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jedi_of_urthAnother week, another round of superhero shows.
Supergirl 2x20
I wish I could say I liked that one. It wasn’t bad by any means, it was in most ways perfectly fine, I just didn’t like it that much. I even sometimes liked it scene to scene, but overall I was left mostly hollow over it. I wonder if James’ story this season will hold together better for me on my inevitable eventual rewatch because it’s been really hit and miss on first go-round. And the main plot felt so functional and now the end seems so predictable (Mon-el having to give up his life on Earth to lead the Daxomites) that I just didn’t have anything to latch onto. Maybe one day I’ll find out why I feel that way about so much of this show, but I haven’t yet.
The Flash 3z21
I...liked that episode. I didn’t love it, but I liked it. It did a lot of things right and at least for this episode I think I ship Barry/Iris more than I ever have before. The characters mostly work well for me, even if the story is not so great, and for this show lately I want to call that a win.
I think part of the problem is it started off badly, with no one single fuck given to how this round of time travel shenanigans makes a lick of sense. I know I should be used to the fact by now that in this universe time travel is never going to make sense, and the more they do with it the less there seem to be rules to get in the way, but I am doomed to always try and impose some kind of sense on it that isn’t really ever there (seriously, they mention Mick in this episode and how he’s off the grid; we know he’s traveling in time, so where are the Legends and their broken time plot and the dinosaurs? Also, at some point when do they tell Cecile that they know all these other heroes, like the arrow-wielding nutjob in Star City and an arsonist turned time traveling semi-hero?). I could never quite make up my mind whether I liked the wacky amnesia plotline for so late in the season, but they do some good stuff with it in by making the wackiness a factor in the actual drama.
On the flip side of making me believe in Barry/Iris more than I usually do, I really don’t buy Caitlyn/Julian here, and I have been at least a little bit shipping them before now. They’re not in love yet, I’m not sure what I would say they are, but they’re not in love. The show remembered Ronnie existed, and implies to me that that’s somehow part of why she’s working with Savatar so we’ll see where that goes.
Agents of SHIELD 4x21
I’m not sure if I liked that episode or not. It was fine I guess, but it’s not even close to a complete story so I don’t know how to judge it yet. While I am glad I’ve been watching this show week-to-week this season, it will clearly be easier to judge it as a story when taken as a whole run rather than individual episodes. I don’t even really have anything I’m all that interested in talking about in this one, so we’ll leave it at, bring on the finale.
Except that I kind of feel about Robbie showing up again the way I felt with the Ghost Rider element was originally announced: don’t we have more interesting things going on? Hopefully I’ll end up being as okay with it as I ended up being about the initial arc, but so help me gods if I don’t get Coulson and May talking about what happened with May-lon (kind of didn’t think I’d get to pull that one back out) but I have to sit through Ghost Rider stuff instead.
Actually now I’m thinking of one issue I kind of have with how they’re treating their Framework lives. They didn’t choose their backstories, at least not as they lived them (and not as I understood how it worked); the simulation decided their choices would have been such, and plugged those into their brains as “experiences.” I’m not saying it wouldn’t feel real, that they aren’t going to struggle with playing real or not real for a while, but one set of things that happened was real and the other was based on probability algorithms and an AI’s assumption about human behavior.
Arrow 5x21
I’m not going to say that was a great episode, I’m not even certain how good it was, but it had a lot of good in it. Again, I feel like the show is wrapping things up and heading for an end; resolving Robert’s message to Thea and bringing back the inciting incident of Robert joining the Undertaking group (I just watched that episode for my big rewatch project a few days ago, so I quickly understood what they were getting at with this case; however I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be at the factory, even if not it was definitely supposed to be in the Glades since that’s how he got roped into Malcolm’s stated clean up the Glades project).
It was really good to have Thea back, though I wish we were getting more detail on what she’s been doing when goes away for episodes on end. The show did remember Roy exists and the idea that Thea might be going to see him, even though she’s not it’s good to reference it. Because if the show is in effective endgame (even though it will supposedly go on) that’s a factor that could well play into it. I personally have wondered why (in universe, obvious reasons on a meta level) Roy doesn’t get recruited by the Legends since he’d fit right in among the displaced heroes; and whether or not Thea should be out there too.
The calmness with which Oliver and Digg acted while being buried on concrete also speaks to a big change/effective endgame of the show; they trust the rest of the team to come for them, it’s not a lonely crusade with limited backup, it’s the Justice League. On the other hand, a whole lot of them use guns now and that feels weird.
I don’t agree with Rene’s choice here, but it’s clear he’s got a lot of guilt for what happened which he’s projecting on to Zoe and uses as a reason to keep his distance; though to fair I think there should be an option on not having her in the room for all that for the reasons he brings up. I’m not sure how this ends, but I think we haven’t seen the last of it.
It may well be too early to say, but at least for this episode they seem to have Oliver/Felicity back in a vibe. The casual (or not so casual) shoulder touching is back and they are connecting better. It’s been in and out all season (when I eventually fully review this I’ll probably try and figure out if there’s a writer pattern) so I don’t want to say where they’ll be at the end of things, but hope ships eternal.
As for the island, I’ve wondered for a while why Oliver didn’t make Sara a grave. Granted I guess he was just marking the dead he actually buried there, but that’s also not where he originally buried Robert, that was down by the beach where he washed up.
Supergirl 2x20
I wish I could say I liked that one. It wasn’t bad by any means, it was in most ways perfectly fine, I just didn’t like it that much. I even sometimes liked it scene to scene, but overall I was left mostly hollow over it. I wonder if James’ story this season will hold together better for me on my inevitable eventual rewatch because it’s been really hit and miss on first go-round. And the main plot felt so functional and now the end seems so predictable (Mon-el having to give up his life on Earth to lead the Daxomites) that I just didn’t have anything to latch onto. Maybe one day I’ll find out why I feel that way about so much of this show, but I haven’t yet.
The Flash 3z21
I...liked that episode. I didn’t love it, but I liked it. It did a lot of things right and at least for this episode I think I ship Barry/Iris more than I ever have before. The characters mostly work well for me, even if the story is not so great, and for this show lately I want to call that a win.
I think part of the problem is it started off badly, with no one single fuck given to how this round of time travel shenanigans makes a lick of sense. I know I should be used to the fact by now that in this universe time travel is never going to make sense, and the more they do with it the less there seem to be rules to get in the way, but I am doomed to always try and impose some kind of sense on it that isn’t really ever there (seriously, they mention Mick in this episode and how he’s off the grid; we know he’s traveling in time, so where are the Legends and their broken time plot and the dinosaurs? Also, at some point when do they tell Cecile that they know all these other heroes, like the arrow-wielding nutjob in Star City and an arsonist turned time traveling semi-hero?). I could never quite make up my mind whether I liked the wacky amnesia plotline for so late in the season, but they do some good stuff with it in by making the wackiness a factor in the actual drama.
On the flip side of making me believe in Barry/Iris more than I usually do, I really don’t buy Caitlyn/Julian here, and I have been at least a little bit shipping them before now. They’re not in love yet, I’m not sure what I would say they are, but they’re not in love. The show remembered Ronnie existed, and implies to me that that’s somehow part of why she’s working with Savatar so we’ll see where that goes.
Agents of SHIELD 4x21
I’m not sure if I liked that episode or not. It was fine I guess, but it’s not even close to a complete story so I don’t know how to judge it yet. While I am glad I’ve been watching this show week-to-week this season, it will clearly be easier to judge it as a story when taken as a whole run rather than individual episodes. I don’t even really have anything I’m all that interested in talking about in this one, so we’ll leave it at, bring on the finale.
Except that I kind of feel about Robbie showing up again the way I felt with the Ghost Rider element was originally announced: don’t we have more interesting things going on? Hopefully I’ll end up being as okay with it as I ended up being about the initial arc, but so help me gods if I don’t get Coulson and May talking about what happened with May-lon (kind of didn’t think I’d get to pull that one back out) but I have to sit through Ghost Rider stuff instead.
Actually now I’m thinking of one issue I kind of have with how they’re treating their Framework lives. They didn’t choose their backstories, at least not as they lived them (and not as I understood how it worked); the simulation decided their choices would have been such, and plugged those into their brains as “experiences.” I’m not saying it wouldn’t feel real, that they aren’t going to struggle with playing real or not real for a while, but one set of things that happened was real and the other was based on probability algorithms and an AI’s assumption about human behavior.
Arrow 5x21
I’m not going to say that was a great episode, I’m not even certain how good it was, but it had a lot of good in it. Again, I feel like the show is wrapping things up and heading for an end; resolving Robert’s message to Thea and bringing back the inciting incident of Robert joining the Undertaking group (I just watched that episode for my big rewatch project a few days ago, so I quickly understood what they were getting at with this case; however I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be at the factory, even if not it was definitely supposed to be in the Glades since that’s how he got roped into Malcolm’s stated clean up the Glades project).
It was really good to have Thea back, though I wish we were getting more detail on what she’s been doing when goes away for episodes on end. The show did remember Roy exists and the idea that Thea might be going to see him, even though she’s not it’s good to reference it. Because if the show is in effective endgame (even though it will supposedly go on) that’s a factor that could well play into it. I personally have wondered why (in universe, obvious reasons on a meta level) Roy doesn’t get recruited by the Legends since he’d fit right in among the displaced heroes; and whether or not Thea should be out there too.
The calmness with which Oliver and Digg acted while being buried on concrete also speaks to a big change/effective endgame of the show; they trust the rest of the team to come for them, it’s not a lonely crusade with limited backup, it’s the Justice League. On the other hand, a whole lot of them use guns now and that feels weird.
I don’t agree with Rene’s choice here, but it’s clear he’s got a lot of guilt for what happened which he’s projecting on to Zoe and uses as a reason to keep his distance; though to fair I think there should be an option on not having her in the room for all that for the reasons he brings up. I’m not sure how this ends, but I think we haven’t seen the last of it.
It may well be too early to say, but at least for this episode they seem to have Oliver/Felicity back in a vibe. The casual (or not so casual) shoulder touching is back and they are connecting better. It’s been in and out all season (when I eventually fully review this I’ll probably try and figure out if there’s a writer pattern) so I don’t want to say where they’ll be at the end of things, but hope ships eternal.
As for the island, I’ve wondered for a while why Oliver didn’t make Sara a grave. Granted I guess he was just marking the dead he actually buried there, but that’s also not where he originally buried Robert, that was down by the beach where he washed up.
