Reading/Watching Log #53

Lockdown has finished in New Zealand, and hopefully we’ll be moving into Level 1 soon, which means a loosening of the social distancing and ongoing disinfecting regulations we’re currently living under (and subsequently, an assurance that we’ve flattened the curve on the spread of Covid-19. At the time of this writing, there’s only one active case left in the country; everyone else is recovering).

With the end of lockdown, I moved back into my New Years Resolution of focusing on women-centric stories, though a few variations on this rule slipped by during quarantine, in which I returned to a lot of my favourite films from childhood/adolescence. Some I hadn’t watched in years, and it turns out I had great taste in my younger years, considering they all hold up extremely well today. It got a little surreal at times actually, as watching things in isolation that were so formative to my childhood (which already managed to mess up my sense of the passing of days) was like stepping into a time vortex.

So in here we've got treasure islands, secret gardens, stage magicians, wild swans, Greek gods, magic carpets, sentient robots and undead mummies. Plus, another win for LGBTQ happy endings. Man, a part of me is going to miss having all the time in the world to race through so many books and shows...

The Flash: Things You Can't Outrun and Going Rogue

And with this, I finally catch up on all the shows I missed while in Australia! I'm only a casual viewer of The Flash (and it's already clear that there are some gaps in my continuity considering I've yet to watch season two of Arrow) but I'm enjoying it as a light comic book show.

I like the visual tricks they play when it comes to portraying super-speed – either the yellow lightening streaks and the gusts of wind that Barry leaves in his wake, or the immobility of people seemingly caught in stasis as he sprints around them (though we see him moving normally). It all looks fantastic on what must be a fairly modest budget.

And there's a good sense of pacing going on. So many shows are too concerned with stuffing as much in to the premiere as they can, but The Flash writers (possibly due to practice over on Arrow) know how to regulate themselves. It's a steady process as they bring all the bits of the show together, and in these two episodes alone they give us some background on Caitlin and Cisco, introduce a way of containing the meta-humans, and raise the possibility of Barry using his super-speed to break his father out of jail. Things are chugging along nicely, without feeling too rushed or too slow.

Things You Can't Outrun put a focus on Caitlin and her relationship with her fiancé Ronnie who totally and absolutely died in the accelerator particle explosion, though given the amount of emotional beats she was given with Barry I'm terrified that a love triangle is about to rear its ugly head. It seems unlikely considering that Barry is so devoted to Iris, but between Iris encouraging him to see other women and her newfound "steady" status with Eddie, there's always a chance that he'll make a move on Caitlin.

Kyle Nimbus was a pretty bland Villain of the Week, but at least the actor looked genuinely creepy, and as ridiculous as the science is on this show, there was a nice internal logic to how Team Flash managed to figure out his identity (that his DNA was inside the victims, that the chemical used in executions was in the gas). From a Doylist point-of-view, I was rather fascinated by how the episode went about building up the suspense of his murders. First he went after a crime family, people that we're not inclined to mourn, but second victim was a mother (who was cleverly humanized in the seconds before her death by having her speak to her daughter on the phone), and the third was Joe, someone we're all genuinely invested in.

Perhaps the best dynamics on the show are between Barry and his two fathers, helped by the fact that Jesse L. Martin is bringing his A-game to every scene, even though he really doesn't have to. Although I'm still irritated at his "keep Iris in a bubble" mentality (especially since they haven't explained how keeping her in the dark about Barry could possibly make her any safer than if she knew about it), the way he interacts with his biological daughter and his surrogate son is the high-point of the show.

And he made a surprisingly good point about what it means for him that Iris is dating his partner. Here I thought it was just going to be the usual curmudgeonly excuses, but he actually had valid reasons for being leery about the relationship and how it would affect his job.

That said, I hope Iris gets some juicier material soon. Fandom is just waiting for a reason to dogpile her, and she must be protected from that at all costs! It's easy enough to see why Barry is besotted with her (especially since she's played by Candice Patton), but at the moment it feels as though she exists on the fringes on the show; that there's a super cool secret club she's been excluded from. No doubt the "no more secrets" exchange with her father is going to come back to bite Joe in the proverbial, but I love that she's investigating the Red Streak. It's something that belongs to her character alone, and her fascination with the occurrences all over Central City mean that she's moving toward Barry without even knowing it.

Now let's all cross our fingers and hope that she gets to figure out Barry's secret identity by herself.

And then we come to Going Rogue, guest-starring Felicity in the show's very first cross-over. I must be a contrarian at heart, because I don't love Felicity as much as everyone else does. Fandom seems determined to canonize her as some sort of deity, and practically every character on this show got the chance to talk about how great she was, and I'm just a little bemused by it all.

I should be so happy that fandom loves a female character this much (because how often do girls become Ensemble Darkhorses?) and yet I just feel oversaturated by her at this stage. Also, her endless stream of Freudian Slips are a long-overplayed joke.

At least her presence in this episode wasn't too gratuitous. Having not caught up with season two of Arrow, I'm assuming that Felicity and Barry (clearly) have a history together, and this was used to bring Barry's feelings for Iris into sharper focus. And I know that Barry/Iris are endgame, but geez – at this point she's just not that into him. I watched closely, wondering if perhaps Iris was overcompensating her enthusiasm for Barry and Felicity hooking up, but she seemed pretty sincere about it.

So we got a bittersweet (more sweet than bitter) farewell between Barry and Felicity, after the latter gives some sage advice about how to handle being part of a team.

The most interesting part of the episode was in ironing out the kinks of Team Flash after it becomes apparent that Cisco has designed a gun that poses a serious threat to Barry's abilities. Cisco is a lot of fun, though I don't for a second buy him as a super-genius, and as far as backstory goes there was some good material here: first by forcing him to make the tough decision to close the blast doors with Ronnie still inside, and then by having him pay the consequences of having made a failsafe to deal with Barry should he ever go AWOL.  

Like Batman carrying around kryptonite, it seems a fairly sensible thing to do in crafting a weapon that will deal with a meta-human that nobody knows or understands, but Barry's grievance is in the fact Cisco didn't tell him about the gun after they got to know each other (and after it ends up in the hands of a killer). I loved that the death of the theatre attendant is treated as a big deal; as something that Cisco and Barry will have to live with despite being only indirectly responsible for his death – though the show will probably never mention him again.  

And it all allows for Wells's dark side to emerge, with him all but threatening Cisco after learning of the gun's existence. Doctor Wells should henceforth be known as Captain Stinger, for with only one exception he's dominated the final scenes. Here we find out in flashback that he knew all along that Barry would be struck by lightning and bestowed with super-speed (which also explains the ambiguous look on his face when the champagne in the bottle began drifting upwards into the air), and it's clear that he's here to protect Barry at all costs.

Hopefully some of this stinger material will make it into the meat of the actual episodes soon.

And last but not least, Wentworth Miller turned up as this week's villain. Unlike all the others, there's every chance he's going to be back for more, so it was a good idea to give him a bit more characterization. He explicitly doesn't shoot cops – but only because there are dire consequences for criminals that do so, and he even looked vaguely amused when Cisco named him "Captain Cold." And of course, plenty of room for hot and cold puns. Given that he stole the stinger away from Doctor Wells, it's only a matter of time before he returns.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Was it meant to be significant in any way that Kyle Nimbus mentioned people "on my list"? Probably not, but if it was unintentional, it was still an intriguing echo to Oliver Queen.

As a non-comic book reader I feel as though I'm missing about a million in-jokes. Caitlin's remark that she and Ronnie were like "fire and ice" was no doubt significant, but I've no idea why.

Ronnie was Killed Midsentence, so any thoughts on what the end of his sentence was: "whatever happens..."

How many outfits does Felicity have? She went through at least four, and for some reason packed a fancy black cocktail dress. Then she got embarrassed about wearing it to trivia night. Girl, it's trivia night. Why one earth would you think it would require dressing up?

The Flash: Fastest Man Alive

In some ways the second episode of any given show is more important than the first. The premiere is a struggle to introduce all the characters, establish the premise, and provide an origin story for whatever long-term arc they've got planned, but all of this cramming means that whatever else it is, a premiere is almost never boring.

But often so much attention is poured into the premiere that the second episode can fall short. And the problem with this is however good the series opener was, it's what comes after that determines whether or not an audience will continue to tune in.

And at this early stage, the writers are still figuring out what works and what doesn't. Often Early Instalment Weirdness can seep in. There's also a tendency to rely on a rather bland Monster of the Week rota-basis in order to keep each singular episode as self contained as possible so that more involved world-building and character dynamics can occur elsewhere.

But Fastest Man Alive ended up being a fairly balanced episode, dealing with Barry's Call to Adventure, the consequences of his newfound power, a scattering of character related minutia, and a surprisingly complex villain.

Barry's social conscience means that he's ready and willing to embrace the life-saving possibilities of his powers, but he's surrounded by naysayers: Caitlin and Joe to be precise, who both think that saving innocent people's lives is only going to endanger his own. Caitlin in particular thinks that Barry was only going to deal with other meta-humans, not race into burning buildings to save the inevitable small child that's been left behind by a negligent parent (seriously, why do they always leave their kid behind?)

Another fire, another traumatized child.

All this argument about Barry's safety and responsibility is a little perfunctory, as let's face it – he's the main character. We know that no matter what the situation, he's not going to die. There's no real question about how this storyline is going to be resolved, and it's a shame that they went for the trite option by using the power of pep talks and positive thinking. But hey, this was always going to be a necessary issue to tackle.

The writers put the focus on how each character broaches the subject, and the most interesting scene ended up being the one between Joe and Doctor Welles when they discuss Barry's abilities. In many ways, this was an episode that explored fatherhood, with three different father figures all trying to protect Barry in ways that are ultimately detrimental to his well-being. In the flashbacks, his real father wants to put distance between them once he's in jail, Joe wants to overprotect him, and Wells eventually kills a man to keep Barry's secret safe.

It's Joe who comes out looking the best, with Barry's own ringing endorsement as to his parenting skills, but his insistence on keeping Iris in the dark about Barry is going to get very old, very quickly – not least because he feels as much a plot device as it does a genuine attempt to protect her. Remember in Harry Potter when Mrs Weasley insisted on keeping Harry in the dark about absolutely everything even though ignorance of the facts actively put him in danger? Yeah, it's like that.

What was handled a lot better was Barry's experimentation with his new powers, and the inevitable consequences that come with them. He can practically teleport people from one location to another with his super-speed (which I'm sure the budget will thank him for considering it only requires a gust of wind and a stunned-looking extra), but it's always fun to see any given superhero use their powers for everyday stuff as well (such as mixing test tubes).

But any burst of speed brings on fainting spells, and it was a great bit of logic-based problem solving when the scientists run some tests and quickly realize that his glucose levels are running low. Obviously he burns through energy ten times as quickly as he used to, and the solution is as simple as a new diet.

I recall this on the animated Justice League as well, in which the Flash was often depicted as a Big Eater, so let's hope that even if the fainting spells are never brought up again, the sight of Barry chowing down on fast food is a consistent feature of the show. Someone is bound to comment on it at some point.

Then there's the actual Villain of the Week, who may have been fairly bland in himself, but was part of a scenario that was surprisingly complex. As part of the usual comic book logic, Danton Black is a guy who worked on cloning technology, and can now Agent Smith himself all over the place. He wants to assassinate wealthy philanthropist Simon Stagg for some undisclosed reason, and so naturally everyone's first instinct is to protect Simon against Black.

Turns out that Stagg stole Black's research which resulted in the death of his wife... though this doesn't stop Barry from insisting that killing Stagg is still the wrong thing to do. After a Burly Brawl last seen on The Matrix over a decade ago which was really impressive at the time and is here replicated on television to pretty much the same standard, Black decides to take his own life and forces Barry to drop him from a high rise balcony.

Seriously, look at this visual. This was great stuff!

Pretty sad really, but the most interesting part is still to come. Wells arrives at Stagg's office after dark and promptly stabs him to death. Ostensibly this is because he's protecting Barry, but he entered that room with a knife well before Stagg started talking about how he could exploit meta-humans.

So much like Arrow, Barry has a parental figure up to some shady business. And if this continues like Arrow, pretty much all the episodes will end on this note: Wells getting out of his wheelchair and doing something dodgy.

But the parallel is interesting: both Black and Wells made an attempt on Stagg's life, both for (arguably) justifiable reasons. But comic-book world lore insists that all life is sacred. Murders can't be committed for any reason whatsoever – not if you're seeking vengeance for a dead wife, not if you're trying to protect someone else, not if you're insisting that the ends justify the means. So technically Wells has crossed into villain territory, and it's just a matter of time before Barry finds out.

Miscellaneous Observations:

One thing that can't be changed quickly enough is Joe's perception of his daughter as a fragile flower who must be protected at all costs. She's obviously intelligent (Joe actually admonishes Barry for not coming up with a better excuse to explain his absences) and driven enough as a journalist to start researching cases of the Red Streak, so if Barry's secret gets stretched out for any length of time, it's only going to reflect badly on her.

No, those empty plates aren't AT ALL suspicious.

And that's NOT OKAY. I'm already very protective of Iris, and she's too cute and sparkly and feminine for the narrative to give her the run-around. Plus Candice Patton is perfect in this role. She was given a line at the beginning of the episode that had her jokingly complain about how much she disliked journalism – it could have very easily come across as whiny, yet Patton played it as a joke and it came across as charming instead.

There was some great material for Caitlin as well, who managed to make an entire clone out of blood specks before figuring out the best way of defeating him. My favourite scene was probably the one in which we're lead to believe that Black has broken into the lab, only to realize that it's just Caitlin and Cisco staring at the clone in shock.

Not what it looks like.

I'm a strong advocate against voiceovers, and apparently so is this show given the way that Barry yada-yadas his way through the opening narration: "this is the part we're I'm supposed to do the whole intro thingy. Barry Allen, fastest man alive – but you know all that already. Alright, let's get to the good stuff."

Hey, look it's Sheriff Valenti from Roswell! Ah, memories. And yikes, how long ago was that now?

He hasn't aged a day.

Oh look, Barry has the Sherlock Scan, complete with on-screen notations for the audience to follow along with. It never ceases to amuse me that after all the fuss Sherlock producers made about Elementary copying their idea, it was actually dozens of other shows that cribbed off their visual design.

It would appear that Star Labs have Lex Luthor Security given the way Joe just wanders in (I don't care that TV Tropes have renamed it Swiss Cheese Security, I have very fond memories of everyone and their grandma and Jimmy Olsen wandering into Lex Luthor's Smallville mansion on a whim).

Why do people always touch their ear microphone when they're talking to their cohorts back at the base? I know it's a visual cue to let the audience know they're not just talking to thin air, but it bugs me.  

So if any given show's first episode is an introduction, then the second is its set-up, arranging everyone at the beginning of their character arcs and putting all the story elements on the right trajectory. From here on out, it's just a matter of ironing out the kinks, but given all the practice these guys have had on Arrow, it seems that The Flash is in good hands.
 

The Flash: Pilot

Pilots fascinate me. A team of writers has forty-five (or less) minutes to introduce a cast of characters, an overarching plot, the general themes, and a storyline that can be wrapped up before the credits roll. The audience needs to get a grasp of the tone, the dynamics of the cast, and what to expect from future episodes. And for a show like The Flash, it also has to be something of an origin story, explaining how and why our protagonist got his superpowers.

It's a challenge no matter what the show, but The Flash manages to handle it with a surprising amount of grace. When you think about the amount of raw exposition that was introduced here, it's pretty incredible just how much we learned: that Barry Allen's mother died mysteriously, that his father was found guilty of her murder, that Barry is now a crime scene investigator, that he was half-raised by Detective Joe West and is secretly in love with his daughter Iris, and that she's dating her father's partner.

The gist of the story is that a demonstration of particle accelerator goes terribly wrong, putting Barry in a coma for nine months and endowing him with super-speed/super-healing abilities, after which he meets Dr. Harrison Wells, the man responsible for the accelerator's malfunction and who has subsequently became a pariah, and his team Caitlin Snow (fiancé killed, doesn't smile, looks like Thora Birch) and Cisco Ramon (no baggage, smiles a lot, looks like Jacob Black).

Realizing that the accident has caused an abundance of meta-humans all over the city, Barry decides to ignore the naysayers, use his powers for good, and take out another mutant meteor freak meta-human who's using his powers to rob banks and cause car accidents. Oh, and we even get a brief cameo from Oliver Queen who delivers the requisite pep talk (and in a nice touch, it transpires that Barry's otherwise tedious voice-over is no such thing, but in fact him recounting his experiences to Oliver in Starling City. Well played, show).

So there's plenty of stuff here to like. Already there's an underlying mystery (who killed Barry's mother?), a Scooby Gang (Dr Wells, Caitlin, Cisco), a plethora of potential supervillains (courtesy of the particle accelerator), the requisite love triangle (Barry/Iris/Eddie), and the first hints of a complex Story Arc (the episode ends with Dr Wells opening a secret room, getting out of his wheelchair, and pondering what looks like a newspaper from the future).

But what sets it apart from the mother-show is its tone. This is so much lighter, more Smallville than Arrow, less Christopher Nolan's Batman than Sam Raimi's Spider-man. And for the record, I've deliberately decided to watch this without having seen all of Arrow's season two. I know it's there that Barry Allen is first introduced to this continuity, but I'm kind of looking forward to watching it as a prequel to this.

What I always find most fascinating about the pilots of genre shows is the existence of Starter Villains; antagonists that exist for one reason alone: to pose enough of a threat to spur the protagonist into heroism. Most new shows usually don't even TRY to make their very first villain interesting. They're always going to be dull, and it's yet this dullness that always piques my interest. I don't know why, perhaps it's just the recurring use of a character that's more threat than character; a quick device to gauge the hero's power.

This time around, Clyde Mardon is a bank robber that gets caught in the shock wave from the particle accelerator and develops the ability to control the weather. There's a half-hearted attempt at suspense when Barry insists that he survived the plane crash that supposedly killed him, and a quarter-hearted attempt at giving the guy a god complex, but ultimately he's there to create a hurricane that Flash can literally reverse (he runs counter-clockwise around it).

So Clyde was inevitably going to be the weakest link in the episode, but that's much more forgivable when taking into account the prevalence (and necessity) of the trope.

There are a couple of other nit-picks. Barry witnessing his mother's death was a hugely intense sequence (it reminded me a little of the Supernatural pilot), but it would have packed more of a wallop if it was allowed a little more time to breath; to explore the impact it had on a young child's mind. Likewise, the casual reaction Detective West and Iris had to Barry waking up from a coma was... well, very casual. Again, it felt rushed simply because there was so much to get through.

But the leading cast of characters are all pretty charming. Iris is a ball of sunshine and rainbows, someone you can easily understand Barry pining over, but who clearly has a life of her own outside the role of designated love interest. There's a real warmth and familiarity in their interactions together, despite the fact that Iris is totally oblivious to Barry's feelings for her.

And yes, I've seen the pre-show wank regarding shipping and fandom's immediate propensity to ship Barry with the girl who told him to pee in a cup, so all my defences are raised when it comes to Iris. I've already seen a few people play the "they're like siblings" card, though it's pretty clear that they're long-time friends who haven't quite mentally made the leap to boyfriend/girlfriend (heck, even Barry felt as though he was trying to articulate his feelings for the first time in his thwarted speech to her).

Among Barry's inner circle, I quite like the juxtaposition of Caitlin and Cisco's opposing personalities, as well as the obvious shadiness of Doctor Wells. Of everyone in this pilot, it was his shift from scientific superstar to outcast that really captured the nine month time skip, and his fall from grace (despite a couple of flat line readings from Tom Cavanagh) was nicely captured. And that final hook hints, if nothing else, that he's up to something.

Perhaps the only character I'm not totally sold on yet is Detective West, the type of man who is so overprotective of his daughter that he yells at her for walking down the street (seriously, this is a thing that actually happens). But his paternal instinct toward Barry and his knowledge of the Flash's identity immediately establishes a different dynamic than the police/vigilante tension over on Arrow, giving Barry an ally on the force that will no doubt make his crime-fighting career easier.

But it's Grant Gustin (his real name actually sounds like a comic book name) that has to carry the show, and he certainly embodies the nerdy-yet-sticks-up-for-what's-right model of a wannabe hero, someone who easily fits into the Steve Rogers and Peter Parker category of men who take responsibility for their abilities and act according to the conscience. Perhaps what I appreciated most was not his intelligence, but his genuine enthusiasm for knowledge. Any idiot can be intelligent, but Barry's level of joy and energy in discovering new things is a rare quality.

Miscellaneous Observations:

The special-effects on this were amazing, some of the best I've ever seen on television. Let's just hope that they didn't blow their budget on the first episode.

Speaking of special-effects, there were some cute visuals here and there as well: the soles of Barry's shoes melting after he was struck by lightning, and sparks flying from his jacket as he ran for Starling City.  

Why on earth would a mugger chose to steal a laptop from a girl in a packed room? Muggers need to be sure of a quick getaway, though I suppose the crowd did obligingly provide an aisle for him.

Another Smallville nod: Barry has his very own Wall of Weird.

So my theory for Mrs Allen's murder is that time-travel was involved somehow. The particle accelerator caused the exact same effects (that is, water floating up into the atmosphere) during the thunder storm as it did during Barry's childhood, and the strange lights/sounds surrounding Mrs Allen had the red/yellow lightning streaks that the Flash causes when he hits high-speed.  

Let's just hope that Mrs Allen didn't die because Barry decided to flit back in time to discover what killed her. Stable Time Loops are a bitch.

By some miracle, the red jumpsuit doesn't look totally ridiculous.

Except when he does this.