The Russia episodes was to finish arcs from Season 1 and 2 and the Helix stuff is to setup next season. You gain nothing by cutting that.
And even still, it was quality content
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The Flash S3 |OT| It was me, Barry.
- Thread starter ZeroX03
- Start date
And even still, it was quality content
it was one of the first few episodes after Wally got powers where they fought on the roof of a building or something -- and yeah it was inexorably dumb
one of the biggest flaws with the flash that i've been able to overlook until now are the inconsistencies. always been able to handwave here and there Barry slowing down to get punched in the face, not saving someone from a bullet (despite being faster than lightning), and not just taking out every standard villain by speeding up to them and removing their gun/face/whatever. they slow him down, de-power him, or stupify him to different levels every episode to suit the villain or plot of the week -- it's just an absolute inconsistent mess.
this season had all that but the main story was also just jumbled, sloppy, and made absolutely no sense despite having a workable premise (barry goes evil mode in the future, haunts his past self). i'm not even going to point out specifics because it at every turn, every where there was some dumb plot hole and stuff that just plain didn't make sense
you gotta suspend believability for these shows to begin with, but they asked way too much this time around -- have to suspend every ounce of rationality or logic to enjoy this season. and yeah a big part of that was an escalation of the tech mumbo jumbo as someone said, oMGGGG huge threat, last 5 minutes wait i came up with a super muzzler dimension fizzler ezzzz. also i get that time travel is messy to begin with, but it would have been nice if they sat down and came up with some basic principles of time travel for their universe and stuck to them rather than just making up everything on the fly, again, as it suits the episode/season. they need to maintain some consistency in these characters, in these themes, anywhere, but there is none. everything constantly changes to suit whatever they are presently writing or facing.
if i had to describe this season in 2 words it would be inconsistency and stupidity
Hey, remember when Flash ran full speed at Grodd and somehow Grodd still hit him?
the grodd episode(s) lol....
grodd: "barry i am good ape evil other king ape is one who wants to invade and kill humans, if u kill evil king ape, i rule apes and i make them stay in gorilla city i promise !!!"
barry: HERP DERP
grodd: "hahahhaa my master plan evil thanks for taking out other king ape actually was good ape ahahahha i invade humans now"
man like i know we always had some dumb moments and some barry inconsistency, but this season was on a whole nother level just relentlessly punching you with its stupidity
It was always bad and inconsistent with his powers it just had better writting and more fun stroylines to excuse it
Like remember when Barry didn't instantly beat Vandal had to ask Oliver for magic advice because he felt different and nothing that differentiate from a meta human and barry never met magic. Then continued to have problem with Vandal even got a knife in him when he's fast enough to save dozen people from a crashing train in a few seconds.
Though Savage had the powerful to turn powerful and capable people dumb as seen in legends
Though that wouldn't make them capable
Like remember when Barry didn't instantly beat Vandal had to ask Oliver for magic advice because he felt different and nothing that differentiate from a meta human and barry never met magic. Then continued to have problem with Vandal even got a knife in him when he's fast enough to save dozen people from a crashing train in a few seconds.
Though Savage had the powerful to turn powerful and capable people dumb as seen in legends
Though that wouldn't make them capable
I think Supergirl did something similar, but they at least explained it.
The Flash vs bees
lol fuck the bee bandit
lol fuck the bee bandit
BLOODED_hands
Member
Lol. So damn true.
Here's another one..... Remember when they erased his memories? When Amnesiac Barry regains his speed, Iris was FROZEN. Barry started off walking, she froze, and he went superspeed.
Now check this: when Savitar was about to kill Barry at the end, Iris somehow was there, shot and killed Savitar. So if we go by the above..... Both Barry's, in this case Savitar should not have been shot at all. Everything should have been frozen since Savitar ran towards Barry and we see his lightning shoot out. It also shouldn't have been possible since Savitar was bloodlusted by then and he had to be going all out.
That was a stupid ass scene and shouldn't have happened at all. Barry in the earlier seasons could feel when a bullet was about to hit him, grabbed it. He was shot nearly point blank during his adventure with Snart and his dad, and he caught that bullet. He caught all the bullets fired from a smg while the badguy was on a motorcycle. He stopped two agents from firing their smgs and grabbed one bullet fired from one of the smgs during the crossover.
Lol.
PerfectFlaw
Member
Hey GulAtiCa, can I talk to you for a minute?
Grizzlyjin
Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Yeah, I actually dug the thing they were doing in Supergirl. Can't remember exactly but I think the explanation was that CADMUS was giving criminals the super weapons. Wish they would've explored that more.
Sure? What's up?
Nabs
Member
Fuck and thank god for tha episode fuck that episode because of the forced drama that was created for the episode thank god for it because it was one of the better episodes.
Honestly it seems like sometimes writers don't put enough work to justy or organic intergrate the fanserivce episodes or moments like the flashpoint episode which only exist because it's the one Flash storyline everybody knows and that was by name only
HoopzBarkley
Member
Its CW there will always be drama for the sake of it.
Riiiight. Okay, yes I vaguely remember that. Though only a couple scenes. God, so many forgettable villains this season... outside of whatshisface from Ant-Man and Dark Knight.
Even the Grodd stuff was a huge waste.
I mean the only reason to have that Russia storyline is to explain the Bratva tattoo and I suppose they found an excuse to include Talia. But Ollie was already dressing up as a green-clad archer before Waller recruited him, so even that training kinda didn't have much of a purpose. It doesn't change that I couldn't tell you a single moment of interest in that entire Russia storyline outside of that one episode with Ollie as Prometheus' prisoner.
And the same thing with Helix. "Felicity is in with a bad crowd." That's about all I could be asked to remember.
Ya know I think it would be interesting to see these CW comicbook shows take a page from Agents of SHIELD's playbook & go for "mini-arcs" within their seasons. SHIELD delivered it's best season yet this past year while delivering three seperate & defined story arcs that built off the last one.
So often, it can feel like these CW shows struggle to stretch one season-long plot over 20+ episodes, leading to filler or episodes that don't really advance the overarching story. SHIELD mostly sidestepped that issue this season by having story arcs that only took 6 to 7 episodes to get through while having story elements that naturally lead into the next arc.
So often, it can feel like these CW shows struggle to stretch one season-long plot over 20+ episodes, leading to filler or episodes that don't really advance the overarching story. SHIELD mostly sidestepped that issue this season by having story arcs that only took 6 to 7 episodes to get through while having story elements that naturally lead into the next arc.
StopMakingSense
Member
For AoS there a recommended drop in point, or do I need to slog through from the very beginning?
edit: this is the Flash thread whoops.
edit: this is the Flash thread whoops.
RedAssedApe
Banned
Keiynan Lonsdale Talks About The CW Series, "The Flash"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdrDfkCBzQQ
Interesting hair choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdrDfkCBzQQ
Interesting hair choice.
That's what I'd hope for. Have their long-game in mind, but they desperately need better pacing.
As badly handled as it was, in S3 of Arrow when Ollie was gone for an episode, a 3-parter just about Arsenal and Black Canary having to fight Brick was a cool idea. Same thing early this season against... uhhh... whatshisface from Walking Dead. Otherwise you're just forced to have these stretches of your big bad doing nothing, with the plot having no forward momentum.
Flashpoint should've been the first half of this season, and allowed it to go extra crazy, with the Alchemy/Savitar stuff taking up the back-half. A Grodd invasion should've been a way more impressive storyline.
Atleast then, they wouldn't have had to drag out Savitar's identity several episodes past when it was already super obvious.
I feel that min-arcs are the best way to do comicbook shows. Along with SHIELD, Gotham has been using mini-arcs since season 2 and it has worked out well for them.
Follow Keiynan on Insta, dude's cool as hell. Chill and shit.
Does this dude really have a key on his ear?
Yep it's his earring
Both Zoom and Saitar had this problem to some extent, While RF is is training Barry and bulding him in order to use his speed, while Zoom also had this there were also moments where he fucks off doing gods knows without a throwaway line of what he does day to day.
Savitar is even egregious because of the dumb Iris story line and them making the date important even if it shouldn't matter since the death is important not the date it required him to do nothing for stretches of time then they sacrificed everything interesting for the sake of a dumb twist.
This place got really negative fast, like one 'bad' season (not for me at least) isn't the end of it all. Arrows worse seasons (which I didn't think were bad) didn't doom the show forever.
I think morningbus was spot on, with what he said. A lot of interesting ideas that weren't executed as one would have liked.
I think morningbus was spot on, with what he said. A lot of interesting ideas that weren't executed as one would have liked.
Septimus Prime
Member
It's good because even if an arc sucks, it doesn't blow the entire season.
To be fair, though, Arrow S3 and Flash S3 both (as well as Supernatural S6-9 or so) tried to do two arcsa short-ish one until the winter finale and a longer one upon returnper season, and that kind of structure just doesn't seem to be good.
RedAssedApe
Banned
one way to not lose your keys XD
really weirds me out when i find out actor's real speaking voices
I dunno why they can't be more creative in general. Like Savitar for instance, imagine actually getting an episode where we see from his perspective how he gets shunned by the team, instead of it just being exposition. At the very least do something like they did with Zoom, where we got to quickly see his origin story.
StopMakingSense
Member
The biggest problem was taking waaaay too long to reveal Savitar. All the while leaving gigantic clues that people figured out way before the reveal.
No one here is acting as if it is the end of it all, but S2 was a noticable step down from S1 even post Legends set up and S3 is an even bigger step down featuring charcters regressing or remaining stagnant, poor pacing, and a large chunk of time where nothing of substance occured. Arrow 3/4, two seasons that aren't that bad to me anyways, had problems, but they were mostly around writing the characters, not the crux of the episodes themselves.
DeviantBoi
Member
Did not care for the season.
The Grodd episodes were garbage.
King Shark was wasted.
Boring in some parts. Some dumb choices by characters. Another speedster big bad.
Meh.
First season is still the best season.
The Grodd episodes were garbage.
King Shark was wasted.
Boring in some parts. Some dumb choices by characters. Another speedster big bad.
Meh.
First season is still the best season.
Haven't seen most of S4 but tbf for S3 of Arrow i don't remember the pacing being the problem wel besides imo taking a while for the Sara story but that could be a 22 eps thing the pacing was and felt packed and justified the length it's all the dumb drama and characters acting stupid and Merlin that ruined it. Not helped that Brick was better villain than Ras
SomedayTheFire
Member
Very telegraphed episode, best part of the whole season was locking Barry away. Much needed and should have been done a long time ago.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
That's a big part of what made it bad however.
Yea I don't recall hating on the pacing, it's just that the writing sucked that season. With Flash S3 it could've garnered a much more positive reception if it didn't take forever to reveal Savitar's identity. Also not making Flashpoint this one episode thing would've been dope too.
I remember season 2 having lots of positve reception here even some of the Legends episodes. It felt like people were pegging to much on Zoom post reveal, even when he still did some cool stuff afterwards, no matter how nonsensical the time remnants were. Like, I remember maybe two or three meh/"bad" episodes, which were Black Tar, Natural Athlecisism and maybe the Hunter Zolomon (which had a really good first half, but some very quostionable choices in the latter half).
I feel like I'm the only one who actually likes season 2 and found it to be almost on par with season 1. Season 3 doesn't hold a candle to them agree, but it wasn't really bad. It was mostly okay, with many questionable decisions of the characters, but it was still enjoyable for what it was.
Those questionable decisions really lowered the show though. Shit the worst character decision was in S1 with Caitlyn, a scientist, asking what a singularity is when Iris and Joe are in the room. Shit just dipped chqracter wise from there. Then Barry became stupider, Iris had less and less to do except that the light skinned boss of her's for two episodes, S2 was just alright.
While not worse than S3, S2 will always be the biggest disappointment, because we went from this to ending it with a lame race. Dude just pulled a "Kylo Ren" where as soon as he got unmasked, he became so lame. And yea, learning a villain's true identity typically takes away from the mystique, but Arrow this season shows how to handle that effectively. And let's not forget him randomly falling for Caitlin because of course he would.
Probably doesn't help that the main character literally hasn't been what he says he is since the second season.
The characters and their abilities are secondary to whatever the artificial tension demands. When a problem arises the characters are just nerfed until the writers decide when the the problem can be solved. Flash isn't a known quantity anymore. Is he the fastest man alive? I haven't seen evidence of it. Can Cisco vibe? That depends entirely on the situation the writers put him in. He is either so-so or can't do it at all.
Same thing happens with their motivations. They're molded to fit the arc and because of that, they have been becoming artificial. Kid Flash acting without thinking!? Well of course he does, the story demands the character be stupid and cliched.
From the introduction of Savitar to the finale nothing really mattered at all. All the characters were powerless to do anything because the arc demanded they be.
I mean clearly many are okay with this stuff, and that's cool, but after this and Legends I just can't deal with the stupidity anymore. I guess I prefer heroes that aren't completely worthless.
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Do you pronounce bag with a long "a"?
They hear it when I say "mom". I guess I turn the "o" into a sort of soft "a"?
But, they were building up his romance with Caitlin since the begining of the season, I wouldn't call it random.
Hunter's deal was that he was just insane. They still showed that he messing around. I don't see what was so lame with him... I think Teddy still did good job post-reveal, he sold me on him being a nutjob.
Like the one weird thing he did was punching a breach, which they never really explained and saying this is a complication.
Yea my bad, random's the wrong word to use, I just found it lame that it accidentally ended up being genuine, rather than it being a case where he pretended to like her. Having the big bad occasionally 2nd-guess what he was doing because of her just felt so dumb to me.
It's the opposite. Was a daughter before, now it's a son. And yes, it applies to Arrow.
It was reversed. They had a daughter and now it's a son. And yes, it did affect both shows.