That reason is that I just...don't want to review ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or The CW's Arrow and Flash because they are all just...so...very...fucking...disappointing. We are talking disappointment that, were this an anime I would pretty much abandon the series, forget it existed and come back to it in eight months time down to sheer boredom or because I remembered it existed.
And what makes me super sad about all of this? The very fact that I am a stupidly big fan of these series. Previous posts have seen me heap praise on Marvel's TV take as well as the Arrowverse setting. But it seems there's some sort of nasty bug of pure disappointment that's just going around.
Let's...just get this over with. With Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. we had a very simple and effective set up. We all loved Coulson as the 'human' P.O.V. 'heart' character in Marvel's Phase One movies. And a series based on his exploits was great. Giving him sudden responsibility was fair...and introducing Skye as the TV viewer's mini-Coulson was good. But there were always extra characters. Extra personalities and the series could focus on them to prevent us getting bored of any particular central focus.
That was Season One. That was fun. It made comic nods for us. It tied in to the movies. It introduced Deathlok. It was great. And then we had Season Two. Ok, Skye got a bit more of a focus, but Phil was getting equal parts love and attention too. Grant got attention. The whole Inhuman origin angle was neat though, let's be real, the series was stolen by Kyle MacLachlan's fantastic portrayal of Calvin Zabo. The whole father-daughter thing with Skye was interesting and ultimately confirmed her role as Quake, giving a whole nod to future angles bringing in new inhumans, heroes or whatever. And the series finale, the whole Secret Warriors thing seemed promising. A good nod toward a future angle where the series could develop and give us new and exciting things.
So why, 6 episodes in have they not successfully managed to shift the angle away from Skye? Why have the fucked up so hard? She's becoming bland. The other personalities of the show are being reduced to side characters and the plot itself seems to be rotating about Skye's whole special snowflake angle...which is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Why are we not seeing more than fleeting glimpses of Ward or Fitz-Simmons? Why have we seen no new inhumans or hero types whatsoever? Like, they found one and that's it.
Secret Warriors? More like Public Disappointment. This is not the angle the show was built on. This was not the focus the previous seasons had. It's like they've somehow forgotten the other characters exist. I mean, let's sum up the plot. Yeah, here we go. 6 episodes in six lines.
Coulson's got a girlfriend.
Skye's got special snowflake syndrome.
May went emo and raged at Hunter for doing the exact same thing she has done before (to him of all people).
Inhumans are an epidemic though we've seen bugger all of them.
Fitz-Simmons are having adventures with a portal rock.
Lash is a minor side character no one gives a fuck about, killing the whole dramatic reveal.
Ew. Seriously. Guys. This week you need to get this back on track. You will have noticed I made no mention of Grant who was such an important character in the past two seasons. Why? Because he has done nothing. Seriously. When we saw him reforming Hydra the rumours flew about who he was going to 'be'. Apparantly 'nothing'.
Less focus on Skye, more focus on your huge cast of characters and different angles. You did this for two seasons so far, you can do it again.
Phew.
Ok. That's one fire put out.
Is it sad that last week the only Arrowverse related thing that I watched that didn't make me want to claw my eyes out and just give up was Adult Swim's Robot Chicken spoof? It probably is. And let me explain why I am not even going to dignify these series with seperate reviews.
I am sick and tired of Legends of Tomorrow.
It's not even out yet and I'm already at the point where I do not want to watch it. And this is because of how this build up toward it is being handled. You see, imagine if Agents of Shield wasted half a season introducing us to Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk, the harshness of the legal world...all the while not advancing any sort of plot despite having a huge plot dangling in front of our eyes the entire time.
It's infuriating. Yes. I understand you need to introduce Character X or Character Y. You need to tell us how so and so got their groove back. You can do this in five minute character clips or little animated clips. You do not have to suck multiple episodes out of a completely different TV series or two to build up to it.
I do not care about Kendra. I do not care about Ray. I do not care about three episodes of Arrow dedicated entirely to bringing back a dead character to stick in a completely different TV series. I do not care enough to have characters shoved in my face and forced into identities when they're clearly not ready.
A while back there was this whole uproar about Marvel's time-displaced X-Men and the revelation that Iceman was gay. People found the way it was revealed...practically forced out to be distasteful. And the worst bit is? Watching Cisco being grilled? Holy shit, why has Tumblr not frothed over in a storm of rage about that?
I'll be honest here. I lied.
There was two good things related to Arrowverse this week.
Constantine was the second. It's a shame his series got axed. He was always such a fun character, being so rough around the edges. But that is an unfortunate fate for those characters. People love them, PR doesn't.
See? No review of episode plot.
Because this artificial focus on Legends of Tomorrow is killing that for me. Really. The plot is just being ignored and buried, people are coming to terms in the most...lacklustre and off-character ways and I dread this week's offerings because it's going to be more of the same. Hopefully, hopefully Arrow at least can...nope. Fuck. We're going to have two Atom focused episodes now. And Flash is buggered because we're probably going to have a Kendra episode.
Wake me up when the plot comes back, thanks.
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