The Flash

[HaemishM]

HOLY SHIT.

MUST SEE TV

Motherfucking this.

EDIT: Also, about the "we can use time travel to change shit" thing - I don't think it's going to be a problem. Barry wasn't trying to go back in time, and I'm sure they can come up with an explanation for why he can't/doesn't all the time. Probably something to do with getting stranded like Reverse Flash. Also it allows them to


Which is something I really hope they do change because I did not want that to happen.

[Tebonas]

Holy shit, even if they undo everything, they can't undo what we now know, plus even if not lasting,

[Khaldun]

I would have wanted


at the beginning of the show. But he's kind of grown on me, and the way the actor played that scene was brilliant.

[NowhereMan]

That scene was awesome and the dialogue for it was just perfect too.

Also on time travel, my guess is they'll introduce it as something that can't really be controlled and so is simply too unpredictable to use for any situation that isn't absolute, last chance, Hail Mary move. I'm fine with Barry not wanting to accidentally end up trapped 100 years in the past. Also

[Lakov_Sanite]

Well in a recent commercial you hear "wells" say "the past has a way of righting itself" which likely means if it doesn't happen one way, it'll happen another.  Which I'm not sure I like in the whole "timeline fixes itself" way but it does solve a lot of problems with time travel.

[Tannhauser]

That was a very good episode.  Hey, who knew that kid who plays Cisco can act?  Such a great scene.  I'm still annoyed at Flash's power creep.  If he can out run a lightning bolt, in both speed and reflexes, then any non-speedster should be a trivial  foe.

Nerd gripe aside, great episode well written and acted. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

That was a very good episode.  Hey, who knew that kid who plays Cisco can act?  Such a great scene.  I'm still annoyed at Flash's power creep.  If he can out run a lightning bolt, in both speed and reflexes, then any non-speedster should be a trivial  foe.

Nerd gripe aside, great episode well written and acted. 

Well he IS the flash but for right now I give a lot of leeway to things like that depending on how they are presented.  In the lightning bolt case he was literally saving the life of his father figure, pulling your full power out for a situation like that is fine.  Barry can be very uneven right now and it'll make sense because he's still new, he CAN tap into it but not on any sort of regular basis.  If it's still uneven a few seasons from now I'd have a lot harder time with it but right now I'm fine with occasional bursts of greatness in between derps.

[HaemishM]

As has probably been said before, if you can move at super-speed, there really shouldn't be anything that gives you much trouble. Just take it as "comic book physics" which means "character can only do what gives the story some amount of conflict" and leave it at that. This can be stretched to utter stupidity however - "continuity wall-punching" being a great example.

[satael]

As has probably been said before, if you can move at super-speed, there really shouldn't be anything that gives you much trouble. Just take it as "comic book physics" which means "character can only do what gives the story some amount of conflict" and leave it at that. This can be stretched to utter stupidity however - "continuity wall-punching" being a great example.

I think that the fact that Flash can think in super-speed (like read a 100+ page document in a second and actually understand what he read...more or less) makes him even more overpowered than just moving at great speed though that isn't really covered by the show so far.

[Ironwood]

See, this is what bothers me about Quicksilver and Flash and the like.

You're just running, right ?  You're moving the same speed you normally would, it's just super to the perspective of everyone else.  Isn't it boring ?

I mean, imagine walking New York City (or even running it).  The whole city.  Now imagine that you can do it in a second and half from the point of view of everyone else.

To YOU, you're taking a journey that would take days, right ?  I mean, to have the reactions to deal with it, it has to be in some sense slower for YOU, so it must be boring ?

No ?

[Tannhauser]

I guess I'm thinking of Northstar.  He's a Marvel hero that's super fast BUT he only has normal human reactions.  Which means he can't dodge a bullet but he might be able to outrun one already fired.  At least this is the old John Byrne version.

[Khaldun]

If someone was willing to deal with some of the implied powers in creative ways, you could get some great scenes/ideas. That was done with the Wally West Flash, for example, when he took over for Barry after Crisis on Infinite Earths. First they depowered him some--for a long while he could only run at the speed of sound or so--but they also made it so that he had to eat huge amounts (like a runner does) in order to be able to run. That added some interesting limits and it also made for some funny scenes. Over time, they dropped that.

One complication that I could see being interesting in plotting terms would be if thinking fast for Barry was mostly something he did with his unconscious or autonomic systems, not his conscious or rational mind. In general when we walk or run, we don't have to think about the actual specific biomechanics of moving, and our sight is doing a lot of unconscious work that directs how we move our bodies--only occasionally do you think, "I need to go over there, not there". Even in something like a fight, most of what's going on is not conscious--you may be thinking consciously that you want to hit the guy's face, but your body is doing a lot of subconscious calculations, reactions, etc. 

So maybe you could set a super-speedster up so that he can't really process consciously what he's seeing/doing as superspeed nearly so fast. So maybe in a millisecond he runs twenty city blocks, but it's about ten seconds before he realizes that he saw someone being mugged halfway through that run. Maybe he can read a book in a nanosecond but it's three or four minutes before his mind really understands most of what he read. Etc. You could do some interesting things in terms of storytelling and choreographing action if you established this as an idea. It might also be a way to explain why it's actually sort of hard for him to do something like "grab the cold gun from Captain Cold".

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, that's a pretty good point I haven't considered.  The lightning bolt triggered the fight or flight mode.  OK I can buy that.  I take this shit way too seriously I guess.

Moving on

[NowhereMan]

On that:

[Fordel]

See, this is what bothers me about Quicksilver and Flash and the like.

You're just running, right ?  You're moving the same speed you normally would, it's just super to the perspective of everyone else.  Isn't it boring ?

I mean, imagine walking New York City (or even running it).  The whole city.  Now imagine that you can do it in a second and half from the point of view of everyone else.

To YOU, you're taking a journey that would take days, right ?  I mean, to have the reactions to deal with it, it has to be in some sense slower for YOU, so it must be boring ?

No ?

That's actually something they touch upon in the Young Avengers comic with their speedster. Where he was complaining about a load of work he was doing, saying that while to everyone else it looks like he just did a weeks worth of labor in a few seconds, to him it was still a fucking weeks worth of labor so everyone can kindly fuck off with having him do everything that way. 

[Ironwood]

That was an interesting episode but it had two real WTF moments.



Also, bonus points for extremely clingy dress that Iris was wearing.  Holy Fuck.  Also, those boots did NOT look comfy curled up under her on the sofa.  Holy Fuck.

[HaemishM]

I thought it was an adequate "reset" but left a lot of room for the inevitable status quo shake up that will be going on in the season finale. I actually really liked the explanation they gave for the resolution with Capt. Cold.

[Ironwood]

Mate, you're getting ahead of me.  I ain't there yet, as yer wife says.

[Khaldun]

The thing with Captain Cold was genuinely smart (snart?)--it sets up the "semi-friendly" relationship the Flash has with his Rogues in the comics, which has always been one of the more interesting things about the character--his enemies are obsessed with beating him and pulling off heists, but they're not like Batman's enemies, they have rules that they follow and there's some things they won't do.

[taolurker]

Ahem.. spoilers peoples. In the UK they are exactly one week behind what we see.

So Ironwood just saw the  <from 1 week ago.

[kaid]

The thing with Captain Cold was genuinely smart (snart?)--it sets up the "semi-friendly" relationship the Flash has with his Rogues in the comics, which has always been one of the more interesting things about the character--his enemies are obsessed with beating him and pulling off heists, but they're not like Batman's enemies, they have rules that they follow and there's some things they won't do.

It does make for an interesting dynamic. Basically they know if they ever pushed barry over the line there is really nothing they could do to stop him and nowhere they could go or hide for long so they work the game within the set rules knowing that if they ever pushed past the line its game over and ends with them almost instantly being locked in a hole for the rest of their lives.

[Khaldun]

It's also generally consistent with the way that TV and movies since the Burton "Batman" films have largely dispensed with the idea that the secret identity should be a major, ongoing plot driver in stories about superheroes. Both Burton movies let the love interest and enemy in on the identity by the end of the film (and incidentally also kill the main antagonist, thus dealing with the problem of how this would complicate the hero's life going forward).

Arrow has just pretty much dispensed with the identity thing, both by revealing it to almost character and by taking Oliver out of the limelight anyway.

Flash is in the process of dispensing with it.

Man of Steel let Lois Lane in on the secret ID from the beginning--she actually helps Clark get his job at the Planet.

The Nolanverse Batman movies were somewhat interested in the ID as a plot device but not too much.

Marvel Cinematic Universe is 100% uninterested in the secret ID as a plot device.

etc.

I think that's a sign of maturation in the genre--there was something unbearably adolescent about the idea that you could relate to a person day-in and day-out and not know that they had a big, weird secret. It played to the feeling that every teenager has that NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME I HAVE A LIFE YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT etc. etc.    With grownups, when they have secret lives, those are just about 90% of the time nasty secrets, and when people find out about those secrets, it tends to break their relationships for good. Those are usually stories of pain and betrayal and suffering. So it's kind of hard to take stories that center on "If only she knew that I was secretly Stupendous Man! But I can't tell her, because my enemies will find out" and "Uh, I had to go to the bathroom because my stomach was upset, like so upset that I was in the bathroom for the last 45 minutes while Stupendous Man battled Doctor Evil. Glad you're all ok!"--they soft-pedal how painful that kind of life is if you can really keep it up, and they require regular functioning adults that we're supposed to see as real people to be abysmally stupid and/or trusting.

[HaemishM]

Sorry, Ironwood... didn't realize you guys were a week behind us. When you said reset, I thought you'd seen the results of that reset. I also didn't give too much away, though.

[Ironwood]

I wouldn't worry about it.  The scripts on this show are not radical departures from every form of literature.

 

[HaemishM]

Oh yes, you can pretty much see most of the resolutions coming a mile away - though not necessarily the Capt. Cold one.

[Ironwood]

You just can't help yourself, eh ?

 

[HaemishM]

Did you think there wouldn't be a resolution?

[Ironwood]

Caught up now.  That was all kinds of lame.

[HaemishM]

Any particular part?

[jgsugden]

Before applauding the MCU for ignoring the secret identity concept - it is going to be a big part of Daredevil and Spider-man.  It was pretty much ignored at the beginning because the characters they selected to go with pretty much had no secret identities in the comics.  The only one that sometimes did threw it out on a whim from the director at the end of the first movie.

[Khaldun]

But it's not just the MCU. Again, since Burton's Batman, almost no cinematic or televisual adaptations of comic-books are as invested as the comic-books are. Which has had a recursive effect on the comics, too--even the most secretive characters (Batman, Spider-Man) now have vastly expanded supporting casts who are in on the secret, and a sizeable number of enemies who are too.

Daredevil is an interesting case since he is completely unsecret in the comics now, but also there's a special kind of fun in his secret ID--nobody believes the blind guy is a superhero even if there's evidence that he is.

Spider-Man maybe has the longest history of secret ID-related plots of any superhero, so it's not a big surprise if they go there. But notice that even the Raimi Spider-Man let his enemies in on the ID in the last act, let Mary Jane in on it quickly, and implied very heavily that Aunt May knows it too. It's really kind of necessary if we're to believe that a superhero's closest friends and loved ones aren't complete idiots or painfully child-like.

[Ironwood]

Any particular part?

The Reboot just plain took an exciting day and turned it into a big ole pile of meh.  Captain Cold was ridiculous.  The Gun thing was ridiculous.  The sister outta nowhere was ridiculous.  The Jealousy Brother outta nowhere was ridiculous.  Flash thinking he had a shot with Ms Boots was ridiculous.  Cisco believing that any woman would come up to him like that and NOT be an evil person interested in The Flash was ridiculous.  The Explanation that Barry suffers from Lightning trauma was ridiculous and them swallowing it was equally ridiculous.

The only bit that I actually liked was the inverse of the basement scene with Cisco and the fact that Cold and Flash didn't really give a shit about Barry Allen.

But to build it up like that only to fart in our faces was all kinds of stupid.

[Khaldun]

The newest was a good episode on several levels. Mark Hamill was  .

But if you can slow down your TV for the "This Season on Flash" trailer-thing at the end, do so. There is a lot of crazy shit embedded in it.

[cironian]

Mark Hamill was  .

Don't you mean ?

[Tannhauser]

I really enjoyed the Trickster episode.  Good story and nice little easter eggs thrown around.  I finally figured out why I don't like Grant Gustiin; it's his speech.  He sounds like he's always talking with his mouth full.  But, yeah, this show is DC superheroics done right.