Hard Truths for Geek Media

We are living in the golden age of geek media. Netflix has five shows and counting devoted to The Defenders, comic book shows are nearly half of the CW network’s lineup, and superhero movies and Star Warses account for something like 98% of US box office revenue at the movies.

But it ain’t all good.

No, this is not going to be the “Dan breaks and denounces Suicide Squad” moment some of my friends have been waiting for. There are just some real issues, some growing problems with certain geek-friendly properties worth discussing. As much as we love them, there are some hard truths to face.

Let’s start with my own field of interest.

Maybe there shouldn’t be a Flash movie

There was a time when Warner Bros. and DC Comics were the kings of the superhero movie genre. But mostly because it was when nobody else was really trying.

Behold: Marvel’s best and most successful movie until 1998.

They spent one decade on four Superman movies (two good), one on four Batman movies that start okay, get worse, and end bad enough to almost kill the genre (well, that and Steel), and then started floundering, banking everything on Nolan’s Batman while Green Lantern and what some consider to be the best Superman movie made thus far failed to jumpstart any franchises. Plus Jonah Hex was a trash heap and Catwoman does not belong in this conversation. It’s a rejected Crow reboot that they slapped the word “cat” onto and it should not exist.

Meanwhile, they watched Marvel Studios go from plucky upstart to the most consistently successful film studio in the history of the medium by building a cinematic universe out of their B-list, all leading to The Avengers, which blew the long-awaited Dark Knight Rises out of the water.

Going from kicking Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk’s asses with Dark Knight to being the also-rans in a genre they used to dominate must have stung. Moreso because if they hadn’t been hung up on keeping all of their toys in separate boxes, they could have been doing this over two decades ago.

I kind of picture it like that scene in Brooklyn, where Ailis’ Irish friends are changing under blankets, then see that she just wore her swimsuit under her clothes, and say “Well how long do you think the Americans have known about that? Probably 100 years.” So simple and obvious once you see it done. Surely someone at Warner Bros. saw the road to Avengers and asked “Well why the hell haven’t we done that?” “We felt it worked better not to link up the movies–” “Die in a fire, Ted.”

So they ended up trying to rush their own cinematic universe, attempting a short road from Man of Steel to Justice League. It’s been a rocky journey so far, according to reviews and certain opinions and also all those Razzies Batman V Superman got, but hope exists that they’ll turn it around in coming years. Set visits are generating hope for Wonder Woman, and Justice League… let’s talk about Justice League after Wonder Woman comes out. Or not. We’ll have to see. Their hope is that a successful Justice League movie will drive audiences to solo movies for the rest of the lineup, the same way Avengers managed to convince people to keep watching mediocre at best Thor movies.

But there’s one film that’s having more trouble than anything on their slate.

This guy.

The Flash has already lost two directors and apparently the script has gone back for a page-one remake. It is the very model of a troubled production.  And while I don’t know exactly what’s going on over there… I have a guess.

To the left.

The Flash is already on TV. And doing pretty well. Well enough that it’s the centrepiece (albeit not the originator) of a four-show empire. So this is all speculation, but it seems to me that the Flash movie would end up having to walk a very fine line… too much like the TV show, it’s redundant. Not enough like the TV show, it’s alienating the fanbase they’ve been building for three seasons and counting. And if this is what’s happening, it would mean more studio interference than anything else they’re doing, and yes, that’s going to cost them directors.

So maybe the solution is don’t make the movie.

Any Flash movie is going to have to compete with the TV series’ nigh-perfect first season. The movie would have two hours to tell a story, the show gets 23 (including commercials). The movie could be my first chance to see the Rogues united (the core group have all turned up on the show, but rarely more than two at a time), but Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold is basically perfect, and I’m at a loss as to how they could do better in the movie. I’m not saying it’s another Heath-Ledger-Joker situation but he is a tough act to follow.

I’m not saying cut the character. Have him in the Justice League, just all over the Justice League. Just maybe Flash doesn’t need a solo movie. Hell, DC has a pretty full slate as it is (while fighting for Warner resources with the Fantastic Beasts franchise), and keeps announcing new projects. The Batman still doesn’t have a release date (and just got a director), and now there’s talk of Gotham City Sirens, solo movies for Nightwing and Deadshot, a Suicide Squad sequel, and talk remains of an actual, proper sequel to Man of Steel.

Pretty ambitious. Sure, the grosses were high last year, but they might wanna get public perception on their side a bit more before they get excited. Maybe see how much Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 outgrosses Justice League by. (Look, I’m enough of a DC fan that no amount of BvS or Suicide Squad smack talk will keep me from opening night of Justice League, but even I’m more excited for Guardians.)

But if they have all these movies they want to make, maybe it’s time to drop the one they clearly don’t know how to make. I mean, Marvel doesn’t make solo movies for everyone. Ask Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson.

In fact, let’s talk Marvel.

Maybe Marvel’s “Everything’s Connected” isn’t working

Ever since Nick Fury popped up after the credits of Iron Man saying “Avengers Initiative,” the key element in Marvel’s success is the idea that all of their film and television properties share one universe, and that they’re all connected. You watch Thor because stuff they do there will pay off in the next big team-up movie.

I mean, you don’t watch Thor movies for fun. That’s just crazy.

But the more they expand into other media, the more cracks are starting to show in the facade.

There’s the little stuff in the movies. The “Why do no Avengers care that terrorists just blew up Tony Stark’s house and then kidnapped the president” or “So after learning that SHIELD was infiltrated by Hydra, the only person Captain America calls for backup is the guy he met while jogging” stuff. But this is nothing new. It’s basic nitpicking comics fans have been dealing with for decades. And two out of three of the big team-up movies have done a fine job smoothing those wrinkles over.

And one had a plot hole for every robot.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The obvious example is Agents of SHIELD. Marvel’s first foray into TV, it was pitched as the connective tissue between movies, but it isn’t. Despite every shoehorned reference Agents of SHIELD makes to the movies, it just isn’t. Whether it’s the feud between Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and his ex-boss, Marvel Entertainment head Ike Perlmutter, or some other nonsense reason, it’s abundantly clear that the film division does not care about Agents of SHIELD even a little. From destroying their very premise in Winter Soldier to their refusal to say the word “Inhuman” to the fact that none of the Avengers have noticed Coulson isn’t dead, the film branch has straight-up ignored everything and anything about Agents of SHIELD.

And now there’s an Inhumans series on the horizon. The Inhumans have been a key part of Agents of SHIELD for three years now, but as of this writing, the Inhumans show has given no indication they’ll connect or cross-over with SHIELD. They have made it clear that this show will not be an Agents of SHIELD spinoff. So their only announcement in regards to what should be their sister show was to distance themselves from it. If another Marvel show on the same network won’t even acknowledge Agents of SHIELD, then is it not time to ask just how exactly “Everything is connected?”

We’re still on that topic but here’s a header to break things up

There’s also Marvel Netflix. Marvel’s Netflix shows are trying to do the Avengers process in the TV format: five seasons of four shows, all leading up to The Defenders this fall. And they’ve been good, for the most part… Daredevil’s second season and Luke Cage’s debut season fell apart in their second halves, but overall they’ve been good. And we’re certainly told that they’re all in the same universe as Captain America, Asgard, and the talking, gun-toting raccoon we all love.

That’s what we’re told.

One of my pet peeves about Marvel Netflix is that while the DCW-verse delights in comic-booky concepts like time travel and alternate Earths and rampaging super-strong hyper-intelligent telepathic gorillas, the Marvel Netflix shows seem to resent being based on comics. Sure, all of their protagonists have super powers, but they mostly stick to grounded, realistic threats (save for one mind-controlling psychopath whose arc was still rooted in very real abuse issues, and one ninja cult story that doesn’t actually make any sense). They have Easter egg references to old Power Man and Jessica Jones comics, but treat them like baby pictures your mother pulled out to show your date.

More than that, they seem to be actively ashamed of being part of the MCU. They will begrudgingly acknowledge the climax of Avengers, but in the vaguest possible terms. Seriously, “The Incident?” The city/country that treats the phrase 9/11 with sacred reverence (except when they don’t) would really call an honest-to-god alien invasion repelled in part by the literal Norse god of thunder something as basic and generic as “The Incident?” What are they, British? And that’s the only reference they’re willing to make. Nothing from any other movie, save for being the only people who seem to remember Hammer Industries from Iron Man 2.

Right. There’s gonna be too much. Time for a “The Defenders Ain’t Care About the Avengers” speed round.

  • We’re two years in and I’ve yet to see Stark/Avengers Tower in the New York skyline.
  • The New York DA starts a crusade against vigilantes, and her main targets are the Punisher (sure) and licensed private detective and one-time-vigilante Jessica Jones. No mention of Inhumans, the Sokovia accords, or freaking Spider-Man. Any of which would be totally germane to the conversation.
  • Aliens invade New York, Asgard exists, Captain America came back from the dead… but New Yorkers still consider mind control too impossible to swallow? For real?
  • For all Luke Cage has to say about the history of Harlem, that time Hulk and Abomination wrecked the place sure doesn’t come up.
  • They talk about the Avengers like they’ll get sued for using the names. “The flag-waver.” “The green guy.” “The blonde dude with the hammer.” You know his name is Thor.
  • None of these people will be in Infinity War. We’d have heard by now.

On top of all of that, they have all the “how does this fit together, where was so-and-so during all of this” issues of the movies, only worse, because they’re all operating within a quick walk from each other. “The Defenders Ain’t Care About Each Other” speed round!

  • If Luke Cage reduced to washing dishes and sweeping floors under the table because he’s on the run from the cops, how is it he owned a bar when we first met him? A bar named after him!
  • I get Luke not wanting to call Jessica for help, things ended poorly between them, but when Luke Cage is being publicly smeared by his enemies, she doesn’t even take an interest?
  • When Luke Cage is in a hostage situation and being framed by the man behind it, she doesn’t call her friend the defense-lawyer vigilante, despite him needing both of those things.
  • Actually, why should she even need to call Daredevil? There was a very public hostage crisis involving a superhuman criminal (as far as the outside world knew), a five minute drive from Daredevil’s house, and he doesn’t swing by? Daredevil doesn’t care about black people.

Okay, sure, they can’t cross-over all the time. It would dilute how special The Defenders is. Probably is. Hopefully will be. And it’s not like Flash and the Green Arrow are constantly popping back and forth, Barry only zips over to help Oliver two, maybe three times a season, but a) the DCW-verse still connects far more often than Marvel Netflix, and b), and this is the important part, Flash and Arrow take place in cities 600 miles apart. All five Marvel Netflix shows take place in New York. No, on the island of Manhattan. New York’s geographically smallest borough. Do not tell me that Daredevil only patrols Hell’s Kitchen, Hell’s Kitchen is two square kilometers, you could walk around it in an hour.

These days the “shared universe” has more holes per yard than chainmail. You can say everything’s connected all you like. But unless it actually connects at some point, it’s all just empty marketing rhetoric. Maybe having one universe for film and one for TV just works better.

Maybe these live-action Disney films are kinda pointless

The problem with doing anything successful is that Hollywood will learn the wrong lesson fast enough to make your head spin. Deadpool and Logan were big hits and critically adored? Suddenly everyone’s looking to make R-rated superhero movies like that was the secret ingredient. Sure thing, DC, people had issues with BvS and Suicide Squad because they weren’t dark and violent enough. That was the problem.

Disney can be particularly bad for this. The wrong lesson thing, I mean. Maleficent was a hit, so they started kicking around other Disney villain origin movies. Don’t get excited. I’m about to explain why that’s bad. Maleficent worked because the idea that the witch from Sleeping Beauty was driven to cursing princesses by a dark and tragic backstory has merit and meat to it. The follow-up with the most traction? Cruella De Vil. The puppy-murdering villainess so lacking in complexity or subtlety they named her “Cruel Devil.” Is anyone really curious what turned Cruella on to puppy coats? Anyone? Was that a question needing answering?

And if that weren’t a bad enough idea to blow all of your Marvel/Star Wars profits on (it is), there is the other trend of making live-action remakes of the classic cartoon. Last year was Jungle Book, this year is Beauty and the Beast, and there’s more coming. But they’re getting dumber as we go along.

Jungle Book at least did something different. Sure they had all the same characters and hit all the story beats but in a different way. I think. Pretty sure. King Louie certainly seems different. But Beauty and the Beast? Every bit of promotion is based around how similar it is to the animated version. Same sets, same costumes, exact same songs. Is this just a shot-for-shot remake with live actors and terrifying CG clock-people? Is that… is that necessary? I mean Hollywood is choked with remakes and reboots as it is, making carbon copies of easily accessible films from the 90s is just making it worse.

Also… “live-action Lion King?” How. How is that live-action. You’re not training lions and having them act it out. No amount of training can make a meercat, a warthog, and a lion hang out and sing Hakuna Matata. It’s not live action, it’s a CG version with some new voices. They’re still using James Earl Jones as Mustafa. Which, sure, there’s no replacing him, but are we entirely sure they’re not just reusing the same audio?

In short. Words have meanings, and this new Lion King will be about as much “live-action” as Monsters Inc.; and if you’re going to remake a movie, do something with it. Make it new. Don’t just re-skin it.

Honestly, thought we learned this with Gus Van Sant’s Psycho.

Obscure Characters Superhero Shows Should Use

Superheroes and comic books are big on both the big and small screens these days, but despite the Marvel empire being built on “Everything’s connected” and DC not having sold all of its shiniest toys to Sony and Fox, there is still a weird Chinese wall between each company’s film and television divisions. DC, as we know, maintains separate film and TV universes and, in most cases, doesn’t allow overlap. Marvel claims to maintain one, consistent universe, spread across the Avengers-based films, Defenders-based Netflix shows, and redheaded stepchild Agents of SHIELD, but Brooklyn 99 and The New Girl cross over more often than any of those branches, limiting the characters the TV branches can use even beyond being banned from using the word “mutant.”

They have, however, found some clever workarounds.

Agents of SHIELD isn’t allowed to use anyone that’s been in a movie, or is a street-level hero in New York, or that Marvel might want to pitch elsewhere. But they have been having one of their better seasons by basing it around a surprisingly effective portrayal of Robbie Reyes, the least popular, least successful, and objectively least cool* version of Ghost Rider. Meanwhile, across the aisle, Arrow’s been having a similar resurgence of quality, and it’s obscure characters all the way down over in Star City. Wild Dog, Mr. Terrific, and Ragman have joined the team, and there have been episodes not only featuring but named after 80s D-listers Vigilante and Human Target (sadly not Mark Valley’s Human Target from the 2010 series getting a Constantine-style revival, but I’ll take any Human Target I can get).

So I say, keep on keeping on with this trend. DC and Marvel each have hundreds of characters to draw on, so why let the big names being embargoed slow you down?

Assuming Marvel Netflix is limited to street-level crime fighters, that Agents of SHIELD can’t touch anyone who could possibly have their own show or movie, and the DCW-verse has to stay away from Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, and Shazam (though they got Superman this year, so who knows), here’s some characters they should be considering bringing to the small/streaming screen, and some casting thoughts, because welcome to my brain. Hey, I have to live in here.

*No, not because he’s Latino, because he doesn’t even have a motorcycle. You can’t be the coolest Ghost Rider without a flaming-wheeled motorcycle.

For Supergirl: Mary Marvel

mary-marvel

Who’s that?

Maybe you’re familiar with the original Captain Marvel, known for yelling “Shazam!” to get his powers. Ten year old Billy Batson was gifted powers by the wizard Shazam. By yelling his name, Billy became an adult with powers just shy of Superman’s. Also without the vision or breath powers. Lately, they’ve stopped calling him “Captain Marvel” (having grown tired of competing with the many, many Marvel characters with that name) and just started calling him “Shazam” (given that most people call him “the Shazam guy” as it is).

Now, Shazam does have a movie in the works, and even though the only thing I know about it is that Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson is playing his nemesis Black Adam, they probably wouldn’t let a different Billy Batson come to Star, Central, or National City. Which is a shame because every day that DC isn’t casting one of the Stranger Things kids as Billy is an opportunity wasted.

But there is another.

Every iteration of Captain Marvel/Shazam begins with Billy, yes, but before long the power of Shazam is being shared by a team. And the first person on that extended list? His long-lost twin (or more recently foster) sister, Mary.

Of all the superhero shows, none have embraced bright, cheerful optimism like Supergirl. But no DC character has, historically, been as bright, innocent, or hopeful as the Marvels, being children given adult bodies with the powers of gods. So I can’t help but think there’s a fun opportunity to have Supergirl need to deal with someone whose unbreakable cheer (and strength) outshines even her own. And while Billy Batson’s probably on lockdown, Supergirl the show has a history of ducking around embargoes by using less known siblings: no Lois Lane, but her sister Lucy; no Lex Luthor, but his sister Lena and mother Lillian are lurking around National City. Having the DEO need to make a road trip to Fawcett City and encountering Mary Marvel would fit right in.

Hell, given her name, you could even fit in a meta-commentary on how, thanks to Zack Snyder, there’s a perception that DC is all grim and dark and broody while Marvel is bright and fun and colourful. Sure, you’re not going to be able to launch a defense of the film branch easily, but still… Oh! Or have Winn or newly gay Alex get a bit of crush on Mary Marvel, only to find out that she’s actually a neonate girl and man was that dream he/she had last night inappropriate in hindsight… Man, this could be such a good episode and they’re probably not going to do it and why do I do this to myself…

Who to cast?

Millie Bobby Brown and Adrianne Palicki.

marys-marvel

If you’re going to do the Marvel Family, you’ve got to do it right. That means big, imposing, adult for the hero, and small child for the alter ego. Adrianne Palicki certainly has the imposing, ass-kicking credentials, although a complicated relationship with DC. She got the lead in a Wonder Woman pilot from David E. Kelley, who proved that he’s much better at writing lawyers than Amazon warrior princesses and thus the infamously bad show wasn’t picked up. She then entered the superhero world as Bobbi “Mockingbird” Morse on Agents of SHIELD. But since she was written off the show for a spinoff that, again, didn’t get picked up, she might be willing to jump back to the DC side.

But you can’t skimp on mild-mannered Mary Batson, either, and remember what I said about how perfect any of the Stranger Things kids would be as Billy? Millie Bobby Brown captured the internet’s attention as Eleven for a reason. Mille and Adrianne both have good experience as badass, powerful women, and would make a fun duo as Mary Marvel’s various halves.

Maybe if I yell “SHAZAM!” enough I’ll turn into a staff writer on Supergirl and can make this happen…

For the Defenders (et al): Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu

shang-chi

Who’s that?

It’s kind of all there in the name. A master martial artist who rebelled against his evil father and decided to use his skills for good. He did a turn as an Avenger a roster shake-up or two ago, easily standing as an equal to Captain America, Thor, Spider-man and the others. Also, of all the superheroes based exclusively on “Super good at real-world martial arts” (Karate Kid, Judomaster, Richard Dragon, sort of but not quite Iron Fist), at least this guy’s actually Asian.

See, the Marvel Netflix shows have a problem with Asian representation. A lot of shows do, a lot of western media does, but it’s a little extra notable when every single Asian character in the Defenders franchise is attached to one of two doomsday ninja cults. Sure, yes, having the Asian guy be a martial artist, you’re steering into stereotype. But their bar is currently set low enough that there aren’t many directions to go but up here.

Also, he once used Pym particles to become giant and kung fu-fight a dragon.

There's not much cooler than ninja kicking a dragon in the face.
There’s not much cooler than ninja kicking a dragon in the face.

More people show know about this guy. Oh, and did I happen to mention that his evil father was old-school pulp villain Fu Manchu? How much to I want to see Fu Manchu and Luke Cage go round and round? A lot.

Who to cast?

I would say Mark Dacascos, but Agents of SHIELD already used him as Discount Magneto and they do hate to double-dip… so let’s say Remy Hii.

remyhii1

Remy Hii’s familiar to Netflix as Marco Polo’s Prince Jingim, Kublai Khan’s son and heir. So not only is he familiar to the network, he’s also used to action scenes and the weapons (other than fists and feet) Shang-Chi would be packing. And he wouldn’t be fighting a foreign language (Steven Chow), being over 50 (Steven Chow again), or being someone I haven’t heard of. I am not currently up-to-date on Chinese film stars, I’m sure I’m sorry, let’s move on.

For The Flash: Firehawk

firehawk

Who’s this?

Lorraine Reilly was a senator’s daughter who was fighting a crush on hero Firestorm when she was kidnapped by one of his nemeses, Henry Hewitt, later known as Tokamak, who attempted to imbue her with Firestorm’s powers to use her as a weapon against both her father and Firestorm. He was largely successful, but Lorraine broke free of his control and became a hero in her own right. Although never to the same level as her male counterpart, because comics and sexism and all of that.

Flash already introduced Henry Hewitt in season two (specifically, and fittingly enough, in “The Fury of Firestorm”), already had him turn dark, named him Tokamak, and gave him a fixation on Firestorm’s power set and a grudge against Team STAR Labs. Why not have him try to get some delayed payback by trying to make his own Firestorm? And before you ask “Why have two people with those powers,” Strawman I’m making up, think how many speedsters are on that show right now. Flash, Kid Flash, Reverse Flash, Zoom, Jesse Quick, Savitar… Now consider how many people in Star City, good or evil, have decided that a bow and arrow is their weapon of choice. Actually, don’t bother. The answer is eight. Eight people, not including League of Assassins flunkies, said “Eh, nuts to guns, I’m-a use a bow.” Two Firestorms won’t hurt anything.

So given that a) they already know how to do the effects, and b) Firestorm and the Flash go way back, that’s why they introduced him on that show in the first place, and c) Firestorm is tied up protecting the timestream on Legends of Tomorrow, why not bring Firehawk to Central City? Give Flash someone to team up with who doesn’t star on a different show or live in a different universe.

Who to cast?

You know who’s killing it lately as a woman who has to break free of her maker’s programming? Evan Rachel Wood.

evan-rachel

Dolores is a “host” in Westworld permanently assigned to one of the uglier narrative loops. (Although the finale may suggest why.) As such, she’s also one of the first to attempt to rise above it, and Evan Rachel Wood fully captured her transition from damsel to badass. As a bonus, depending on things go in tonight’s season finale, she may have a steady gig on Westworld for a while, and cable series have different shooting schedules than network, so she’d in theory (and what more does this discussion require than “In theory” have availability for sweeps month Firehawking without danger of getting booked on whatever the next Chicagobased procedural soap drama is.

I mean she might choose to do movies like previous Firestorm Robbie Amell did, but hey, I can hope. Mostly. Sort of. I remember the basic mechanisms of how to– shut up.

For Agents of SHIELD: Abigail Brand, Agent of SWORD

brand

Who’s that?

In his run on Astonishing X-Men, Joss Whedon (who created Agents of SHIELD, which would be handy) introduced a subdivision of SHIELD: SWORD (Sentient World Observation and Response Department), who monitor extraterrestrial races and threats to protect the Earth from invasion. Abigail Brand, half alien herself, is its head.

Marvel and ABC recently announced plans for a new Inhumans TV series. This makes sense, since it was Isaac Perlmutter, head of Marvel Entertainment, who wanted to adapt the Inhumans, and not Kevin Feige, head of the now-separate Marvel Films. Despite the fact that Inhumans have been a major part of Agents of SHIELD for three seasons now (the focus might currently be on Ghost Rider, but the back half of the season is shaping up to again be Inhumans-centric), the new show has been said to be focused on the classic characters such as Black Bolt and Medusa, and will not be a spinoff of Agents of SHIELD. I see two ways this could play out.

First, this could be the first Marvel property to actually acknowledge, and even crossover with Agents of SHIELD. It’s free of the TV/movie division drama, unlike the Avengers; it would be on the same network, unlike Marvel Netflix; it would (probably) be set in the present day, unlike Agent Carter. All the barriers that thus far exist to keep Agents of SHIELD in its own little lonely box would be, in theory, gone. And between Avengers, Defenders, the ratings spike that happens every time the CW shows crossover, and the absolute lack of a ratings bump that happens when Agents of SHIELD does a shoe-horned, one-way, desperate-plea-for-attention excuse for a movie tie-in episode, the network has to know that having Coulson and Daisy/Quake come face to face with Inhuman royalty is the way to go.

Second… they could not know that and not only continue to neglect SHIELD (which they might be considering cancelling once it hits a syndication-friendly 100 episodes), but demand they stop doing Inhuman stuff.

In the first case, SHIELD already established that the Kree, who created the Inhumans, were concerned that they were active again. SWORD would be the perfect way to bring Coulson and Black Bolt together to deal with impending Kree actions. In the second case, Agents of SHIELD would need a new playground, since they’d be kicked out of their current one. In which case, since SWORD and SHIELD have a patently obvious link… it is all there in their names… SWORD could be the new thing for their fifth (and if Marvel won’t let a second ABC show acknowledge them, almost definitely last) season.

Who to cast?

Once upon a time, rumours circulated that Joss Whedon was looking to cast one of his frequent fliers, Felicia Day, in the role for the Avengers movie.

felicia

Obviously that didn’t happen, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea. Felicia Day has the exact geek appeal that Agents of SHIELD and the DCW-verse look for in casting choices. Also she’s familiar with the showrunners from her work on their older Joss-backed projects, Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse. It would be fun to see her take on a more badassed role.

For The DCW-verse in general: Ambush Bug

ambush_bug

Who’s that?

Created by Keith Giffen, Ambush Bug started as a comic relief villain for Superman, only to decide he’d rather be a (largely incompetent) hero, and eventually became popular enough to star in a sequence of miniseries and specials over the next two decades, all from Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, the definitive Ambush Bug creative team. One of his signature traits became DC in-jokes and satire of DC itself (and some Marvel).

You know that whole “breaking the fourth wall, being aware he’s a comic/movie character” thing Deadpool does that everyone loves? Ambush Bug was doing it nearly a decade earlier. Let me posit something to you… the DCW-verse is in its fifth year. Arrow just celebrated its 100th episode. We’re nearing the point where a show can start to get away with the occasional self-referential humour episode. (Some might argue Arrow’s 100th started this off with the opening speech-referencing exchange “My name is Oliver Queen—“ “We know who you are.” “Everyone knows who you are!”) Supernatural’s done a handful of those over the last few years, and they’re all great.

Ambush Bug’s one power is the ability to teleport anywhere, even between universes. So Ambush Bug could visit all four of the DCW-verse shows for a fun, comic relief, non-crossover crossover. Or just for random episodes. You know, I can picture the DCW-style “My name is Oliver Queen/Barry Allen” opening now…

“My name is Irwin Schwab. That’s not the name I’m super famous for or anything, but—you know, I’m getting off track here. When a scientist of the planet Schwab sent his clothes from his supposedly doomed planet, hoping that his wardrobe would survive, only to have it intercepted by a giant radioactive space spider… I think? That’s what I heard, but I didn’t actually… I mean it sounds right… I found the bug-like suit, and gained the ability to teleport, ambushing people. So, Bug, Ambush, there’s something there, I feel. I discovered a universe full of repeating tropes and gloomy heroes, and now have made it my mission to help these teen soap multiverse heroes be someone else… something else. No, just that first one.”

“Ambush Bug! I am… Ambush Bug. Did I make that clear? Yes? Good.”

Who to cast?

This looks like a job for Danny Pudi.

pudi-danny

Ambush Bug is a little bit crazy and a lot of self-reference. And six seasons (and a movie? Not yet) of nailing quirks, pop culture, and meta-jokes on Community as Abed Nadir prove Danny Pudi’s got the chops to make Ambush Bug a fun addition to the DCW-verse instead of an annoyance only I enjoy.

Will any of these shows do any of this? I don’t know. Frankly I couldn’t have predicted any of the characters Arrow pulled out this year (maybe Prometheus). But they’d all be fun to see.

Dan at the Movies: Suicide Squad

And I’m back. I meant to blog more over the summer… journal my Fringe tour, for instance… but as I’ve mentioned in the past, it can be hard to keep on a blog when other writing projects are sucking up your creative energies. Or when the unfamiliar heat and humidity of Ontario in the middle of summer and other personal issues are making it hard to have creative energy. But the first draft of my second pantomime is done, and I’ve traded humidity for record-setting rainfall, so I am back.

So let’s talk about Suicide Squad.

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The basics

There are a lot of really histrionic headlines out there. Shouting things like “Worst movie of the summer” or “Worse than Fantastic Four.”

So first of all, no. None of that. People claiming this are either lying for traffic or just wrong. I’m not saying they’re wrong because they’re stupid, since I don’t know any of them personally, but we can’t rule it out.

That’s not to say it’s perfect, or the best superhero movie of the year, or anything approaching that. It’s not without jokes and one-liners, but the laughs that exist fall short of Deadpool or the airport fight from Civil War, which remains the best and most fun sequence from any blockbuster film I’ve seen this year, comic book or otherwise. It’s good for what it is, which is a simple, flashy in places men-on-a-mission movie with a comic book coating. And for that, it works pretty well. Honestly I don’t get what the naysayers are complaining about in most cases.

In most cases. In one case I do.

The Joker

Jared Leto’s Joker has dominated the conversation around this movie, so let’s get him out of the way.

It doesn’t work.

To elaborate. Leto’s Joker voice is pretty good, but he’s not using it to do anything really Joker-ish. He’s like a mobster mixed with a B- Hannibal serial killer. We could argue about the tattoos, which frankly don’t bother me… well, with one major exception…

With one major exception
I mean come on.

…but the real issue is that he mostly just snarls and giggles and mopes about having lost Harley. Joker caring about a person, even Harley, is un-Jokerish enough but there’s a deeper problem here.

Where’s the joke?

I’m not saying that Joker should be funny. That’s not the point. The point is that Joker’s best crimes/stories revolve around a joke that only he sees, a joke of humanity’s futility. He does horrible things and he thinks they’re funny, and that’s not the Joker we’ve been shown here. This is just a moody pyscho who kills people for eyeballing his woman. Which is the worst scene of the movie, by the by, but fortunately it’s early, and then everyone can move on.

Maybe Ben Affleck could do something more or better with this version of the Joker in a Batman solo movie. I don’t know. In this case, he is not used super well. But he doesn’t super need to be, since he’s not the main villain. Which brings us to…

Villains

(One minor spoiler coming up, if you don’t know or want to know who the villain is)

There was a time when having a great villain was key to a comic book movie. As important as the hero, if not more so. Doctor Octopus and Spider-man 2, Joker and Dark Knight, and while it had highs and lows, Magneto sold the X-Men franchise. But the importance of the villain has not been the case as of late.

Okay, scream “DC bias” all you like, but I’m pointing a finger at Marvel. Though not necessarily in a bad way. While the Burton/Schumacher Batman movies put more effort into their villains than Batman himself (to mixed results), Marvel has managed great success while shifting the focus to the heroes. In short, Marvel villains tend towards bland and formulaic, and they make scads of money anyway, because if the Guardians of the Galaxy are fun enough to watch audiences will apparently forgive Ronan the Accuser being two-dimensional.

Hey, it’s not just me saying this. People have been talking about Marvel’s villain problem for years now. But this is really just a long lead-up to saying that, like a Marvel movie, Suicide Squad is not putting a ton of effort into their primary villains.

In short… and here’s the spoiler… Amanda Waller has successfully controlled a millennia-old witch called the Enchantress, who was awoken when an archaeologist named June Mune (Cara Delevingne, more effective as the evil witch than the archaeologist) wanders into the wrong cave and gets possessed. See, Enchantress and her un-awoken brother Incubus used to rule the world and be worshiped as gods back before they got stuck in statues. Now Enchantress finds herself in the modern world, enslaved by Amanda Waller. She doesn’t care for any of it. But while she can’t fully break Waller’s control, she can wake up her brother so that he can shield her from Waller’s retribution, allowing them to re-conquer the world. So that’s what she sets out to do.

Short version, Enchantress escapes Waller, teams up with Incubus, and begins a ritual to rule the world. And there we leave her until the climax. Sure, we check in once or twice, but that’s basically all she does.

Not exactly Heath Ledger’s Joker, I know. I mean, I could easily name ten worse comic book movie villains…

Or whip up a rough collage

…but she doesn’t exactly blow the doors off the place.

I think this might have more to do with writer/director David Ayers’ style. Look at Fury, his movie closest to Suicide Squad. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on the villains because we as an audience don’t need a lot of reasons to understand that the Nazis, and the SS in particular, were worth fighting. So he spent his time on the men in the tank. So, too, does Suicide Squad spend more time with the Squad than with Enchantress and Incubus. They’re doing something bad, it needs to be stopped, that’s as much detail as they feel we require.

Because getting this particular group of people to work together against a common foe… a common foe that isn’t their “employers…” isn’t an easy task.

The (Non-Joker) Cast

Let’s run through them, shall we?

Deadshot/Will Smith: I’m not saying that Will Smith doesn’t dip into his “Big Willy Style” bag a little in this role. There’s still a noticeable amount of Fresh Prince in Deadshot. But that’s okay, because it’s well used. He’s got edge and heart, making him highly effective as one of the film’s two central characters. Which brings us to…

Harley Quinn/Margot Robbie: One of the two biggest highlights of the film’s cast. After a rocky start weighed down by extra crazy and some weird shooting choices Ayers makes during Joker scenes, Margot Robbie is incredible as Harley Quinn. Everything you’d want from the character. Well… except one thing. They could’ve given her pants. Wouldn’t have hurt anything to give her pants. I’m just saying.

Amanda Waller/Viola Davis: Also awesome. She’s tough, she’s ruthless, she can stare down five deadly killers and come out on top. Is she one of the villains of the movie? That’s debatable. She walks the line very well. Why doesn’t she have a cameo in Justice League, exactly?

Captain Boomerang/Jai Courtney: Here’s a sentence that is almost never uttered: Jai Courtney crushes it. Captain Boomerang is selfish, manipulative, and consistently fun to watch. This movie nails the character in a way his appearance on Arrow just didn’t, and Courtney, normally known as one of those bland white action leads that you forget about when the movie’s over, kills it.

Rick Flagg/Joel Kinnaman: Another actor I didn’t expect much from, having (and I had to look this up) not exactly set the world on fire as reboot Robocop. As the Squad leader, he does well crossing from tough and resentful to be working with psychopaths to vulnerability when he needs to ask those psychopaths for help stopping a disaster… which will likely involve killing the only woman he’s ever loved.

El Diablo/Jay Hernandez: The heart of the Squad. Probably has the deepest backstory of anyone. Some people call him a stereotype, and the way he’s talked to can be a little on the racist side, though I would counter “Supervillains, abusive/corrupt prison guards, and black ops soldiers aren’t known for their racial sensitivity,” but maybe this isn’t a good argument for a white dude to pick. But according to some, it could have been worse

Killer Croc/Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje: For the second time in a comic book movie, Adewale gets buried under so much makeup that there’s only so much he can do. He had the occasional decent line but was mostly there to be big and menacing.

Katana/Karen Fukuhara: Somehow given less to do than Killer Croc. She’s pretty much just there to look badass in a samurai fashion and kill things with a sword. I appreciate you trying to add another woman and some more POC to the Squad, but you don’t get points for someone two-dimensional and fairly stereotypical. Better on Arrow.

Slipknot/Adam Beach: I mean what the hell. I get that you needed to kill someone to prove that the neck bombs weren’t a bluff but did it have to be someone you just introduced? And one of the POC characters? Seriously, right as the Squad (most of whom got their own splashy intro flashbacks) gets ready to leave, a car pulls up and they’re all “Oh right, and here’s Slipknot.” Then he’s dead in under five minutes Come on, man.

Wrap-up

Here are some points that seem too short for entire entries.

  • I was really impressed with the visuals, especially in 3D. Some of the Enchantress effects seemed super cool to me.
  • Cool to have cameos from Ben Affleck and Ezra Miller. Now that I’m seeing the movie Flash suit in action, it’s growing on me.
  • I don’t see how people are complaining about the plot not making sense. Okay, sure, we don’t know right away why the Squad are dispatched to Midway City, since they aren’t being sent after the villains until the climax, but they don’t know either, so why should we? And once you get past that, it makes perfect sense. If you pay attention, anyway.
  • It’s weird how many moments from the trailers aren’t in the movie. There’s disagreement between Ayer and press rumours about how extensive the reshoots were, so I won’t comment on if that’s responsible, but it’s a little weird. Harley pouring everyone drinks? Why leave that out? Although, I guess it would have less impact since we saw the whole sequence in the second trailer…

Ultimately I enjoyed it. I got swept up in more than one moment. It’s not a masterpiece and doesn’t redefine the genre, but it’s enjoyable if you can get on its level.

Except for some of the Joker stuff. Damn but I wish that weren’t true.

Comic TV 2016 Part Four: The Top Five

And we come to the end. What are, in my estimation, the top five comic book shows on TV last season, and why. You know the drill, let’s get into it.

5. Daredevil

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Premise: Matt Murdock’s war to protect the people of Hell’s Kitchen is complicated not only by a DA out to round up New York’s vigilantes (at least the ones who don’t appear in movies), but by the arrival to the Kitchen of lethal vigilante Frank Castle, and Matt’s dangerous ex, Elektra Natchios.

So we’ve talked about the Punisher. Repeatedly. And for a reason. As long as the Punisher was happening, Daredevil was every bit as good, if not better, than its freshman outing. So why, you might ask, has it slipped from first place to fifth since last year? Because the parts not dealing with the Punisher ended up more lacklustre. We’ll cover that down below. But despite all of the flaws I’m about to list, there’s still enough of the first season in there to make it above average. And what they did well, they did well enough to push Daredevil above Arrow for a second year. Although it was close.

Strengths: All things Punisher. The fight scenes, when you can see them. Deborah Ann Woll is doing amazing work, even if Karen Page’s story gets weird towards the back half. Breaking the season into mini-arcs.

Weaknesses: Okay, we’re gonna need a speed round for all of these plot holes and problems…

  • Elektra’s one of Daredevil’s strongest female characters in the comics. Here she has to decide which male figure is going to determine how she lives her life. That’s… weak.
  • Why did the Hand dig a giant hole? What was that accomplishing?
  • No, wait, the Hand’s big goal, this Black Sky they’ve been hinting at since last year, is just a person who’s good at killing? That’s it? How does that help them rule the world? How does that even help them rule New York, let alone a world filled with Avengers and Inhumans and magic space rocks?
  • The producers are so committed to Matt’s martyrdom that there’s never a fight he wins easily. He has to struggle each time. So the army of ninjas loses some bite when they give Matt exactly as much trouble as the biker gang from episode three.
  • They put a lot of effort into their fight scenes. Maybe if they’d lit a few more of them…
  • Elden Henson seriously whiffs a few of Foggy Nelson’s big emotional moments. He was a better actor last year.
  • How does a legal assistant get a job as an investigative reporter? There have to be dozens of journalism majors for every open newspaper job.
  • How does someone not get fired for spending weeks, maybe longer on a story only to write a junior high essay about heroes?
  • How is the DA targeting New York vigilantes and her number two target (after the Punisher) is licensed private detective and only part-time-at-best vigilante Jessica Jones? Not Spider-man? No Inhumans? No mention of Sokovia, even? I mean, Jesus Christ, Marvel, be a unified universe or don’t.
  • Daredevil sure gets blasé about fighting next to people who are killing people by the end.
  • Every Asian on this show is in a sinister ninja cult. That’s… not great.
  • And how does the season start in a summer heat wave and end at Christmas? Everything seems to happen in a matter of weeks at most, not months.

Feels like a lot, doesn’t it. See, Arrow, if you’d dial back the Felicity drama even a little you’d make the top five easily.

High point: New York’s Finest/Penny and Dime. The best fight, the best Punisher/Daredevil confrontations, Daredevil at its best.

Low point: The Dark at the End of the Tunnel. Poorly lit fights and the Elektra/Hand plot takes a turn for the stupid. Seriously, that’s your endgame? Your Black Sky would have their hands full against freaking Ant-Man, let alone the Vision.

Tips for next season: Turn on some damned lights. Have a better Big Bad, ’cause the Hand flopped hard. Focus on New York if you want but either try to remember that the larger MCU exists, or officially secede. I mean, we’ve seen how multiverses can work…

4. The Flash

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Premise: After the events of last year’s finale, Flash learns that he has opened breaches to an alternate Earth, and drawn the attention of evil speedster Zoom.

Few shows on this list embrace the wacky and weird world of comic books like The Flash. After introducing super powers, time travel, and giant telepathic gorillas in season one, in season two they plunged right into one of DC’s on-again off-again favourite devices since the seminal The Flash of Two Worlds, the multiverse. This helped to propel their early episodes to fun heights. They still manage the best blend of action, humour, and heart. Even if they didn’t quite stick the landing.

Strengths: I haven’t really found a place in these blogs to talk about what an asset to the show Tom Cavanaugh is, but he’s great. Even when the finale handed him one of the most ridiculous comic book nonsense lines of any show this year. Also, new characters Wally West, Jesse Wells, and in particular Patty Spivot ranged from good to delightful. Grant Gustin remains delightful even when Barry is pissing me off. Cisco and Caitlin might not make the supporting character podium, but they did some good work this year. Not only did they bring back the telepathic gorilla, they upped themselves with a giant man-shark.

Weaknesses: First off, Earth Two has the Justice Society, Earth Three has all the evil doppelgangers, come on guys, you know this. That said. The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Barry Allen really did wear thin over the back third. More problematic, when we hit peak Bad Barry Choices, we also ran out of plotline for Zoom. For the last five episodes, there was no nuance, no subtlety, no real surprises. One of the best aspects of Reverse Flash’s plot in season one was that his motivation turned out to be incredibly simple. Zoom’s motivation was also simple, but worse: it boiled down to “Zoom just likes killing.” That’s fine for a one-off villain or Krombopulos Michael, but a season-long villain needs more than that. Ultimately Zoom was a horrible waste of a far better comic villain. A weak ending was enough to knock Flash all the way down to number four. Also, like Arrow, they had to spend some time setting up Legends of Tomorrow, but other than the “Well, need a new Firestorm, I guess” episode, it was low impact.

And man… why’d they have to write Patty out… she was great…

High point: Welcome to/Escape From Earth 2. A high-paced trek through the much-mentioned, until-then-little-seen Earth-2 filled with Easter Eggs (including our first glimpses of Jonah Hex and Connor Hawke, who would later pop up on Legends), fun evil versions of multiple characters, and a big hint towards a coming twist. Not even the first Poor Decision of Barry Allen could sink this two-parter.

Low point: Back to Normal. After a disastrous decision on Barry’s end, Barry learns to adjust to life without powers. Again. Second time in as many seasons. Waiting for Barry to get his speed back slowed the season to a crawl right when it should have been accelerating–that was a lot of speed references in a thing about The Flash, it just happens.

Tips for next season: Okay. I saw what you did at the end of the finale. So let me say this… if you’re doing what we all think you’re doing… don’t drag it out. I’ve been promised a four-show crossover for episode eight, and I do not want it to be a week-long wrap up to TV Flashpoint.

…Actually I want a Flashpoint story featuring characters from all four shows incredibly bad, but I’d rather the other three not to have to put their own stories on pause to make it happen. So maybe try to keep it to four episodes, tops? And then once you’re done, write a better villain. I know you know how.

3. Supergirl

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Premise: Kara Zor-El, strange visitor from another planet, decides she’s tired of living in secret as Kara Danvers, and sets out to protect the world as Supergirl. Just like her more famous cousin.

Remember what I said about embracing comic booky-ness? About 630 words ago? Well, there’s one other show doing it as well as the Flash. And it’s also surpassed its brother show in terms of cheer and hopefulness. Supergirl’s first season delivers all the geeky fun of the Flash’s, plus better blends of combat and special effects, and some delightful surprises for long-term fans and newbies alike. It can be a little cheesy at times, but if you can get past that, there’s a lot to love.

Strengths: Melissa Benoist. Chyler Leigh. The evolution of Hank Henshaw’s relationship to Supergirl. Calista Flockhart takes Cat Grant from stereotypical “mean boss” to a surprisingly effective mentor for Kara’s civilian and super identities. Jeremy Jordan as Winn. Top notch special effects for TV. Max Lord worked well as a recurring antagonist.

Weaknesses: Sometimes the feminism can be a little on-the-nose. And sometimes the dialogue can be a little cheesy or clunky. And Kara and James Olsen could have better chemistry if we’re supposed to be invested in them as a thing.

High point: Worlds Finest. The Flash comes to National City, and it is Ah. Maze. Zing.

Low point: Red Faced. Where to start. The episode has four villain characters, meaning it doesn’t have time to do any of them well; the “women can’t be mad in public” issue is a little ham-fisted (and they mentioned but kind of skimmed past “neither can black men”); what did they spend on that Red Tornado costume, fifteen dollars, maybe sixteen; why is Justice League stalwart Red Tornado a villain at all, shouldn’t he have become good after becoming self-aware; killing Red Tornado and his creator was a waste not only of Red Tornado but of T.O. Morrow, one of DC’s bigger and better mad scientists, and that’s saying something since DC has enough mad scientists that they once formed their own sovereign country

Tips for next season: Well, this one’s hard. Their budget’s getting slashed, so it may be enough of a challenge to keep up what they’ve been doing thus far. We’ll probably get less CG, maybe less Cat, and it may be a challenge finding external locations that look like the California desert hillsides that define the outskirts of National City. Kelowna, maybe. The important thing is to maintain and build on the things you’ve done well that don’t cost megabucks to pull off. Flash and Legends of Tomorrow do okay effects-wise on a CW budget, so can Supergirl. And how excited am I at the possibility of Winn meeting Cisco and Felicity? And Superman’s making a proper appearance? Interesting.

2. iZombie

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Premise: Promising doctor-turned-zombie Liv Moore works with Seattle PD detective Clive Babineaux to solve murders, by using the visions she gains eating the victims’ brains to feign psychic abilities. Meanwhile, her boss/friend Ravi Chakrabarti finds that even if he can recreate his cure for zombiism, it has unfortunate side effects.

iZombie came back for second season firing on all cylinders. They cut some plotlines that weren’t working (Liv’s family), gave Major a much better story now that’s he’s learned the truth about Liv, Blaine’s way more fun this year now that he’s not the big villain, the big villains they do have are great… sure it’s still a crime procedural based around psychic visions caused through zombie brain consumption, but all in all, iZombie remains thoroughly delightful.

Strengths: With improved stories for Major, the cast doesn’t really have a weak link. We dive deeper into the Seattle zombie population that Blaine created in season one, and the issues Blaine’s having keeping them happy, and how that’s complicated by Vaughn du Clark trying to wipe them out. Personal relationships are allowed to grow and evolve. Really, just about everything works.

Weaknesses: If murder-of-the-week crime procedurals aren’t your thing you might struggle a little with this one.

High point: Max Wager, in which Mr. Boss makes his debut, or Abra Cadaver, in which Liv eats magician brains and it’s the best day for Ravi, but it’s probably Dead Beat/Salvation Army, the two-part finale in which the launch of Max Rager’s newest drink threatens to become a full-blown zombie apocalypse, while Ravi and Blaine must join forces against Boss’ men. And Liv discovers a new player that promises to make season three a whole new thing.

Low point: The Hurt Stalker. Liv eats Stalker brains, and subsequently destroys her life. By the next episode, even Ravi’s desperate to move on from that brain.

Tips for next season: So… that thing that happened in the last few minutes? Let’s just see how that goes.

1. Jessica Jones

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Premise: Super-powered private detective Jessica Jones fights to expose and defeat Kilgrave, the mind-controlling psychopath who once kept her prisoner for weeks on end, out of a twisted sense of love.

Sometimes “bright,” “hopeful,” and “comic-booky” aren’t what you need. Sometimes you want to go the other direction. And if that’s the case, Jessica Jones has you covered. It’s dark, it presents an unlikeable heroine facing a villain that makes your skin crawl, it has streaks of nihilism… it’s also pretty brilliant.

Strengths: The whole cast is top-notch. The series is incredibly bingeable. They never pretend that all of Jessica’s problems have one source or an easy solution. Kilgrave has more depth than most Marvel villains put together. A great introduction to Luke Cage. Best exchange of origin stories ever: “Accident. You?” “Experiment.”

Weaknesses: Agents of SHIELD struggles to be connected to the MCU. Daredevil doesn’t bother much. Jessica Jones seems actively embarrassed to be part of it. When the Avengers are mentioned it’s never by name, merely as “the green guy” and “the flag-waver.” That’s worse than the Supergirl pilot, which seemed full-on allergic to saying “Superman” out loud. Plus I still don’t see Stark/Avengers Tower in the New York skyline, and the whole plot hinges on needing to prove that mind control isn’t impossible in a city where an actual alien invasion was fought off in part by the literal Norse god of thunder. That’s a lot of time I just spent explaining what is, I admit, a minor quibble re: larger franchise continuity. If you don’t care about that, then I’ve got nothing.

High point: AKA WWJD? Jessica and Kilgrave play house as Kilgrave attempts to win over Jessica, and Jessica wonders if she can find a way to redeem the irredeemable. Along the way, they have it out over what, exactly, their past relationship truly was.

Low point: AKA 99 Friends. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s a filler episode, it does end on an awkwardly shot action beat (really more of a tantrum), and you know his name is Captain America, Jessica. “The flag-waver.” Swear to god, if I rewatch this show and catch her namedropping reality TV stars…

Tips for next season: Maybe try mini-arcs, like Daredevil did. Stretching one plotline over 13 episodes can get exhausting. Well, I imagine it might. For people who somehow don’t watch the entire season in two sittings. Whoever they are. Just avoid Daredevil’s mistake and don’t make the last mini-arc poorly-lit garbage.

And that’s the list. Thanks for joining me, those who did, and feel free to leave comments claiming I’m a fool for under/over-valuing something. I’ll just be over here, sulking about having to wait a week for another taste of Preacher.

Comic TV 2016 Part Three: Beginning the wrap-up

I would do another Beyond the Capes section but there’s a lot to cover already and it mostly just would’ve been about Limitless. I liked Limitless and there aren’t a lot of venues to talk about it. But anyway… let’s begin the rankings.

11. Gotham

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I just… I can’t. I hit a point back in October where I just couldn’t be bothered. Limitless is canceled but this one just keeps going… how is that justice…

10. Lucifer

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Premise: Lucifer Morningstar, having abandoned his post in Hell, helps LAPD detective Chloe Decker solve murders (to her chagrin) while angel Amenadiel tries to get him back to Hell.

I only read one issue of the comic this is based on, but I don’t think there’s any way to hear “A spinoff of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is reimagined as a Castle knock-off” and not think it’s a terrible idea. And yet… there is something there. Most of the appeal is in Tom Ellis’ performance, but there’s a cleverness to the writing at times, and Lucifer’s relationship with his sterner brother Amenadiel is entertaining. Especially in the last two episodes.

Strengths: Tom Ellis. The mysteries-of-the-week aren’t 100% predictable. Lucifer and Amenadiel’s weird sibling rivalry.

Weaknesses: One more time for the kids in the bleachers… it is a knock-off of Castle in which the Devil helps the LAPD solve crimes. Nothing I say can change that.

High Point: #TeamLucifer/Take Me Back to Hell. The two-part finale blows the doors off. Finally, the Amenadiel/Lucifer fight and buddy cop movie we deserved. And a potentially interesting (possibly terrible) twist for next year.

Low Point: Manly Whatnots. Lucifer decides the best way to get over his fascination with his partner Chloe Decker is to double his efforts to bang her. It gets uncomfortable and embraces the weaker aspects of Lucifer’s character.

Tips for next season: More mythology. And less running in circles where “Why does Lucifer’s invulnerability wear off when Chloe’s around.” Also, could one of the human characters figure out he’s not just pretending to be the Devil? Just one? That has to happen eventually, doesn’t it?

9. Agent Carter

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Premise: Peggy Carter transfers to the LA branch of the Strategic Scientific Reserve to investigate a new case… one her superiors don’t want her investigating.

I get that this is still an important show to a lot of people. Agent Carter was proudly feminist and examined the institutional sexism of a period of time conservatives love to call a golden age. But none of that changes the fact that the show lost a few steps this year. The “woman in a man’s world” angle got moved to the villain, so that “woman succeeding in a male-driven group” becomes something to root against. More problematic? “Peggy Carter goes rogue from the SSR because, as a woman, they don’t take her seriously” worked like gangbusters. “Peggy Carter goes rogue from the SSR because they’re being manipulated by the Arena Club (what Agents of SHIELD viewers recognize as a branch of Hydra)” is a lesser copy of that. And it weakens Carter as a character, because if she already lived through the SSR being manipulated by the Arena Club (Hydra’s most successful branch, they seem to already run the US), how on Earth did she miss SHIELD being infiltrated by Hydra Proper? But we know she did. We saw Winter Soldier. Also… it’s a little odd that after a season based around establishing Peggy’s worth beyond being Captain America’s girlfriend, so much of this season revolved around her love life.

Strengths: Peggy’s relationship with Edwin Jarvis. Their oh-so-British banter remained wonderful. The newly revealed and delightful Ana Jarvis. The continued employment of Enver Gjokaj. Chief Thompson’s turn back to the light in the final episodes.

Weaknesses: The Arena Club. Never managing to call Whitney Frost “Madame Masque.” Having ratings that low but still ending on a cliffhanger. Forcing a female lead into a romantic triangle. Spending one whole episode on race relations in the 50s then forgetting about it.

High Point: The Atomic Job. For one episode, Agent Carter became a comic heist flick.

Low Point: A Little Song and Dance. Despite a fun opening musical number, this episode ends with Peggy Carter becoming an “acting tough” version of the simpering girlfriend. Shortly after chastising her ally/would-be suitor Agent Sousa for letting his feelings for her compromise a mission, she allows her feelings for scientist Jason Wilkes to compromise an even more vital mission, risking basically the whole world to protect a man who asked her to let him die. She is not shown the irony.

Tips for next season: At the time of writing there is no next season, but we live in an era of unexpected revivals, the fan campaign to save it is passionate, and frankly, Agent Carter always belonged on Netflix anyway. Short seasons, one plotline, it’s a better fit there than on broadcast. So if the miracle comes… don’t waste it. Found SHIELD. Get it done. You can’t blow this on a third “Peggy Carter goes rogue from the SSR” plot. Two was clearly too many. Imagine a season arc where Peggy reassembles the team from the now-disbanded SSR to solve the cliffhanger from season two, and in the process they become SHIELD. Now that would work.

8. Legends of Tomorrow

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Premise: Rogue Time Master Rip Hunter unites a team of heroes and villains to bring down immortal villain Vandal Savage before he can conquer the world… and kill Rip’s wife and son.

I’ll admit… this one took some time to find its groove. But it was a team adventure featuring some of the best recurring characters of Flash and Arrow, featuring Arthur Darville as a time traveler and Victor Garber as… don’t even care. Love him in everything. That said, Vandal Savage (one of DC’s upper B-list villains who they blended with uninspiring 2000s era Hawkman/Hawkgirl villain Hath-Set) never really clicked as a great villain. And not all of the cast are on Victor Garber’s level. But in the back half, the show really took off. And they managed some impressive twists.

Strengths: Everything/anything Captain Cold. Arthur Darville and Victor Garber. Jonah Hex. The final arc. Wentworth Miller managing to out-badass James Spader with the line “There are no strings on me.”

Weaknesses: Reddit made a running gag out of how often Ray Palmer screwed up. Their habitual abuse of the timeline. Vandal Savage being a lovelorn Egyptian rather than a conquest-hungry caveman. Kendra/Hawkgirl and her frequent reminders of having just been a barista.

High Point: Destiny/Legendary. Legends wraps strong with a strike against the Time Masters, an impressive fight against Savage (in three time periods at once), and a name-drop that has me at the very least excited for another round.

Tips for next season: The last two minutes have my attention. Don’t screw it up. Also maybe make the next female Legend a little stronger than Hawkgirl ended up being.

7. Agents of SHIELD

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Premise: The Agents of SHIELD work with (sometimes against) the government to deal with the rising number of Inhumans caused by a leak of Terrigen, while a branch of Hydra schemes to bring back the One Inhuman to Rule Them All from his exile on a distant planet.

Agents of SHIELD still has two problems. They still burn through plot a little too fast, especially right before the fall finale. A lot of interesting stories got wrapped up in manners too fast and unsatisfying in order to clear the deck before the hiatus. But that’s still better than season one, in which they waited for 16 episodes to even have an interesting plot. Second… they still try to connect themselves to the movies when the movies don’t care about them. They’ve had four movie tie-in episodes in three years and only one of them is good.

Strengths: After three seasons and five radical changes to his character, they finally made a decent villain out of Grant Ward, even if it did involve killing him first. Fitz and Simmons coming together was adorable. Their fight scenes remain impressive.

Weaknesses: Apparently nobody told them that the Civil War movie wasn’t about registering powered people. Guess they wrote their tie-in based on the comics. Like I said, they tossed out too many interesting plots at the fall break. The much-ballyhooed Secret Warriors we’d been promised since the end of season two took forever to show up and were seriously underwhelming. Lincoln the electric Inhuman was never interesting as a character, although they found a way to make his powers interesting to watch in the end. They wrote out two of their best characters way too early for a spinoff that didn’t happen. Although, that said… their cast did need some pruning.

High Point: 4,722 Hours. The show breaks from their format to tell us about how Simmons stayed alive on a hostile planet for… well, it’s right there in the name.

Low Point: Emancipation. The aforementioned Civil War tie-in episode written by people who clearly weren’t shown the Civil War script, ending in a fight between Inhuman heavyweights Hive and Lash that should have been epic but was ultimately disappointing.

Tips for next season: The movie division doesn’t care about you, so stop caring about them. You likely can’t tie-in to Guardians of the Galaxy, so don’t bother trying to tie-in to Dr. Strange. Do like the DCWverse, find a branch of Marvel Kevin Feige doesn’t want (he is still hoarding all the big name Inhumans), and go to town. And do the right thing… bring back Bobbi and Hunter.

6. Arrow

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Premise: After giving up life as the Arrow, Oliver Queen finds himself drawn back to Starling City (now renamed Star City) to join again with his old team behind a new name: the Green Arrow. Just in time to try and prevent magic-powered Damien Darhk and his friends in HIVE from destroying what’s left of the city.

Arrow’s fourth season had its highs and lows. Was it as good as second season? No. Was it still an improvement on season three? Yes. Could they have toned down the Oliver/Felicity drama? Sure. Was it as bad as the malcontents in the Arrow subreddit claim? No. Is anything as bad as that toxic wad of Felicity-hating shitposters claims? No. Screw those guys. There are no actual Arrow fans on r/arrow anymore. The show managed to bounce back from a muddled and emo third season with a more focused (eventually) villain plot, better use of most of its cast, and while Curtis Holt is not quite Ray Palmer (and may never be Mr. Terrific, who by the way is named Michael Holt, why do they do that), he was a solid addition to the cast.

Strengths: Damien Darhk. Curtis. The fight sequences. Oliver beginning to work his head out of his own ass. Finally making good use of Thea as a character. Managing to still have an impact with their fourth major death in four years. And of course, John Constantine.

Weaknesses: While I stand by my dismissal of r/arrow and those who lurk there… I will admit that the Oliver/Felicity drama became a little much this year. Also, the flashbacks are beginning to struggle for relevance. Isn’t a little weird that everything that happens to Oliver in the present mirrors something that happened to him precisely five years ago? And a non-trivial portion of their run-time up until the fall finale was gobbled up in prepping characters for Legends of Tomorrow. But then, the main villain plot never really comes into focus until the fall finale. Hell, we spent the first nine episodes of season two thinking Brother Blood was the main villain…

High point: Haunted. John Constantine fit right into the ensemble. More of that, please.

Low point: Broken Hearts. “Olicity” drama hits its peak as they fake a wedding to lure out a villain targeting happy couples. I’m pretty sure Lois and Clark did this plot better back in the 90s, and that is not something I want to say again.

Tips for next season: Pick a side, people. Oliver and Felicity are together or they’re not. Make a choice, stick to it, and find your drama somewhere other than Felicity’s issues with Oliver’s secrets. Also, consider it a red flag when your episode summaries open with “Felicity and friends,” not “Oliver and the team.” And maybe we can wrap up the flashbacks? I feel you trying to stretch out Oliver’s five years in Hell/on the island beyond five seasons’ worth of flashbacks, and I ask you to reconsider. And please, please, please… we need to see Diggle react to Supergirl, given that he still hasn’t wrapped his head around the Flash.

Soon… a look at the top five.

Comic TV 2016 Part 2: Blood, Words, and Tears

And we continue. We’ve talked about the best characters, now let’s look at who did the best things with said characters.

That was kind of a thin intro. But let’s face it, these get long. Enough jibber-jabber! Somebody hit something!

Best fight!

Thankfully, we are well past the days of spending an entire season building up a fight between Clark Kent and Doomsday only to have it last thirty seconds and involve Clark tackling Doomsday into a hole offscreen. Even effects-heavy shows like Flash and Supergirl know they need decent fight choreo. Which means this isn’t an easy call to make. But I’m gonna give it a whirl anyway.

(Honourable mention: Hive vs. Daisy in Agents of SHIELD for the blend of fight and power use, the one thing I said they were missing last year)

Bronze: Team Waverider vs Vandal Savage, Legends of Tomorrow, “Legendary”

After a full(ish) season of trying and failing to defeat world-conquerer Vandal Savage, the crew of the Waverider finally have a shot at taking him out: which involves fighting him in three different time periods at once.

For a certain definition of “at once.” Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, speedforce, it just works, okay?

(Obviously it’s a little spoilery, it’s the climax of the entire season.)

Silver: Team Arrow vs. the Ghosts, Arrow, “Brotherhood”

Whatever faults Arrow may or may not have had in its fourth season, they still surely know how to put together an action scene. In season four, Green Arrow and his team have been battling Damien Darhk and his mercenaries, known as the Ghosts. One of those limitless armies of faceless minions I’m often complaining about. But one of them turned out to be less faceless than the others, and Team Arrow hits one of their strongholds in order to extract him. Single-take fights, a single-take fight involving a moving elevator, some of the badder-assed moments for Speedy and the Black Canary, and even the Atom gets in on the fun. Hell of a fight.

Gold: Daredevil vs. an entire biker gang, Daredevil, “New York’s Finest”

Look, everything about the third episode of Daredevil’s second season is pretty great. “New York’s Finest” is Daredevil at its best. In the end, Punisher kicks a hornets’ nest full of angry bikers (no, your metaphor is strained!), and Daredevil is forced to fight his way through them after they threaten the building’s super. It’s the season two answer to season one’s infamous hallway fight. It may not actually be a single take like its predecessor, but it makes up for it by being extra badass. And one of the few season two fight scenes that’s properly lit. Enjoy!

Biggest heartbreak!

You’d think it’d be enough to have people in costumes with powers fight each other in awesome ways. But it is not. They also go and create lovable characters, make you feel for them, and then hurt them in terrible ways. Here’s what I’d call the most heartbreaking examples.

There are some mild spoilers. I mean I’ll do my best but they’re gonna happen. Skip to the next section if you’d rather.

Bronze: A Spy’s Goodbye, Agents of SHIELD, “Parting Shot”

At the beginning of season two, we were introduced to freelancer Lance Hunter and undercover operative Bobbi Morse, known to comics fans as Mockingbird. At first, I wasn’t sure why we were bothering with Hunter (Adrienne Palicki as Bobbi made perfect sense). But before long, ex-spouse spies Hunter and Bobbi became two of the show’s strongest characters.

Halfway through season three, a mission to stop the villainous Gideon Malick from extending Hydra/Hive influence into Russia through a coup d’etat goes wrong, when the general Malick is appealing to turns out to be an Inhuman capable of creating a shadow-self to kill people. In order to save Hunter from the shadow, Bobbi does the only thing she can… she kills the general in front of a half-dozen Russian troops. Leading to her and Hunter’s arrest. Coulson does his best to get them out of custody, but to protect SHIELD, they volunteer to be disavowed, cut off from the agency forever.

At the episode’s end, Bobbi and Hunter try to figure out their next move at a bar, when several shots are delivered to them, one at a time, from the rest of the team. They can’t say anything to Bobbi or Hunter, or have any contact whatsoever, lest the Russians get wind of it and re-connect them to American spy agencies, so they give Bobbi and Hunter “A spy’s goodbye.” A final drink (a parting shot, if you will, hence the episode title) and a silent farewell from each team member in turn, ending with Bobbi and Hunter’s oldest friend, gentle giant Mac, tears brimming in his eyes. His probable last goodbye to the people he’s closest with, and he can’t even say anything due to who could be listening. It’s pretty sad, and made all the sadder by the fact that it turns out they won’t be sailing into their own spinoff this fall.

Silver: Alex confesses, Supergirl, “Solitude”

Alex Danvers was forced to do a bad, bad thing, one she knew that Kara wouldn’t be happy about. To save Alex from Kara’s reaction, her boss Hank Henshaw, director of the DEO, takes the blame. This strains Kara/Supergirl’s working relationship with the DEO in general and Hank in specific, and keeping the secret takes a toll on Alex. Eventually, the toll becomes too much, and even as Kara is begrudgingly agreeing to work with Hank again, Alex breaks. Her voice shaking, she tells Kara exactly what happened, then begins to break down as she admits that she let Hank take the fall because she was afraid of losing her sister.

Kara almost walks out, but love overtakes anger, and she gives a comforting hug to Alex, who then truly breaks down. And when Hank tries to leave, Kara shoots an arm out, stopping him, and taking his hand in a silent moment of… thanks? Apology? Or maybe just respect and acknowledgement. It’s a touching moment only slightly undermined by the fact that in the final wide shot, it looks like Hank really doesn’t want to be there.

Gold: The Big Death, Arrow, [episode redacted]

Right from the end of the season premiere, Arrow was warning us that someone was gonna die this year. Someone major. And when it finally comes, towards the end of the season… they made us feel it. Arrow’s known for big deaths, having offed a major character once per year, but between the character’s final moments and the rest of the cast’s reactions, this one hurt. It hurt a lot. And kept hurting for a while, as the aftershocks hit Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.

That’s really all I can/should say.

Worst recurring tropes!

Taking a break from “Best of” for a second, before I get into “best storyline,” because there have been a few recurring story tropes that are starting to bug me. Not my usual go-to trope complaint, Infinite Respawn, it’s really only Damien Darhk that manages a seemingly infinite army of faceless but expendable soldiers. No, there’s some other things.

Bronze: Abandoned plot points

Now, I’m not talking about plot twists here. Those I’m fine with. They keep things interesting. No, this is something else. I’m talking about episodes that open the door for a potentially interesting storyline, but then the writers just say “Nah, fam,” and keep walking. The plot isn’t twisted, it’s just dropped completely. And it happened more than I’d like.

Prime offenders:

  • The Flash: Two characters are given a clear Origin Moment, but as of the finale, the show has actively rejected the notion that they have powers. Look, if you didn’t want her to be Jesse Quick, you didn’t have to keep calling her that.
  • Agents of SHIELD: Simmons is placed in an awkward position: before she’d been swept away to a far-off planet, she and her lifetime friend Fitz had been planning their first date. But on said planet, things very much heated up between her and Will, the handsome astronaut who helped her stay alive. Fitz vows to save Will… but if he does, who will she choose? Well, don’t worry about it. Will’s dead and Fitz gets to have the catharsis of burning the thing that’s wearing his corpse. Simmons doesn’t have to make choices at all.
  • Also, Coulson’s romance with the head of a rival agency sure ended in a goddamn rush but we’ll get back to that.

Silver: “It’s a trap! But what choice do we have?”

Here’s the scenario. The villain has abducted someone close to the hero. They make their demand. Everyone, literally everyoneespecially us in the audience, senses that this is a) a trap, and b) a terrible idea. But the hero tearfully asks what choice they have, and walks right into the goddamn trap. I mean, at least try. At least try, even a little bit, to outsmart the villain. You know they’re going to betray you, and it’s never a desperate person pulling their last job before retiring, it’s always someone truly dangerous, and you’re just, what, falling for it. You couldn’t make a token effort to betray them first?

Prime offenders:

  • The Flash again: Zoom threatens to kill someone close to Barry’s adoptive dad if Barry doesn’t give Zoom his speed. But, see, Barry… if you do give Zoom your speed, he’s going to use it to kill or torments thousands… no, millions of people that you know about, and you won’t be able to stop him. And Barry does it. Zoom even gave up his hostage first! You didn’t even try to double-cross him, and it got a dozen CCPD officers killed and led to the season’s low point.
  • Lucifer: When the season’s only true recurring villain, a corrupt cop saved from Hell to target Lucifer, kidnaps Detective Chloe Decker’s daughter, she’s determined to do whatever he wants. Even though Lucifer makes clear what we all know… he’ll kill them both anyway. There is no way in which Chloe goes alone and walks out alive, but she refuses to even try to think her way out of it. Fortunately, Lucifer ignores her wants and shows up anyway. Unfortunately, since Chloe’s there, he’s not bulletproof, which causes some issues.
  • Arrow: Damien Darhk kidnaps someone close to Oliver to make him drop out of the mayoral race. To his credit, Oliver at least tries to mount a rescue. Sadly, they blow it, Oliver caves, and a supervillain becomes mayor. But at least he tried.

Gold: Women in refrigerators

Named for the time rookie Green Lantern Kyle Rayner came home to find his girlfriend had been murdered and shoved into the fridge, “Women in refrigerators” refers to the unfortunate trope of female characters being killed to service the plotline of a male character. Superman turns evil because Lois Lane was killed, Vesper dying helps shape James Bond into the man he becomes, that sort of thing. We had a few this year. More than I’d prefer.

Obviously spoilers.

Prime offenders:

  • Agents of SHIELD: RIP Rosalind Price, head of SHIELD’s rival agency the ATCU, whose relationship with Director Coulson went from adversarial to adversarial yet flirtatious to authentically flirtatious to blossoming into a kind of adorable over-40 power couple, which is not something network television embraces often… and then it’s over because she’s dead so that Coulson has the necessary motivation to kill traitor Grant Ward. Because agent Hunter being determined to murder Ward at any cost wasn’t sufficient.
  • Agent Carter: Yes, feminist-loved Agent Carter went to the “Women in refrigerators” place. And not a gender-swapped version, because sorry, MRA crowd, “Men in refrigerators” isn’t a thing since it lacks decades upon decades of gender marginalization to back it up. No, Agent Carter did something else… Ana Jarvis, adorable and supportive wife to Peggy’s partner-in-crime Edwin Jarvis, is shot to cover villainous Whitney Frost’s escape. She lives, but we learn her injuries left her unable to have children. We never see her reaction to this news. Only her husband’s. Ana Jarvis’ potentially life-changing sterilization is a story about how it affects Edwin. We sort of expect better than that from Agent Carter.
  • Arrow: No, not what happened to Felicity. Her story is far too dominant in the back half, sometimes eclipsing Oliver’s, to count for this trope. In fact, this one’s kind of fudging the rules… see, they didn’t kill Argus boss and Suicide Squad engineer Amanda Waller to advance Oliver’s storyline. No, they abruptly killed off Amanda Waller for a far stupider reason: because the Suicide Squad movie’s coming up, and DC Films doesn’t like to share. Weak. Sauce.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: I guess since I’m on this subject, the entire plotline is about Rip Hunter’s wife and child being killed, causing him to go rogue from the Time Masters and do everything he does in the first season. So, you know… there that is.

Enough of that. What did storytellers do right this year?

Best Storyline!

It’s kind of all there in the header. So let’s make this quick.

Bronze: Smile, Jessica Jones

While Daredevil broke its second season into multiple story beats, Jessica Jones was still doing the binge-friendly approach of one story spread over 13 episodes. The entire season, save for one filler episode near the start, is Jessica vs. Kilgrave. And sure it drags in places around the middle, but overall, it works.

Silver: The Secret History of Hank Henshaw, Supergirl

When I heard that the head of the Department of Extranormal Operations on Supergirl would be named Hank Henshaw, I was pretty sure I knew where this was going. You may or may not have noticed from all of the everything, but I’m a long-term DC aficionado. You say Ronnie Raymond, I brace for Firestorm. You say the new barista’s named Kendra Saunders, I know to expect wings and a mace. They said Hank Henshaw, and I thought I knew where we were going. I was wrong. The Berlanti And Friends Cape-based Action Fun Factory hoodwinked me, the way they like to do. And instead of what I expected, they did something pretty great.

Gold: Rise of the Punisher, Daredevil

Simply put, the best story on comic book TV, maybe on TV in general, of last year. Daredevil made some mistakes this year, but everything involving Frank Castle worked like gangbusters. Not much else needs to be said.

Next time, the rankings begin.

Comic TV 2016, part one: Characters!

With last night’s season finale of Arrow, I can now call what I believe to be the biggest season for comic book TV in history closed. Which means it’s time once again to rank the superhero/comic book shows, and take a look at who did what best.

Because it’s my blog and I do what I want.

(Gonna drop “Worst,” though, that’s less fun.)

We lost one show from last year, as Constantine went from leading his own show to only having a guest spot on Arrow (with hopefully more to come, said basically the entire internet), but gained three more as Supergirl, Jessica Jones, and the Legends of Tomorrow hit the small screen. Also, this year I’m dropping “beyond the capes” and just inviting Vertigo to the party, so we’ll throw in the improbably successful Lucifer and the sophomore season of iZombie.

(Sorry, no Walking Dead… still haven’t watched it since 2011.)

(And no Preacher. The pilot just aired, they can play next year.)

(Also I will NOT call them “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD” or “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” I hate that trend, we know you’re from Marvel/DC already, there’s a better way to announce that.)

Let’s start by looking at the best characters.

Best Male Lead

This should be a harder category to judge, given how dude-heavy the superhero market is. And yet, a few male leads fell short, often through finding themselves under-written rather than a fault in the actor. These are the three who, through a blend of solid writing and great performances, pulled ahead of a crowded pack.

Bronze: Tom Ellis as Lucifer Morningstar, Lucifer (a-doy)

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Lucifer, a series about the Devil himself living in LA and helping the police solve murders, should be awful. And yet it isn’t, thanks largely to Tom Ellis in the lead role.

There’s an undeniable charm to his take on Lucifer, and the amount of fun he’s clearly having in the role is infectious. Okay, yes, in large doses, his amused surprise voice and general lustiness can get… samey, but he still kept me coming back for an entire season of, and really listen to how ridiculous this sounds, a Castle knock-off in which the Devil helps the LAPD solve murders.

The ridiculousness of the premise bears repeating. And yet thanks to its lead, the show works. If that’s not a testament to Ellis’ skills and the writing of his character, I don’t know what is.

Silver: Grant Gustin as Barry Allen, The Flash

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I’m surprised he slipped a spot too. It’s not Grant Gustin’s fault, Grant is still the best in the biz in many ways. Still funny and heartbreaking. Grant/Barry helped deliver two of the best episodes of other series just through dropping by to lend a hand. But in the back end of the season, Barry Allen just made so. Many. Bad. Choices. Yes, I get it, EVERY character makes bad choices, it creates drama, but it just got overwhelming. Starting in episode 10, it may as well have been called “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Barry Allen.”

I don’t like being that angry at Barry so often. But when he wasn’t screwing up royal, he was still the most noble, most dependable, most lovable hero in a uniform. Sorry, no… in a costume.

Gold: Clark Gregg as Director Phil Coulson, Agents of SHIELD

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It’s like all of a sudden the writers of Agents of SHIELD remembered what an asset they have in Clark Gregg. Freed of the endless and slow-moving Tahiti/resurrection/space madness plot that dominated the first season and a half, they actually started finding more emotional and engaging things for Coulson to do. From his rivalry/flirtation with ATCU head Rosalind Price, to his unnervingly calm determination to end traitorous ex-agent Grant Ward, to how haunted he was by succeeding in it, to his awkward mismatched-buddy cop partnership with former nemesis General Talbot, Coulson had a lot of great levels and moments this year. And without all of that “Why is he alive” and “What is he hiding from the team” malarkey, he really came into focus as a leader.

This was the most fun Coulson’s been to watch since The Avengers, and it made this the season I remembered why I was glad he didn’t stay dead.

Best Female Lead

What a difference a year makes. From having so few female leads on TV that I had to stretch the definition just to have the category, to having enough that last year’s winners got knocked clean off the podium. Here are comic book TV’s top ladies.

Bronze: Rose McIver as Liv Moore (GET IT?), iZombie

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Frankly last year I did “Beyond the capes” because I wanted to rave about Rose McIver’s performance on iZombie. When zombies on iZombie eat a brain, they take on aspects of the former owner’s personality. Which means every week we meet a new twist on Liv Moore: eternal optimist, magician, fighty stripper, caped superhero, and somehow they all stay Liv at their core. This year Liv found love, lost love, and lost hope as a promised cure to zombieism began to fail, and along the way Rose McIver will make you laugh and make your heart bleed for the pale mortician with a hunger for brains.

Silver: Melissa Benoist as Kara Danvers/Zor-El, Supergirl

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Supergirl was a breath of fresh air for people tired of the darker tone of DC’s movies. Or, indeed, some of their TV. She’s bright, smiling, hopeful, colourful, and at the heart of the character is a ridiculously adorable performance from Melissa Benoist. When she smiles, you smile, and when she cries, you cry. It’s a knockout performance as a lovable character that could only be surpassed by, as it turns out, one thing…

Gold: Kristen Ritter as Jessica Jones, Jessica Jones (I reiterate… a-doy)

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…a knockout performance as a wonderfully UNlovable character that you end up liking all the same. Jessica Jones is hard-drinking, angry, confrontational, violent, and wonderful to watch. She is a great example of what someone more knowledgeable than me on feminist lead characters discussed in an article called “The Importance of the Unlikable Heroine.” For those who didn’t read, a) for shame, b) she talks about how female characters, unlike their male counterparts, are forced into boxes of likeable, ladylike behaviour. I could go on, but this would get long and stop being about Jessica, so… like her or not, you rooted for her. She was compelling to watch, and the first hero of any gender to turn surviving sexual assault into a super power.

There’s room on TV for Supergirl and Jessica Jones, but if forced to pick (and I guess technically I wasn’t but here we are anyway), Jessica has the edge. If only for how she nailed her line when accused of being paranoid… “Everyone keeps saying that. It’s like a conspiracy.” Black Widow wishes she did that well with the same set-up.

Best Male Supporting Character

There are too many great supporting characters on TV to limit them to just one category this year. Most of these shows are made by their ensembles. Flash wouldn’t be Flash without the geeky enthusiasm and wit of Cisco, Arrow finally clicked in its first season when Oliver partnered with Diggle, Karen Page remains the beating heart of Daredevil… It’ll be hard enough just to pick out three of each gender. But let’s give it a try, starting with the dudes.

Bronze: Rahul Kohli as Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti, iZombie

Ravi

As strong a lead as Rose McIver is, the heart and soul of iZombie is her partner/boss and confidant, Ravi Chakrabarti. Ravi provides backup at the morgue, searches tirelessly for a cure to zombieism, and is a best friend to Liv’s ex-fiance Major Lillywhite (yeah, I know, this show does like to be blunt with the naming). He’s also charming and effortlessly funny, such as when a barista tells him a quote is from Ghandi, and he points to himself saying “Clearly I know who Ghandi is. I’m British. He stole the crown jewel of our empire!” And he managed to sum up me watching any episode of Hannibal… after Liv whipped up that week’s brain-based meal, he leaned over her shoulder and let out a whimper of “God help me but that looks delicious…” And hey, a positive and non-stereotypical role for an Indian. And Aziz Ansari didn’t even have to write it himself.

Silver: Wentworth Miller as Leonard Snart, Flash/Legends of Tomorrow

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Last year, Captain Cold had knocked it out of the park as the Flash’s second best villain (not entirely fair, he had four episodes to Reverse Flash’s entire season). Not only a delight to watch, he posed an actual challenge to the Flash, beating him three out of four times they crossed paths. So it’s no surprise he made the list of “great recurring characters we want to have their own show” that is the cast of Legends of Tomorrow. What I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed, given that his team includes Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer, Victor Garber’s Martin Stein, and Arthur Darville back in a time machine, is that he’d become the show’s MVP. Just the right level of camp, and one of the best character arcs, as Snart goes from being out to steal across history to becoming a true believer in the mission… while his long-time partner Heat Wave did not, leading to a difficult choice. As much as I’d love to see Captain Cold back in Central City leading the Rogues, I’d be sad to see him leave the Waverider. But as it turns out, next year he’ll be doing both. Or neither. It’s really uncertain right now. I just know he’ll be around somehow.

Gold: Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, Daredevil

Castle

In one of the best scenes of Daredevil’s second season, in fact, of superhero TV this year, the main character just sits quietly for like five minutes while someone else gives a monologue. That’s all it took to deliver an amazing scene. Because that’s how good the Punisher was.

Jon Bernthal’s magnetic performance as Frank Castle was the single best thing about Daredevil’s second season. Frankly (sorry, that was an accident) it was one of the best things on TV this season. Daredevil had some faults this year, no getting around it, but the rise of the Punisher wasn’t one of them. No wonder he’s getting his own show, he basically stole this one out from under its lead.

Best Female Supporting Character

Remember that thing I said about ensembles? That again, only now we’re talking about women.

Bronze: Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, Agents of SHIELD

Skye

This wasn’t a sure thing until a few weeks ago. Daisy, formerly known as Skye, soon to be known by her comic alias of Quake, has always been a central figure to Agents of SHIELD, even in the beginning when she wasn’t quite up to it. But season three wasn’t just when they figured out how to use Coulson. Daisy/Chloe finally found her niche, became a badass, and as the resident Inhuman in SHIELD, the voice of her people. But it was the final episodes of the season where she really shone. After having her mind influenced by would-be Inhuman messiah Hive, Daisy finds the belonging she’s always craved… but when her mind is freed, all she’s left with is a horrible slurry of PTSD, withdrawal, guilt for her actions, and crushing grief. And when she finds out she can never get that belonging back… powerful, powerful rage. And Chloe Bennet just nailed it, leading to an amazing fight scene blending some of the show’s better choreo and Daisy’s powers.

Silver: Chyler Leigh as Alex Danvers, Supergirl

Chyler

Kara may rely on her friends to help with her crime fighting, but the one person she counts on above all is her adoptive sister Alex. The love these two sisters-by-choice have powers the show more than any other relationship. Also, Alex kicks a certain amount of ass. And I’ve been a fan of Chyler Leigh’s since she and Captain America made fun of teen movies back in 2001.

Gold: Rachael Taylor as Trish Walker, “Jessica Jones”

Patsy

Speaking of sisters-by-choice… Jessica Jones makes every effort possible to shove everyone in her life away from her, but there’s one person who will not budge. Patricia “Trish” Walker, radio personality and former child star of “It’s Patsy,” stands by Jessica no matter what. One could argue that every positive impulse Jessica has is thanks to her friendship with Trish, who Rachael Taylor sells as a friend worth having, no matter what. And as a badass-in-progress. Even when trying to lure out Jessica’s mind-controlling nemesis almost gets her killed, Trish stays in the fight, and remains Jessica’s lifeline until the very end.

Best Villain

So, this is where I got some flak last year for naming Gotham’s Oswald Cobblepot and Agents of SHIELD’s Calvin Zabo instead of Vincent D’Onofrio’s excellent take on Wilson Fisk (Reverse Flash I stand behind). That’s on me, that’s my bad. Let’s see if I can do better this year. It’ll be a challenge, since this season saw a lot of great comic book villains hit the screen… Vandal Savage, Maxwell Lord, Killer Frost, Mr. Freeze… but these three stood out.

(Honourable mention to Agents of SHIELD’s Brett Dalton, who, as always, basically played two characters this year, both villains, one almost good enough for the podium. Six variations on Grant Ward in three seasons, at least three of them decent, that’s a little impressive.)

Bronze: Eddie Jemison as Stacy Boss/Steven Weber as Vaughn Du Clark, iZombie

Or vice versa

 

In season one, the big villain of iZombie was Blaine, formerly a low-level dealer of a drug called utopium, who infected Liv at the fateful boat party that began the zombie plague. But Blaine was too fun to kill off, and couldn’t be the main villain forever. So season two made Blaine a more necessary evil, and gave us larger roles for two of Seattle’s more nefarious businessmen. Each with their own connection to the cocktail that created zombies: a tainted batch of utopium combined with Max Rager energy drink.

Season one introduced Max Rager, its apparent connection to the zombie outbreak, and its possibly psychotic CEO, Vaughn Du Clark. In season two, Vaughn stepped up from simply pushing a product that caused outbursts of zombie-like rage in certain customers (and hiring an assassin to cover that up) to full-on supervillainy, running a secret lab studying zombies, all for the goal of successfully launching his new product Super Max, which was somewhere between Red Bull and Super Solider Serum. And he also lured one of Liv’s allies into hunting down Seattle’s zombie population to cover his tracks. Steven Weber is gleefully amoral in the role, relishing his devious acts, making Vaughn Du Clark one of those villains you love to hate.

And in this corner… season one dropped rumours and allegations about Blaine’s old employer, the kingpin of Seattle’s utopium trade, Mr. Boss (as I’ve said, they love their on-the-nose names). Season two had Liv’s best friend and Seattle ADA Peyton Charles begin putting together a case against Mr. Boss. Soon after, an unassuming man at a barber shop, played by Ocean’s 11’s Eddie Jemison, described a perfect murder that would send chills up your spine, and then later in the episode, strolled into Peyton’s office to update her board laying out Boss’ syndicate. And so did we meet Stacy Boss: mild-mannered accountant-slash-ruthless crime lord, past and future problem for Blaine’s brewing rival drug empire. Stacy Boss is a subtler, but no less dangerous evil than Vaughn, and in his own way is more monster than the zombies.

They’re both a delight, and add new layers of long-term villainy to what is still primarily a murder-of-the-week show.

Silver: Neal McDonough as Damien Darhk, Arrow

Damien_Darhk

Speaking of villains you love to hate.

Last year, Arrow got to use one of DC’s big guns as their Big Bad: Batman nemesis and leader of the League of Assassins, Ra’s Al Ghul. And they whiffed it a little. This year they went the opposite direction, a villain that even I couldn’t place when he was first name-dropped at the end of season three. I probably have every comic that Damien Darhk ever appeared in somewhere in my basement, but I still had to Google him.

And they nailed it.

The sheer glee Damien had in his sinister work radiated out of him. After three years of increasingly angry and/or angsty main villains on Arrow, to have a villain who so relished the role was a breath of fresh air. And more importantly, they had Neal McDonough. He owned every scene he appeared in, no matter which show. So much so that he caused problems for one of the other DCW series villains… comic book A-lister Vandal Savage’s debut in the Flash/Arrow crossover was completely overshadowed by a one-scene cameo by Damien Darhk. Early in the season, I would actually flinch a little when Damien turned up unexpectedly, because he managed to exude that level of grinning menace just by walking into a room.

Neal McDonough gave a masterful turn as a villain we loved to hate. What could be better? Well…

Gold: David Tennant as Kilgrave, Jessica Jones

Kilgrave

…A masterful turn as the villain we hate to love. The one who makes your skin crawl.

Oh man. Kilgrave. I knew, I knew from the second I heard who was cast, that Kilgrave would give us all the jibblies pretty hard. But I think I may have still underestimated it. David Tennant was horrifyingly spellbinding in the role. And how good was Kilgrave as a villain? He was able to create high stakes without putting the world at risk. Kilgrave didn’t want to destroy and/or rule the world, unlike the majority of this year’s Big Bads (six out of eleven, maybe seven, it’s hard to be sure with the Hand). He just wanted to make Jessica love him. But he was power without conscience, an immoral monster able to impose his will on anyone, and that was enough to make him a menace. Plus, thanks to a non-cheery Cracked article, I learned how incredibly effective he was as a powers-as-metaphor representation of abusive relationships and stalkers. Kilgrave rivals Wilson Fisk for Best Marvel Cinematic Universe villain ever, and he was head-and-shoulders above the pack on TV last year.

Next time… fights, stories, and tears.

Superhero Season in Review: The Final Chapter

And so it’s come to this. But before we get to my superhero rankings, let’s see how some other geek shows would have done in my earlier categories.

Because it’s my blog and I do what I want.

Beyond the capes

There are a handful of geek-oriented TV shows I like that I disqualified for not being superhero shows. But they’re worth some kudos. So let’s do a speed run through the previous categories. Warning: this is even less comprehensive than my previous entries, because I don’t watch Once Upon a Time and am seriously behind on Sleepy Hollow (thought I’d catch up on Netflix, that still isn’t an option) and Supernatural.

Though Supernatural’s a little long in the tooth and probably wouldn’t have made it anyway.

Best Male Lead: Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

Or as you know him, the OTHER Sherlock.
Or as you might know him, the OTHER Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes is a misanthrope. All recent adaptions can agree on that. Good with mysteries, bad with people, and generally fine with that, and Johnny Lee Miller’s Sherlock is no exception. But where BBC’s Sherlock is better at tackling the big, canonical mysteries and making events out of them (only having to write three episodes every two years helps), CBS’s Elementary has more time for character growth and development, and to my surprise, they’ve been making use of it.

Sherlock is still Sherlock, still blunt, still generally bad with people and uncaring about social niceties… but he’s become a genuine friend to Joan Watson, better able to open up. Their partnership has evolved from Detective/Assistant to Detective/Protege to essentially equals. He took on a new apprentice in Kitty Winter, demonstrating new depths of emotional investment in another human being beyond their use to him. Miller’s Sherlock has become a rich enough interpretation of the character, one I’ve become so invested in, that the threat of him having a relapse into heroin addiction was genuinely frightening. And that’s quite an accomplishment for a show that started as “Crime procedural but with Sherlock Holmes,” or as it seemed some network executive was picturing it, “House, but instead of fighting disease he solves crimes.”

Honourable mention: the 12th Doctor, Doctor Who. He may be less cheerful and cuddly than Ten or Eleven, but he’s still the Doctor, as seen in this speech.

Best Female Lead: Liv Moore, iZombie

LivLiv Moore (get it?) had it all: a promising medical career, a perfect fiance, friends and family… now she’s single, working in a morgue, and pushing away anyone close to her, because after a boat-party-turned-horror-movie, she’s a zombie. If she eats a steady supply of brains, she stays mostly normal (if pale), hence the morgue job, but the brains come with a consequence: she absorbs the owner’s memories, so she uses that to help Seattle police detective Clive Babineaux solve mysteries by pretending to be psychic. All part of adapting to life after death.

In addition to memories, Liv also absorbs some of the deceased’s personality. Thus far she’s been a passionate (in more ways than one) artist, a sociopath hit man, an extreme sports junkie, a would-be relationship guru, an agoraphobic gamer/hacker/troll, a military sniper, an alcoholic journalist, and more, all while still being Liv. And like I said last time, Rose McIver is nailing it each and every week. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the creator of Veronica Mars knows how to write a kickass detective heroine.

Honourable mention: Joan Watson, Elementary. Like Sherlock, Watson’s evolved over the last three seasons, from a doctor-turned-sober-companion to a skilled detective in her own right. Not a traditional Watson, but a damn fine one.

Best Supporting Character: Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti, iZombie

Ravi

Liv’s boss and sole confidant, Ravi figured out her secret pretty quickly (he noticed chunks of brain kept going missing from the bodies), but instead of being horrified, was simply fascinated. The only person Liv can be 100% honest with (or even 30%, really), Ravi’s become her (excuse the term) lifeline… and is convinced he can find a cure to her condition. Plus he’s got a charm to him, is pleasantly nerdy, and brings an enthusiasm to their casework that keeps things lively. All without any unnecessary romantic tension.

I mean, he cares about Liv, but he’s not an idiot. She is just SUPER contagious.

Honourable mention: Kitty Winter, Elementary. Survivor of a horrifying crime, she turned to investigating criminals. But her trauma made it hard to be taken seriously, as it made it hard for her to even make eye contact with strange men, let alone be convincing about her findings. But a chance encounter after a failed attempt to make a report to the London police got her noticed by Sherlock Holmes, who takes her under his wing, and trains her in his techniques. Sherlock’s tutelage never reduces her to a victim, even in his slightly ham-fisted attempts to be protecting, and in a flashback, we learn the full truth: Sherlock didn’t save Kitty. Mentoring Kitty saved Sherlock, right when he was at his lowest. She’s gone now, as her story (adapted from one of the classic novels) always had an endgame, and her farewell to Sherlock was a little heartbreaking. Here’s hoping she finds her way back to New York someday.

Best villain: Missy, Doctor Who

Missy

Spoilers for Doctor Who, Series Eight. Skip over this if you want to stay unspoiled.

Throughout Peter Capaldi’s debut season as the Doctor, we get glimpses of an eccentric woman named Missy, who seems to be collecting all of the people who die during the Doctor’s adventures. Villains, allies, bystanders, all find themselves in one of Missy’s offices. That’s all we’re told at first… her name is Missy, she has a particular interest in the Doctor, and she claims to run Heaven. It’s not until the two-part finale that we learn the truth… and it’s a hell of a thing. Who is Missy?

[spoiler title=’Big-time spoiler here.’ collapse_link=’true’]Missy is classic Doctor Who nemesis The Master, regenerated from John Simm into Michelle Gomez, and she’s used the dead to build an army of Cybermen.[/spoiler]

Michelle Gomez was so good in the role that I liked her as a villain even when she was doing things designed to be painful to watch. And it was her motivation that pushed Missy to the top of the list… she wasn’t trying to conquer all of time and space, she was giving the Doctor a dark and terrible gift. She wanted him to admit that he isn’t better than her, that they share the same darkness, because then they could be friends again. She’s a monster, yes, horrifying, to be sure… but this time around, she just wants her best friend back.

Honourable mention: Blaine DeBeers, iZombie. Turned into a zombie at or shortly prior to the same party as Liv, Blaine found an upside to zombie life… scratch a few one-percenters, and he’s living the high life, making tens of thousands of dollars a week keeping the rich and undead in fresh, haute cuisine brains. Evil? Sure, he’s monetized being a literal predator and doesn’t care who gets hurt. But he’s played by Alias/the Revenant’s David Anders, who’s never not fun to watch.

The Main Event

Okay, let’s wrap this puppy up. Who’s the best series? Instead of giving you the three best and one worst, here’s my full rankings of super hero TV.

#7

gotham

For every one thing that works about Gotham (Bullock, Cobblepot, the brewing mob war), there are three that don’t (Barbara, Nygma, seriously how old is Harvey Dent gonna be when he becomes Two-Face if he’s already a prosecutor, Barbara again, she’s that awful). The Wayne Enterprises conspiracy plot has no real momentum, and the series premise basically guarantees a great deal of wheel-spinning. There’s enough there that I’m gonna watch at least the start of season two, but if they don’t want to get their asses kicked by Supergirl, they’d better do some serious course-correction instead of doubling down on their flaws.

#6

con3

Constantine loses some ground in the standings for getting off to a weak start. The show had strong potential, especially in its lead character, but took a while to start seizing that potential. And they didn’t do the best job with canon characters Felix Faust or former Constantine nemesis The First of the Fallen. But they started to find their feet, it was still a fun watch, it was sad to see it go, and the tiny hope that Matt Ryan’s Constantine may yet find his way to Starling City is exciting.

#5

SHIELD

Certainly an improvement over their lacklustre first season, but as is their habit, they may have overcorrected a smidge. In season two, they burned through plots almost too quickly. Hydra only lasted half the season and their primary nemesis, paving the way for Dark SHIELD (amazed no one else ever called them that…), which skidded to a halt so that their last three hours could be devoted to something else entirely, war with the Inhumans. And right in the middle of that last, most awkward gear shift, a token movie tie-in that was almost as half-assed as The Well, their bait-and-switch Thor: the Dark World “tie-in” that remains the show’s worst episode.

But unlike a year ago, I’d have actually been sad if the show got cancelled. If there’s one thing Agents of SHIELD is good at, it’s reinvention and course correction, so let’s see what season three can do.

#4

arrow-2-09I love Arrow, always have, and I’m as surprised as anyone to see it not make the top three. But you can love something and admit it’s had problems. A less cohesive season arc than season two, flashbacks that felt less essential, a little too much weepy Felicity… I believe in the show, love the larger universe its responsible for, and look forward to season four, but I’ll admit this wasn’t their best year. Still good, not quite great.

#3

Carter

Perhaps Agent Carter’s short run-time did it favours. It’s amazing what freeing yourself of the filler episodes a 22-24 episode season requires can do for your narrative. But if a great lead, reliably entertaining banter between Carter and Edwin Jarvis, and a glimpse into the history of the people who trained Black Widow aren’t enough for you, Agent Carter was also about something. They used old-school spy action to lure you into a look at the difficulties of women in post-war America, as the returning men tried to push them back into the background, and how even “safe places” like the ladies’ apartment complex Carter moves to are places of control and puritan judgement. Agent Carter was smart, fun, and necessary.

#1&2… And we have a tie

flashdevilLook, I’ve given this more thought than anyone rationally should, and… I can’t. I just can’t. I cannot, in good conscience, tell you which of these shows is better.

You see, the thing about rating things from one to ten, is that there is no objective ten. Or at least that’s what I read once, and it made sense to me. The notion was, a ten is simply a nine that fills a personal niche. Daredevil and The Flash are, and it is not just me saying this, it’s all over the web, they are nines. They are both excellent television shows. As it happens, Flash hits more than one niche for me, having been a massive Flash fan starting in the 90s, a Firestorm fan in my formative years, and an Arrow fan recently.

So while it would be tempting to declare Flash the best superhero show on TV, I can’t ignore the fact that it is almost custom-tailored to my exact tastes (having Mark Hamill reprise his role as the Trickster from the 90s series? I’m not made out of stone).

Daredevil and Flash have the best supporting casts, the best leads, the best plotlines, but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Daredevil has the better production value. It plays less like a series and more like a 13 hour film. Every episode is tied to the central narrative (save two things), something a shorter runtime makes easier to do. It’s gripping, yes, but grim. And it doesn’t quite stick the landing in its finale. Also, it suffers the same issues as Age of Ultron, in that they occasionally break from their own story to set up other properties. Want to know what Matt’s mentor Stick was doing in New York, or who he’s reporting to? Sorry, you’ll have to wait for (I assume) The Defenders in 2017.

The Flash is more joyful. Brighter, more fun, and more, for good or ill, comic-booky. Daredevil tries as hard as it can to not be a superhero show, despite taking place in the same universe as the Avengers. Matt’s traditional costume, and the name “Daredevil,” don’t show up until the end of the last episode. I don’t think they ever use the word “Kingpin.”

Flash, on the other hand, is loud and proud about its comic book origins. Easter eggs are, simply put, cooler and more frequent. Where Daredevil tried to keep its villains as grounded as possible (except, okay, for the ninja and the mandated tie-in to Iron Fist’s mystical city of Kunlun), Flash caps off a steady stream of comic book supervillains by having Barry fight a telepathic gorilla. And it’s great. And it should be said… for all that the MCU’s selling point is that everything is connected, Flash and Arrow’s DCWverse is just better at being a shared universe.

On the other hand, The Flash had an Iris problem for most of the season. You wouldn’t catch Daredevil half-assing Karen Page because they didn’t know what to do with her.

They’re both great. They’re both better and worse than the other in different ways, and which you prefer will come down to personal taste.

And with that… we’re finally done. On to other topics. Such as the delayed-but-imminent season finale of Writers Circle. Is “Decisions and Deneuments” as good as Flash’s “Fast Enough?” Well… it’s not as heartbreaking. Some might say… it’s the reverse.

mic drop

 

Superhero TV Season in Review Part 2

So last time, I went over my favourite and least favourite characters from the year’s superhero shows: male leads, female leads, supporting cast, and the most controversial of them all, best villain.

I admit… maybe Wilson Fisk was overlooked. Perhaps Daredevil suffered in my rankings because I watched all of it over a month ago, while the finales of everything else (except Constantine) were fresh in my head. I’d totally forgotten about Fisk’s speech in which he realizes he’s been the villain this whole time.

And even beyond that, there’s Wilson Fisk’s international cartel, Captain Cold and the Rogues, Gotham of all things managing to make Victor Zsasz as fun to watch as he’s ever been, it’s been a great year for bad guys, somebody was going to get left out, I’m sure I’m sorry.

I think those were the only oversights, so… wait… no… iZombie is based on a comic book… we’re not calling it a superhero show, are we? Because if we are… well, Best Female Lead would have gone differently. Oh Rose McIver. You are nailing it.

No. No, we’ll assume it doesn’t count.

Anyhoo, round two!

Best fight!

Your average superhero show needs some action. Sadly, not every show gets this. Smallville spent its entire eighth season building up a battle between Clark Kent and Doomsday, and said battle lasted about fifteen seconds. Heroes gave rivals Sylar and Peter Petrelli dozens of powers to play with, then limited their big climactic fight to punching.

Thankfully, those days are gone. For two years, Arrow was the gold standard, but then Daredevil happened, and Agents of SHIELD let Mortal Kombat: Legacy’s Kevin Tancharoen go to work. As a result, onscreen action has kicked it up a notch this season.

Some honourable mentions: Melinda May vs. Melinda May’s doppelganger in Agents of SHIELD’s “Face My Enemy” for a double-dose of extra-cool Ming Na fighting; the Flash vs. the Arrow in The Flash’s “Flash vs. Arrow” (okay, maybe I didn’t need to specify the combatants… I said “Flash” a lot just then) for nailing a fight based around Oliver Queen’s skill and experience vs. Barry Allen’s sheer speed; Arrow vs. an unarmed Ra’s Al Ghul just for Ra’s’ opening line (“I will take your swords, when you’re done with them,”); and pretty much every fight from Daredevil. All of them, always. But here’s the winners.

Bronze medal: Reverse Flash vs. Err’body, “Rogue Air”

Mild spoilers for Flash’s first season.

After an episode filled with self-doubt, betrayal, and defeat, the Flash faces down the Reverse Flash, a man he’s never been able to beat one-on-one. At first, the other was simply faster: but even as Barry works to improve his speed, his opposite number has been fighting the Flash a lot longer than the Flash has been fighting him (wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey), and so at this point in Barry’s career, Reverse Flash is simply the better fighter. So… it ain’t looking promising.

And then, at the last moment, in swoop Firestorm and the Arrow. Me, I’m a sucker for all things Firestorm, as I’ve said, and having the Arrow go a few rounds with the Reverse Flash (with the help of Ray Palmer’s nano-tech) was a treat. Plus there was just something inherently pleasing about seeing everyone come together to take on the Reverse Flash.

Check it out if you like. Although there are potential spoilers for Flash’s first season and Arrow’s third.

Silver medal: Skye vs. Like Half a Hydra Facility, “The Dirty Half Dozen”

A year ago, Skye was just starting to learn how to be a SHIELD agent. She started the first season as a hacker with basically no combat skills. Now, in one single take, we see what nearly a year training under Melinda May can do.

No spoilers, no context really needed, so check it out. This is some John Wick-level stuff right here.

The only way that sequence could have been better is if Skye remembered she has super powers.

Gold medal: The Daredevil Hallway Fight, “Cut Man”

Come on. You’re on the internet. You knew where this was going. Daredevil had the best fight chroeo on anything that could be called television this season, and its crown jewel is the scene in which a bruised, bloodied, clearly exhausted Matt Murdock still punches and flip-kicks his way through at least nine Russian gangsters in one single take.

Let’s just watch it, shall we?

Worst: Flash vs. Clyde Mardon, “Pilot”

This was a tricky one. Like I said, the days of Smallville-style anticlimactic one-punch-and-it’s-done battles with Doomsday or Darkseid, or Heroes never delivering a proper fight between Peter and Sylar, are currently over. Currently. Heroes Reborn is coming, we’ll see what happens.

I considered throwing Constantine under the bus here, but Constantine isn’t based around physical combat. He magic and deceit, you can’t really blame them for not having big fight scenes. Might as well accuse Elementary of not having enough time travel.

But the fight between Flash and weather-powered Clyde Mardon (his more powerful brother Mark would actually be named Weather Wizard) basically came down to Flash running really fast in a circle. And it could have been shot better. But they’ve improved at making Flash’s speed-battles visually interesting as the series progressed.

Best emotional moment!

Nothing like a good old-fashioned feels-bomb. Some of the best Doctor Who episodes can also be the most heartbreaking. And like fight scenes, superhero TV’s attempts at these have also evolved since Smallville.

Potential mild spoilers.

Bronze medal: “I can’t take one more step.” Daredevil, The Ones We Leave Behind

Daredevil gets… kinda dark. Well, that’s not true. It starts dark and it stays dark. And that takes its toll on the central characters. In the back half, a wedge gets driven between Matt Murdock and his best friend Foggy Nelson, a wedge they both accidentally take out on their assistant Karen Page, who ends up alone in what used to be a group effort to bring down Wilson Fisk.

But by the end of the episode, Matt has learned an unpleasant truth about one of Fisk’s allies, and how they finance their operations. And after pushing his friends away (as his former mentor said he would), after suffering defeat after defeat against Fisk, this unpleasant truth is his breaking point. And when Karen, who is suffering from her own trauma, confronts him, he confesses… not that he’s the “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” as the media has called him, but that fighting this crusade alone has become too much to bear.

“I can’t take one more step on my own,” he says. And while Matt and Karen are still keeping huge secrets from each other, they reconcile, and Nelson and Murdock begins to come back together. It’s a nice moment.

Silver medal: “I don’t want to die down here.” Arrow, [episode redacted]

Team Arrow loses a valued friend and ally, a painful blow to the entire team. For the whole episode, however, Oliver doesn’t openly react. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t mourn. He remains the big shoulders, because he knows that his team has no one else to turn to. No one else they can rely on. In his words… if he grieves, no one else can.

Until the end.

Oliver began the season feeling he needed to shed the last remnants of Oliver Queen to focus on being the Arrow, but in one moment, his grief, his fear, his sadness is too much to bear.

The killer hasn’t been found, but the initial shock has died down. The team makes their way out of the headquarters, until only Oliver and his first and closest ally, Diggle, remain.

“John?” Oliver says, his voice cracking. And honestly, it’s odd enough that he doesn’t call him “Dig.” Then, standing over the body of someone he’d been close to, who had been claimed in his crusade…

“I don’t want to die down here.”

Stephen Amell kind of nailed that moment. And yes, it got to me a little.

Gold medal: Basically the whole damn thing, Flash, “Fast Enough”

Flash’s season finale is an emotional roller coaster. Barry finally has the chance to do what he’d never thought possible: go back in time and stop the Reverse Flash from killing his mother. But there are consequences. Martin Stein warns that changing this moment could change everything in the lives of Barry, those around him, or any life the Flash has touched. Which is a lot of them by this point.

Barry seeks out advice from Iris and all of his dads. Joe says Barry has to do it, even though he’s afraid of what he himself would lose: the joys of having helped raise Barry into the man he’s become. Barry’s actual father, who would get his wife and fifteen years of his life back, begs Barry not to do it, and says his mother would agree. Henry Allen is proud of who Barry is, even beyond being the Flash, and is against Barry risking any of that by altering the chain of events that forged him. Iris says to listen to his heart, because why wouldn’t she. And Harrison Wells… has his own agenda.

Every big conversation leading up to Barry’s choice is not just a pull but a yank on the heartstrings, and they nail every one, and the episode is just getting warmed up. As far as heartbreak goes, saying goodbye to the man who’s been a second father, knowing they might lose everything they’d been to each other is the warmup act.

But I can’t elaborate. It’s the perfect end to a stellar season, but it will stab you right in the heart, over and over.

Worst: Barbara leaves Jim, Gotham, “The Mask”

After thinking “I bet if I ask Gotham’s reigning mob boss, like, super nicely, he won’t kill my fiance for trying to arrest him” was a great plan, Barbara Kean has herself a little breakdown, and decides to a) leave Jim Gordon, b) start using drugs again, and c) hook up with Rene Montoya again.

And I didn’t care about a single bit of it. Except by being annoyed that she and Montoya were back together again, because their whole thing was just the worst. Rene Montoya, shining star of Gotham Central, the former Question, should not be stuck in a plotline where she’s trying to prove Gotham’s last honest cop is corrupt because she wants to bang his girlfriend, then becoming an enabler.

God damn you, Barbara, and anyone who wrote for her.

Best storyline!

Stories are neat! Sorry, don’t really have a clever opening for this category. I’ll just… I’ll just start, shall I?

Honourable mention goes to Agents of SHIELD for their introduction of the Inhumans. The story worked well, gave new depth to Skye, and moved faster than any plot from season one. It would make the podium if I honestly believed that it was setting up anything in the movies, be it the source conflict in Civil War or even the actual Inhumans movie. But given that it never seems like the movie branch of the MCU cares even a little what the TV branch is doing, I just… I just don’t.

Bronze medal: Rise of the Atom, Arrow

Given all my various rantings about Ray Palmer on Arrow, I don’t think I need to say much here. Quality origin story for a quality character.

Silver medal: The Long Game of Harrison Wells, The Flash

The twists and turns of Harrison Wells’ schemes surrounding the Flash, his love/hate relationship with Barry, and the mega-emotional payoff were a masterclass in long-term storytelling. That’s really all I can say without spoiling stuff.

Gold medal: “I’m just trying to make my city a better place,” Daredevil

The thing that made Daredevil really excel, and had people demanding to know why I ranked anyone over Wilson Fisk for best villain, let alone Oswald Cobblepot, is that Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have matching goals. Both are trying to save Hell’s Kitchen, both believe themselves righteous, but they’ve taken drastically different and equally self-destructive paths. Matt is (often physically) fighting the city’s criminals and corruption, while Fisk is using them in an attempt to burn down the city and rebuild it. Both lose allies along the way, though one of them loses allies a bit more deliberately and permanently. Both see themselves as saviours, while being painted as devils.

Having more time to breathe helps make the struggle between Murdock and Wilson much richer than the average movie hero/villain relationship, and it’s a treat to see.

Worst: Theta Protocol, Agents of SHIELD

I’d say something with Barbara on Gotham, but she never really had a “story,” per se. She’d just show up, be a mixture of boring and annoying, do something we didn’t like that felt unmotivated, then disappear for a few episodes and we’d all be happy. She couldn’t even do “be in a bad plotline” right.

Instead, I’d like to toss a few jeers at Agents of SHIELD’s super-forced attempt to connect to Age of Ultron. In the second half of the season, we learn that Coulson’s band of misfits aren’t the only people trying to rebuild SHIELD, and that the rival SHIELD doesn’t trust Coulson in charge. They begin to lure Coulson’s right hand, Melinda May, to their side by revealing the various things he hadn’t been telling his team, including something called the Theta Protocol. What is it? Why hasn’t he told anyone? Will this dark secret project tear apart Coulson’s allies?

No. He was just fixing up the old helicarrier for Nick Fury so that he could swoop in and save the day in Age of Ultron. That established in a thirty second cold open bit, everyone said “Sure, fine,” formed a single SHIELD basically immediately, and got back to dealing with the Inhumans.

They spent three episodes on the Theta Protocol, made finding out the truth a huge deal to May and Simmons, and then tossed it aside in a thirty-second cold open and forgot it ever happened, all so that they could try to give Agents of SHIELD some sort of connection to Age of Ultron. Which is kind of all for nothing, because there is still a goddamn Chinese wall between the movies and Agents of SHIELD.

According to Age of Ultron, the Avengers had been hitting Hydra base after Hydra base for months, probably ever since Winter Soldier. Hydra was the primary nemesis for the first half of SHIELD’s season. You’d think, if the Avengers were fighting Hydra at the same time, somebody on the show, either Coulson or one of the Hydra bigwigs, would have noticed it and thought it worth mentioning.

But they didn’t. And Age of Ultron made no reference or even vague allusion to Coulson or Theta Protocol. So the whole thing ends up feeling like a desperation play to be relevant, a Mary Sue fan fiction where Coulson is totally involved in stopping Ultron even if nobody notices. And then it’s back to our utterly non-Ultron-related plot.

Man these things get long on me… next time, the wrap-up, including my picks for best show.

Superhero TV Season in Review (Part 1)

We begin our segue into a post-Writers Circle Confidential world… at least while the brain trust figures out what between-season bonus material we’re doing.

So in the meantime, now that I’ve managed to get through all of the big comic series for the TV season… okay, except Walking Dead… let’s do a Year-in-review! No, I’m not going to dig up my blogs on what I wanted to see from geek TV this season, that’s no fun for you or me. Instead… let’s do us an award show! Best and worst in a variety of categories.

That’ll be fun for at least me.

(I considered calling it “Geek TV” instead of “Superhero TV” so that I could accuse Game of Thrones of not being “geek friendly,” because this season it isn’t friendly to any of its audience, it hates its audience and wants us to suffer, but… Walking Dead kind of screwed me out of that by existing and being a show I haven’t watched in over two years.)

This week, best and worst characters!

Best male lead!

Sadly, as far as comic book shows go, saying “Male lead” is virtually redundant. Hurry up, Supergirl.

This year, Oliver Queen failed to avenge a loved one and Phil Coulson lost his team’s trust plugging a plot hole from Age of Ultron… which did nothing at all for the plot of his own show… so three freshmen take the podium.

Bronze medal: Matt Murdock, Daredevil

daredevil

Matt Murdock spent the first season of Daredevil in a dark, dark place, fighting against insurmountable odds to make post-Chitauri Hell’s Kitchen a better place. Charlie Cox did a brilliant job portraying Matt’s exhaustion, growing isolation, and resolve to keep swinging no matter what.

Silver medal: John Constantine, Constantine

con3

To put it simply, Matt Ryan was note-perfect as John Constantine. He nailed the look, the darkness, the cynicism, the self-hatred, the way that Constantine has to be practically press-ganged into doing the right thing, but when he does, he’s unstoppable.

He’s the perfect magic-slinging con-artist wizard. Sadly, there seemed to be slightly less market for that than needed. If they can’t find a new home for the series, I’m hoping against hope that Constantine finds his way to Starling and Central Cities next year. Maybe do a magical consult for the Legends of Tomorrow.

Gold medal: Barry Allen, The Flash

THE-FLASH-Full-Suit-Image

It’s not just that relatively young Grant Gustin has been unexpectedly good as Flash’s Barry Allen. Which he has. I no longer flinch at hearing a cast member of something is a Glee veteran. It’s not just that he sold every heartbreaking moment in the finale, which oh gods he did, don’t get me started.

It’s that Barry Allen is, simply, the best hero. The inspiration, the light in the darkness, the one who struggles to be on the right side, even in his first year as a hero. The Flash had a stellar first season, and it couldn’t have done that without a stellar lead.

Worst: Jim Gordon, Gotham

Look. He tries as hard as he can. He doesn’t do a bad job as Jim Gordon. But the problem is, “Angry that the system is corrupt” and “So dedicated to doing the honourable thing that he gets himself in trouble” only takes you so far when the show doesn’t let you move forward. As such, Jim gets in a rut while his partner gets all the development.

Best female lead!

Gonna have to stretch the definition of “lead” here, but our gold medallist demanded the category exist.

Ohhhh this is hard. This shouldn’t be so hard. Why aren’t there more female leads. Why are the ones who exist so underwritten. I want to say Laurel from Arrow, but that whole “I’m-a lie to my father for a year until it explodes in my face” thing isn’t doing her any favours… Flash’s Caitlin Snow is not what you’d call a lead… the women on Gotham are almost unilaterally terrible… This isn’t why we can’t have nice things, nerd culture. Shit like this. Okay. Doing my best.

Bronze medal: Skye, aka Daisy, aka Quake, Agents of SHIELD

Skye

Skye takes the bronze just for being Agents of SHIELD’s most-improved character. A weak link of the first season (better than pre-Hydra Ward, not on par with Melinda May), she came into her own in season two both as a SHIELD agent and our perspective character into the world of the Inhumans. While I’m still hesitant to believe that this plotline will have much if any impact on the Marvel movies (even the actual Inhumans movie), it gave Agents of SHIELD something to do besides sit around and wait for a movie to react to, which after their first season they sorely needed.

Skye met her murderous father (a highlight of the season), discovered she’s an Inhuman (and that Inhuman is a thing you can be), gained seismic powers, and became enough of a badass that even without powers she managed a couple of John Wick-level one-take fight scenes that rival any action sequence this season.

Silver medal: Karen Page, Daredevil

Karen-Daredevil

Daredevil had a slight problem with throwing its female characters into peril for plot purposes, but I give Karen Page props for never fully becoming a damsel in distress. She saves herself about as often as Matt and Foggy do (Really? She needs Foggy to save her at one point? Goddamn), even if in one case she potentially does considerable damage to herself in the process. On top of that, she’s instrumental in the crusade to expose and convict Wilson Fisk, and when Matt can fight no longer, it’s Karen who picks him back up.

Matt saved her physically, and she saved him spiritually.

Plus Deborah Ann Woll was amazing in the role. That helps. It was the kind of performance that gets characters brought back from the dead in the comics. Assuming she survives season two, anyway… no guarantee there…

Gold medal: Peggy Carter, Agent Carter

Carter

Was there any doubt? Comic TV was hit and miss at best when it came to writing female characters, but with Peggy Carter they nailed it. Having female showrunners couldn’t have hurt. Haley Atwell made Agent Carter’s eight-episode run appointment viewing. And Haley herself is advocating increasing the diversity on their white-ass cast.

The best written and best developed female character in geek TV, and a certified badass to boot.

Worst: Iris West, the Flash

Ugh. Again, it’s not the actor’s fault. The Flash didn’t have many flaws in season one, but their treatment of Iris goes right to the top. Greg Berlanti and His Amazing Friends learn as they go… mostly… and one thing they’re learning is that “I must protect my identity from those closest to me” gets old FAST.

It certainly did with Iris.

The problem is, the wider the circle of characters who know the hero’s identity becomes, the weirder it gets when certain characters are left out of the loop. So it was with Iris. When nearly the entire cast knew Barry’s secret by the end of the pilot, “We can’t tell Iris to protect her” just… lacked credibility. It stuck her in a shallow and unflattering story for nearly the whole season.

Also… if you’re going to set up a romance plotline between two characters, you really need more than “Well, they got together in the comics” if you’re going to ask your audience to get invested in them. That’s all that Oliver and Laurel had on Arrow, and by the end of season one, the writers wisely moved on.

Best supporting character!

It’s generally understood that a comic book show needs an ensemble. Obviously team shows like Agents of SHIELD and Legends of Tomorrow need an ensemble, but even shows based around one guy like Arrow, Flash, and Daredevil still need a strong supporting cast, like the team from STAR Labs or Wilson Fisk’s cabal of international stereotypes. And man, by and large it’s working. The Daredevil cast helps build a surprisingly blood-soaked 13-part epic, the Arrow ensemble saves us from the godawful voice-over narration from the first episodes, and the crew from the SSR in Agent Carter are what sell the overall theme of “the difficulties facing women in post-war America.” Here’s some standouts.

Bronze medal: Harvey Bullock, Gotham

Bullock

Gotham’s supporting cast is one of highs and staggering lows, but Harvey Bullock is one of the highs. Gotham could jump from often okay to great if they fired most of the cast and just made it Bullock and Alfred solving crimes while Penguin conquers the underworld in the background.

Where Jim Gordon was stuck in a holding pattern of “Curse this city’s corruption that by the nature of the show can’t change in a hurry,” Harvey Bullock could grow and evolve. Harvey started out symptomatic of the GCPD’s corruption, but has been gradually changed by exposure to Jim Gordon’s honest ways. If the entire show could be a little more like Harvey Bullock, they might get somewhere.

He also gets basically all the best lines.

Silver medal: Ray Palmer

Arrow

As I said when I talked about Legends of Tomorrow, the best thing Arrow’s third season did was introduce Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer. Sure, they turned him into a nerdier, ad-hoc Iron Man, but damn it it’s working. Routh’s quirky charm made Ray Palmer a highlight of any episode he was in, and justified making a second spinoff, which means DC is now the CW equivalent of CSI at its peak.

Gold medal: Joe West, The Flash

West

 

His mother may have died when he was a kid, but Barry Allen has a wide variety of dads. His actual father, Henry Allen, who he hopes to one day see out of prison; Harrison Wells, his mentor, the man who’s teaching him to be the Flash; and Joe West, the cop who took him in after his father went to jail. And while nearly all of Barry’s scenes with his father are touching, and Harrison is there to teach him how to use his speed, there’s a real love between Joe and Barry. Joe was Barry’s lifeline, the first in line to help him through his tough times. By midseason, I was terrified that the bloodlust Greg Berlanti and the Funky Bunch demonstrated on Arrow would turn on Joe.

And to be honest… he might not have gotten the gold a week ago, but his scenes with Barry in the finale were incredibly touching. Barry wasn’t born Joe’s son, but damned if Joe hasn’t become the father he needs. A father willing to make a sacrifice beyond measure for the benefit of the man he raised.

He’s also the conscience of Team STAR Labs, Barry’s first and best ally in the quest to find the Reverse Flash, and has the best reactions to Barry’s powers.

Worst: Barbara Kean, Gotham

God damn. Barbara is just the worst. The absolute worst. Remember what I said about needing something other than “they get together in the comics” to make us invested in a character? At least the Flash writers tried. Barbara is… she’s nothing. She started useless and kind of whiny, became something to throw in danger to motivate Jim, and when it was clear that she was the worst character on a show that wasn’t exactly knocking their whole ensemble out of the park, instead of trying to course correct they doubled down. It was like they went out of their way to find new awful plot points for her.

She ruined Renee Montoya. Created for the animated series, hero of No Man’s Land, primary character of Gotham Central (one of the best Batman spinoffs ever), heir to the title of The Question, that Renee Montoya. In a better world, she’d be the lead character of a Gotham Central TV show. Instead, she’s the second worst character on Gotham, was barely in the back half of the season (did she or her partner even show up after the fall finale? I can’t remember, they were that unmemorable), because her story was tied to Barbara and Barbara was fucking toxic.

As of the season finale, she may be god damned irredeemable. This woman cannot possibly be Batgirl’s mother. I will not accept that.

Best Villain!

Now here we have an embarrassment of riches. If you’re a comic book fan, then this season brought you Ra’s Al Ghul and the League of Assassins, Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad, Deathstroke, Absorbing Man, Hydra, the Kingpin, a 1940s Black Widow, Felix Faust, Eclipso, most of Flash’s rogues gallery, Mark Hamill reprising the Trickster, and even Gorilla Grodd.

Gorilla Grodd. On network television. What a time to be alive.

And those aren’t even the three who made the podium.

Bronze medal: Cal Zabo, Agents of SHIELD

Cal

 

The first season of Agents of SHIELD, like any Marvel movie but the first Thor, had a villain problem. None of them were interesting until after Winter Soldier. Season two fixed that with Hydra’s Daniel Whitehall, but more than that, Skye’s murderous father, Doctor Cal Zabo, known to comics fans as Mr. Hyde. They never said that on the show, though. Which would never happen on The Flash. Someone would have been calling him Mr. Hyde by the end of his first episode. Just sayin’.

Cal flipped from genial to rage filled at the drop of a hat. He was capable of sudden, brutal, even horrifying violence. But deep down, he was just a man trying to bring his family back together, after they were torn apart (metaphorically, and in one case disturbingly literally) by Hydra. All he really wanted was to find his daughter, and bring her home.

And thanks to Kyle MacLachlan, he was riveting.

Silver medal: Oswald Cobblepot, Gotham

Oswald

Is Oswald even really a villain? His main targets are Fish Mooney and Sal Maroni, far worse villains than he was at the start. But I guess he does kill a lot of people along the way… that flower delivery guy didn’t deserve what happened…

What he is, though, is the most fascinating character on the show. Jim’s crusade to clean up Gotham can’t really succeed, because if it did, why would the city need a Batman? But Penguin’s bloody climb to the top of Gotham’s underworld? That’s good television.

Although… he is weirdly selective about when he’s capable of violence. When Fish or Maroni confront him, he cowers. Any other time, he takes the knife train right to throat town. Which is enough to bump him down to second place.

Gold medal: The Reverse Flash, I think you can guess which show he’s on

Reverse Flash

“I’m not like The Flash at all. Some would say… I’m the reverse.”

Fifteen years after Barry’s mother was killed by a mysterious man in yellow, Barry came face-to-blurry-face with him in Flash’s fall finale. He uttered those words above, and we had our arch-villain. Those words, along with his other signature quote, “To me, you’ve been dead for centuries,” are still echoed across the internet wherever Flash fans find a chance to comment on something.

Reverse Flash’s long game provided The Flash’s central mystery, and its conclusion was the season’s best finale. That’s really all I can say. There’s some serious spoilers involved here.

Worst: Raina, Agents of SHIELD

God I hate Raina. She was insufferably smug when she thought she was on the right side. She moved from villain to villain, be it the go-nowhere Centipede plot of season one, Agent Garret, Cal, Hydra, or the Inhumans, so that every major plot had Raina smugging it up. She was obsessed with “What we become,” something that only made sense because corporate synergy kept the show on the air long enough to reach the Inhuman plot, and when she finally did “become,” she was instantly whiny about what she got, blaming everyone but her own hubris. Until she saw a way to use her newfound powers to be a big shot again, and then bam, right back to smug.

Thank god the actress playing her is on Preacher now. Season three should be Raina-free.

Next time… best stories, fights, and more!