Well this was a bit of a casual week. I forgot almost half these episodes as soon as they aired. Which isn’t bad, necessarily, just expect a lot of Cs this review as it was all pretty… ok.
Supergirl 1.14 – Truth, Justice and the American Way
You know, I could write an entire blog post about just this episode (spoiler warning! I probably will). Yes, part of that does come from my day job being involved with the criminal justice system & processes so of course some things related to that bug me.
What also bugs me is Supergirl’s almost inability to get “3rd options” right. I mean… look I enjoy as much as anyone the take a 3rd option trope (even if sometimes they overplay it) and yes a good Superman (or girl in this case) story should play on that. Part of Supes appeal is the ability to have more third options to us that are lacking in real life. Yet the show seems to consistently forget these 3rd possibilities. Red Tornado? Bizzaro? Portrayed as completely a black and white horrors, nobody even brings up or addresses things like the White Martians or rogue Kryptonians or any other myriad aliens that mankind MIGHT want more help against. The end of the episode doesn’t have to change, but they need to at least DISCUSS it.
Likewise with the bad guy this week. Nobody brings up the possibility of recruiting him for the DEO? Getting him to share his tech, train their agents, or even just keep him around in case they ever need to actually execute a prisoner? You want to do something interesting with this show, have the DEO set up a semi-court system to prosecute & sentence the aliens they arrest. Have Lucy Lane join them as the primary prosecutor for example. And figure out whether the convicted will be executed or serve long terms or form a suicide squad or whatever. But if you don’t want to do that, at least have someone bring it up – even if it’s just Hank morning that this guy wouldn’t join them.
At least they sort of addressed the Maxwell Lord thing. Now if they could just get that kind of continuity going across the board, for big and little things.
Don’t even get me started on Lucy & Jimmy’s deal. Yes I’ll allow that she’s jealous and letting it get to her, but really? Blab someone else’s secret? Lucy previously worked for the military, and if she was ever privy to classified information, would James have been right to demand that information else he would break up with her? Poorly done.
The Max and civilian life stuff brings it up, but all the missed opportunities and missed plot threads dragged the episode down to a final grade of C.
The Flash 2.15 – King Shark
Meh, fun little episode. I like Diggle from Arrow so it’s hard to hate this episode too much. But otherwise it was just more, “quality flash time” with nothing really propelling this episode to greatness. This was instead an episode for the characters and viewers to deal with everything that had happened on Earth 2 and I thought they did a good job.
I do hope maybe Cisco will finally get a steady girl with E2 Jesse. Caitlyn trolling him though, that was the highlight of the episode.
Let’s grade this one a… C+ though if you are an avid Arrow watcher and obsessed with whatever storylines are going on over there, the episode might bump up in your estimation.
iZombie 2.14 – Eternal Sunshine of the Caffeinated Mind
Man, after the sheer craziness of the previous episodes, this one felt more like the crash after a caffeine high (nice title btw). Most of the excitement was at the end where we confirm that Blaine is back to zombie (and infecting someone new by sex… so Peyton needs to look out, think we’ll see her undead before the season’s out?) and Major ruins things between Liv and hot redhead. Whether that’s deliberate or not is… left up to us for now and I don’t mind.
The moment with the girl scouts? Hilarious.
Even when this show swings a C+ grade, it’s superior to many shows’ B or A material. Seems like the weeks grow longer…
Legends of Tomorrow 1.06 – Star City 2046
Along with Flash, Legends of Tomorrow ALSO has a tiny crossover with Arrow this week. Like above, mostly “meh” that was entertaining enough I don’t regret watching it, but hard to remember much. The argument between Capt Cold & Heatwave was of some interest – I half expected that maybe they would leave HW there and continue on, maybe pick up another crew. I do think this show would work best if it rotated the cast with some frequency – but they can leave things open so old cast members could return, etc. Maybe they’ll just take HW to the end of time so he can watch the world burn there.
Again, a good episode, just not GREAT. A well earned C grade.
Trivia note: The members of Firestorm sharing things even after being separated has been explored to various extents in the comic, most often it’s usually a bit of ‘echo’ of knowledge. One wonders if Jax is doing so well as the ship’s mechanic because he’s got bits of Stein’s brilliance bleeding over into his skull. Could be interesting to see how this develops.
