jedi_of_urth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jedi_of_urth) wrote2017-05-08 12:10 pm
jedi_of_urth) wrote2017-05-08 12:10 pm
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A rather please TV rundown
Oops, forgot to get this up over the weekend, but here it is now.
Also, I had quite god intentions of doing my LoT s2 wrap-up thoughts, but between baseball and my review the Arrow-verse project I haven’t gotten to it, so we’ll see what happens when this season in general ends.
Supergirl 2x19
I think that was a good episode, I just wasn’t really feeling it as much as I would have needed to to love it. That’s often my problem with this show, it’s perfectly fine but it hasn’t found a way to get its claws in me the way the other shows have (again, it’s better and less angering than Flash, but somehow I care deeply about how much I have problems with Flash). So understand that I liked the main story just fine, and I did realize this time around that Raina was Teri Hatcher which is cute I guess.
But I need to talk about the fact that this world has had a high powered superhero for years now, the legality of how things work in this world should have been well established long before Kara put on the cape. And it’s not like she’s figuring out her own system on her own, she has plenty of people who can tell her what the standing rules are, whether she’s fighting large scale threats or stopping relatively minor ones. On the other hand, this something Earth 1 needs to start to deal with since so many vigilantes (some powered and some not) are running around, but this Earth should be on top of that.
The Flash 3x20
I actually liked that episode (I think maybe at the end of the season I’ll review these reactions and see how often mine were a surprised ‘that wasn’t so bad’). I even liked characters I often don’t like Barry and HR (there wasn’t much Wally to judge if I thought he was okay here). The Joe/Cecile relationship hasn’t really featured enough for me to feel what happens here, but there was nothing wrong with it, just doesn’t have an emotional tie in me.
I’ve kind of suspected for a few episodes that Savatar was going to be future Barry, it was the only justification for dragging out the reveal like this (especially since it couldn’t be Thawne or ThWells). I was going to wonder if this doesn’t this fly in the face of just last episode where future Barry said he didn’t know who Savatar was, but then I consider that maybe he did know and was lying because he was already half Savatar. I’m not sure it explains why he would opt to kill Iris at any point, but there might be some explanation offered.
If they can keep this quality for the final run of episodes this season might at least leave a decent taste in my mouth once it’s done, but considering their track record this season has currently left such a bad taste I’m not actually expecting it to hold. But hope springs eternal I guess.
Agents of SHIELD 4x20
I liked that episode, it felt a bit functional getting them out of the Framework but it was well done. I almost want to take a page out of how I’ve been doing my big review project and break this down by character, so I guess I will.
I’ve wondered on and off how they were going to get Mack to leave this world, and then they didn’t. I don’t know if this sticks, or the Framework gets dismantled so it becomes a terrible choice, but it feels earned. I don’t want to lose Mack, but I don’t know that Mack with his memories would have made any other choice, except to send better goodbyes. So now Mack and Trip are left to lead the resistance and possibly Hope ends up with two super great dads. Though I do question how Mack got back to the base since there was no airlift obviously.
I also question what happened to Radcliff in the end, did he not go back with Mack? I was never sure through this is he would betray them or not, and I like that he saved them in the end. It’s not redemption exactly but it works and it was done in a very Radcliff way to bring it about. All the dads are better that Fitz’s real dad.
My occasional Skye/Trip shipper heart is taking this as further evidence that she did love his or at least was pretty close to it. Because I feel like he’s the one she would bring if she could and their scenes have such a feeling of loss in them.
Jemma is amazing and I love her. Her big scenes with both Fitz and papa-Fitz were amazing, in a sense where I realize I almost don’t need to talk about them because they speak for themselves so well.
Oh Fitz, poor Fitz. He doesn’t seem to be reacting so well to being back in the real world, his thoughts and feelings all screwed up. May and Coulson seem to be doing a lot better and I’m not sure if that’s because they chose to take the leap or because they have each other, while Fitz was forced into it and Jemma isn’t anywhere around. Should be interesting to see how FitzSimmons deal with everything that happened, and just Fitz dealing with this in general; I’m not sure how I feel about him sorting it out with Aida (who apparently can teleport now).
I think I need to talk about May and Coulson as a pair; which to be fair, I usually prefer to do. Also I’m really only meaning the last couple scenes, their earlier parts where cute but I don’t think they say a lot about the actual characters. Towards the end though, when in any version of the world Coulson is not dying on May’s watch; reminding us that the first time he didn’t die in her arms (I’ve always suspected she carries some undeserved guilt for not having his back that day). The barely metaphorical leap of faith was never easy for either of them, but she decided to take it and trust that he would catch her on the other side, and he quite literally did. I also kind of love the fact that when Aida comes in at the end May just decides to see if there’s a gun in that box she’s leaning on, and conveniently there is.
Also it was good to see some of what was going on on the plane during all this, even though we didn’t get much. I kind of want to point out that the Zephyr was said at the start of the season to be able to stay in the air for about two months; but I’m not quite calling it a plothole; they probably weren’t constantly cloaked and definitely weren’t plugged into some extradimensional computer program. I kind of don’t remember why they have to hide from the world at large right now since we’ve gone so long without seeing anything about the real world but at least Talbot got namechecked.
Arrow 5x20
I quite liked that episode too, so it’s been a good week for the superhero shows. I’m not entirely sure how well the flashbacks work with where Oliver and Felicity were at the start of the season, but it is good to know they actually did talk about what happened at some point, and Felicity admitted that walking away maybe wasn’t the best way to handle things, something I’ve thought (can’t remember if I actually said) for a while. Maybe it’s because Amell has the most experience acting in flashbacks but he always the one who seems to know best how to pitch his performance at any point in the history of the character, Felicity seems a little too acted to be in contrast to her present day self, even though this is set less than a year ago.
I am really getting to the point where I will be shocked if the season doesn’t end with OTA taking a backseat going forward (be it focused on the New Team Arrow is s6 (my uncertainty about that being that none of the new team are archers and show is called Arrow, so unless Roy or Thea come back it doesn’t work) or the time skip I still kind of think could happen. Really, if we didn’t know there was going to be a s6 I’d speculate that the writers were wrapping it up in case they didn’t get one. This episode straight up calls out the fact that Oliver has been at this shit for 10 years, with his only break the six months he and Felicity ran away from Star/ling City; it sets up that he needs to figure out who he actually is, which I’d argue the closest he ever got to just being Oliver was in Ivy Town. I think these days Felicity would less difficulty taking a less active role than she did in their last break, there’s more of a team to trust and she’s looked into the darkness a fair bit of late. And Digg...I don’t think he needs it as much as he sometimes has, and he’s always been kind of comfortable in a supporting role on the team. It’s also just in the way they get out of the bunker, OTA together forever, broken and battered and half dead and barely hanging on.
I also like the Diggle and Lyla drama this week. Though ya’ll know how much I like Lyla and her actually being part of the team. I love that she calls him out of standing beside Oliver’s very grey and often debatable choices but balking at hers. Although I think there are some reasons for that, stemming from them knowing each other longer, knowing her when she wasn’t that person, and having to literally live with the person who makes those choices. I’ve always kind of loved how Lyla and Oliver as creatures of a kind, and two of the people that Digg loves most in the world, and he should probably get okay with that; and I’m glad that he does.
But the main event is the Oliver/Felicity show, which all kind of speaks for itself. It does continue sort of the OTA dynamic from early on; that Diggle can get Oliver back from the edge but it takes Felicity to actually heal any of the crap in his head. I also kind of forgot she didn’t already know where his head’s been since Chase, that Diggle knows just how much Chase got under his skin, but I’m glad people continue to point out the Oliver that this whole idea that he likes killing really doesn’t work. Chase got in his head and made something that’s yeah a little true from a certain point of view into a crippling defect. I do still call some foul on Felicity’s choice of her defense since yes Oliver called the Bratva but then backed out of it because he couldn’t trust them which he was trying to prevent her from getting to that point with Helix.
One issue I have with it is the same thing I’ve had issue with the “revelation” from Chase...don’t we already know the stuff that’s being treated as reveals here? Doesn’t Felicity already know the many reasons why Oliver has difficulty truly letting people in (you’ll always revert back to the man you were on the island)? Isn’t it obvious that the reason he doesn’t want her (or any of them) to be like him is because he doesn’t like the person that he is?
And also, why is the thing that sent her on this path supposed to be Billy and not Havenrock? You want to acknowledge that the last couple years have not been a great time for Felicity (the paralysis, having to end things with Oliver, losing Palmer Tech, Havenrock, Laurel, alien attacks, Billy; and she’s tried to be the strong one through it all) and she’s trying to take back control in kind of iffy ways, there’s a story in that but it’s not the one they’ve been telling most of the season.
Also, I had quite god intentions of doing my LoT s2 wrap-up thoughts, but between baseball and my review the Arrow-verse project I haven’t gotten to it, so we’ll see what happens when this season in general ends.
Supergirl 2x19
I think that was a good episode, I just wasn’t really feeling it as much as I would have needed to to love it. That’s often my problem with this show, it’s perfectly fine but it hasn’t found a way to get its claws in me the way the other shows have (again, it’s better and less angering than Flash, but somehow I care deeply about how much I have problems with Flash). So understand that I liked the main story just fine, and I did realize this time around that Raina was Teri Hatcher which is cute I guess.
But I need to talk about the fact that this world has had a high powered superhero for years now, the legality of how things work in this world should have been well established long before Kara put on the cape. And it’s not like she’s figuring out her own system on her own, she has plenty of people who can tell her what the standing rules are, whether she’s fighting large scale threats or stopping relatively minor ones. On the other hand, this something Earth 1 needs to start to deal with since so many vigilantes (some powered and some not) are running around, but this Earth should be on top of that.
The Flash 3x20
I actually liked that episode (I think maybe at the end of the season I’ll review these reactions and see how often mine were a surprised ‘that wasn’t so bad’). I even liked characters I often don’t like Barry and HR (there wasn’t much Wally to judge if I thought he was okay here). The Joe/Cecile relationship hasn’t really featured enough for me to feel what happens here, but there was nothing wrong with it, just doesn’t have an emotional tie in me.
I’ve kind of suspected for a few episodes that Savatar was going to be future Barry, it was the only justification for dragging out the reveal like this (especially since it couldn’t be Thawne or ThWells). I was going to wonder if this doesn’t this fly in the face of just last episode where future Barry said he didn’t know who Savatar was, but then I consider that maybe he did know and was lying because he was already half Savatar. I’m not sure it explains why he would opt to kill Iris at any point, but there might be some explanation offered.
If they can keep this quality for the final run of episodes this season might at least leave a decent taste in my mouth once it’s done, but considering their track record this season has currently left such a bad taste I’m not actually expecting it to hold. But hope springs eternal I guess.
Agents of SHIELD 4x20
I liked that episode, it felt a bit functional getting them out of the Framework but it was well done. I almost want to take a page out of how I’ve been doing my big review project and break this down by character, so I guess I will.
I’ve wondered on and off how they were going to get Mack to leave this world, and then they didn’t. I don’t know if this sticks, or the Framework gets dismantled so it becomes a terrible choice, but it feels earned. I don’t want to lose Mack, but I don’t know that Mack with his memories would have made any other choice, except to send better goodbyes. So now Mack and Trip are left to lead the resistance and possibly Hope ends up with two super great dads. Though I do question how Mack got back to the base since there was no airlift obviously.
I also question what happened to Radcliff in the end, did he not go back with Mack? I was never sure through this is he would betray them or not, and I like that he saved them in the end. It’s not redemption exactly but it works and it was done in a very Radcliff way to bring it about. All the dads are better that Fitz’s real dad.
My occasional Skye/Trip shipper heart is taking this as further evidence that she did love his or at least was pretty close to it. Because I feel like he’s the one she would bring if she could and their scenes have such a feeling of loss in them.
Jemma is amazing and I love her. Her big scenes with both Fitz and papa-Fitz were amazing, in a sense where I realize I almost don’t need to talk about them because they speak for themselves so well.
Oh Fitz, poor Fitz. He doesn’t seem to be reacting so well to being back in the real world, his thoughts and feelings all screwed up. May and Coulson seem to be doing a lot better and I’m not sure if that’s because they chose to take the leap or because they have each other, while Fitz was forced into it and Jemma isn’t anywhere around. Should be interesting to see how FitzSimmons deal with everything that happened, and just Fitz dealing with this in general; I’m not sure how I feel about him sorting it out with Aida (who apparently can teleport now).
I think I need to talk about May and Coulson as a pair; which to be fair, I usually prefer to do. Also I’m really only meaning the last couple scenes, their earlier parts where cute but I don’t think they say a lot about the actual characters. Towards the end though, when in any version of the world Coulson is not dying on May’s watch; reminding us that the first time he didn’t die in her arms (I’ve always suspected she carries some undeserved guilt for not having his back that day). The barely metaphorical leap of faith was never easy for either of them, but she decided to take it and trust that he would catch her on the other side, and he quite literally did. I also kind of love the fact that when Aida comes in at the end May just decides to see if there’s a gun in that box she’s leaning on, and conveniently there is.
Also it was good to see some of what was going on on the plane during all this, even though we didn’t get much. I kind of want to point out that the Zephyr was said at the start of the season to be able to stay in the air for about two months; but I’m not quite calling it a plothole; they probably weren’t constantly cloaked and definitely weren’t plugged into some extradimensional computer program. I kind of don’t remember why they have to hide from the world at large right now since we’ve gone so long without seeing anything about the real world but at least Talbot got namechecked.
Arrow 5x20
I quite liked that episode too, so it’s been a good week for the superhero shows. I’m not entirely sure how well the flashbacks work with where Oliver and Felicity were at the start of the season, but it is good to know they actually did talk about what happened at some point, and Felicity admitted that walking away maybe wasn’t the best way to handle things, something I’ve thought (can’t remember if I actually said) for a while. Maybe it’s because Amell has the most experience acting in flashbacks but he always the one who seems to know best how to pitch his performance at any point in the history of the character, Felicity seems a little too acted to be in contrast to her present day self, even though this is set less than a year ago.
I am really getting to the point where I will be shocked if the season doesn’t end with OTA taking a backseat going forward (be it focused on the New Team Arrow is s6 (my uncertainty about that being that none of the new team are archers and show is called Arrow, so unless Roy or Thea come back it doesn’t work) or the time skip I still kind of think could happen. Really, if we didn’t know there was going to be a s6 I’d speculate that the writers were wrapping it up in case they didn’t get one. This episode straight up calls out the fact that Oliver has been at this shit for 10 years, with his only break the six months he and Felicity ran away from Star/ling City; it sets up that he needs to figure out who he actually is, which I’d argue the closest he ever got to just being Oliver was in Ivy Town. I think these days Felicity would less difficulty taking a less active role than she did in their last break, there’s more of a team to trust and she’s looked into the darkness a fair bit of late. And Digg...I don’t think he needs it as much as he sometimes has, and he’s always been kind of comfortable in a supporting role on the team. It’s also just in the way they get out of the bunker, OTA together forever, broken and battered and half dead and barely hanging on.
I also like the Diggle and Lyla drama this week. Though ya’ll know how much I like Lyla and her actually being part of the team. I love that she calls him out of standing beside Oliver’s very grey and often debatable choices but balking at hers. Although I think there are some reasons for that, stemming from them knowing each other longer, knowing her when she wasn’t that person, and having to literally live with the person who makes those choices. I’ve always kind of loved how Lyla and Oliver as creatures of a kind, and two of the people that Digg loves most in the world, and he should probably get okay with that; and I’m glad that he does.
But the main event is the Oliver/Felicity show, which all kind of speaks for itself. It does continue sort of the OTA dynamic from early on; that Diggle can get Oliver back from the edge but it takes Felicity to actually heal any of the crap in his head. I also kind of forgot she didn’t already know where his head’s been since Chase, that Diggle knows just how much Chase got under his skin, but I’m glad people continue to point out the Oliver that this whole idea that he likes killing really doesn’t work. Chase got in his head and made something that’s yeah a little true from a certain point of view into a crippling defect. I do still call some foul on Felicity’s choice of her defense since yes Oliver called the Bratva but then backed out of it because he couldn’t trust them which he was trying to prevent her from getting to that point with Helix.
One issue I have with it is the same thing I’ve had issue with the “revelation” from Chase...don’t we already know the stuff that’s being treated as reveals here? Doesn’t Felicity already know the many reasons why Oliver has difficulty truly letting people in (you’ll always revert back to the man you were on the island)? Isn’t it obvious that the reason he doesn’t want her (or any of them) to be like him is because he doesn’t like the person that he is?
And also, why is the thing that sent her on this path supposed to be Billy and not Havenrock? You want to acknowledge that the last couple years have not been a great time for Felicity (the paralysis, having to end things with Oliver, losing Palmer Tech, Havenrock, Laurel, alien attacks, Billy; and she’s tried to be the strong one through it all) and she’s trying to take back control in kind of iffy ways, there’s a story in that but it’s not the one they’ve been telling most of the season.