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The Flash - season 1 (1 Viewer)

Sean Bryan

Sean Bryan
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Yeah, they need to work on the "power logic" and be consistent. That kind of stuff takes you out of an otherwise enjoyable experience. I chalked it up to his performance anxiety.
 

Hanson

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I'm starting to notice a pattern where the better comic book shows like Gotham and SHIELD (neither of which are great) don't have super-powered leads whereas the dumb shows like Smallville and now The Flash have super-powers but are so wrapped up in moving from plot point to plot point they fail to grasp that they're not even utilizing the powers correctly. It's like that scene in Raiders where a gun toting Indy is confronted with a giant swordsman -- The Flash is trying to take him on with his bullwhip instead of shooting him. Even before the ludicrous scene where he's being attacked by "five" assailants, the same villians show up with guns. Okay, use your super speed to collect their guns before they can even blink. Or even knock them out at super speed to allow the authorities to arrest them. Instead, Barry just follows their instructions. Okay, maybe he doesn't want to use his powers in public. But then they fire their guns and he uses his powers in public anyway. So why didn't he disarm or incapacitate the intruders in the first place?

If they keep doing this (which I suspect they will) I cannot watch this show. I was afraid it would end up this way, and they have done nothing to stop it. Ultimately, this is another stupid comic book show aimed at children. Stupid children.
 

DaveF

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I enjoyed the second episode. The show has a good balance of optimism, do-gooder heroics, super powers, and a dash of long-arc mythology. The one element I particularly could do without is Iris, the daughter and unrequited love interest. It's a cliche I'd be happy to skip on this series. And her journalistic pursuit of the "red streak" is too much a clone of Lois Lane's journalistic chase after the "red-blue blur" on Smallville.
 

RobertR

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The Flash doesn't seem anywhere near as fast in his show as he should be. At one point he boasts that he can run a mile in 3 seconds. That works out to 1200 miles per hour. Sorry, that's not Flash speed. He should be able to make 1200 miles per second seem like standing still.
 

DaveF

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In the show they've commented on him running between 350 mph to 767mph ( faster than the speed of sound)
RobertR said:
The Flash doesn't seem anywhere near as fast in his show as he should be. At one point he boasts that he can run a mile in 3 seconds. That works out to 1200 miles per hour. Sorry, that's not Flash speed. He should be able to make 1200 miles per second seem like standing still.
The Flash can run at the speed of light? (1200 miles/sec ~= 2e6 m/s, about 0.64% the speed of light (300e6m/s). To make 1200 miles/sec look "standing still" he's doing some appreciable percentage of the speed of light.) I don't know anything about the Flash, besides Smallville and this new show. So I don't know what his superpower capability is supposed to be.

In any case, I assume he will get faster as the show progresses. And then he will be arbitrarily as fast as the plot requires :)


My other question about the Flash: is he also supposed to be the smartest man alive? It's one thing to move in straight lines really fast. But he can think at that speed. And it's not mere reflex. They showed him have a hyper-speed conversation with Iris. He is making decisions as he runs about. That all implies he's thinking orders of magnitudes faster than any normal person.
 

RobertR

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DaveF said:
In the show they've commented on him running between 350 mph to 767mph ( faster than the speed of sound)

The Flash can run at the speed of light? (1200 miles/sec ~= 2e6 m/s, about 0.64% the speed of light (300e6m/s). To make 1200 miles/sec look "standing still" he's doing some appreciable percentage of the speed of light.) I don't know anything about the Flash, besides Smallville and this new show. So I don't know what his superpower capability is supposed to be.

In any case, I assume he will get faster as the show progresses. And then he will be arbitrarily as fast as the plot requires :)
767 mph is pokey in Flash terms. Yes, he can run much faster than the speed of light. In his more ludicrous comic book incarnation, he's said to be able to outrun Death, and move his arm fast enough that it becomes a black hole.
 

Hanson

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Bullets from a handgun travel over 800 mph. The way he can run with the bullets standing still indicate he runs much, much faster than that. I don't think the writers know how to use Google.
 

Sean Bryan

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Being a speedster is cool, yet proposes dramatic problems. In terms of writing, how do you put your protagonist in danger and give them challenges when they can almost stop time because they move so fast? I'll say that I think writers certainly CAN do that, but it has to be difficult to write that without forcing arbitrary limitations and more often than not winds up with the "as fast or as slow as the writers need him be be" solution. Look at the portrayal of Quicksilver in Days of Future Past. A really, really awesome and fun portrayal of what a speedster can do. The only problem with having a character that fast is he's ridiculously too powerful. Why would they need anyone else? Note that in DoFP they sent him off after his showpiece so they wouldn't have to figure out how to use him further in other situations when the main protagonists need to be doing stuff. Whedon has a similar challenge in using Marvel Studio's version of the character in Age of Ultron next year. Making him fast yet much slower than in DoFP would certainly help dramatically. It's cool that they have the caloric intake limitation for Barry, but I suspect the nature of his ability will prove challenging for the writers to be comic accurate, consistent, and soundly dramatic on a weekly basis. I hope they pull it off because I'm enjoying it so far and would hate to keep being pulled out of it because of inconsistencies like dodging bullets and then getting knocked around by six guys.
 

NeilO

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I've enjoyed it so far. A lot of the criticisms above can be readily explained by his lack of experience.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Sean Bryan said:
Being a speedster is cool, yet proposes dramatic problems. In terms of writing, how do you put your protagonist in danger and give them challenges when they can almost stop time because they move so fast? I'll say that I think writers certainly CAN do that, but it has to be difficult to write that without forcing arbitrary limitations and more often than not winds up with the "as fast or as slow as the writers need him be be" solution.
I agree with this, and it's why I sometimes like the live action portrayals to be slightly depowered compared to their comic counterparts. My ideal TV Flash would be much faster than the fastest normal human alive, but not so fast that he can outrun anything. In circumstances where they need him to outrun anything -- ie. going faster than the speed of light to travel back in time -- there should be some special means by which it is achieved.

Because if the Flash is Hiro from "Heroes", then nothing has lasting consequences.
 

Matt Hough

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Another entertaining entry. And I read today that the series has been picked up for the full season, so congratulations for that!
 

ponset

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I LOVE the Villain of the week set-up. Hope it continues.
It recalls of the days of my youth reading FLASH and BATMAN comics.
Looking forward to CAPTAIN COLD and HEAT WAVE.
 

spshultz

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Ok, I have to ask but exactly who is Tom Cavanagh's character? Is he a good guy or a bad guy?
The secret door tech we keep seeing him use near the end of a couple of the episodes seems
much more advanced and futuristic for the time period he's in. It just seems strange to me.
 

Sean Bryan

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I don't know who he is. He seems to be from the future or at least has access to future knowledge (and maybe tech). Seems he knew the explosion would occur and actually went to his secret room to watch Barry become the Flash, like he took the opportunity to observe what was (from his perspective) a great historic event. Hard to say what his overall motivations might be at this point other than making sure the Flash is around long enough to do something in the future.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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The fun of casting the 1990s Flash as the 2014 Flash's father aside, John Wesley Shipp is doing really great work as Hank Allen on this.
spshultz said:
Ok, I have to ask but exactly who is Tom Cavanagh's character? Is he a good guy or a bad guy?The secret door tech we keep seeing him use near the end of a couple of the episodes seemsmuch more advanced and futuristic for the time period he's in. It just seems strange to me.
I don't think his comment about it feeling like he's waited centuries for the particle accelerator to be initiated was just a throwaway line.
Sean Bryan said:
Seems he knew the explosion would occur and actually went to his secret room to watch Barry become the Flash, like he took the opportunity to observe what was (from his perspective) a great historic event.
Or, more likely, he planned the explosion because he knew it would result in Barry becoming the Flash.
 

NeilO

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Adam Lenhardt said:
The fun of casting the 1990s Flash as the 2014 Flash's father aside, John Wesley Shipp is doing really great work as Hank Allen on this.I don't think his comment about it feeling like he's waited centuries for the particle accelerator to be initiated was just a throwaway line.Or, more likely, he planned the explosion because he knew it would result in Barry becoming the Flash.
Yes, great work with John Wesley Shipp.

The question is why he feels he needs to have such an active role in the birth and maintenance of the Flash. We've already seen him kill someone directly who he thought would adversely affect the maturing of the Flash. There are loads of possibilities from the comics that they might be working on, but I really don't know. It must tie in with the Crisis headline. Is he trying to prevent or ensure that?
 

Hanson

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This is the same exact crapola as Smallville. Instead of Meteor based Monster of the Week, it's Storm based Monster of the Week (which is like Misfits, but that actually went somewhere with the premise). The only difference is that they're naming them after characters from the DC mythos. Tonight's fart attack cloud is dubbed The Mist. Is this any difference? Nope. It's still a dumb monster of the week show.

Did anyone notice the Mist is as fast as The Flash? Which begs the question why Kyle Nimbus (*snicker*) didn't kill all of his enemies in an hour. He could have whipped around town in seconds and dispatched them all. When they first squared off, I was like, "just goddamned run around in super speed to defeat the cloud!". Then later it is revealed that the Mist is not only a giant fart cloud, he's a giant fart cloud with Flash level speed. Will all the villains in the future have Flash level speed to prevent one-sided fights? Will those villains realize the super villainy they can pull off with super speed instead of simple revenge schemes? Are the writers all 10 year olds or are they writing for 10 year olds?

What's more annoying, that Jesse Martin looks like he's about to burst out crying at any second or that Tom Cavanagh is about the burst out laughing at any second? And they might be the best actors on the show. Danielle Panabaker and Candice Patton are nice enough to look at, but neither are high level thespians (I've liked Panabaker in previous performances, but she's irritating on this show). "Eddie Thawne" is a block of wood. Grant Gustin comes off as a whiny lightweight. Gotham has tons of flaws, but that cast (even including Jada) destroys the Flash cast. And clearly, the writers aren't doing them any favors. Did they hire the entire Smallville writer's room? The dialog is painful to listen to.

The whole time traveling scientist thing could be the start of an interesting show mythos, but you know they're going to screw it up. It's going to end up being completely dumb, just like everything else in this show.

BTW, what is the logic in using the remains of the particle accelerator as a prison for meta-humans?
 

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