Friday, November 18, 2016

Oh, The Metahumanity! (Nov 13-17)

It's Bobo Master Chief! I mean The Punisher! I mean Vigilante!
Not the best week for the CW. And with the Invasion crossover coming soon, let's hope things pick up, 'cause I'm gonna have to watch a Supergirl and a legends.


Luke Cage: "Blowin' Up The Spot" (7% Stupid)

Forgot to mention that Luke Cage got shot by a Judas Bullet at the end of last week's episode. Oops.

Basically three things going on here - we have Mariah and Shades framing Luke Cage for Cottonmouth s murder, which is where this episode earns all of its points, as Shades displayes a completely uncharacteristic weird religious-sexual fervor towards Mariah that doesn't work for me AT ALL. And we have Luke and Claire trying to deal with the Judas shrapnel and the appearance of Diamondback, a.k.a. Willis Stryker, a.k.a. Luke Cage's brother, if his end-of-episode revelation is to be believed. And then he shoots Luke again with a second Judas.

And in between, we have Misty, torn between the competent framing of Luke and getting caught up (and beaten up) in the Cage-Diamondback confrontation. It all continues to be great stuff except when it's a little weird.

The Flash: "Shade" (20% stupid)

Team Dumdum Flash is back this week, with the usual array of secret-keeping, poor planning, letting-people-out-of-cages-when-you-totally-shouldn't, you know, the usual shit. Plot-wise, Alchemy is after Wally, a shitty villain named Shade does very little at all, Caitlyn reveals her Killer Frostiness to the team, Joe goes on a date, Wally ends up Alchemied even though they sorta defeat Alchemy, and oh, another goddamned evil speedster, this time Savitar, The God Of Speed. Because they save a LOT of money by palette-swapping Speed Force lightning. Oh well. At least it all moved along quickly through the dumbness tropes, keeping the overall score down.

Arrow: "Vigilante" (15% Stupid And Rising)

I'm not giving this 15% because Ollie's being super dumb in romancing the reporter, and is gonna get burned SO HARD when she maybe figures out he's the Green Arrow and tells the world or at least tells the world he was a Russian mobster. No, this is an exciting new way for Ollie to be stupid, and I approve of it.

No, this gets a very generous 15% because both storylines this ep, the debut of Vigilante and Quentin Lance going into rehab, are just... poor. Just clumbsy and obvious. Not awful, but not up to Arrow's usual standards. Vigilante is like The Punisher in Daredevil Season 2, only without any shred of nuance. And the Lance stuff is just a movie of the week completely disconnected from everything going on around it.

Then there's that weird reveal at the end that Artemis is working with Promootheus, which if true is dumb and if it's a swerve may be double dumbass on you. I need to stop thinking about it before I double the score.

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