The Flash and The Arrow - Hype Over?

As some of you will already know from earlier posts on this blog, the Nerdling is a huge, huge, huge fan of The CW's Flash and Arrow series, of how the characters have developed, how there is this established continuity that is only set to get larger with Heroes of Tomorrow and Vixen and of how the series has literally taken a ground up approach and produced something with the right elements of humour, darkness and action.

But recently many sites out there have commented that both series have hit this odd sort of side-plot lull while they lay down the groundworks for the forthcoming Heroes of Tomorrow. And I have to admit, after last night, where Arrow seemed to be yet another off filler episode dedicated solely to polishing up the recently resurrected Sarah Lance (or White Canary as she will be)....yeah. I can see why.

This week's Flash wasn't much better. A solid 40+ minutes dedicated to fixing Firestorm, seemingly having forgotten about the impending threat that is Zoom.

So the Nerdling has decided he needs to discuss this. Are both series still strong? Yes, yes they are. Do both series need to go off on such a tangent to help establish Heroes of Tomorrow? No. Hells no. They've already demonstrated with the animated mini-series of Vixen that you can have character development occur away from the TV show that is still relevant to the series it is in. And to be perfectly honest, the HoT build up could have been done much better as a series of shorts focusing on the key characters being moved across, rather than this strangely laborious and artificially forced effort to pull it into the spotlight. I know I've harped on about how both series openly support and endorse the other and how I love this sense of community between them...and to be honest I expect nothing less from HoT. But this development does not need to take place at the expense of the two flagship shows for the setting that have already established a much deeper, darker underlying plot in place for each respective series (Zoom and H.I.V.E.).

If anything this approach is very much the filler/flashback episode phenomenon that a lot of people pan in any sort of animated series. It is the point where you feel someone ran out of material and it feels fake and just...not right.

I'll be honest and say, this week, Arrow dropped the ball. After it's pointless Filler fluff episode there didn't seem to be any significant return to the plot or any significant revelation as a result of this. No indication of something bigger coming from Darhk, no indication of H.I.V.E. bringing in more known characters to the setting.

Sure, you could argue this episode was very much about a sort of closure with Ollie and Captain Lance...but that angle has cropped up two or three times so far and never seems to stick. It was redundant. It was meaningless. I feel as though nothing was accomplished in that episode and its attempt to bring us back on track was... Ollie's running for Mayor. I don't even think we're back on track to be honest. We still have the whole Ray Palmer issue that's probably going to eat another episode or two.

Meh.

I mean, come on guys. I love you but at least Flash had a double whammy in the form of King Shark and then the re-introduction of who I can only assume is the Earth 2 Harrison Wells. King Shark alone was teased throughout and then the final thing...well. Yes, yes please.

My only worry is that the Earth 2 villains are just temporary one-offs with no real lasting presence...and essentially each appearance is nothing more than a cursory nod with a convenient way of not having them stick around and thus not having them flooding the setting with costumes and capes. Atom Smasher I think is a prime example of this.

But that has me asking one big question.

 Are we getting a real deal Killer Frost (along the lines of Cisco going to Vibe) or are we going to get an Earth 2 Killer Frost just as a one off nod to the Season 1 finale's teaser from above?

I don't do ratings. But if I did this week's Arrow would be well below par. The Flash redeemed itself in a somewhat more significant way, though I find myself questioning the Earth 2 angle more and more. I mean, yeah, I can understand not wanting to flood the setting with too many metas...that's good. But a lot of these I feel should be more than customary one-offs.

But that's the downside of being a Nerdling...sometimes the TV show has to step away from the comic. It's more a logistics sort of thing...they just can't realistically keep all these metas floating at all times.