Arrowverse Review Index

Batwoman 1×03: “Down, Down, Down”, Supergirl 5×03: “Blurred Lines”, The Flash 6×03: “Dead Man Running”, and Arrow 8×02: “Welcome to Hong Kong” reviews

Welcome, everyone, to a week of wonderful new adventures in the Arrowverse!

Batwoman got a new wig, Team Arrow got a new mission, Supergirl got a new sense of moral ambiguity, and Team Flash got a new Harrison Wells – Gotta Catch ‘Em All!

 

Batwoman 1×03: “Down, Down, Down” review

This was a very important episode for Batwoman.

The previous episodes have been important, too, of course. The pilot established our main characters and the world they operate in, set the tone and style for the series, and got our hero into the Batsuit for the first time. And the second episode was all about establishing what looks to be the main conflict of the season, with Kate trying to reach out to her long lost sister, said long lost sister targeting the rest of Kate’s family, and Kate’s dad refusing to believe any of this long lost sister talk and just wanting to put the psychopath down.

But because those episodes were focused on establishing important aspects of the series, they were unable to answer a question that may be even more crucial: what’s an ordinary episode of Batwoman going to look like?

A lot of shocking, dramatic revelations went down in the first two episodes, but doing that every week isn’t going to be sustainable, especially not with 22 episodes a season. Same goes for centering the conflict around Alice: for all that she’s an absolute joy of a villain (the best part of the series by far), having every episode revolve around her would eventually get tiring. (Plus, when you have all the colorful rogues in the Bat-franchise at your disposal, limiting yourself to one is an utter waste).

Batwoman needed to establish that it can also tell more episodic stories, that it can still keep your attention even when Kate’s not battling her evil sister or getting bombshell news dropped in her lap. And at that goal, “Down, Down, Down” succeeds admirably.

Alice is still present and being vaguely menacing, but after last episode made it clear that arresting her will likely lead to an extrajudicial execution, Kate doesn’t seem eager to have another big showdown with her sister. This lets their conflict fall into the background of the episode, allowing a new villain to take center stage. Enter: Tommy Elliot.

Tommy is an excellent transitional villain for Kate at this point in her career. Until now, she’d only used the Batsuit to aid her on personal missions; protecting Gotham from general villainy wasn’t her job. To make that leap, she needed a foe who was unconnected to her personal drama, who wasn’t targeting her or anyone else in the main cast (not deliberately, anyway), but who still had enough to do with her that Kate would feel it was her duty to stop him.

Tommy being someone she knows but is not close to, someone who’s stealing from Wayne Enterprises so he can hurt Batman, and (most importantly) someone whose crime wave was inspired by Kate’s Bat-costumed escapades: it makes him a villain Kate can’t ignore. And once she’s allowed her mission to expand beyond Alice and the Wonderland Gang, it becomes so much harder for her to look at the next villain to attack the city and dismiss it as not her problem. She’s allowed herself to become someone that Gotham looks to for protection, which is why only now, in this episode, does she don the finishing touches of her costume and receive the name Batwoman. And it’s only now, after we’ve seen her face what will (in all likelihood) be the kind of bad guy she’ll be facing most weeks, that Batwoman proves whether it has legs to stand on.

And given this episode’s daring rescues, funny banter, clever detective work, and pretty good fight scenes? It looks like we’re in for a mighty good series, y’all.

Stray Observations:

• While Alice remains the obvious best character in the series, Mary is catching up as Number Two. Her practicing medicine all night, then changing into a skimpy dress so she can sneak back home and say she was out partying? It’s hilarious, tells you so much about her character, and honors this franchise’s tradition of hiding heroism behind a vapid playboy/girl persona.
• I’m glad Batwoman’s finally got the red wig, but . . . where did she get the wig? Kate and Luke fixed the suit up during a ticking clock scenario; I doubt there was time to make a trip to the wig shop. So was that just something Luke had lying around the cave?
• Every Arrowverse series seems required to have a love triangle in its first season. So far, Kate/Sophie/Tyler is sub-Oliver/Laurel/Tommy, but still surpasses (by a wide margin) Ray/Kendra/Carter.
• I’ve never read any comics featuring Tommy Elliot (a.k.a. Hush), but from what I’ve looked up about him, his portrayal here as the pettiest, whiniest, most entitled douche to ever douche is right on the money. His complaint that Bruce Wayne “even had to have more dead parents than me” was the laugh-out-loud line of the night.
• Though “It’s no fun torturing a corpse – believe me, I’ve tried” is up there, too.
• How long, you figure, before Kate catches on that her world operates by James Bond gadget rules, where if Luke explains to her what a gadget does, she will need it to save her life within the next 48 hours?
• So far, Alice has figured out that Kate is Batwoman, and after what went down this episode, Tommy Elliot should be able to piece it together, too. She’s really gonna have to up her secret identity game.

 

Supergirl 5×03: “Blurred Lines” review

Okay, look, I wanted to make this review about the use of moral ambiguity in “Blurred Lines”.

One of my more frequent criticisms of Supergirl has been its simplistic, black-and-white view of morality. Characters are divided up into obvious, clearly defined good guys and bad guys. Occasionally a bad guy will have a few sympathetic qualities, but the good guys remain unimpeachably pure. Even when the show tries to tell a story where our heroes do something wrong, it always soft pedals the issue. Either what they’ve done wrong isn’t really all that wrong, and their guilt feels like pointless self-castigation, or if they have done something seriously wrong, the show doesn’t seem to realize how wrong it is and just brushes it aside.

Given that, the fact that “Blurred Lines” deals with our heroes behaving in not-so-moral ways, and does so with thoughtfulness and maturity? That should have me over the moon about this episode.

Lena continuing to exploit Eve’s body and manipulate Kara, all for what she insists is a noble goal, is riveting stuff. What J’onn and his father did to Malefic is genuinely messed up, and deserves the utter horror with which it’s treated. And Kara pointing out that she breaks the law all the time in the name of helping people, so why is stealing something for Lena all that different? It’s taking behavior endemic to both Supergirl and the superhero genre in general, and questioning it in a way this show has rarely done before. Heck, the moral of the episode is that it’s sometimes a mistake to be open and trusting of others, which is like something out of Bizarro World Supergirl.

That is all terrific stuff, and I do want to applaud it.

But if that’s all I talked about here, leaving other aspects of the episode for the Stray Observations section, then this would likely come off as a rave review. And I don’t want that, because this was not an episode I raved over. It averages out to decent, because while the moral ambiguity stuff is good, there’s a bunch of other stuff in it that just does. Not. Work.

Let’s start with something minor: the presence of Guardian in this episode. And this isn’t kneejerk Guardian bashing, either. This is about the way inserting him into the action here doesn’t make sense, and undermines the villain’s threat. I can overlook how James managed to even reach the scene of the battle in time to back up Kara (she left the DEO first, and can fly at superspeed, yet James, presumably traveling by motorcycle, arrives less than a minute after her?). What I have a harder time with is that James is able to tangle with the villain-of-the-week for a bit, and even take a couple punches from her, yet at the end of the episode this villain trade blows with Kara, and we’re supposed to believe the fight is at least a little challenging. Which, no. I can’t buy someone lasting more than a second fistfighting Supergirl if they can’t put James the Ordinary Human down in one hit.

But, as I said, that’s a minor point. An obnoxious one, that robs the climax of its tension, but still minor. What’s more serious is how J’onn’s Martian flashbacks are handled. The facts of what happened on Mars, what he and his father did to Malefic, and the impact that’s had on them: in theory it’s some heavy, dramatic stuff. But it’s all over-and-done with so quickly, it’s hard to invest in or even process what’s happening before it’s all over. And . . . look, I don’t want to disparage Carl Lumbly as M’yrrn J’onnz. The guy’s done some good work before. But his anguished cry of “The agony in my heart!!!” while doing what, in the theater world, is known as “milking the giant cow”? It takes what should be a powerful scene, and moves it from drama to melodrama.

Lastly, and most frustratingly is the Nia & Brainy conflict. It’s just . . . this is the most half-assed relationship drama ever! Nia is annoyed that Brainy is constantly reciting her poetry, and he says that he’s sorry but he can’t stop being 100% himself, so he walks out the door with the suggestion their relationship may be on a break? It makes no damn sense! Brainy wasn’t reciting poetry all the time because he’s super-into poetry. He was doing it because, last episode, Nia told him that she liked poetry, and he started doing it to please her. Once she tells him that this amount of poetry is no longer pleasant for her (explicitly tells him, because it should be obvious Brainy’s not gonna pick up on subtle hints), that should end the problem simply enough. The issue here isn’t that Brainy keeps trying to make Nia happy; it’s that he needs to learn to cook with more than one ingredient. If this had been a light-hearted comedy plot, that’d be fine, but to wring serious, possibly relationship ending drama out of it?

No. Just no!

Stray Observations:

• How do we know Kara is taking her work seriously? She forgot food. That is Defcon 1 right there.
• I wish that, since the secret identity reveal, we’d get some scenes with Lena and the rest of Team Supergirl, not just Kara. James, Alex, and Brainy were supposed to be her friends, too, and they also kept this huge secret from her. What’s their relationship like now?
• Despite my complaints about the poor handling of the Mars plot, I must say that David Harewood did some top notch acting throughout the episode, making J’onn’s internal turmoil feel palpable.
• I know it’s just about the easiest, most basic joke possible, but screw it: telling a spider-themed villain “You are really starting to bug me” . . . it’s delightful.

 

The Flash 6×03: “Dead Man Running” review

I try not to repeat myself too often in these reviews, but sometimes it can’t be helped. After reviewing nearly 200 episodes of these shows, each of which has a formula it doesn’t like to stray from, it can get mighty difficult to find something to say about an episode that I haven’t said before. So it happened that, about three or four paragraphs into writing this review, I realized that I was basically copying a review I’d written nearly a year ago, for Season 5’s “News Flash”.

In that review, I talked about how The Flash always introduces new characters each season. There’s a new bad guy, a new version of Harrison Wells, and at least one new ally character, often a novice superhero who needs mentoring from Barry. The show has to introduce these new characters, because everyone on Team Flash gets along so disgustingly well, the only reliable way to stir up conflict is to add someone new to the team, someone who can clash with the established characters and question the way they do things.

I said all that at the beginning of Season 5. Now we’re in Season 6, and lo and behold, The Flash has done it again!

I’m not expecting a prize for noticing that The Flash structures its seasons in a very predictable way. But, y’know, an “attaboy” would be nice.

There are a few tweaks to the new character formula this time around. Most obvious is that the newbie superhero role is being filled by The Frost Formerly Known As Killer, who isn’t strictly speaking a new character. Killer Frost has been appearing off and on since the second season (since the first season, if you count a vision of her appearing when Barry traveled through time). But until now, Frost has always existed as an extension of Caitlin, whether it’s as her Earth-2 doppelganger, her evil side that she needs rescuing from, or a combination of superpowers and snarky attitude that she can call upon as needed. Here, for the first time, Frost is being treated as a character and as a member of Team Flash in her own right.

And you know what that means: Barry lecturing her about what she’s doing wrong! Wally, Ralph, and Nora all had to suffer through it; now it’s Frost’s turn.

To repeat another of my old reviews (Season 4, Episode 17: “Null and Annoyed”), stern leader is not a good look on Barry Allen. Even when he’s got a point, like about Frost not pulling her punches enough against the meta-of-the-week, his aggressive determination to do his best (which can be endearing when he applies it to himself) becomes obnoxious quickly when turned against others. But all is forgiven when Barry throws Frost a birthday party/rave at episode’s end, and seeing his earnest do-gooderness clash with Frost’s blithe indifference and too-cool-for-school(pardon-the-pun) attitude.

Overall, making Frost our new superhero for the season was an inspired choice. We already know Danielle Panabaker can give a hell of a performance, and that she has great chemistry with the rest of the cast, so even as a different character she’s able to feel like a natural part of the Team Flash. Plus, since Frost is taking over for Caitlin, we’re able to have a new character in the mix without the cast feeling too bloated.

It’s the same trick that works for Tom Cavanaugh as The Many Faces of Harrison Wells. Here he debuts the latest iteration of the character: Harrison “Nash” Wells, who looks to be a hybrid of Indiana Jones and Batman, dropping into the scene via grappling hook and disappearing via smoke bomb. It’s too soon to say how this latest version of Wells will work long term, but it is refreshing that this is the first Wells since Season 2 who’s come to Earth-1 with his own mission, rather than being recruited by our heroes because they’ve gotta have a Wells. It’s also a good sign that they’re showing self-awareness about how they’ve done this story before: “It usually starts off rocky, especially between you and me, but eventually we bond, and you learn to embrace that sensitive side.”

Meanwhile, on the new new character front, we have Allegra (jury’s still out on her, but for now she’s coming across like Season 1 Iris, which: No! We don’t need another Season 1 Iris) and our new villain Ramsey Rosso. He’s still in his early stages yet, but so far he’s making for nice change of pace. Normally The Flash introduces its villains as this big, unstoppable, often faceless threat, and only fills us in on their goals and backstory a ways down the line. But since the big, unstoppable, faceless threat is being provided by a wave of antimatter this year, the show feels free to portray Ramsey as just a guy slowly slipping into mad scientist territory.

The Flash may be formulaic, may hit the same beats every season, but when it throws enough little bits of variation into the mix, as it does here, it can still make for a pretty darn enjoyable outing!

Stray Observations:

• So glad that the keep-Barry’s-death-a-secret plot only lasted one episode. You’d think, at this point, the characters would look back on their lives and go, “When has keeping a secret from the team ever worked out for any of us?”
• Something I wasn’t too keen on was how they used Ralph’s mom. I mean, I liked the casino hijinks, but taking the absurd running gag of Ralph relating anecdotes about his mom’s boyfriends, all of whom had odd careers and died in gruesome ways, and turning it into a source of drama? It feels off, like if Cheers did an episode where Norm took a serious look at his drinking problem.
• The villain-of-the-week is a meta-zombie, of a man named Romero. That’s not a codename Cisco gives him, that’s his real name. I guess someone was tapping into the Coincidence Force.

 

Arrow 8×02: “Welcome to Hong Kong” review

Where last week was an extended homage to Season 1 of Arrow, this week’s episode is an extended homage to Season 3. Specifically, to the flashback storyline from Season 3.

This is done most obviously in the way it takes us back to Hong Kong, brings back both Tatsu and China White, as well as the Alpha Omega Virus, and features a familiar storyline of corrupt government agents vs. Triad gangsters. But it also hearkens back to the themes of that flashback storyline, which saw Oliver sacrificing his humanity for the sake of a mission.

When Arrow began, the flashbacks functioned as Oliver’s heroic origin story. They showed how a soft, spoiled rich boy became capable of courage, strength, and intelligence, making him into the hero we follow in the present. But as the series continued, and became more critical of Oliver’s behavior during the first season (keeping everyone in his life at a distance, being secretive and untrusting, and, oh yeah, doing a whole bunch of killing and torturing), the role of the flashbacks shifted. While they still showed Oliver acquiring the skills he’d put to use later, now they were framed, not as the steps Oliver took to become a hero, but as the steps he took to become a monster.

In Season 1, and to a lesser extent Season 2, the flashbacks used Oliver’s starting point of “playboy billionaire” as something he needed to grow past and mature from. But beginning in Season 3, the show began looking back at the relative innocence Oliver had then, and seeing it as something precious that was cruelly stripped away during his “five years in hell”.

In Season 3, Amanda Waller was the agent of Oliver’s corruption. She held him against his will, threatened the lives of his family if he disobeyed her, and stressed how the mission she had given him was so important, anyone who got hurt along the way was an acceptable sacrifice. She taught Oliver to commit torture, to kill without conscience, and to place the mission above all else.

Even when freed from Waller’s service, he remained the man she had shaped him into. A man who, when given a new mission by his father, would follow it with the same ruthless fervor. A man who could torture another man to the brink of death, and state without emotion, “He failed this city. So I gave him the justice he deserved.”

Now, Oliver is back in that same position, handed a mission by someone who is more wantonly destructive in the name of the greater good than even Amanda Waller (as difficult as that is to imagine). The Monitor has destroyed entire worlds before (or at least given the tools for destroying worlds to unstable psychopaths), but justifies it by citing an even greater evil he’s trying to prevent. He tells Oliver that his family will die if he does not follow the Monitor’s instructions, even as he keeps the exact nature of his plans a secret.

But Oliver is no longer the man that Amanda Waller made him into. The flashbacks in Season 3, and in the seasons that followed, didn’t exist merely to explain Oliver’s behavior in Season 1. They existed to show us the source of Oliver’s flaws, his sternness, his ruthlessness, his capacity for violence, so that the present day storyline could have him overcome those flaws.

The story of Arrow has ultimately been about the long, rocky, and not always straightforward path of Oliver Queen’s redemption. Over the years, we’ve seen Oliver grow, seen him look at his behavior in a new light, seen him struggle to change, to become a better man than he was before. We’ve seen him become a hero.

The Monitor possesses power and knowledge that Oliver cannot grasp. He threatens destruction on both a cosmic scale, and on everyone Oliver loves. He tells Oliver that the destruction of Earth-2 was the result of him failing to be the stonehearted agent that the Monitor demands. In the face of something so dire, Oliver slides, however briefly, back into his old ways, of putting the mission above everything, even his own humanity.

But Oliver’s come too far to give into that again. Certainly not when he’s got John, and Tatsu, and Laurel by his side. As he said last week, we’re only as good as the people we have in our lives, and he’s no longer a shipwrecked foreigner held captive by killers. He has people who have seen him at his darkest and at his best, and who will help guide him to be the man he knows he should be. Even if that means defying the closest thing to God there is.

Oliver Queen went to Hong Kong and became a monster. Now he’s returned, but has found the strength to remain a hero.

Stray Observations:

• Stephen Amell did some phenomenal work this episode. He needed to come close to breaking down twice, first when Oliver asks the Monitor about Earth-2, then again when he explains how “I need my family to live!”, and also have a hint of tears shimmering in his eyes when Laurel chastises him. And he sells every. Single. Moment.
• It’s good that someone’s finally asking why a being as powerful as the Monitor needs a mere mortal to run errands for him.
• I love how Tatsu casually revealed that she’s heard of the Monitor before. It reminds me of the show’s early seasons, when Oliver would reveal that of course he knows about supersoldier serums, mystical powers, and the inner workings of the Russian mob. Just because we haven’t seen it (yet) doesn’t mean the characters aren’t getting up to some weird crap offscreen.
• The fight scenes all around were terrific this week, though my favorite is probably Oliver’s elevator fight. Especially the little “Ow” he lets out when it’s done.
• Where did Team Save The Multiverse get their costumes and weapons from? When they left Earth-2, they were wearing their civilian clothes; the only luggage they had was the bag with the dwarf star particles, and the Monitor took that. So how were they able to gear up and suit up for the climax?
• For people not familiar with the Crisis on Infinite Earths comic, Lyla working for the Monitor must be a huge WTF!?! moment. For those of us who are familiar with it, it’s not surprising so much as amazing. During Season 1 of Arrow, lots of characters were given the names of comic book characters more-or-less at random, as nothing more than Easter eggs; there was never any intent of making them resemble their comic book counterparts. So who could have imagined that the character named after Harbinger would not only stick with the show for eight years, but that by the end, Arrow would have built up a superhero universe so wide, weird, and wild that she could actually become Harbinger? That is playing the long game.

 

MVP of the Week: Laurel Lance

Katie Cassidy had to convey Laurel’s grief at losing her entire world, something that could easily become too big for people to relate to, but she frickin’ nailed it. And when she showed up at the end to save Tatsu, I almost cheered.

Question of the Week: What other Bat-franchise villains would you like to see turn up?