Long TV rundown
Oct. 29th, 2017 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthI suspect I’ll start catching up on thigs more next week, but for now here’s a couple weeks’ worth of TV thoughts.
Supergirl 3x02
That episode was the more or less expected level of okay. I don’t have a ton of feelings about it one or any other, it was okay. Sam in an interesting character that I am now fully convinced Alex is going to end up in a love triangle with, and her daughter is very very stupid. I weirdly got less Kara/Lena vibes than usual even though they had more scenes. The fact that they keep teasing at Mon’el makes it pretty clear he’s going to show up in full at some point, and I still don’t care. I find the Kara/Mon’el ship even more frustrating now that he’s not there since we’re locked into a narrative that I don’t care about but can’t just be abandoned until something shakes it up.
I’m going to give some thought to tabling this show with Flash and catching up down the road; not for quite the same reason as with Flash since I just don’t like Flash that much, I’m just indifferent to so much on Supergirl that maybe I can scrape up some caring if I’m not waiting a week between episodes.
Legends of Tomorrow 3x02
I don’t know that I liked that episode as much as the first one, but you know how I feel about episodes that don’t have Rip in them. As I guess I suspected this seems to be their way of keeping him on the sidelines for half the season again, leading me to conclude that the mid-season break will see the fall of the Time Bureau and Rip and probably Sharpe rejoining the team to deal with the big threat. Or maybe not Sharpe, she does sort of seem to be Rip’s stand-in for now while I’m guessing Darville is off...somewhere (I can’t blame Broadchurch this time out), probably why even Gideon is so...sharp with Sharpe because Rip isn’t around to be mad at (Sharpe is Sara and Gideon’s, and probably some of the rest of the team’s, Rip-stand-in; and she’s Rip’s Sara-stand-in).
Sharpe seems super jealous of how much Rip loves the Legends especially Sara, I don’t even mean in a romantic sense so much, just that Rip loves the screw-ups in a way he doesn’t love the professional organization he created and it aggravates his professional sidekick. I am however adding to my headcanon that Rip and Sara have been hooking up on the side and he’s been trying to convince her to join the Bureau and she keeps telling him no, she’d come back for the Legends, their family, but not for the job. There’s a line Sara had in the season trailer about how the Legends are a group of screw-ups and outcasts and whoever she’s talking to is one of them, and the way the line sounded I always thought she was talking to Rip; I thought briefly here than it might turn out to be Amaya, it would have fit in that last scene, but it didn’t happen so I’m back to thinking it’ll be her and Rip.
This episode was alright even without Rip. I like that Amaya seems to be getting an actual plotline this season, that was missing for most of last season. Pretty much all the character interactions were engaging and charming this time out, maybe even more so than usual in places. Although, the Titanic joke felt a little flat in context after I loved it so much in the trailer, but it was still okay. I’m not quite sure I like them laughing off a threat the Time Bureau is terrified of, and I thought the mood changed a little too abruptly but it’s kind of cute that that’s their reaction.
Hmm, so the character I still have the most to say about isn’t even in the episode, that’s...telling I suppose. I like the rest of them, I thought the episode was perfectly fine as it is including a cute shrunken sabretooth tiger, but it’s always been Rip that inspired me to have actual big thoughts for this show.
Inhumans 1x03
At this point I feel like I may keep watching this show, but only because it will be short; if this were a full length show I’d be really tempted to walk away from it entirely, but with only a few episodes left I might as well see where it goes. But I don’t like any of the characters, in fact I deeply dislike most of them and I find the show’s morality and social commentary very unfortunate.
The closest I come to liking anyone is probably Maximus, he seems like a tragic misguided hero while the rest of them are basically assholes. At this point if Atalan still exists at the end of this series I’m going to be kind of annoyed, but nothing yet has been set up to teach the rulers how bad their system is, they might be humbled by their experiences on Earth but they’re not seeing the problems in Atalan itself.
I also continue to be bothered by the show’s attitude towards police officers. They’re all apparently cruel and abusive, not to mention dumb because apparently none of them have ever heard of someone being mute and asking if Black Bolt needs an interpreter. I’m not saying police should always or even here be portrayed as your friendly neighborhood cops, or the always righteous versions we get in most cops shows (though I maintain not having that would still be awkward in a world where we have to just accept that black ops government agencies are always well intentioned and mega corporations are at worst a bad egg taking control from a more virtuous leader), but having the cops universally be dicks and apparently all prisoners are just stand up folk I can’t get behind either.
And the more I think about it the more those problems for me may be connected; monarchy is cool and our civil institutions are terrible. If might be better if the show took the stance that Maximus is right to want to demolish the caste system in Atalan, but he also needs to realize that going to Earth has to be done carefully if at all, because Earth is going to be a scary place. Or if we barely followed what happened back on Atalan at all and it was just the outcasts’ story of trying to survive on Earth and we were seeing Earth and humanity from outsiders’ perspectives and them learning that humanity is both better and worse than their ancestors’ stories said. But so far humanity is mostly okay with a few bad eggs; except for the police, who are just bad. And it feels like it’s that way because presently it’s the thing to do right now to show cops in a negative light; though that doesn’t account for the show’s pro-monarchy and castes slant, that’s just weird.
Arrow 6x02
I liked that episode a lot better than the premier, probably for a lot of reasons; it didn’t feel nearly as overcrowded, as much as it hurts my heart to see Anatoli as the villain I can’t deny this turn has been earned, there was more focus on the characters instead of the plot (though the plot was also better), there was no Back Siren, I continue to love the Digg and Dinah relationship, I even liked the development of Oliver and William’s relationship here and I’ve been skeptical I was going to enjoy this turn.
This episode also did something I was waiting on all of last season, and question what these people say they do. Sure late in the season they finally slipped in a reference to Felicity’s golden parachute from Palmer Tech, but that was too little too late for me, I’m more interested in them actually correcting that issue now. I can’t decide if it answers or enhances the question of why Sara was working retail but I guess these answers feel like they fit in the same world where Digg doesn’t have a cover life as Oliver’s bodyguard.
I actually have a lot of thoughts on Diggle, but I also kind of want to wait and see how things play out, probably in the next episode. With what’s going on he really can’t put on the hood for very long and no one else can presently shoot a bow (can Roy come back? of course he’d just end up going down as the vigilante again). I do kind of hope Sara swoops back in with some future med tech to help Digg and Thea (for that matter, what happened to Ray’s medical nanites?).
I’ll be a little curious what Oliver thinks he can do to set up for William being taken care of; literally everyone he knows well enough to trust them with that is tied up in the Arrow life, which puts them at the same kind of risks including the present investigation of Oliver. Last episode seemed to say Samantha’s parents were alive and William could be with them, but this episode didn’t bring them up.
Also, I usually just toon out the technobabble on this show, or any show really, and it’s been a few years since my last CS class, but Felicity saying she knows S.Q.L. stood out to me to ask if she means SQL which I always thought was said like sequel; also that’s a database language and very different from Java. So for once I was really taken out of things by the technobabble and that’s not good.
But, I still feel bad about Anatoli, I don’t see how they can hug and make up but I wish they could.
The Good Place 2x05
I like that episode...more or less. I thought the ethics torture stuff went on a little long, but it wasn’t bad, and I did like the Jason-Tahani-Janet plot. While I’m probably wrong I wonder if Janet’s malfunctioning may have something to do with memory traces from however many times she and Jason were together and having no way to process that with being their couples councilor.
One bit of wild speculation is about as much as I can probably do for any episode.
Crazy Ex-girlfriend 3x02
That managed to cover a lot of ground and managed to fit in a plot of the week with what’s-his-face (I’ll say Tim, that sounds right), and have more songs than usual which I appreciate. There were quite few characters not involved, instead the B-plot allowing room for the C-cast as opposed to Daryl and Heather, etc.
I’m not real sure what I want to say about this, I have a lot of half formed thoughts but not a lot of settled ones. Including a very ill-formed thought about how many of these shows I’ve liked the second episodes of the season more than the first and maybe I have a problem with the way modern series are constructed season to season, since there’s rarely any actual resolution what happens is the season plot concludes and then we hit an end, so any resolution (which plots need to have) gets shoved to the next season but they also think they need to start the new plots at that time so it just ends up being too much.
It’s kind of making me think I might give Flash a second episode to see how much of my problems with the premier were just that it was a premier.
Before that though I have to ask, why would Rebecca put her return address on the poop package? Wasn’t she trying to trick Josh into thinking it was cupcakes from Jesus?
Inhumans 1x04
This episode further makes clear something I think I always kind of knew; that this series should probably be watched in marathon form instead of days or weeks between episodes. It would still not be very good, but very little happens in the individual episodes which a problem somewhat helped when marathoned rather than spaced out.
Lacking social commentary to discuss this time, I would like to point out that this is the first time I really felt like this show was ignoring that the Inhumans have been a thing in AoS for a couple years now. Which is weird since they repeatedly reference the spread of Inhumans in this episode. Also it makes the same bizarre statement that AoS made in s3 about not being able to use DNA from dead beings (although in this case it’s at least a little less bizarre because they don’t turn around and get the needed DNA that had been taken from a dead being years ago and inserted into a person of a different species). My point is that how has this guy not gotten to look at Inhuman DNA before? Inhumans are covered in the Sokovia Accords, there are watchdog groups protesting them, there’s Senate action regarding them, there’s one literally standing next to Black Bolt all through this episode. If there’s a difference between the sort of DNA you find in recent Inhumans and, what I’ll call for lack of a better word, pure-blood Inhumans there could be something to that. The Atalan Inhumans separated from Earth several generations ago (how long ago was it anyway?) and have only bred with other Inhumans in all that time; it makes sense that they have more than the genetic markers that you find in Inhumans or potential Inhumans on Earth, but I feel like I’m giving the show too much leeway to assume that’s what they’re talking about at this point.
Really the stuff on Atalan was pretty boring this time out. It’s interesting that Maximus is playing a few extra angles, and I do want to care about his relationship with his old friend, because that story sounds interesting, but it isn’t interesting here. I think it’s because old friend guy isn’t a very good actor, or at least not given very good direction, but I could be wrong about that.
Supergirl 3x03
I actually waited a little bit to write my thoughts on this one, because I couldn’t really settle on what I thought of it. I liked it, I’m more willing to say I straight up liked it than the first episodes of the season, but I’m not sure why, and I don’t really like the answer I came up with.
I liked it partly because Kara is a supporting character.
I like Kara, I do, but I was far more invested in both plotlines this week than I have been in anything regarding Kara in a long time. We aren’t dealing with any of Kara’s subplots, we don’t see Lena, we only see James and Winn at the party, we don’t go to CatCo or even have it mentioned. She was used well in her part on J’onn’s plot but it was very much J’onn and his father’s plot (even if I never seem to have caught his name), with a background in the Martian population story, and Kara just...tagging along. It would have hurt the story a lot to make Kara much more important in it, but it still says something about the show that I like her better in the background.
And for Maggie’s plot, I realize that if Kara had been there the writers probably would have made her somehow important and that would have taken everything away from Maggie’s story. Even Alex is really just a supporting player in Maggie’s development here, an important support but it needed to be focused on Maggie as herself instead of making one of the more prominent characters take the plot reins.
This is probably the most I’ve ever shipped Alex/Maggie, because we see them just being regular people and that they do work. I still think the relationship is rushed, and that the story even kind of knows that since whether or not their future involved kids, if not being discussed before getting engaged maybe should have come up in the last six months since they started planning their lives together.
While not the focus I think this episode did something to justify to me why Alex would see the future as having kids in it, and it’s just in the subtext or her interactions with her mom. I’m sure Alex doesn’t want lots of kids but she sees family as including kids, not just a couple together. Maggie’s lack of desire to have kids may or may not have to do with the way she was treated by her family, but both are part of her and therefore at least a little connected (she could just as easily have taken that treatment and decided she definitely wanted to do better by her kids, but she doesn’t want kids so it’s not an issue). I don’t know how this ends, because I’m still calling Alex falling into a love triangle with Sam, and do I really think the Arrow-verse introduces a conflict like this to have it worked out reasonably without a lot of drama first?
A part of me wants to say the whole Maggie plot is kind of preachy, but I don’t actually feel like it was. If someone else felt like it was I wouldn’t tell them they’re completely wrong, because I see places where it comes pretty close to crossing that line, but I felt it was well enough constructed to stay just outside of preachiness.
Legends of Tomorrow 3x03
I’m not really sure how I felt about that one. It had moments that I liked, but I never really found myself fully invested. Well...there is one thing I care about; I like Gary. I also like how much the Legends hate Gary, and the fact that I’m pretty sure they really don’t care about Gary at all, they just hate Rip and his No Legends Club (it’s ‘No Legends,’ they’re allowed one, but it’s just Rip).
I actually had an early thought about how the rest of them dismiss any Bureau calls for help, but Sara isn’t willing to, I think because she view them as working with Rip where the rest of them see the Legends as completely separate from the No Legends Club. Now, Sara will fight against any Time Agents who get in their way (and think that Gary’s a wuss), but I’m not sure she’s angry in the same way the others are. It may partly be that she’s been in a big shadowy group where none of the others have, and therefore a little more able to separate her dislike of the agents from her anger at yet love of Rip (not that some of her anger at Rip for making a new club doesn’t spill over to the members of said club, just more separated than the others). Mostly I’m having a hard time putting the vibe I get into words, especially without it just going into shippy rambling and I only partially intend my point to be about my shipping them.
I also have some thoughts that Gideon takes on traits of her captain, so where early on she was very much an extension of Rip, she’s taking on more of Sara’s traits as time goes on. That interpretation works pretty well retroactively with her using the idea of sex to motivate frat boys in the first episode, and her calling Ava a bitch here. Some of it is probably also anger at Rip, and she clearly has no loyalty to the Time Bureau (for the record I have gotten infinitely better at spelling Bureau in the two seeks since this season started) even as an extension of Rip.
...So this is just the way it’s going to be I guess, we’ll talk about Rip and the Time Bureau and how those factors are involved, then if I think of it I’ll actually discuss the plot of the episode.
Thing is, Zari seems really boring here. She seems really overpowered and yet super bland. I want to know more about the world she’s from, but it just seems like a generic dystopian future in a superhero world. Apparently the anti-meta edict was done in 2021, that’s not that far off and yet we never get anything that hints at the world going that way. Hell that would be before the Flash is supposed to disappear in a Crisis. I’ve been waiting for The Flash to deal with the social and political realities that the emergence of metas would do to the world, but it steadfastly refuses to address those plots; and yet according to this in the pretty near future it’s going to become a big concern. Also, is this in the same future as Star City 2046, or has that been changed? What about Kaznia in the more distant future?
Also I don’t have a ton to say about the Amaya plot, but I have to say it leads to a bit that feels like men trying to show/explain mansplaining. Stein is not mansplaining (not that he never does, say last season when he thought he should be in charge), Stein is a scientist caught up in his own worldview; he’s not listening to her but it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s a woman and everything to do with what she’s trying to say (admittedly my view may be skewed by the fact that I prefer his worldview where magic is just another kind of science to straight up magic). And Nate’s just out of character in that scene, highlighted by the fact that he acts completely differently in his next scene on the subject. Even then it’s not mansplaining, it’s talking over and ignoring the woman in the room, which is a different issue; so I went and looked and yep this episode was written by men, so they were in fact mansplaining mansplaining.
All around I was just a little meh about this one
The Flash 4x02
I opted to give tis another chance and...I think it was a better episode than the premier, but I still hate Barry so much. I thought this episode was going to maybe call him on his shit but it just became about him leaving last season and as close as the show will ever come to having fallout for that I’m sure, and it really doesn’t count as much.
I don’t care about Cisco/Gypsy I wish I did, and I don’t know why I don’t. I don’t dislike the relationship it’s just there as big blob of meh. I will say I liked some Barry and Iris’ scenes but it’s hurt by the fact that I hate Barry so much and that on the other hand I don’t agree with Iris’ assertion that now they’re both the Flash, you can be a team and an us without trying to be the same person. We need some actual adults on this show besides Joe because he’s not quite enough of a respite from all this. I even want more Wally and certainly for him to get more respect, and I don’t even like Wally that much; I just hate Barry so much that I feel bad for Wally having to pay second banana to him.
As a side note, apparently the most expensive penthouse on Central City is just a redress of the loft on Arrow. Not even a very good redressing, it looks exactly the same except for a few attempts at not convincing distractions from the fact it was the same set.
I don’t know what this means for me continuing to watch this show. The show is too focused on Barry for the fact that I hate him not to be an issue, but we’ll see.
Arrow 6x03
I think I legitimately and uncomplicatedly liked that episode. It was super character driven, focused on a lot of the relationships I care about (it even remembered that Oliver’s got to be broken up about Thea), advanced those relationships with how the story has progressed, contributed to an ongoing story I care about concerning the place of vigilantes in this world, and didn’t immediately return things to status quo as I had expected last week.
I’m not even sure there’s that much to talk about here; it’s all pretty clear in the text so far so I don’t need to twist and turn to make sense of anything, and there’s not much obvious overarching plot to speculate about; it’s just good.
The ending isn’t exactly surprising either, degenerative nerve damage wasn’t just something that John was about to get past. I suspect this plot will morph into or merge with a bigger plot down the road, but for now it’s just...worrying. I do want to know if Lyla knows what’s going on. This episode at least remembered she exists (last week kind of did too I suppose) but as much as I like the role reversal with John and Oliver, and that if this team setup lasted Dinah would basically be his Diggle, I do at some point I want to see more of how Lyla fits in with what’s happening.
Also, I’d expect that William has googled some stuff and is aware the Oliver and Felicity were together at some point, and he has eyes to see that Oliver looks her like she hung the moon, so he’s probably aware that his present math tutor is his future stepmom. That said, as much as I expect Oliver to be back in the hood by the midseason break (possibly as soon as next episode depending on how long it takes to out Diggle with his miracle cure) I really like getting this glimpse into the dynamic where Felicity runs off to be a hero and Oliver takes care of the homefront.
The Good Place 2x06
So I was kind of right that Janet’s problems involved lingering feeling for Jason she wasn’t even aware of...go me I guess. Sometimes my ship oriented brain sees clearly. Of course it was more than that, as the base problem is Janet having to lie, which makes a lot of sense to a problem point (Bad Place Janets lying causes less problem than with Good Place Janets it seems). And I do think there was a legitimate concern with killing Janet off since they don’t know if they could get another Good Place Janet so easily, they probably don’t have one on hand right now.
The ease with which Michael originally stole Janet kind of feeds my vibe that this whole thing is more purgatory than Bad Place. That either Michael was somehow influenced to conduct an experiment to see if people could change after death and/or it’s a grand conspiracy by the Good Place that just sort of put the demons to work in the Bad Place, which has never been...as lasting as they thought. I just feel like this season will probably try and have its own big reveal later on, and there seems some evidence for that.
As an episode it was...pretty good. It was very focused and the plot was fine, I don’t think it was as funny as usual, but it was still plenty charming.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 3x03
Well that was a return to the usual number of musical numbers, and the not at all atypical fact that I only really liked one of them. I want to like Heather’s song, but I’m kind of okay with the fact that I don’t because I don’t think she’d want me to; it felt to me much like it seems to feel to her, an obligatory musical number with no real conviction in it. However, I really liked Nathanial’s song, it made me laugh; I also like that he pulled out ‘oh my god I think I like her’ even though I don’t think they can reprise that in song for a different ship.
This is probably the most I’ve shipped Rebecca/Nathanial to date, although given how uncomfortable the episode as a whole made me I’m not sure that’s a good thing. It’s not a terrible thing because it’s in keeping with the fact that I rarely ship things unless the parties involved reach a minimum level of liking each other (i.e. if it’s only one sided it needs to be more definite than if both parties are mutually a little bit into it). It’s not great because this can’t go anywhere healthy for Rebecca in this situation.
I wonder if when I rewatch this season down the road I’ll still feel as uncomfortable with it as I do now. There have been plenty of episodes in the past that made me uncomfortable to watch but a little less so when viewed with hindsight and with more of the story to judge; but this episode kind of make me more uncomfortable than I remember being in a while.
Supergirl 3x02
That episode was the more or less expected level of okay. I don’t have a ton of feelings about it one or any other, it was okay. Sam in an interesting character that I am now fully convinced Alex is going to end up in a love triangle with, and her daughter is very very stupid. I weirdly got less Kara/Lena vibes than usual even though they had more scenes. The fact that they keep teasing at Mon’el makes it pretty clear he’s going to show up in full at some point, and I still don’t care. I find the Kara/Mon’el ship even more frustrating now that he’s not there since we’re locked into a narrative that I don’t care about but can’t just be abandoned until something shakes it up.
I’m going to give some thought to tabling this show with Flash and catching up down the road; not for quite the same reason as with Flash since I just don’t like Flash that much, I’m just indifferent to so much on Supergirl that maybe I can scrape up some caring if I’m not waiting a week between episodes.
Legends of Tomorrow 3x02
I don’t know that I liked that episode as much as the first one, but you know how I feel about episodes that don’t have Rip in them. As I guess I suspected this seems to be their way of keeping him on the sidelines for half the season again, leading me to conclude that the mid-season break will see the fall of the Time Bureau and Rip and probably Sharpe rejoining the team to deal with the big threat. Or maybe not Sharpe, she does sort of seem to be Rip’s stand-in for now while I’m guessing Darville is off...somewhere (I can’t blame Broadchurch this time out), probably why even Gideon is so...sharp with Sharpe because Rip isn’t around to be mad at (Sharpe is Sara and Gideon’s, and probably some of the rest of the team’s, Rip-stand-in; and she’s Rip’s Sara-stand-in).
Sharpe seems super jealous of how much Rip loves the Legends especially Sara, I don’t even mean in a romantic sense so much, just that Rip loves the screw-ups in a way he doesn’t love the professional organization he created and it aggravates his professional sidekick. I am however adding to my headcanon that Rip and Sara have been hooking up on the side and he’s been trying to convince her to join the Bureau and she keeps telling him no, she’d come back for the Legends, their family, but not for the job. There’s a line Sara had in the season trailer about how the Legends are a group of screw-ups and outcasts and whoever she’s talking to is one of them, and the way the line sounded I always thought she was talking to Rip; I thought briefly here than it might turn out to be Amaya, it would have fit in that last scene, but it didn’t happen so I’m back to thinking it’ll be her and Rip.
This episode was alright even without Rip. I like that Amaya seems to be getting an actual plotline this season, that was missing for most of last season. Pretty much all the character interactions were engaging and charming this time out, maybe even more so than usual in places. Although, the Titanic joke felt a little flat in context after I loved it so much in the trailer, but it was still okay. I’m not quite sure I like them laughing off a threat the Time Bureau is terrified of, and I thought the mood changed a little too abruptly but it’s kind of cute that that’s their reaction.
Hmm, so the character I still have the most to say about isn’t even in the episode, that’s...telling I suppose. I like the rest of them, I thought the episode was perfectly fine as it is including a cute shrunken sabretooth tiger, but it’s always been Rip that inspired me to have actual big thoughts for this show.
Inhumans 1x03
At this point I feel like I may keep watching this show, but only because it will be short; if this were a full length show I’d be really tempted to walk away from it entirely, but with only a few episodes left I might as well see where it goes. But I don’t like any of the characters, in fact I deeply dislike most of them and I find the show’s morality and social commentary very unfortunate.
The closest I come to liking anyone is probably Maximus, he seems like a tragic misguided hero while the rest of them are basically assholes. At this point if Atalan still exists at the end of this series I’m going to be kind of annoyed, but nothing yet has been set up to teach the rulers how bad their system is, they might be humbled by their experiences on Earth but they’re not seeing the problems in Atalan itself.
I also continue to be bothered by the show’s attitude towards police officers. They’re all apparently cruel and abusive, not to mention dumb because apparently none of them have ever heard of someone being mute and asking if Black Bolt needs an interpreter. I’m not saying police should always or even here be portrayed as your friendly neighborhood cops, or the always righteous versions we get in most cops shows (though I maintain not having that would still be awkward in a world where we have to just accept that black ops government agencies are always well intentioned and mega corporations are at worst a bad egg taking control from a more virtuous leader), but having the cops universally be dicks and apparently all prisoners are just stand up folk I can’t get behind either.
And the more I think about it the more those problems for me may be connected; monarchy is cool and our civil institutions are terrible. If might be better if the show took the stance that Maximus is right to want to demolish the caste system in Atalan, but he also needs to realize that going to Earth has to be done carefully if at all, because Earth is going to be a scary place. Or if we barely followed what happened back on Atalan at all and it was just the outcasts’ story of trying to survive on Earth and we were seeing Earth and humanity from outsiders’ perspectives and them learning that humanity is both better and worse than their ancestors’ stories said. But so far humanity is mostly okay with a few bad eggs; except for the police, who are just bad. And it feels like it’s that way because presently it’s the thing to do right now to show cops in a negative light; though that doesn’t account for the show’s pro-monarchy and castes slant, that’s just weird.
Arrow 6x02
I liked that episode a lot better than the premier, probably for a lot of reasons; it didn’t feel nearly as overcrowded, as much as it hurts my heart to see Anatoli as the villain I can’t deny this turn has been earned, there was more focus on the characters instead of the plot (though the plot was also better), there was no Back Siren, I continue to love the Digg and Dinah relationship, I even liked the development of Oliver and William’s relationship here and I’ve been skeptical I was going to enjoy this turn.
This episode also did something I was waiting on all of last season, and question what these people say they do. Sure late in the season they finally slipped in a reference to Felicity’s golden parachute from Palmer Tech, but that was too little too late for me, I’m more interested in them actually correcting that issue now. I can’t decide if it answers or enhances the question of why Sara was working retail but I guess these answers feel like they fit in the same world where Digg doesn’t have a cover life as Oliver’s bodyguard.
I actually have a lot of thoughts on Diggle, but I also kind of want to wait and see how things play out, probably in the next episode. With what’s going on he really can’t put on the hood for very long and no one else can presently shoot a bow (can Roy come back? of course he’d just end up going down as the vigilante again). I do kind of hope Sara swoops back in with some future med tech to help Digg and Thea (for that matter, what happened to Ray’s medical nanites?).
I’ll be a little curious what Oliver thinks he can do to set up for William being taken care of; literally everyone he knows well enough to trust them with that is tied up in the Arrow life, which puts them at the same kind of risks including the present investigation of Oliver. Last episode seemed to say Samantha’s parents were alive and William could be with them, but this episode didn’t bring them up.
Also, I usually just toon out the technobabble on this show, or any show really, and it’s been a few years since my last CS class, but Felicity saying she knows S.Q.L. stood out to me to ask if she means SQL which I always thought was said like sequel; also that’s a database language and very different from Java. So for once I was really taken out of things by the technobabble and that’s not good.
But, I still feel bad about Anatoli, I don’t see how they can hug and make up but I wish they could.
The Good Place 2x05
I like that episode...more or less. I thought the ethics torture stuff went on a little long, but it wasn’t bad, and I did like the Jason-Tahani-Janet plot. While I’m probably wrong I wonder if Janet’s malfunctioning may have something to do with memory traces from however many times she and Jason were together and having no way to process that with being their couples councilor.
One bit of wild speculation is about as much as I can probably do for any episode.
Crazy Ex-girlfriend 3x02
That managed to cover a lot of ground and managed to fit in a plot of the week with what’s-his-face (I’ll say Tim, that sounds right), and have more songs than usual which I appreciate. There were quite few characters not involved, instead the B-plot allowing room for the C-cast as opposed to Daryl and Heather, etc.
I’m not real sure what I want to say about this, I have a lot of half formed thoughts but not a lot of settled ones. Including a very ill-formed thought about how many of these shows I’ve liked the second episodes of the season more than the first and maybe I have a problem with the way modern series are constructed season to season, since there’s rarely any actual resolution what happens is the season plot concludes and then we hit an end, so any resolution (which plots need to have) gets shoved to the next season but they also think they need to start the new plots at that time so it just ends up being too much.
It’s kind of making me think I might give Flash a second episode to see how much of my problems with the premier were just that it was a premier.
Before that though I have to ask, why would Rebecca put her return address on the poop package? Wasn’t she trying to trick Josh into thinking it was cupcakes from Jesus?
Inhumans 1x04
This episode further makes clear something I think I always kind of knew; that this series should probably be watched in marathon form instead of days or weeks between episodes. It would still not be very good, but very little happens in the individual episodes which a problem somewhat helped when marathoned rather than spaced out.
Lacking social commentary to discuss this time, I would like to point out that this is the first time I really felt like this show was ignoring that the Inhumans have been a thing in AoS for a couple years now. Which is weird since they repeatedly reference the spread of Inhumans in this episode. Also it makes the same bizarre statement that AoS made in s3 about not being able to use DNA from dead beings (although in this case it’s at least a little less bizarre because they don’t turn around and get the needed DNA that had been taken from a dead being years ago and inserted into a person of a different species). My point is that how has this guy not gotten to look at Inhuman DNA before? Inhumans are covered in the Sokovia Accords, there are watchdog groups protesting them, there’s Senate action regarding them, there’s one literally standing next to Black Bolt all through this episode. If there’s a difference between the sort of DNA you find in recent Inhumans and, what I’ll call for lack of a better word, pure-blood Inhumans there could be something to that. The Atalan Inhumans separated from Earth several generations ago (how long ago was it anyway?) and have only bred with other Inhumans in all that time; it makes sense that they have more than the genetic markers that you find in Inhumans or potential Inhumans on Earth, but I feel like I’m giving the show too much leeway to assume that’s what they’re talking about at this point.
Really the stuff on Atalan was pretty boring this time out. It’s interesting that Maximus is playing a few extra angles, and I do want to care about his relationship with his old friend, because that story sounds interesting, but it isn’t interesting here. I think it’s because old friend guy isn’t a very good actor, or at least not given very good direction, but I could be wrong about that.
Supergirl 3x03
I actually waited a little bit to write my thoughts on this one, because I couldn’t really settle on what I thought of it. I liked it, I’m more willing to say I straight up liked it than the first episodes of the season, but I’m not sure why, and I don’t really like the answer I came up with.
I liked it partly because Kara is a supporting character.
I like Kara, I do, but I was far more invested in both plotlines this week than I have been in anything regarding Kara in a long time. We aren’t dealing with any of Kara’s subplots, we don’t see Lena, we only see James and Winn at the party, we don’t go to CatCo or even have it mentioned. She was used well in her part on J’onn’s plot but it was very much J’onn and his father’s plot (even if I never seem to have caught his name), with a background in the Martian population story, and Kara just...tagging along. It would have hurt the story a lot to make Kara much more important in it, but it still says something about the show that I like her better in the background.
And for Maggie’s plot, I realize that if Kara had been there the writers probably would have made her somehow important and that would have taken everything away from Maggie’s story. Even Alex is really just a supporting player in Maggie’s development here, an important support but it needed to be focused on Maggie as herself instead of making one of the more prominent characters take the plot reins.
This is probably the most I’ve ever shipped Alex/Maggie, because we see them just being regular people and that they do work. I still think the relationship is rushed, and that the story even kind of knows that since whether or not their future involved kids, if not being discussed before getting engaged maybe should have come up in the last six months since they started planning their lives together.
While not the focus I think this episode did something to justify to me why Alex would see the future as having kids in it, and it’s just in the subtext or her interactions with her mom. I’m sure Alex doesn’t want lots of kids but she sees family as including kids, not just a couple together. Maggie’s lack of desire to have kids may or may not have to do with the way she was treated by her family, but both are part of her and therefore at least a little connected (she could just as easily have taken that treatment and decided she definitely wanted to do better by her kids, but she doesn’t want kids so it’s not an issue). I don’t know how this ends, because I’m still calling Alex falling into a love triangle with Sam, and do I really think the Arrow-verse introduces a conflict like this to have it worked out reasonably without a lot of drama first?
A part of me wants to say the whole Maggie plot is kind of preachy, but I don’t actually feel like it was. If someone else felt like it was I wouldn’t tell them they’re completely wrong, because I see places where it comes pretty close to crossing that line, but I felt it was well enough constructed to stay just outside of preachiness.
Legends of Tomorrow 3x03
I’m not really sure how I felt about that one. It had moments that I liked, but I never really found myself fully invested. Well...there is one thing I care about; I like Gary. I also like how much the Legends hate Gary, and the fact that I’m pretty sure they really don’t care about Gary at all, they just hate Rip and his No Legends Club (it’s ‘No Legends,’ they’re allowed one, but it’s just Rip).
I actually had an early thought about how the rest of them dismiss any Bureau calls for help, but Sara isn’t willing to, I think because she view them as working with Rip where the rest of them see the Legends as completely separate from the No Legends Club. Now, Sara will fight against any Time Agents who get in their way (and think that Gary’s a wuss), but I’m not sure she’s angry in the same way the others are. It may partly be that she’s been in a big shadowy group where none of the others have, and therefore a little more able to separate her dislike of the agents from her anger at yet love of Rip (not that some of her anger at Rip for making a new club doesn’t spill over to the members of said club, just more separated than the others). Mostly I’m having a hard time putting the vibe I get into words, especially without it just going into shippy rambling and I only partially intend my point to be about my shipping them.
I also have some thoughts that Gideon takes on traits of her captain, so where early on she was very much an extension of Rip, she’s taking on more of Sara’s traits as time goes on. That interpretation works pretty well retroactively with her using the idea of sex to motivate frat boys in the first episode, and her calling Ava a bitch here. Some of it is probably also anger at Rip, and she clearly has no loyalty to the Time Bureau (for the record I have gotten infinitely better at spelling Bureau in the two seeks since this season started) even as an extension of Rip.
...So this is just the way it’s going to be I guess, we’ll talk about Rip and the Time Bureau and how those factors are involved, then if I think of it I’ll actually discuss the plot of the episode.
Thing is, Zari seems really boring here. She seems really overpowered and yet super bland. I want to know more about the world she’s from, but it just seems like a generic dystopian future in a superhero world. Apparently the anti-meta edict was done in 2021, that’s not that far off and yet we never get anything that hints at the world going that way. Hell that would be before the Flash is supposed to disappear in a Crisis. I’ve been waiting for The Flash to deal with the social and political realities that the emergence of metas would do to the world, but it steadfastly refuses to address those plots; and yet according to this in the pretty near future it’s going to become a big concern. Also, is this in the same future as Star City 2046, or has that been changed? What about Kaznia in the more distant future?
Also I don’t have a ton to say about the Amaya plot, but I have to say it leads to a bit that feels like men trying to show/explain mansplaining. Stein is not mansplaining (not that he never does, say last season when he thought he should be in charge), Stein is a scientist caught up in his own worldview; he’s not listening to her but it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s a woman and everything to do with what she’s trying to say (admittedly my view may be skewed by the fact that I prefer his worldview where magic is just another kind of science to straight up magic). And Nate’s just out of character in that scene, highlighted by the fact that he acts completely differently in his next scene on the subject. Even then it’s not mansplaining, it’s talking over and ignoring the woman in the room, which is a different issue; so I went and looked and yep this episode was written by men, so they were in fact mansplaining mansplaining.
All around I was just a little meh about this one
The Flash 4x02
I opted to give tis another chance and...I think it was a better episode than the premier, but I still hate Barry so much. I thought this episode was going to maybe call him on his shit but it just became about him leaving last season and as close as the show will ever come to having fallout for that I’m sure, and it really doesn’t count as much.
I don’t care about Cisco/Gypsy I wish I did, and I don’t know why I don’t. I don’t dislike the relationship it’s just there as big blob of meh. I will say I liked some Barry and Iris’ scenes but it’s hurt by the fact that I hate Barry so much and that on the other hand I don’t agree with Iris’ assertion that now they’re both the Flash, you can be a team and an us without trying to be the same person. We need some actual adults on this show besides Joe because he’s not quite enough of a respite from all this. I even want more Wally and certainly for him to get more respect, and I don’t even like Wally that much; I just hate Barry so much that I feel bad for Wally having to pay second banana to him.
As a side note, apparently the most expensive penthouse on Central City is just a redress of the loft on Arrow. Not even a very good redressing, it looks exactly the same except for a few attempts at not convincing distractions from the fact it was the same set.
I don’t know what this means for me continuing to watch this show. The show is too focused on Barry for the fact that I hate him not to be an issue, but we’ll see.
Arrow 6x03
I think I legitimately and uncomplicatedly liked that episode. It was super character driven, focused on a lot of the relationships I care about (it even remembered that Oliver’s got to be broken up about Thea), advanced those relationships with how the story has progressed, contributed to an ongoing story I care about concerning the place of vigilantes in this world, and didn’t immediately return things to status quo as I had expected last week.
I’m not even sure there’s that much to talk about here; it’s all pretty clear in the text so far so I don’t need to twist and turn to make sense of anything, and there’s not much obvious overarching plot to speculate about; it’s just good.
The ending isn’t exactly surprising either, degenerative nerve damage wasn’t just something that John was about to get past. I suspect this plot will morph into or merge with a bigger plot down the road, but for now it’s just...worrying. I do want to know if Lyla knows what’s going on. This episode at least remembered she exists (last week kind of did too I suppose) but as much as I like the role reversal with John and Oliver, and that if this team setup lasted Dinah would basically be his Diggle, I do at some point I want to see more of how Lyla fits in with what’s happening.
Also, I’d expect that William has googled some stuff and is aware the Oliver and Felicity were together at some point, and he has eyes to see that Oliver looks her like she hung the moon, so he’s probably aware that his present math tutor is his future stepmom. That said, as much as I expect Oliver to be back in the hood by the midseason break (possibly as soon as next episode depending on how long it takes to out Diggle with his miracle cure) I really like getting this glimpse into the dynamic where Felicity runs off to be a hero and Oliver takes care of the homefront.
The Good Place 2x06
So I was kind of right that Janet’s problems involved lingering feeling for Jason she wasn’t even aware of...go me I guess. Sometimes my ship oriented brain sees clearly. Of course it was more than that, as the base problem is Janet having to lie, which makes a lot of sense to a problem point (Bad Place Janets lying causes less problem than with Good Place Janets it seems). And I do think there was a legitimate concern with killing Janet off since they don’t know if they could get another Good Place Janet so easily, they probably don’t have one on hand right now.
The ease with which Michael originally stole Janet kind of feeds my vibe that this whole thing is more purgatory than Bad Place. That either Michael was somehow influenced to conduct an experiment to see if people could change after death and/or it’s a grand conspiracy by the Good Place that just sort of put the demons to work in the Bad Place, which has never been...as lasting as they thought. I just feel like this season will probably try and have its own big reveal later on, and there seems some evidence for that.
As an episode it was...pretty good. It was very focused and the plot was fine, I don’t think it was as funny as usual, but it was still plenty charming.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 3x03
Well that was a return to the usual number of musical numbers, and the not at all atypical fact that I only really liked one of them. I want to like Heather’s song, but I’m kind of okay with the fact that I don’t because I don’t think she’d want me to; it felt to me much like it seems to feel to her, an obligatory musical number with no real conviction in it. However, I really liked Nathanial’s song, it made me laugh; I also like that he pulled out ‘oh my god I think I like her’ even though I don’t think they can reprise that in song for a different ship.
This is probably the most I’ve shipped Rebecca/Nathanial to date, although given how uncomfortable the episode as a whole made me I’m not sure that’s a good thing. It’s not a terrible thing because it’s in keeping with the fact that I rarely ship things unless the parties involved reach a minimum level of liking each other (i.e. if it’s only one sided it needs to be more definite than if both parties are mutually a little bit into it). It’s not great because this can’t go anywhere healthy for Rebecca in this situation.
I wonder if when I rewatch this season down the road I’ll still feel as uncomfortable with it as I do now. There have been plenty of episodes in the past that made me uncomfortable to watch but a little less so when viewed with hindsight and with more of the story to judge; but this episode kind of make me more uncomfortable than I remember being in a while.
