Friday 19 December 2014

Arrash

With the recent two parter combing the series of Flash and Arrow, why not talk about them? And Peter is also!

One element I liked was that in the Arrow episode, they point out the rather severe tonal differences of the show. Arrow is a lot darker, and Flash is so much brighter and upbeat. And it's not that one show has death and the other doesn't, there has been plenty of death in Flash, but that show doesn't get down over it. Perhaps in a season or two when it's built up some characters we might care about, and then kill them, maybe then, but not for now. The metahumans get silly nicknames (that just so happen to be their DC supervillain names), and the show is lighter. Which does give Arrow a problem, in that no-one wants doom and gloom all the time. I'm still watching, but it's easy to believe that others aren't.

Anyway, we have this two-parter... which isn't actually a proper two-parter, because there's no continuing story from one episode to the next, it's just one lot of characters turn up in the other series and then vice versa. It was nice, but what was the point? We already know they are the same universe, and the shows tried to tease the idea of 'who would win?' between Flash and Arrow, when it's kind of clear that the guy who can outrun arrows has a bit of a leg up...

It was also kind of disappointing that Flash went with Rainbow Raider for their emotion manipulating villain. Psycho Pirate is there begging to be used, and opens up the whole possibility of Crisis... And Arrow used Captain Boomerang, who is more known as a Flash villain! Because Arrow doesn't have any villains of its own to reference? Then again, Arrow is referencing Ra's Ah Ghul at the moment, which is more Batman... use your own rogue's gallery, dammit!

It's nice to see superheroes on TV (and I'm loving the references Flash is giving to the CBS Flash series), but there are better things to do with cross-overs. (Let along that Flash and Arrow hook up with Green Lantern more often than each other.)

[END]

2 comments:

Al said...

OK, I think you've convinced me, I'm going to have to give these shows a try - thanks for that Jamas. And I'm intrigued to know how the CBS Flash is being referenced (beyond Mark Hamil?)

Jamas Enright said...

Hi Al!
The father in this Flash is played by John Wesley Shipp who was the actual CBS Flash.
And they just had Tina McGee turn up in Flash played by Amanda Pays... who played a character called Tina McGee in the CBS Flash! (although she worked for Star Labs in that.)