"The Flash" - A Worthy Blind Buy? (1 Viewer)

[Bob Pierce]

Boy, am I bummed. I couldn't even start the pilot episode! In one of my PCs, the disc menu wouldn't even load (lots of clicking, no activity on screen), and in my laptop, I got the menu, but couldn't get past that to play an episode. Sigh! I was really looking forward to watching the pilot tonight.

Well, I haven't tried it on my two actual DVD players downstairs yet. Maybe one of them will work. I loved this series! This is so disappointing.

Back to Best Buy, I guess, where I have to explain about getting the Reward Zone price and using $25 in RZ certificates to buy this for $9.99. Can't wait....

For those of you that can play it...Enjoy!

Bob

 

[John*D]

EDITED...

I'm going to wait for the WB to let us know what they plan on doing before I go and purchase this set. I was already holding off on it for a price drop. Lucky me!

:star: Hopefully they will have a similar program as with the Thundercats issue, although I would hope they mail out the envelopes/disc quicker rather than waiting for a huge amount of call-ins to be filled.

 

[David Lambert]

The Smallville bonus disc did NOT have the pilot. Pilots were excluded from that bonus disc program for Warner's 50th celebration. The episodes were always the first weekly episode after the pilot. So this disc has the 2nd episode, "Out of Control".

 

[Gary Seven]

Well, I had problems with the second disc so far. I am going to watch them all then exchange just the defective discs at BB. So far number two and I'm on number four.

 

[Sam Favate]

I watched the pilot without any problems.

I barely remembered the pilot -- I haven't seen any of these since the original airdates. The pilot was full of so many cliches -- the punk-rock looking bad guys (who were they fighting? Def Leppard?), the noble brother who is sacrificed, the annoying girlfriend, the cool reggae sidekick, the beautiful laboratory scientist, and so on. Still it is a fun show and the music, atmosphere (while not what I would choose for The Flash) and costume all make it worthwhile.

 

[Mark Talmadge]

I had thought about picking up the set but it seems that the problems with the DVD sets for season one seem to be widespread. What happened withg Warner this time around on putting out such an inferior and error prone DVD set.

 

[todd s]

Crap! I just got my set today from Deep Discount DVD and it skipped at the end of the pilot episode around the 1:32 mark. Should I even bother with contacting DDD or wait until Warner addresses this? I can't believe they don't know about it or are looking into it.

 

[James@R]

Now that it's no longer on sale, my local Best Buy has this priced at $48.99. I don't expect them to sell very many that way.

 

[Vader]

I just finished the first disc, including having watched the pilot twice with no problems (Denon DVD-1600). I also spot-checked the pilot on my wife's Sony DVP-NS300, and my DVD-ROM drive. Neither exhibited any problems either (except some video instability on the DVD-ROM drive, but I think that is related to the fact that post-production was done on video). Is this an isolated problem with certain batches? Is there a pattern of certain player models?

 

[Mark Talmadge]

What do you mean it's no longer on sale at Best Buy? Best Buy has it on sale through the end of this week, until they close on Saturday. All you have to do is ask for a raincheck.

 

[Julio Diaz]

I will say this: while I like the design work and all of the comics art in the packaging, whoever made the decision on the box and disc art must have never watched the show. I can't believe there's not a single photo of series regular Alex Desert anwhere to be found! Not only is he in every episode of the show, he's a fairly well known actor thanks to roles in "Becker" and the movie "Swingers." I'm stopping just short of calling this racism, but it's certainly suspicious, especially when the disc art includes a one-off, unremarkable villain and Barry's girlfriend Iris (who disappeared by episode 2).

I'd have included Desert and possibly recurring characters like Megan Lockhart, Nightshade (another glaring omission that could be construed as racism), Lt. Garfield, Sabrina and Murphy & Bellows.

 

[James@R]

I didn't see any sale price, either in the store or the weekly circular. Didn't that lower price end last Saturday?

 

[Tory]

same here, should i contact ddd or is wb going to offer a replacement?

 

[todd s]

Tory, thats what I am debating.

 

[BrandonJF]

If I went out today and asked everyone I know if they know who Alex Desert is, I can guarantee not one of them would know. To be fair, they won't know who John Wesley Shipp is, either. Slight chance I'll find a hit on Amanda Pays. The only one everyone would know is the actor that played that "one-off, unremarkable villain".

The purpose of the box art is to sell DVDs. If Julio were played by Denzel Washington, I can guarantee you his face would be on that DVD. But, he was played by Alex Desert. His character is also not known to anyone familiar with Flash mythology (like Superman's Jimmy Olsen, Perry White...). I wouldn't have gone out of my way to include him either. Or any of those minor characters you also want on the box art.

I think it's kinda silly to even have the word "rasicm" in this thread. That's quite a jump when discussing box art for "The Flash".

 

[Julio Diaz]

Believe me, Brandon, I'm not one to jump to that, and as I said, I'm stopping short of saying that here.

And I'm also not talking about the slipcase outside of the box. OK, yeah, you want lots of shots of Shipp in the costume there, that's just good marketing, and likewise, the small shot of Mark Hammil as the Trickster makes sense despite his only appearing in two episodes.

What I'm referring to is the inside art on the digipak and discs (and, now that I consider it, on the on-screen menus, too). The show had three "in the credits" regular actors. How does it look when the only one who's not represented in the art is African-American, and moreover, a bunch of one-off, unimportant characters are represented? I mean, the guy who controlled Flash like a puppet in one episode gets onto disc art over a regular? And it's not even like it's someone who was a big star -- I totally get putting Hammil and David Cassidy as the Mirror Master in there, as people know them. And had they put, say, Angela Bassett, Denise Crosby, Jeri Ryan, Jonathan Brandis or any other guest-star who eventually became better known on the box art, I'd have understood that, too. But one- or two-off relative unknowns are featured over someone who was A) a regular on the show, and B) who could reasonably be considered to be better known than Paula Marshall (Iris in two episodes) or possibly even John Wesley Shipp himself.

I'm not saying it's racism, I'm just saying it's poor decision making that could be interpreted as racism, even though I don't believe that's what's at work.

 

[David Lambert]

When I got my own copy of The Flash, I noticed myself that Desert was missing on the packaging and discs, and so the next time I spoke to those in-the-know, I brought that up. They told me that there were no shots of Desert in the unit photography, so the package designer had none to use when he put it together.

Simple as that, no other ulterior motives involved. Occam's Razor, guys, Occam's Razor.

 

[Julio Diaz]

Cool, very good to know. I'm in journalism myself, so I understand these things can happen and that's why I wasn't calling it racism, just saying it could be perceived as such. Believe me, at the paper I work at, we've had meetings with the NAACP over less.

Thanks for the inside info, Dave.

 

[todd s]

Just bumping to see if Warner is going to fix the issue??

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Watched the Pilot tonight and Mine cuts out at the 93 min mark and I'm unable to continue. Tried the disk on two Sony Players and both did the same.