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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
It's not that viewers are morons, it's just that for some bizarre reason, they only want characters to be in so many things, and love retelling the same stories.
—
See Generally: Bat-Embargo
But for serious, they had a great chance to tie the shows into the movies, but just don't seem to want to do that.
edited 1st Apr '15 4:44:28 PM by wanderlustwarrior
Apparently Wendy's showing up in Age of Ultron.
Or rather her voice actress Linda Cardellini
.
Huh.
edited 1st Apr '15 4:50:25 PM by TargetmasterJoe
I've watched the whole season of The Flash but only a couple episodes of Arrow; still, it's pretty clear to me that DC has set up Green Arrow as its analogue-Batman show (its crossover episode with The Flash was even called "The Brave and the Bold", and the current arc is all about Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins) and Flash as its analogue-Superman show (down to the girl he likes being a reporter who doesn't know his secret identity. That may be a characteristic of the comics Flash as well, but it's pretty Superman-y.) Arrow is the dark-and-gritty Badass Normal, while Flash is the bright-and-idealistic guy with top-level superpowers.
Currently I'd say The Flash is approximately on a level with, and sometimes slightly worse than, Agents Of SHIELD. They're both fairly middling, as shows go, but entertaining.
edited 1st Apr '15 4:52:07 PM by Galadriel
It's Iris, whose status as a reporter is also from the comics.
Though it's only in its first season, Flash has so far been a lot better a show than most of the other superhero shows thus far if only because it tends to move its plot and characters whereas a lot of other shows keep the characters in the same place as long as possible in order to milk drama out of their situations (Arrow and Ao S both suffer from this, though Arrow much more so). It doesn't have the strong continuity of the longer runners yet, but it will.
Yes, but the character Galadirel is talking about is Iris, not Linda. At least I'm assuming so, because Iris' role is arguably more reminiscent of Lois'.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:12:44 PM by KnownUnknown
Actually, Linda's also in the show, but she's not Flash's main love interest.
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.I think The Flash is pretty shitty. Like with Agents of SHIELD, a lot of the drama is derived from people keeping secrets from each other, unlike with Agents of SHIELD, so much fucking time is devoted to the case of the week that we rarely, if ever, get any actual insight into who these characters are or why the hell they keep so much crap from each other.
Take, for example, I dunno—the Skye's powers storyline. Within that alone, we get Skye's anxieties over putting those around her in danger, Fitz fearing Simmon's sudden fear of metahumans, as well as his own anxiety about Simmons having abandoned him and Simmon's feelings of betrayal once all this gets out. That alone is four separate set of built-up, believable emotional stimuli.
Now let's take any number of the secret-keeping arcs in The Flash. Harrison Wells is hiding that he's killed Barry's mom. How does he feel about this? Dunno. Why did he do it? Dunno. Or, hell, Barry keeping his secret identity from Iris. Why's he doing it? "To keep her safe." How does he think this will keep her safe? Dunno. How does he feel about this? Mildly uncomfortable, nothing her father telling him it's the right thing to do won't solve. How does her father feel about this? He thinks it's important. Doesn't really bother him. Whatever.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:13:31 PM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Wells is the Big Bad, and his deceptions are the main plot of the first season - it's not really the same thing as "main characters keeping secrets from each other." It's more "a conspiracy that the hero slowly uncovers."
I'd hesitate to call Barry keeping the secret from Iris an "arc." While it does comes up every few episodes, it's not really given much more than secondary plot significance (at least not as much as "Barry pines for Iris but she's dating another guy"), and the show does give decent reasons (which are helped by the fact that Iris is largely minor character at this point). While him revealing himself is likely going to be a big climactic moment, it's less prominent an element in the main characters' characterization as, say, every secret they keep on Arrow or the whole business with "The Real SHIELD" in AOS. At least, not in the sense that the characters reflect every episode over the said secret or the consequences of keeping it.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:20:07 PM by KnownUnknown
Well, one, even with, say, Whitehall, Hyde or Garrett, we still had some idea why they were doing this crap. No such luck for Wells. Like, we know he wants to get back to his home time, and we know training the Flash will help him do that, but—I mean, is he attached to anyone back home? Does he have status there? Did he just miss the cool tech? And how does killing Barry's mom help any of this?
As for "conspiracy the characters slowly uncover", we got one episode of Joe interrogating him over coffee, two episodes of a bit character having uncovered some crap, and one negated timeline where Cisco blew the cover off the whole thing. It's just this week that Barry or Joe has started seriously investigating but they haven't actually figured anything out yet. There's not a single Agents of SHIELD plot I can think of where, sixteen episodes in, all the characters have are vague suspicions about their enemies. Even the initial HYDRA-in-SHIELD plot moved faster.
And, I mean—I really find the secret identity thing insulting to Iris as a character because she has practically no agency for no good reason. Fuck keeping her safe. You know what would keep her safe, so long as she's determined to report about metahumans anyway? Letting her know there's a chance metahumans will come for her, why that is, and give her a chance to defend herself.
None of this might bug me so much if I couldn't say "I hesitate to call anything a 'prominent element in the main characters' characterization'" and completely mean it.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:24:27 PM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.I just found Agents of Shield incredibly boring. Yes, Flash has stupid melodrama in it, but at least it has a straightforward premise and simplistic overarching plot that keeps me entertained. None of this "meander around aimlessly for half a season until the Winter Solider tie-in randomly shakes things up out of nowhere" crap.
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.We didn't learn much about Hyde or Whitehall's plans until we got near the climax of their respective arcs - before that there was a lot of them being monstrous and mysterious but not answers, which is because the nature of such a plot is to reveal the enormity of the plot ahead of the heroes just before they finally confront it. Likewise, we didn't learn about the Clairvoyant until well into the endgame of Agents of SHIELD. There's arguably the perception of it happening faster in AOS' current season, but that's because AOS' second season primarily uses arc villains over villains that span over the entire season.
Compare Faustus in Agent Carter - we didn't learn the truth about what he or his group was up to and why until literally the second to last episode in the series, because the point of the actual plot is the uncovering of those secrets. Until then, we got hints and half answers, but failed to get the full story.
The big point of revelation hasn't actually happened yet, which is not the same as not having one - especially since the series is actively setting up that moment and has been for the past few episodes (kind of hand over fist, really). I mean, I get the critique - my main criticism of AOS' first season is that it did a lot of hinting in the first half but didn't do any real development of anything it introduced, but Flash isn't doing that - it tends to build on what it establishes.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:30:46 PM by KnownUnknown
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I'd say it's unfair to judge a series by its first season, but The Flash just premiered this year, so, um...
I'd say it's unfair to judge a series on its first season when it's second season has shown serious improvement. Yes. This amendment to my personal standards will totally save me from looking like a complete hypocrite.
I mean, again, I wouldn't mind the plot moving so slowly if I felt any of the characters had substance to them.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:31:06 PM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Later good episodes don't retroactively make the older episodes less crappy. All that tells me is if I ever want to watch Agents of Shield, I should skip ahead a bit. I kind of ruined Breaking Bad by forcing myself to slog through the awful old seasons because people kept telling me seasons four and five were so orgasmically amazing, and then I got so bored around season 3 that I couldn't bring myself to keep watching.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:34:14 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.The characters in AOS were pretty flat thoughout the first season; the ones in Flash are more enjoyable to watch and have a good rapport with each other. The first season of SHIELD also took its time with the main plot far more than The Flash has - we didn't even know HYDRA existed until most of the way through the season, so we certainly knew less about them than we do about Wells at this point.
Wells is supposed to by a mysterious element who we only learn about a bit at a time, and I find him the best-acted character on either Flash or AOS. Flash also has multiple plotlines going simultaneously (Barry's investigation of who killed his mother; what Wells is up to; Gorilla Grodd; the formation of the Rogues as Barry's antagonists; Firestorm). It's set up a ton of stuff in a relatively short amount of time for a TV show, despite having a largely villain-of-the-week format.
In contrast, Agents of SHIELD larglely does one plotline at a time:
- Season 1 Part 1: Why is Coulson still alive?
- Season 1 Part 2: Who is the Clairvoyant, and what exactly was done to Coulson?
- Season 2 Part 1: The Alien City / Inhuman, and SHIELD's contest with HYDRA over the diviner and the city
- Season 2 Part 2: How Inhumans and alien influences generally should be treated.
In short, The Flash is silly, but I enjoy it (certainly a lot more than I enjoyed the first season of AOS). Partly it's that Barry and the rest of his team aside from Wells are just regular young people (with powers, in Barry's case) who have no special training in dealing with weird stuff, so if they screw up sometimes it's okay. Agents of SHIELD Season 1 was full of what was supposed to be top members of an elite spy agency being deeply idiotic and incompetent, which was the primary factor that turned me off the show (I didn't even both watching the middle episodes). Sending Simmons, who was TERRIBLE undercover and who had zero training, on an undercover mission in TRACKS. Sending male agents against a person who can mind-control men. Not realizing that Ward was a mole even when he was flunking a lie detector test.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:41:27 PM by Galadriel
Everyone but me seems completely enraptured with the characters on The Flash. I have no idea what it is I'm missing that makes them all come off as one-note one-liner machines to me.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Of course, the biggest issue with Flash is that the writers can't write very well. Like, their overarching plotlines are interesting, but when it comes time to compose dialogue, they're pretty much only good for cracking a few jokes and dropping exposition. A good example is the latest episode with the Trickster, where Barry's supposed to be all broody and angsty because he suspects Dr. Wells of being Reverse Flash, and we only know he's brooding and angsting because characters keep saying, "GEE BARRY, YOU SEEM REALLY GRUMPY TODAY!" Swear to God, I wouldn't have figured out Barry had a crush on Iris if he hadn't had some dialogue saying "I AM SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH IRIS!"
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No, no, you're not the only one.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:39:59 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.Not enraptured, but Barry and Cisco and Caitlin are fun and they get along with each other, and Barry's got a great rapport with Detective West.
Sure, the writing is cheesy, but not much more than on Agents. It seems to be a general flaw in superhero shows.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:43:16 PM by Galadriel
All I know is they had Mark Hamill come in and say "I am your father" and really, if that's not good enough for you your standards are probably too high.
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."Yeah, that too.
Also, they have the guys from Prison Break show up and make terrible puns.
And it's just fun because the show's a lot more willing to be weird than Agents is. They've got a telepathic gorilla. Why would the military want to make a gorilla telepathic? I have no idea. It's just over-the-top.
edited 1st Apr '15 6:45:08 PM by Galadriel
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Actually, I kind of cringed at that scene, but overall I thought Mark Hamill was amazing. In fact, he was kind of better than the script he was given...
That's the thing about Flash, though. The reason I enjoy it isn't because it's well written, it's because it's cute and amusing and interesting, and those are valuable aspects of a TV show to me. What I've watched of Agents of Shield wasn't terrible, but it was just so meh.
And again, I fully expect Daredevil to blow all these other shows out of the water. Of course, there's some bias there since I already love the Daredevil comics...
edited 1st Apr '15 6:48:12 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.

Apparently they offed Deadshot in the show just because he's also in Suicide Squad. Which seems horribly counterproductive to me, since I'd think keeping him would build more hype for the movie by making him more popular. Not to mention they're in separate continuities anyway so it shouldn't really matter. Does Warner Bros really think Viewers Are Morons?
edited 1st Apr '15 4:42:15 PM by AlleyOop