Arrow S03E06: Invasion Of The Pod People

For the first few episodes of its third season, Arrow has been somewhat inconsistent. After a season premiere in which a whole heck of a lot happened, the subsequent installments have had to try to deal with the implications of each twist and turn. Diggle’s daughter was born and he benched himself. Oliver and Felicity’s relationship took a romantic...that ultimately proved catastrophic as Oliver ended their relationship before it had a chance to start. Quentin Lance—whose first name Team Arrow genuinely seems to believe is “Detective”—was promoted to captain and now rides a desk. Laurel handled the legal side of vigilante justice. There was plenty of material in the first 40 minutes of the premiere to get the season off to a promising start.

Then, in the final two minutes, an off-screen entity drove three arrows into Sara’s abdomen, knocking her backwards off of a rooftop and rather conclusively killing her. Sara died at Laurel’s feet, and Arrow has been scrambling to strike a conceivable balance ever since. 

The most unfortunate effect has been the marginalizing of the original Team Arrow, whose unlikely comradery has long been one of the biggest draws to the show. With Olicity on the backburner and Diggle preoccupied by his infant daughter, the dynamic was altered for the worse. Last week’s episode—“The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak”—was a return to form on the Team Arrow front as Oliver and Digg gleefully met Felicity’s mom. Olicity was on the mend, and the Digglette was incorporated into the story without issue. Even Roy began to feel less like the summer intern and more like a member of the team. “Secret Origin” was a huge upswing in the quality of characer interactions, and fans everywhere began to hope that a new trend for the season was finally beginning.

Well, maybe “Guilty” will be an outlier.

The Flash: S01E06 Plot Summary And Promo

The Flash faces a new meta-human named Tony, who can turn himself into girded steel at will. While Dr. Wells and Caitlin are concerned for Barry's safety, Cisco comes up with a plan to take Tony down. Meanwhile, Iris's blog on The Flash gets her into trouble, and Eddie witnesses Tony's abilities firsthand and begins to ask questions that Joe doesn't want answered. Joe asks Dr. Wells to help him solve Nora Allen's murder. x

"The Flash Is Born" airs on 18 November 2014 at 8PM on The CW.

The Flash: Too Super Too Soon?

Of the four DC shows to air this fall, The Flash has undoubtedly been the cheeriest. Far less grim than the terminally gray Gotham, less bleak than Constantine, and boasting a distinctly less broody lead than Oliver over on Arrow, The Flash has set itself apart.

As it happens, The Flash differs from its sister shows in more than mood. Unlike the other three, The Flash features superpowers. The Arrow may have impeccable archery skills, Gotham may boast a gallery of rogues with atypical abilities, and Constantine may be able to deal with demons on a regular basis, but Barry Allen on The Flash has real, genuine, 100% side-effect-of-science-mishap superpowers. He’s the fastest man alive, and the possibilities of what he can do with his speed are endless.

So far, those possibilities have been drawing viewers back week after week. The show has been setting and breaking records over on The CW, being lauded for its lighter tone, capable cast, and fancy effects. However, last night’s episode, entitled “Plastique,” raises a big question: is the Flash becoming too super too soon?

The Walking Dead S05E05: An Hour With The C-Team

With this Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead, the show returned to form. After last week’s Beth-centric “Slabtown” in which Emily Kinney was the only cast member to actually have lines, “Self Help” took us back to the multi-character structure that comprised the majority of the first four seasons. Of course, with a bloated general ensemble that could really use a zombie horde or two to trim the cast, it was inevitable that “Self Help” would only feature certain characters and highlight certain relationships.

Unfortunately, while the episode as a whole was neither bad nor negligible, the ensemble of “Self Help” happened to be comprised of a group of characters that failed to spark together. 

Arrow: S03E06 Plot Summary And Promo

Ted Grant is accused of murder when a body is found strung up in the Wildcat gym. In flashbacks, Maseo asks Tatsu to help jog Oliver's memory so he can remember where an informant for China White stashed key information; and Roy shares a secret with Felicity. x

"Guilty" airs on 12 November 2014 at 8PM EST on The CW. 

"The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak," or, "Why Not All Heroines Need Masks"

On November 5, the long-awaited episode of Arrow entitled “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak” finally aired. After first watch (which will probably be followed by a rewatch or three), I'm fairly certain that it will go down as one of the best in the show’s entire run. Comic, dramatic, and tragic all at once, the episode centers on everybody’s favorite hacker as her troubled past comes back with a vengeance.

Despite being a fan favorite since the first season and emerging as the hero's lady love to in the third, Felicity Smoak was the main character with the least available backstory. Fans knew that she hated kangaroos and loved mint chip ice cream, but we had to fill in an awful lot of blanks for ourselves. The concentrated dose of Felicity as promised in this installment was one that plenty were anticipating even more than last week’s milestone fiftieth.

Fortunately, “The Secret Origin Of Felicity Smoak” was a pretty great hour of television on all fronts. None of the characters were sacrificed on the altar of shoddy plotting. Unlike Oliver’s frankly baffling decision in “The Magician” to alienate the League of Assassins for the sake of protecting mass murderer Malcolm Merlyn, the events leading up to this week’s climax progressed naturally, and Felicity was able to save the day in her own episode without marginalizing the rest of Team Arrow’s roles. Nobody had to look bad for her to look good. Felicity and her mother would likely not have made it to the end were it not for Diggle and Roy taking care of the criminals outside and Oliver defying gravity to destroy the automatic targeting weapons inside. Without the brawn of boys, our brainy girl would not have survived.

And that’s okay.

Constantine: "Non Est Asylum"

NBC

On October 24, the fourth of the DC inspired shows premiered.  With Gotham surging forward over on Fox and The Flash breaking records on the more diminutive CW, NBC’s Constantine had some stiff competition. Although airing on one of the four major networks, Constantine’s unenviable timeslot of 10:00PM on Friday nights is about equivalent to airing on The CW, and the relative obscurity of the character in mainstream media far from guaranteed an audience. Of the four shows, Constantine was the one most likely to struggle for viewers, and an awful lot was riding on the pilot episode to lock in an audience.

Constantine: What I Know Going In

NBC

Of the three new DC shows that would premiere in Fall 2014, NBC's Constantine was undoubtedly the one about which I knew the least. Fox's Gotham--if not about the Caped Crusader himself as audiences had come to know him from the Christopher Nolan trilogy--was at least going to be set in the Batman universe and feature some familiar faces. I had less knowledge about The Flash over on The CW, but the character's iconic red suit with yellow lightning bolts was plenty recognizable, and star Grant Gustin's appearance as Barry Allen in Season 2 of Arrow (also on The CW) at least provided some background.

But Constantine?

Constantine was something else entirely, and if I had not been aware of the DC panel at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, I wouldn't have even known that it was based on a comic series. So, as I now sit down to watch the series premiere(a week and a half late), these are the things that I think that I already know:

My Origin Story

Once upon a time, a group of teenagers worked at a swimming pool. It was not a very big swimming pool and the teenagers were not the most professional lifeguards to ever don the whistle, so there was plenty of downtime in which they got into their fair share of hijinks. Sometimes, it was grilling a doughnut to look like a hamburger and serving it with ketchup to a hapless coworker. Sometimes, it was leaving the premises to buy a staff Slip 'N Slide. Sometimes, it was just seeing which bottles would explode when struck with a wrench.

Then, in the summer of 2005, a movie was released that launched a debate that would last the entire summer.

Batman Begins.