeline" while whizzing the timeline down their legs.


    Still not watching Supergirl? Let me catch you up. Blah blah blah evil Kryptonians and I honestly can't remember what their master plan was but then again, I only saw four episodes. The season premiere was less idiotic than it was last season anyway. My God, the Flash crossover last season is proof that they must hire mentally challenged writers under some sort of diversity program. She works with a super secret alien hunting organization and they freak out every other time she ever brought sometime to their top secret headquarters but hey, here's a guy with god powers from another universe and they let him in, I guess because of the winning smile. This season they introduced cousin Superman who at least seems to enjoy the fact that he's the most powerful thing on the planet, unlike a certain movie with a character who was a walking ad for antidepressants.

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