DC Television Week 5 Discussion

For our weekly foray into the Distinguished Competition’s small-screen super-heroes: Supergirl is all about the girlfriends, and similarly The Flash primarily portrays the partying princesses.  Meanwhile Legends and Arrow have to run some errands and take gifts (a Deathstroke and a Mack) back to the store.  I may be a bit behind and have misinterpreted the synopsis, which appear after the cut.

 

(Synopsis cut and pasted from Trakt.com.)

Supergirl – Damages – When multiple children get sick from lead poisoning, Morgan Edge points the finger at Lena and blames her creation of the lead bomb she made to save National City from the Daxamites. While Lena knows she never intended any harm, she fears there may have been a flaw in her design, leaving her responsible. Kara teams up with Samantha to clear Lena’s name, but it turns out to be harder than they thought. Meanwhile, Alex and Maggie make a crucial decision about the future of their relationship.

The Flash – Girl’s Night Out – Having received an ominous threat from her old boss, Amunet, Caitlin fears that her past time as Killer Frost may be back to haunt her. Felicity comes to Central City to help the girls celebrate Iris’s bachelorette party, while Cisco, Joe and the guys take Barry out for a night on the town.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow – Return of the Mack – When Nate thinks he has found a pattern to the anachronisms, it leads the Legends to London in 1897 to hunt down a time-traveling vampire. When they arrive in London, they run into Rip, but not everyone welcomes him back so quickly, leaving Sara to make a tough choice in the end. Amaya tries to connect with Zari, but she is still struggling with being part of the team. Meanwhile, Stein discovers what Ray and Jax are up to and is not entirely pleased.

Arrow – Deathstroke Returns – Slade returns and asks Oliver for help in tracking down his son. When they learn Joe has been taken hostage by mercenaries, their mission to save him gets complicated by a terrible revelation that could shatter Slade’s hopes of reunion forever. Meanwhile, Vigilante reappears in Star City.

13 replies on “DC Television Week 5 Discussion”

  1. Some random thoughts on The Flash:

    -Both Iris and Barry have very small groups of friends for their events. Dramatically, of course, the size makes sense.
    -You know what would do an even better job of showing strong feminist women than having them say, “#feminism”? Having them not act like complete tools once they capture the villain. Killer Frost could have taken her in, since her powers had been neutralized– and why was the man-in-distress (nice trope reversal) still wandering around after they freed him?
    -The idea of Caitlin as a quasi-controlled ally, “like the incredible Hulk,” is a good one.
    -They’re still playing Ralph as a douchebag, but he’s entertaining, and it’s clear he will become an important part of Team Flash. He may be the most entertaining thing about the show right now.
    -Why were the women so utterly shocked when Caitlin changed her shirt? I’ll accept it, since the ep is written and directed by women, but it felt a tad overplayed.

    • It makes sense, but not having Jesse Quick or Kid Flash or anyone else from Team Arrow (Like Arrow) seemed off. They could have them all together and use the wedding itself, as the inciting event for their four-show crossover.

    • As for the shirt, I figure it was something we didn’t see. Like it turns out she wasn’t wearing a bra, had pierced nipples with clamps, and a giant tattoo of her late boyfriend and her in flagrante delicto.

      “You earthers have hang ups!”

  2. You know, I kind of want to sit in the room with the people who write these shows, with a rolled up newspaper, so I can hit them on the head and go “NO!” when they do stupid things.

    The writing is usually ok, and often even good, but they have to go and throw some really stupid lazy crap in there with it all the time.

  3. There was a clear agenda with the writing of the episode: “Girl power! Men are stupid!” On its own, that wouldn’t have been particularly jarring since the overall context and story line made sense. However, with the blatant “#feminism” and “male gaze” lines, it threw me completely out of the story because it went full on Sarkeesian. It probably shouldn’t have since there really are people, especially in that age group, that talk and behave exactly that way, but there is so much of that nonsense online that I couldn’t help noticing it.

    Seriously, though, the hypocrisy of that one character for going on about the “male gaze” while voluntarily working in a strip club…. At least they almost addressed that in the end.

    Also, I shouldn’t have to say this, but the above does not in any way support a “male supremacy” belief. Or that women are somehow inferior. That would be ludicrous.

    • Uh, glad to know.

      I didn’t find the “#feminism” or the “Male gaze” lines to be a problem. I found it a problem that the women then ended their crime-fighting with such idiotic decisions, made only to serve the story arc, awkwardly. As for the guys, they were actually pretty toned-down for a bachelor party– and Ralph is being written as the sort of guy who would be a regular at a strip club. I didn’t see that the episode made them any less intelligent than anyone else on the show. That bar hasn’t been set too high, however.

      Finally, it’s possible you may be misinterpreting what the woman in the strip club thought she was doing. Whether her decision was thoughtfully made is, of course, another matter. I am speculating, of course; pop-TV that tries to delve into social theory often makes a mess of everything.

    • Oh, sure, I may very well be misinterpreting what’s doing with the motivations. That’s probably down to whatever bias I’m coming in with as much as the writing. (And I’m obvious biased. Everyone is. I think there’s an element of thin skin regarding the SJW victim culture stuff online that’s colouring things more negatively than might otherwise happen.) There’s plenty of time to clarify in future episodes. Indeed, the final discussion with Joe has hints in that direction. (It seems she wasn’t actually quite clear on what she thought she was doing, either, if I grokked the implications correctly.)

      For the record, I thought the men were treated reasonably, too. None of them behaved out of character or particularly badly. And I agree that the ladies adventures could have been handled better with less idiot ball deployment.

      • Hmmm. Apparently I glitched. Should have been a reply in the other thread. Oops. I will now put down my own personal idiot ball and adjourn to the sofa to watch television or something. :)

      • I wasn’t impressed with what they did with “the girls” try to make it seem much more #Feminism, but it seemed in keeping with the level of character decisions and story line with the shows regular episodes. The Flash isn’t written by Joss Whedon or anything.

  4. Legends: Anyone else notice that Mick no longer seems to have/use his heat gun? He’s just a beer drinking badass, along for the ride. Like their pet thug.

    Also, they didn’t make enough jokes for the fact that Dominic Purcell was Dracula. (Blade III)

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