Interesting developments with Lee and Ed, not sure what to make of Barbara, Tabitha, and Selena -- they seem a bit like they just haven't realized how confused they are -- but one disappointment kinda sticks out...
I've been somewhat fascinated Sophia's obviously complex and layered manipulations, wondering where she was going with it all, how honest she was being with Jim about her goals, etc. And now... Soooo, all that complex machinistic planning by Sophia, all of it depended on her ability to maneuver Jim into a state and position from which she could nudge him into simply (and very un-Jim-ly) rallying the GCPD like any other mob boss to go to war with Penguin? Whaaaaa.... Feels like a bit of a let-down after all that that storyline's gradual build.
Well, that, and... Did Sophia and the ladies really think that Oswald would really just hand over his empire like that, given that they held back nothing to hold over his head if he went back on any agreement? They've all been much smarter than that in the past... what happened here? Writer's Stroke?
And what's with the perennial stupidity of guards at Arkham? Is there some kind of intelligence-and-common-sense test on which one has to score sufficiently low to become an Arkham guard, or is that just where the GCPD assigns its dumbest and most expendable?
C'mon, o writers and directors of Gotham. You can plot so much better than this...
Although I liked the episode otherwise, that whole Internet Vault thing was absolute crap. The beginning of the team's discovery and explanation of the Evil Plan sounded sort of okay at first, sounding like it was heading toward some sort of widespread DNS hack (which could indeed have paralyzed much of how the Internet is used), but then... only three? in one single (and conveniently local) "vault"? for the entire Internet? C'mon writers, we all know that you're capable of much better than that.
Fun episode, otherwise, but given that it all depends on that crappy core...
Okay, well, we did get to see Oliver nicely running the Overwatch station; that was pretty cool. He certainly has the tactical abilities to run that sort of coordination, and throw in that quick "well, you've automated so much of the tech that anyone could do it" explanation and we're good, right? Well, a lot better than that those "Internet Vault" crap.
The momentary reference to the 1985 movie "Gotcha!" was a nice touch.
So, I mostly liked this finale (and season), but...
Some of this episode's personal-demons confrontations felt a bit blunt, although it's difficult to do this sort of thing without it feeling blunt. And this season's villain is all about surfacing your painful memories to the point of despair. So... okay.
More of an issue for me was how many transitions into and between those confrontations, seemingly at Andre's all-powerful whim, felt so arbitrary and discontinuous. Fleshing out the cause-and-effect connections of those power-flexes and transitions could have produced a much stronger result.
The whole time, I was thinking that one call to Gene and/or Sara expressing concern that the call warning Jimmy about the sting might have come from Josh (which Gene or Sara could then easily find out), and just sit back and let Josh experience the same arrest-and-trial and blind-jail-prisoner hell he was so determined to see Murphy get. Much easier, much more poetically appropriate.
But instead...
Not at all what we all wanted for Murphy or Felix, after everything they've been through, especially once someone finds Josh and fingerprints the big knife right nearby (or did she pick that up on her way out?).
Pretzel deserves better.
It was a nice goodbye.
A somewhat weak action/conflict episode, with multiple super-bads (some of whom individually once stymied the team for most of a season) defeated far more quickly and easily than they ever were or should have been.
But at least it included a fairly nice goodbye; better than some.
Edit: Turns out there're other reasons for at least some of this last season's choppy abbreviated feel: https://ew.com/tv/the-flash-showrunner-reveals-everything-cut-from-final-season/ :disappointed:
So far, I'm really liking pretty much all of the characters and the actors' renditions of those characters.
The story is... okay.
Huh. So far (catching up on this some months after it ended), I'm having very mixed reactions here, not unlike with some of the other CW DC shows...
I like the characters, the actors' portrayals, etc. Even the arguably stiffer characters, like Dee and Zumbado, kinda make sense and seem consistent about it. The high school kids are all distinct without being too iconicly stereotypical and make for an interesting mix and some fun interactions.
The high-level story-line, what we can see of it so far, looks interesting and promising (if a little overly steeped in the all-aliens-have-powers thing).
OTOH, the execution details, low-level story writing and direction, are sometimes frustrating to watch. A lot of clumsy or sloppy story bits, like:
Not that any one of these are necessarily fatal-to-the-story carelessnesses, but the way they pile up like this (like no one cares about fleshing them out well) pushes the believability of the story itself too much and is getting a little frustrating.
I hope that this aspect improves over the rest of the series, and wonder if it (along with all the interestingness going on with CW and Discovery) is part of why this show didn't get a second season.
Does anyone else think that something is distinctly wrong with Sylvester? (Beyond his ridiculously reckless destructive behavior; like something's wrong with him causing this behavior.) I have to wonder if, when he "came back" in his coffin (as he explained in episode 3x01), he came back a little incomplete. (He's reminding me just a little of Harold Meachum from Iron Fist.)
I'm finding it interesting that Courtney, Nebraska's Conclusion-Jumping Champion of Seasons 1 and 2, is now the one [finally] practicing extreme caution about suspecting or condemning any one in particular.
Mmmm. Errr. Gaak.
Honestly, I really liked the basic idea of the primary story here: Eobard's second-chance return (perhaps earned for that end in Legends) sans most of his memories leaving little more than the Speed Force source designs to drive him but unaware of its "negative" aspect, etc., etc., etc. This storyline alone could easily have fueled a good solid movie. And that's my problem: it should have been a movie, or at least 2-3 episodes, to give it enough room to flesh out and breathe. Jamming it all into one episode this like required simplifying and shortcutting too much of it, leaving it feeling choppy and... well... shortcutted.
A good idea quickly rushed together half-baked yields an okayish result that could have been so much better.
Warning: Minor naming gripe.
Hell Storm? Really? I could see that as something flip that Frost might say, or maybe if Constantine was involved, but... uhhh...
Given the trail so far, from Firestorm to Deathstorm to... Icestorm?
This was another one of those episodes in which I did really like the high-level storyline, but was frustrated by the excessively sloppy/clumsy execution of so many of its pieces. (I get the feeling that Khwalah's probably right about it being at least partially a direction problem.) In any case... sigh. This could have been really good.
High-level story progression: 8/10.
Detailed execution: 5/10.
And why does Deathstorm (in his reveal-pose at the end) look a bit like a big flaming Dammit Doll? Hopefully, that'll improve, too.
That they can each mold their lightning power into the creation of a big lightning-sword? Okay, weird, but kinda cool.
That that somehow suddenly makes them all swordsmanship experts? WTF? No.
This episode was the usual-of-late The Flash mix of fairly well-executed moments and really poorly-executed moments, but that one... what the... I just... Sigh.
So, lots o' fun stuff and a few bits of nefarious Lex-plot advancement, but a few serious gripes as well:
Why do the heroes always have to pause their frantically imperative rush to solve the crisis to have a deep heartfelt personal-life discussion? It was a good discussion, but... uh... there's a deadly battle going on upstairs and a wild timebomb ticking in those servers, guys; can we have this talk later?
Just about every DEO-agents-vs-hijacked-tech fight scene was utterly ridiculous. Super-advanced and deadly tech that apparently couldn't hit the side of a Sandcrawler, mad energy-bolt crossfire-chaos that somehow never manages to hit anything... C'mon, writers. I know you can formulate a scene where the super-tech poses a realistic deadly tech and is realistically and heroically fought off. Why the crazy-sloppy theatrics?
Sigh.
Hologram of Zari Tomaz: Help me, Nathan Heywood. You're my only hope. [vanishes]
Nathan Heywood: Wait a minute. Where'd she go? Bring her back! Play back the entire message!
Gideon: What message?
Ray Palmer: That was so COOL!
Okay, I think I get what they were doing, sort of following and wrapping up on the Legends worldwide exposure at Heyworld. And, it's Legends, so there's gonna be some wacky to it. But... uh... That was pushing even the Legends' capacity for making timey-wimey wacky work.
I do like how their movie-panel at the end called out everything that was wacky about this adventure (cough), although the effectiveness with which they seemed to achieve their nothing-to-see-here back-to-normal-ness was a bit... simple.
IAC, some good stuff sprinkled about. Meeting Behrad. A bit of Sara's Crisis after-effects. A hint of the soul-chit madness to come. Not really enough (IMO) to make this episode's wackiness factor flow together as well as it sometimes does with the Legends, but... Hoping that the season to come finds the feet that this episode seems to have stumbled off of.
Fun, and good to see the gang back, but...
Did it feel like a rather lot was resolved awfully quickly and simply? Almost feels like the writers changed their minds about where they wanted to go between the end of season two and the beginning of season three, and so [a little too] quickly wiped things clean so as to redirect. Maybe not, maybe it's just plain old sloppy writing. Either way, hope the season's plot improves from there...
Again, some good stuff and some seriously lazy-writing bits.
Such as: That's not how CEO transitions work at all; like an "acting CEO" (which made no sense here to begin with) would have the authority to sign her job over to someone else without the approval of the company's board (which was threatening to fire her a few episodes ago) like that. But if it makes a story advancement easier for lazy writers...
I like seeing occasional episodes that focus on various other characters, but this...
This felt like the writers took a genuinely interesting story-concept idea and tossed together some quick and sloppy story around it. There were some good bits in there, but most of it was... disappointing.
I was actually encouraged by the first four episodes of this season; still not as good as Superman & Lois, but certainly easily better than much of The Flash's recent seasons. Then... sigh.
While it was nice seeing everyone return to help save the day, it would have been so much nicer if those appearances had been given real substance and felt less like shallow tokens.
I don't know. I'm kind of all over the place on this one.
7 (good) bits: End scene with Cindy and Bobbie and Eclipso, maybe the bits with Richard and Pat, and maybe Rick's DoorDashing.
6 (fair) bits: Most parts with Jenny.
5 (meh) bits: Most parts with Courtney.
4 (poor) bits: Huge green flares (and a new crater) in the park in the middle of town and no one notices.
YMMV.
Freaky flashbacks to the Golgothan (a. k. a., The Excremental), if a little less visually gross.
The bathroom "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I was just here taking a sh*t" moment was weirdly pretty damn funny.
Pretty much the rest of it was a whole lotta WTF?
There were some good moments in this one. Joe's what-are-you-really-worried-about speech to Barry. Some of Frost's succinctly Frost moments. The possibilities in that weird end-teaser moment (Deathstorm?). Even Tinya's brief reunion.
But so much of the rest was a mess. The pseudoscience-babble has gone off the rails. Did the writers bother to look up what cold fusion actually is? There's nothing cold about it. It's nuclear fusion (the stuff that happens inside a star) sustainable at something approaching room temperature (i.e., not requiring insanely high temperatures to sustain, only "cold" in comparison to where fusion usually occurs). And latent genes are just genes until something activates them; they won't generate power signatures while they're still latent. Maybe we're saying that we've deliberately activated Carla's frosty genes (will she personality-split, too?) and she's a meta now, but... they can do that? Why haven't people been doing that before?
I know it's a comic-book show, and stretching reality is part of the game, but when the writers stretch it so far that we can see the tears and gaps in what's left, it ain't working any more.
Sigh. This show can do better. We're seen it do better. But its frequent erratic swings between really good stuff and really sloppy WTFs has been giving me whiplash for a while now...
I know I've said before that this show can be at its best when it goes all-in timey-wimey wacko, but this wasn't it. This was far more farcical than anything else—from candied Fidel to pointless football—and so much of it just made no sense whatsoever, including Eva handing the Waverider and mission over solely to Mick (while the rest of the crew will now do... what?). There were some fun and funny moments, but not enough of them to make up for the Bay of Farce that was the rest.
The whole Emiko Queen storyline direction is interesting, if perhaps feeling a bit recycled—albeit fairly consistent with the comics origin of that name, so... okay.
That new direction's execution (acting, direction, scene blocking) in this episode—especially around Emiko herself—however, was consistently terrible, as though the directors/producers just didn't care about the experience this time around.
Sigh. And hope...
I was starting to get a little encouraged by slow improvement over the last few episodes. The few two episodes of this season were far too rough, chopped together, sloppy. The last two were actually pretty decent, IMO. But this one was far too rough, chopped together, sloppy... Sigh.
Too much of Season Three so far is looking like a caricature of the first two seasons.
I heard that NBC has ordered a Season Four of Blindspot. Does that mean that Season Three does get significantly better somewhere along the way, or have NBC (who has never really been shy about canceling even good shows) dropped its expectations a bit much?
Overall, the core of this was typical Stitchers fun. The whole murder-for-barter ring isn't terribly original, but it works, and falls apart pretty quickly when the NSA can stitch into the victims. Maybe a little too quickly, but...
But if I may nitpick for a moment:
* Tor is an anonymizer used by lots of people who like their internet privacy; nothing inherently evil about it. But automatically assuming that use of a Tor browser means dark web and evil intentions? Ooookay.
* The "dark web" consists of websites that support Tor-like encryption and anonymization to further support people who like their internet privacy. Some of those sites do support illegal and worse activities, but many of them do not -- news site ProPublica, for example. So Tor means Dark Web means evil? Sigh.
* Suddenly Detective Fisher is all ninja assassin? Where'd that come from?
* Drawing out that pointless pizza-guy suspense? And not even well, like a few-seconds of undisguised yeah-we're-just-messing-with-you. Really?
* Someone must have been pretty unstable to begin with to go all if-I-can't-have-All-In-any-more-instead-of-just-starting-over-with-a-new-site-I'll-just-go-end-it-all-Kamikaze-on-Maggie.
Stitchers overall is a cool idea and a mostly-fun show with mostly-entertaining characters, but I feel the story-writing has grown increasingly careless, glossing over development and details like pesky annoyances, as though the writers/producers don't really care enough to spend the time to build something as well as I'm sure they could if they tried. Scorpion has suffered terribly from that sort of affliction, and the newer MacGyver to some extent, as well. TV series can only survive so long under such carelessness...
So much of this episode (including that panoramic battle sequence) had so much potential to build and be the climactic sendoff of the series. However, so much careless lazy clumsiness in the design of its details wasted so much of that potential that the result... Sigh.
I think the only part that I actually liked was Esme grabbing the All Stone and throwing it down to break it in three. Besides that Esme may have been the best acted in this episode (and the moments featuring her generally being the better ones), that one move reflected some of how I felt about most of the episode as a whole.
