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Thread: This Fall On Our TVs...

  1. #1
    Justin Dechen
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    TV This Fall On Our TVs...

    October is upon us, which means all of the cool shows have either started, returned, or are going to do so pretty freaking soon - so yay for that!

    What's everyone watching (or looking forward to watching) this time around?


    Blindspot has done a pretty good job of hooking me in. I wasn't sure about the premise when I first heard about it, but Jaimie Alexander is utterly amazeballs. She goes from sad and vulnerable (those sad pretty eyes ) to Jason Bourne levels of badass like the flick of a switch. It seems to flirt with being a bit police procedural and a bit action/thriller, but it doesn't get too carried away with it, which for me is a really nice balance; reminds me of 24 back in it's heyday, where you gave a crap what was going on but it didn't tax your brain too terribly bad. Also, Ashley Johnson (who is part of the Critical Role livestream that I'm addicted to) is the worlds most adorable scientist. Such cute. So sass.

    Gotham has really changed for Season 2. They've taken Barbara Kean (one of the most annoying/frustrating parts of Season 1) and made her awesome, and they seem to have got rid of a lot of the stuff that didn't work so well for Season 1. The proto-Joker kid, Jerome, is much more fun than I expected - there are moments where he starts channelling Mark Hamill's Joker (especially when he gets all showmanny), which I am definitely a fan of. It's still not good by any stretch of the imagination, but it's transformed into movie theatre nachos - you know they're bad, and part of you regrets having it, but it feels so good and the ridiculous smothering of cheese is delicious.

    Agents of SHIELD has upped it's game yet again. They really seem to have nailed down what makes the characters work, and there are some great interactions, dynamics, and development going on. Skye (sorry, Daisy) has turned into a really solid character: she's cool without trying too hard. Also, she called Coulson "Phil", and for some reason that made me really happy. They also seem to have got a handle on the "don't try to do too much at once" thing - they have a lot of characters, but they are taking their time and not introducing everyone all at once: Simmons wasn't addressed until the post-credits scene, and Ward and May didn't feature in the episode at all. And speaking of Simmons, Holy shit what the fuck is going on?! I wonder if the "Death" thing on the scroll has anything to do with Thanos and his "To challenge you is to court Death" thing, or maybe something to do with the Asgardian version of hell? Would totally buy a "Portal to Niflheim" explanation for that pillar.

    The Muppets is a little disappointing so far. I get what they're trying to do, and there are parts of it that make me chuckle (I'm also a big fan of Kermit's taste in celebrity crushes), but it feels like it's trying to be a bit too 30 Rock in it's style of comedy, celebrity cameos, etc... and it just isn't quite capturing the magic just yet. And by magic... I mean the distinct lack of Jack Donaghy and Liz Lemon.

  2. #2
    TheHolo.Net Admin
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    I'm liking Minority Report, but the ratings are abysmal and it's sure to be cancelled leaving all the questions it raises unanswered just like Fox's last futuristic crime procedural Almost Human.



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  3. #3
    TheHolo.Net Poster

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    I'm really digging the Muppets. The first episode was a bit lackluster in the sense that it felt like it was mostly setting up things for the rest of the show, but I enjoyed every moment of it. The humor is great, catered to adults without deviating into the crass and vulgar.

    I'm looking forward to watching more of it.

  4. #4
    I watched one ep of Once Upon a Time, then felt disinterested by the second ep and opted to sit online instead.

  5. #5
    So... The CW had it's three premieres this week (or at least the three I care about).

    The Flash felt very... sensible? It seemed to be taking a moment to catch it's breath and to make sure everyone was up to speed. Nothing exceptionally cool or exciting, but this season is going to be crazy bonkers parallel universe hijinks, so I completely understand the logic in doing so. I wish they'd spent a little more time on Barry's dad, and it's a shame they made such little use of Atom Smasher... but Professor Stein is adorable, so please keep him. Also, Cisco's power seems pretty intriguing.

    Arrow I enjoyed immensely. Oliver spent more time smiling this episode than in the previous three seasons combined, and I'm liking the one-liners he's starting to use: Stephen Amell is fantastic, but the lack of Ollie's sense of humour from the comics has pretty much been my only complaint about the show. Damien Darhk is really cool, I love the mystical vibe. And Thea? Speedy fighting crime and enjoying every minute of it is adorable. The whole unexpected flash forward moment... that's intriguing. I'm guessing that will be the midseason finale that has us all in tears, and we'll be spending the next eight episodes wondering who that tombstone belongs to.

    Supernatural was surprisingly... not bad? The show (and the characters) seem to finally understand that they've fallen into a bit of a formula, and they seem to be trying to break that. The villain is pretty intriguing (especially that little plot twist at the very end), though this whole infectious black neck veins thing feels a little bit too familiar (Croatoan virus, Leviathans, etc). I like that Castiel and Crowley have their own related-but-different plots, and I did make an excited squeak when they mentioned the cage... you'd better give me Adam or Lucifer, damn it! Odd-numbered seasons of Supernatural are usually fairly solid, so hopefully it sticks to that particular pattern.

  6. #6
    TheHolo.Net Poster
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    Just popped in to say how much I am loving Agents of Shield so far. This show has gone from strength to strength, and it has the confidence to go to some quite literally out-there places with its stories and not give a fuck. This is a whole host of characters I genuinely care about, who have been developed very well, and have a camararderie sparkling with both humorous and poignant moments. More of this, please. Lots more of this.

    Flash felt a bit catchy-uppy and exposition-heavy. I'm sure it will hit its stride. Henry Allen is suddenly a dick, and, even in absentia, Harrison Wells proves himself to be the cast's MVP.

  7. #7
    Minnie Starshine
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    Flash
    I enjoyed, but it has its problems. As Droo says, Henry Allen is suddenly a dick, presumably because they need an excuse to not have him around all the time. But my bigger problem (and one I hope they address soon) is that they still don't seem to understand how time travel works. They seem to forget that Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne isn't 'dead', he's erased from existence. If Eddie shooting himself makes it so Eobard never existed, everything Eobard did should also not have happened. How can he leave a confession tape if he never existed in the first place? And for that matter, everything he influenced should never have happened either. I'm hoping they'll explain that's why the two worlds are colliding and why the singularity happened, but I don't know yet.... Still loved the episode for being fun though. The Flash is one of those rare shows that just makes me smile watching it.

    Arrow was technically better than Flash, in my opinion, but I still enjoyed Flash more. I think Arrow had a lot it had to get through to get things back on track, but I still feel the show is struggling a bit, particularly with its flashbacks, which were a problem in season 3. I love Thea/Speedy so far though, she's really fun to watch, and Oliver's new costume is cool. As for the tombstone? Apart from liking the sudden randomness of the cameo from Barry (I love when they do unexpected small crossovers those shows), I'm not sure what I think. My money is on the death being Diggle, but I'm not sure. And I don't really know how invested to be in it, since we now know they can bring people back to life with the Lazarus Pit (as they're going to do with Sara).

    iZombie is like my favourite show. But the opener here was merely 'okay' rather than as great as it has been. Liv eats possibly her most cringe worthy brain yet, and some of the jokes regarding it aren't funny; being racist isn't funny. But it also suffered the worse from one of iZombie's problems, which is Liv's on-again off-again personality absorption. In some scenes she was just playing Liv, and in some she's dialling up crotchety old person vibes to the max. It doesn't feel consistent. Like it changes from literal scene to scene. I like where the plot is going though with all the set up for the rest of the season. The whole thing going on with Liv's family made me just want to give her a massive hug. Although I kind of think she could have come up with a better excuse for not giving blood...

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Minnie Starshine View Post
    [they still don't seem to understand how time travel works]
    That depends on how you view time travel. Bear in mind that [Eobard Thawne isn't from the future of the show. He's from a different future/timeline, where Barry became the Flash several years later, where the real Wells built the particle accelerator, and so on. The timeline for the show is like Back to the Future II: it's an alternate reality that he's created by messing with the timeline. His Eddie Thawne, the one that he is descended from, is completely fine and alive back in that original timeline.]

    [If you think back to the episode with the tidal wave, when Barry changed time before, the universe went to great lengths to "correct" the change, to throw more bad stuff at him and balance it out. That's effectively what happened with Eobard Thawne. Eddie kills himself, thus creating a universe where Eobard Thawne can never be born. But Thawne is there, and that's a paradox. The time stream doesn't like being screwed with, and it doesn't like rewrites and changes and retcons, so it actively "deletes" Eobard from existence, from the point in time when he became a paradox. Everything he did while Eddie was alive is fine, because Thawne's existence then wasn't paradoxical, hence all of those events being still intact. That is the "least disruptive" thing that the space-time continuum could do at that point.]

    It's a problematic approach to time travel, sure... but it does have it's own internal logic. The alternative is unwriting the entire first season of the show, and making it so that they can't come back for Season 2 until 2018 when Barry would have originally got his powers which is... problematic from a production standpoint to say the least.
    Last edited by Ceto Rübezahl; Oct 8th, 2015 at 04:20:42 PM.

  9. #9
    Minnie Starshine
    Guest
    Oh, I get the issues with not erasing the whole show. That would be silly! But in my opinion you have to have very specific rules of time travel for the death of Eddie, a person who as you point out isn't even Eddie from Eobard's original timeline, to cause his erasure from history, but only from the point Eddie killed himself even though it erases him from being born in the future, it doesn't erase him from when he time travelled to the past... It's very, very shaky as rules of time travel.

    The thing is, I don't expect the show to erase the first season. But there was a massive black hole in the sky! Would it have been hard to throw in a line about how it caused a paradox or something? (Or was even caused BY a paradox? That's why it formed?). Something like that address the issue, especially since the entire climax of season one revolved around Barry deciding whether or not to change the past, but if this is what happens when you do so, it means had Barry gone back and saved his Mom anyway, nothing would have changed but his Mom would be alive, because that's what happened when nothing changed but Thawne's existence...

  10. #10
    TheHolo.Net Admin
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  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Minnie Starshine View Post
    [nothing would have changed but his Mom would be alive]
    Well... that in itself is a shaky bit of time travel stuff.

    In the same way that [Eobard Thawne left Timeline A (where Barry becomes the Flash in 2018), and ended up in Timeline B (where he took over the life of Harrison Wells), Barry going back in time and saving his mother would have also resulted in a new timeline, where his mother was still alive... but that wouldn't have impacted Timeline B.]

    [And actually, the show sorta shows us this. What was the point of Ronnie and Caitlyn getting married, if that timeline was suddenly going to cease to exist when Barry saved his mother? Why was everyone completely chill with their entire lives being utterly written out of existence? Why were they saying goodbye to Barry as if he was going away, rather than being all "oh crap, the world is going to end"? The only way everyone's behaviour makes sense in the Season 1 finale is if everyone expected their life to go on just fine (just without Barry), but Barry would end up in Timeline C, where everything was different but, like Eobard, he still remembered everything from the timeline that he left.]

    That in itself [opens up some interesting options, most obviously: if Timeline B still exists, then there is a world out there where Ronnie and Caitlyn are happily married, and where Eddie and Iris are happy together, but there is no Barry. Presumably in that timeline, Eobard returned to the future in the time sphere... but Barry didn't come back on time, so Team Flash shut down the singularity. Because Barry vanished though, the future that Eobard ended up in would be radically different from what he was hoping for... which leaves room for the Eobard Thawne we know and love to return, still wearing Harrison Wells' face, and super-pissed because Barry cocked up his future after all.]

    If you hadn't guessed, speculative plot guessing stuff like this is pretty much my favourite thing.

  12. #12
    Minnie Starshine
    Guest
    But that's where the problems lie. [If Timeline B is the Timeline of the show, Eddie killing himself shouldn't have any impact on the Eobard Thawne from Timeline A. It should theoretically stop Eobard ever being born in Timeline B, but not A, which is where he came from. So again, that logic doesn't work either.]

    [To be fair to the show too, in season one's finale, Joe and Barry, and Barry and his Dad do talk a lot about how everything is going to change, but yeah, they do just also seem to expect everybody else to be perfectly fine with it all. He doesn't seem to have thought it through very well.]

    [The show also really hasn't addressed a lot of what was going on with Season One Eobard, so I assume he'll be back. The entire deal with his powers seems very odd. He clearly could, at a point, time travel on his own, but he 'used up' his power doing so. Then he needed the Flash to exist to get his powers back, apparently? But he doesn't drain them from the Flash or anything because he charges himself up with the chair. THEN it turns out his powers are unrelated to the Flash's and he just needs the Flash to time travel because for some reason he can't (even though he can move faster than the Flash).

    None of that makes sense either! Or at least, it's not fully explained yet. I'm guessing it has loads to do with the 'speedforce' which I've heard is a big thing in the comics, but I dunno.]

  13. #13
    Mandalore the Liberator
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    That's where my whole ["the universe actively deleted him" theory comes in, though. In Timeline C, which is where Barry comes out of the wormhole and speed-punches Eobard in the face, Eddie kills himself. That makes it so that in Timeline C, Eobard Thawne cannot possibly exist: he becomes a paradox, and the timeline becomes "toxic" to him. The timeline doesn't need to rewrite the last ten years, though. It doesn't need to rewrite the last ten minutes. Eobard wasn't a paradox then. He only became a paradox when Eddie died... at which point the space-time continuum realised something was up, and yelled "GTFO my timeline, you yellow-clad bastard".]

    [It's basically the same premise as the photograph and Marty McFly's hand fading during Back to the Future. For the sake of narrative, there is a little bit of flex and variation in how instantly space time reacts to things. And yeah, the answer is probably going to be "because Speed Force", which is in itself a sort of quasi-sentient amorphous thing that seems to have a will of it's own. That's the way you've got to think of it for it to make sense, I think: time is "alive", and it "chose" to just delete Eobard Thawne in that moment, rather than choosing to erase him completely and cock everything up. The same way that it "chose" to change things when Barry went back a day, like Thawne warned him would happen, etc.]

    As for the rest of the Season 1 stuff, [the first thing to bear in mind is that the reason Barry wasn't as fast as the Reverse-Flash is psychological. He kept getting faster as the season went on, but only because he started believing in himself more, and pushing himself more - nothing actually changed physically/scientifically with his powers. Eobard didn't have that restriction, so he was able to run at his "maximum speed", but if Barry truly believed in himself, he could absolutely have run faster. The second thing is that the Reverse-Flash "doesn't belong" in the past, and because the space-time continuum is quasi-sentient, it "didn't really like him being there". The speed force wasn't willing to recharge his batteries properly because he didn't belong... so to start with, Thawne was doing the speed force equivalent of taking the batteries out of his cordless mouse and putting them in again to get a few more minutes of power; and then he got the tachyon doohicky in Episode 9, which recharged his batteries... but recharged them with tachyons, not with "proper" speed force. He started using his speed a lot more after that point: he killed Stagg with a knife for example, but he killed Mason by vibrating a hand through his chest. Even with his tachyon power-up though, he was still never able to achieve the full on supersonic speed needed to open a wormhole or to naturally cause a tear in time.]

    tl;dr - [Reverse-Flash was never faster than Barry. Eobard was just faster than Barry believed he was.]

  14. #14
    Minnie Starshine
    Guest
    [I can just about accept that, but I really feel it needs adddressing in the show, because when Barry went back a day, everything changed, but when Eobard was erased, things didn't. I feel like it needs addressing. Just a line or two. Either that, or with Tom Cavvanagh confirmed as being a regular anyway, I wonder if he's not really gone, and it'll be revealed this was somehow part of his plan. Like he knew that by doing whatever it is Barry was doing (or by creating the singularity) that the timeline wouldn't change, as otherwise why send Barry back? As that'd erase all the work he'd done too.]

    [As for his powers, I also feel that's really not been explained properly at all, and I would be surprised if the show didn't have some explanations lined up. We know that at some point, Eobard could use the Speedforce thingy right? Because he knew what it was and its apparently required for time travel, which he did. But doing so drained his powers so that he couldn't move super fast anymore, and to get his powers back, apparently he needed The Flash. At first I thought this was because his powers came from the Flash (like he absorbed them from him, or shared them with him, or even his origin in the future only happened because the Flash had existed in the past, so stopping the Flash from existing took away his powers), but then it seems unrelated to him? Maybe? We never see him use his speed before the Flash is created after he loses it, but we do see him use them almost the instant he is (when Barry is in a coma in the flashbacks in the final episode, he does his blurry hand thing as he thinks about killing him). But then they don't work properly. They're good enough to have a big fight in that episode where Barry first meets Reverse Flash, but then later on they fail when he has to escape some meta human (I forget who, but I remember him trying to run away and falling over). Then he needs some gizmo, except he uses that gizmo on Firestorm instead (against Gideon's advice), except then he still seems to have all his powers anyway for the finale, except he no longer can time travel like he could in the first place...

    ...ugh, it's really confusing. It might just never be explained and stick with the 'comic book' excuse/vibe the show is going for, but I really hope they do. Especially since he literally never had an origin.]

  15. #15
    TheHolo.Net Poster

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    Good memory! I'd forgotten that about the coma flashback.

    [I think that it's worth bearing in mind that Thawne's entire plan consisted of "make particle accelerator; create Flash", and then from there he was sort of winging it. When a metahuman able to leech Barry's powers was dropped into his lap, he absolutely explored the prospect of stealing Barry's powers so that he could just go back to the future on his own. He swiped the tachyon doohicky when the opportunity presented itself. When he was exposed as the Reverse-Flash, he may have abandoned all of his plans and accelerated his timeline, deciding that he needed to leave ASAP and that emotional blackmail was the same way. Heck, he has spent so long hating the Flash that the idea of cooperating with him, of manipuating him, of doing anything that didn't involve Barry Allen six feet under didn't even occur to him until he got to know the guy / started to like the guy. Also, a big part of the keeping Barry alive plan seemed to relate to making sure that he still had a future to go back to. Thawne is an awesomely complicated guy, I don't think he understands his motivations, let alone the audience having a hope of doing so... if things are confusing, it's likely because Thawne himself was confused.]

    [Regardless, I am 100% sure that the CWverse's version of time travel is going to get a whole lot more thoroughly explained over the coming months. With Legends of Tomorrow on the horizon, and with Ray Palmer and Martin Stein as two of it's main members alongside honest-to-god time travel expert Rory Williams Rip Hunter, explanations are inevitable. In the comics, Rip Hunter's entire purpose in life is to fix/fight disruptions to the timeline, so my guess is that's the show you want to watch for your temporal mechanics revelations.]

    (PS. You do realise that you have just made yourself my designated post-Flash/Arrow pester person, right? )

  16. #16
    Minnie Starshine
    Guest
    [I love the idea Thawne was just winging it lol. It would explain a lot, but it still doesn't explain the inconsistency in his powers. I had this theory that his powers were linked to Flash's, and that's why he always wanted Flash to get better. Because the faster Flash gets, the faster he gets. And then by your theory, he just abandoned that when he was found out earlier than planned and just used the Flash to get him back to his time instead of doing it himself. That would make sense. I still wonder about a lot of his motivations. Like his big fight with Arrow, Flash and Firestorm. While it was really cool, I still kind of think he lost on purpose. That fight showed us that he was good enough to fist fight and nearly beat Oliver Queen when Oliver was days away from defeating R'as himself WITHOUT his super speed. So how the heck he couldn't just take them all apart when he can move faster than all of them, who knows? And the knock out tranqs had been shown to not work on Flash, so shouldn't work on him either. But if wanted to get caught, again, why? Another part of some plan we've not seen all of yet? Or like you say, is he just that crazy?]

    [Can't wait for Legends of Tomorrow. And yes, hopefully it will explain a lot ] .

    That's fine, but you have to deal with my obsessions this means . Which basically goes, I'm obsessed with Sara [And spent a whole year telling everybody she wasn't really dead just because I'm so obsessed lol until the point I was proven right and now keep rubbing it in people's faces], I love Thea, and I'm totally on Reverse Flash's side in Flash because Tom Cavvanagh is so awesome >.>.

  17. #17
    [I think Thawne getting captured/defeated on purpose is a pretty safe bet. He needed to be in STAR Labs. He needed to have that conversation with Barry. Getting captured was the only way to do it. And that entire fight sequence only exists because Stephen and Robbie kept begging to be allowed to be on screen together, so odds are it didn't factor in to whatever Thawne's orginal plan was supposed to be.]

    [Thinking Sara is awesome is one of the fundamental truths of the universe, I think - anyone who doesn't adore her is broken in the head. What surprises me about Sara is that she didn't come back sooner. I figured that Malcolm or Ra's would bring back Sara as a way to manipulate Nyssa. I am still 90% sure that's what's going to happen, though part of me now wonders if Damien Darhk is going to be involved instead, as a way to manipulate Captain Lance.]

    [I am equally fond of Thea - she's so wonderfully bratty at times, and I am LOVING her as Speedy/Red Arrow, can't wait to see her and Ollie being a proper dynamic duo - and I really really like both Malcolm and Eobard because they are so... deliciously villainous and yet somehow likeable. I'm really interested to see why Eobard hates the Flash so much. I kinda suspect that Barry did something horrible by accident and sorta... erased the timeline with Thawne's family in or something tragic like that. Reverse-Flash and Reverse-Arrow are such interesting characters, I really hope they stick around for the foreseeable. Mostly though, I am an enormous Green Arrow fan (and always have been), and I will fight anyone who tries to argue that Batman is better. Also... kinda got a soft spot for Laurel for Supernatural reasons.]
    It's like that, and that's the way it is.

     

  18. #18
    Minnie Starshine
    Guest
    [I adore the reason Reverse Flash hates Flash from the comics. I only read it on wikipedia after watching the show, but I love it! He was a massive Flash fanboy who even replicated the suit/powers and went back in time for a chance to meet him, but when he got there found out that he was already the Flash's arch enemy (from going back even further in time later on in his own timeline) and went insane over how he could be the arch enemy of his hero.

    It's so timey wimey I love it!]

  19. #19
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    I think we need an "Arrow/Flash/Legends of Tomorrow" thread

  20. #20
    Minnie Starshine
    Guest
    Maybes >.>

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