If I Made It: Flash season finale and Season 2

Welp, the Flash finale happened.  As I tweeted it was about 40 minutes of meh, 3 minutes of Holy Shit! and 1 minute of WTF?  It was mostly underwhelming except for one great scene towards the end.  The season ended on a cliffhanger, which I didn't really appreciate, cementing this as probably the worst year for CW finales.  While the Arrow finale was way too final this one wasn't final enough.  The episode was largely relationship nonsense that included a wedding that nobody cared about and didn't leave room for a satisfying ending.  While the ending was definitely open it wasn't open in any kind of compelling way and didn't set up the next season at all.  After seeing this I was left deeply unsatisfied and critical and the step after criticism, for me anyway, is improvement.  My brain asks me "Well, if you're so smart what would YOU do better?" this is what I would do better:

Flash vs Arrow/The Brave and the Bold

Epic Crossover

So, this happened this week.  I have to admit that I came into the two episodes with a lot of apprehension.  Flash has been amazing, one of my favorite shows of the year at this point, but Arrow has been disappointing.  I didn't even finish "Draw Back Your Bow" (the episode previous to The Brave and the Bold) and I read some of the reviews online and they weren't favorable.  Needless to say I was expecting Arrow to drag down the greatness of Flash and create kind of a muddy mess.

  Well, I was wrong.  I actually quite enjoyed this block of television.  Probably top three or five Flash episodes and, I'd say, the best Arrow episode of the season.  There is no doubt they take some heavy handed jabs at a couple of subjects they have no business taking, namely the very thin theme of torture, but overall it's the best of both worlds.
 
Starting out I was ready to hate but when that Arrow-esque music sting hit with it's own Flash score twist I totally popped.  Follow that by the Arrow tinged opening credits and I was all in.  I also popped thinking that we were seeing the debut of Psycho Pirate but it turned out to be jabroni scrub Prism.  Eh, I'll let that one go.  The Flash side of this is it's usual light hearted, colorful fare with a couple drops of Arrow darkness to grunge it up.  Seeing angry Barry was great as Grant Gustin proved he can be truly intimidating as a heavy.  The Arrow/Flash conflicts were great showing Ollie's ability to think faster than Barry can move and keeping the duo on pretty even footing.  The final conflict between Ollie and Barry was a really solid fight, not only a top tier TV fight but something that could go up on the big screen.  Obviously not as a main event but a page 20 action beat definitely.  The episode is solid just not as "meaty" as The Brave and the Bold, but it's fun and engaging.

This Season in Comic based TV

I wanted to touch on this season of shows just briefly.

This just hasn't done a lot to grab me.  The first episode was a little overwhelming with how many concepts and characters they were trying to establish.  It was good though, despite that it was a relatively solid premiere.  Since then the series has totally dropped off my radar.  The baddie-of-the-week premise is kind of lame and the overall story arc isn't very interesting.  Some of the characters are good while others tip the scale towards the bad.  Penguin is interesting, as is Bullock, Nygma is intriguing but doesn't get enough screen time.  Young Bruce is on a slow boil and Catwoman is a highlight.  Meanwhile I HATE Fish Mooney, I don't care about Falcone or Maroni, Gordon is boring and Barbara has been given a bi-sexual past for no real reason I can see.  If it serves a purpose I can see doing it but it just seems meaningless and is rarely used for anything interesting.  I haven't made this a priority to watch so I'm a little behind, maybe when I get caught up something will change, right now I'm on the fence.

The Flash (TV series, 1990)

The Fastest Logo Alive

  Rating: 3 out of 5 weird looking sped up scenes meant to look like super speed.

  So I finally got around to finishing the Flash TV series.  I started it months ago and slowly but surely I've been making my way through it whenever I had time to watch an episode or need to clean the apartment (I did a lot of cleaning while watching Flash).  I'd have to say, after consuming the whole thing, that it was pretty good.  It starts out terribly slow, which is ironic for a show about a speedster, but by the end it picks up nicely and ends on probably the best episode of the series.  The main cast is great, John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen plays the character well, I think they portray the character as too much of a ladies man however.  In the comics I don't remember Barry getting around as much as John's version of Barry does and Amanda Pays is quite enjoyable as the British scientist from S.T.A.R. Labs who initially shows up to help Barry control his powers.  That's pretty much the duo we spend the most time with.  Alex Desert plays Barry's lab partner but for the most part he's given a pretty one dimensional role (the other guy who also has relationship problems).  All of the supporting cast characters are fun to watch and bring something to the table.

Fan Film Friday: The Flash:The Brave and The Bold

  This week was a bit harder to find stuff.  Last week I found Powers on page one of You Tube, this week I had to go allllll the way to page five which is where I found this little gem.  I found a few things before it that were bad beyond review but when I came across this I was pretty happy.

  Flash comes to us from uploader InfluenceFilms, directed and starring Jason Damian as Wally West.  I'm going to be honest, it's a bit of a mixed bag but it's an entertaining mixed bag dammit.

  The plot is nigh incoherent.  Someone died, let's see if I can properly explain it.  The person that died was a friend of Wally's uncle.  The person that calls Wally is the son of the friend of Wally's uncle so Wally Flash's it up to help out the son of a friend of his uncle.  He runs around a bit, he meets with the Justice League (a scene introduced by the completely out of place but funny "Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice" from the Super Friends cartoon), there's some talk about how super powers don't elevate you above normal man, Wally doubts himself, he goes to Barry's grave and seeing thugs about to kill the son of his uncles friend.  The plot is pretty paper thin and I don't think it holds up any scrutiny or analysis.  There's also a cameo by Lex Luthor but it doesn't amount to much.

  Okay, so the plot is barely there, but the acting is actually pretty... hit or miss as well.  Wally is played pretty well by Jason Damian, I don't know if this was shot sequentially or what but he goes from a little stiff in the opening scene to actually pretty good by the end of the 5 minutes of the film and his voice over is pretty competently done as well.  There a brief cameo by John Stewart Green Lantern played by John A Clark and he is by far the best actor in the group.  He looks good in the costume and delivers his lines really well.  He's in it for MAYBE 8 seconds but he's a highlight.  The other highlight are the 2 thugs who provide some comic relief.  I think one of them was told to act like he was in a 1920's gangster movie or possibly like Joe Pesci, either way it's hilarious.

  I had fun with this.  It's not going to win best independent film or anything but it's a fun 6 minutes with a gag reel tacked on to the end of it which I found pretty funny.  They portray super speed the best possible way they can considering the, what I assume is a, shoe string budget.  The Flash costume looks a little weird but the other costumes are pretty good, also considering the zero budget.  It's shot in an entirely non distracting or detracting way, that's pretty much the highest praise I can give it.  The camera is there, it's pointed at things, those things are in focus and in the frame and you know what, I'll take that.  The acting is what you'd expect from a pool of either amateur actors or friends of the director.  I'd say it's worth a look as there's certainly worse.  A lot worse. Like next weeks entry, which I also found on page 5.

bigfanboy.com interview with John Wesley Shipp

I've been watching the old Flash TV series from way back in '90.  I only remember watching the 2 tapes they had at my local video store.  They were the 90 minute pilot and the episode (episodes?) with Mark Hamill as the Trickster.  That was it, I was not aware of this show when it was on TV.  But it's pretty awesome and a big part of the is John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen/The Flash.  Maybe at some point I'll put up a full review.  I was thinking of trying to track this guy down and trying to get an interview to talk about his awesome turn as The Flash.  I instead found this great interview at bigfanboy.  Mark Walters, the interviewer, does a great job and pretty much makes any subsequent interview pointless.  The whole interview is here ,  I'm including a portion of it here.  This sample covers how John Wesley Shipp got involved with the project, his thoughts on the character, the costume and criticism of the show.  I suggest reading the whole thing though.  Check it out after the jump.