Critical Hits & Misses #318

• It's been a crappy year in America, but also a great year for political artists, who have been given plenty of material by 45.


• Supergirl star Melissa Benoist speaks out about the recent suspension of Andrew Kreisberg, showrunner for Supergirl and The Flash, for 19 claims of sexual harassment against him. Supergirl, we need your girl power more than ever.  

For today's musical hit, here, have this beautiful and epic orchestral piece from Two Steps From Hell, with "El Dorado"

Today's critical rolls: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you achieve it or are working towards achieving it now? If not, what are you doing instead and are you happy?

Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Arrowverse Real Talk - Featuring The Flash

I have not been blogging about the Arrowverse this Fall season, and the reasons for that are many, including not having as much time as I did last year. That said, a good chunk of my lack of motivation has come from the fact that most of the Arrowverse is a goddamn hot mess this year.

Supergirl started off obnoxious and featuring a couple of lesbians arguing constantly about the most asinine wedding decisions (DJ? Live Band? This argument took a whole episode to resolve!), although there was an attempt in the third episode to tell Maggie's story and feature her homophobic Mexican father who came up with a bogus AF reason for not wanting to be at her wedding. That was also a pretty decent episode because Kara wasn't the main feature; she goes up to Mars to help J'onn take care of some personal business, and it was overall a damn fine story. However, Supergirl has the Iris West problem: it doesn't know what the hell to do with its primary black character that isn't superpowered/alien, aka James Olsen. Last season he was all about doing good as the Guardian. This season, not only has he not done jack shit as the Guardian, but then his job as head of Catco gets taken away by Lena Luthor. Which, admittedly, I love all the Lena, and oh my god I ship Lena and Kara so hard... but not at the expense of a black character, FFS.

Hey guys! Remember me? Cuz my writers don't!

Arrow is... not bad, but it's not spectacular either. I'm still with it because it has its moments, and +1 internets for Stephen Amell managing to sneak in a Bruce Wayne reference that made fans titter. I've somewhat enjoyed the Oliver-as-single-dad storyline, but I'm giving this show's writer's the stink eye for what's going on with John Diggle (hey, another black character that the writers seem to engaging in some wtfuckery with). And look, as much as I hated how they killed off Katie Cassidy's Black Canary in season 4, can we just not with Black Siren? She's so shoehorned-in and forced, it's not even funny.

Guys, remember me? GOOD BECAUSE I WILL NEVER LET YOU FORGET EVEN IF IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE WITH THE STORY RAWR!!1!!11

Legends of Tomorrow has been 100% fabulous and you should go watch it right now. The reason for this is because both the writers and the actors of the show have all come to the conclusion that they are on the campiest show on the CW, and goddamn it, they are going to have fun with it! Legends has featured ridiculously hilarious stories of the Legends bumbling their way to heroic acts, the actors are clearly having a blast along the way, and I walk away every week with a smile on my face.

Camp has never looked this good before. 

But dear god, The Flash what in the Nine Hells are you doing?

Easily the worst of the four superhero shows on the CW, The Flash has hurt to watch sometimes. Barry is brought back within seconds after last season's "cliffhanger" (I called it, someone owes me $20, Barry didn't even last a full episode off of his show), and he finds that Iris has taken charge of Team Flash in the meantime. Which, on a surface level, I am totally fine with. Iris needed to do something, as she's been anything but useful in the previous seasons. I'm happy that Iris has taken front and center and that even after Barry's return, she still has a take-charge attitude.

But this show still doesn't know what to do with Caitlin Snow. We finally got a decent episode last night with Caitlin showing that she and Killer Frost have a tense coexistence but at least we can have them both, which is cool. But until last night, Caitlin has just been putzing around in the background, not really doing much. Which has been a problem with her character for four straight seasons.

Inexplicably, The Flash shoved aside fan favorite Kid Flash, ostensibly because the special effects for two speedsters at the same time were too expensive, and also because the show's writers apparently couldn't conceive of creating stories for Wally that didn't involve his speedster abilities. That sound you're hearing is me rolling my eyes because the Firestorm special effects are expensive for Legends of Tomorrow too, and yet magically, the writers of that show have figured out how to write stories for Jax and Martin that don't require them to fire up in every episode. Fancy, that. So Kid Flash got written off the show for reasons, although he's supposed to be back for the wedding crossover special. But there goes another black hero, running off into the sunset.

Don't run, Wally. Don't run.

What makes me really angry about this is that they replaced Kid Flash with another superpowered dude, this time the Elongated Man, and I get that maybe it's slightly cheaper to stretch Ralph's limbs as a special effect than to do a speedster, but really? Your excuse for getting rid him was that it was too expensive to keep a speedster around, so you replace him with a superpowered white guy? To further rub salt in the wound, Elongated Man had a pretty decently amusing introductory episode, but then completely ruins the character last night in "Girls Night Out" by making Ralph a really gross misogynist playboy who forces Barry's bachelor party into a strip club so Ralph can make continuously gratuitous leering at dancers. It took exactly one episode for me to hate this character. I'm pretty sure that's a new record. Even Marvel's Inhumans took the time to make its wooden and terribad main characters hateful to the audience over the course of five or six episodes.

"Girls Night Out" wasn't a totally terrible episode, because it did feature Iris, Caitlin, Felicity, and Cecile having to save the day from the weekly bad guy while Barry is off getting hilariously drunk thanks to Cisco. If the episode had been only about the ladies getting to be heroic, it would have been amazing.

This is my "WTF was that strip club subplot all about" face too, Felicity

While I deeply appreciated Barry's de facto drunken state being that he stands at the bar shouting "I am the Flash!" to a bunch of equally as drunk strangers who cheer for him every time, the whole strip club scene was seven levels of awkward and potentially really disturbing. Besides Ralph being gross the whole time, there was this weird subplot about Cecile's adult daughter dancing at the club as research for a book she's writing about feminism and the male gaze, which okay, I can kind of dig it. But there are some weird undertones of incredible disrespect for sex workers. And frankly, it was a very odd subplot that came entirely out of left field and had something to do with Joe being a parent or something, and something something "I'm freaked out about Cecile being pregnant." This part of the episode was, at best, an incomprehensible tangent, and at worst, fucking gross.

Also, what is the point of Cecile's baby? I've heard a fan theory that Cecile and Joe's baby might be Bartholomew, who in Young Justice is Kid Flash from the future (and Barry's grandson) who comes back in time to hang out with Barry and Wally. Just what this show needs, another future black speedster who can get shoved off to the side too.

Can we talk about how The Thinker, this season's big bad, looks like Brainiac? No? Okay, but let's at least thank The Speed Force that it's not another flipping speedster.

Look, The Flash season four is not as bad as Arrow season four (thank Dog), but I feel like this show is still lost and hasn't quite found its footing, something it lost way back in season two after a wonderfully fun and vibrant season one. The writers really need to find whatever muse it was that let them finally tell a compelling story about Iris and Caitlin being a part of an all-lady hero team, and stick with it, because that was good stuff. Whatever the hell else is going on with this show, though? It needs to get it together.

There is a silver lining to all of this, though. Nothing on the CW is as bad as Marvel's Inhumans.

But then again, very little is.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Critical Hits & Misses #192

• Comics Beat has a solid interview with Supergirl: Being Super writer Mariko Tamaki, an adolescent Supergirl run that sounds like it's definitely worth a read. 


• Did you watch FX's Legion, which is based on the X-Men universe? If you didn't, hop to it; Legion was fabulous in so many different ways. It was visually stunning and had a really high production value. But not to be left behind was the music of Legion, which was just as amazing as the rest of the show. The tunefind blog has an interview with Legion music supervisor Maggie Phillips. 


• Paper mag has a fabulous piece on Zara Larsson, a millenial indie singer who has no filter and is feminist AF. My kind of lady. 

For today's musical hit, we have Zara Larsson and "Ain't My Fault"

Today's critical rolls: Music doesn't always get noticed in American tv shows, at it tends to be muted, but Legion definitely had a fabulous soundtrack (so did HBO's Westworld, for that matter). What are some of your favorite tv show soundtracks, and why did you notice them?


Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Critical Hits & Misses #189

• Bustle has an excellent list of 5 intersectional feminist books to help you reflect and resist, courtesy of the Women's March on Washington and their ongoing lists of action. 


• If you've been watching Supergirl this season, you just might be in love with Lena Luthor (especially after last week's episode). I sure am! Tvline has an interview with actress Katie McGrath, who has been upgraded to regular for season three! 


• Broadly discusses the feminist punk trio that goes by the name Skinny Girl Diet. And we've got one of their songs as the musical hit for today, so check it out!

For today's musical hit, we have Skinny Girl Diet and "BORED"

Today's critical rolls: do you have any intersectional feminist books, tv, or movies you'd recommend? Let us know!


Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Critical Hits & Misses #188

• This excellent New York Times piece on a mural in Chicago featuring Michelle Obama is worth a read, as it discusses how artists of color are easily exploited and forgotten. 


• Speaking of black women and how they are treated in the US, this Black Girl Nerds piece discusses black women in film and tv: "Within media, Black women are rarely deemed with a super power; instead, they are deemed with the ability to assist, agree with, or be the love interest of, those who are predominantly male and predominantly White."


• And speaking of being Super, Comics Beat has this great interview with Mariko Tamaki, writer of Supergirl: Being Super. 

For today's musical hit, I'm feeling some Queen Bey. Here's Beyonce and "Pretty Hurts"

Today's critical rolls: there aren't a lot of them out there, but they are out there still: tell us about some of your favorite fictional black women, regardless of genre or medium.


Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

"Duet" Hits the Right Notes - The Flash & Supergirl Crossover

That sound you heard last night was probably the sound of me squeeing in absolute delight for a solid hour of television.

Also, possibly, it was the sound of the tremendous amount of musical talent that you might not have realized exists in the Berlantiverse. And maybe even the sound of tap-dancing. Because, you guys, there was tap-dancing in this episode!!!!

Spoilers over the fold.

As with the previous crossover episode this season which involved all four Berlantiverse shows, it's probably worth noting right off the bat that the plot of "Duet" was very simple, and if really want to be critical, kind of silly. Music Meister, who appears at the end of Monday's Supergirl episode and "whammies" Kara unconscious, shows up on Earth-1 and whammies Barry as well. Later, Music Meister tells both our intrepid heroes that he's just there to teach them a lesson, and oh yeah, don't die in the dream world because you'll die in the real world too.

The "lesson" for Kara and Barry to learn is about love, which, if you're not interested in the silly romantically-contrived drama this season, may cause you to roll your eyes. Certainly I hit The Flash hard for it's CW-soap-opera-esque decision to play the "will they/won't they" game, with an honorable mention going to Supergirl for the same predictable melodrama between Kara and Mon-El. I will say that at the very least, Supergirl didn't drag the drama on for very long. We all knew the melodrama was going to happen, but it didn't happen until this past Monday's episode, wherein Kara discovers that Mon-El has been lying to her about his real identity as Prince of Daxam all this time, so she decides she simply can't be with him, or have anything to do with him. Meanwhile, Barry decided last week that he couldn't be with Iris because reasons, and that was after she had called off the engagement the week before that, because reasons.

I would be remiss if I didn't link to a post (again) at the Fandomentals blog about the problematic nature of the Mon-El and Kara romance. It's worth a read for sure.

Okay, so what all of the criticism out of the way, let's get real here about musical episodes. Unless you're Glee, the only reason to have a musical episode is a) because the fans would love it, and b) because it's fun, and c) because if your cast has the talent, it would be wasteful not to. Sometimes it doesn't work out (looking at you, Grey's Anatomy), but sometimes it goes down in history as being one of the most memorable things about a show (full confession: I still sometimes play the soundtrack to "Once More With Feeling," the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode, in my car).

Considering all the musical talent present in at least some members of every Berlantiverse cast, maybe the real surprise is that a musical crossover didn't happen sooner. Either way, and despite the simplistic nature of the plot, "Duet" delivered in a big way. It was visually gorgeous, between all the costumes and hair, and of course it was such a pleasure to hear the pipes on some of these actors, in all their full glory.

Costuming and hair, especially for Iris and Kara, were on-point here!

So basically, Music Meister traps Kara and Barry in a dream world where they are in fact in a musical, and they don't have their super powers. They have to play along with the plot and see it through to its conclusion if they want to get out. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Mon-El and J'onn crossover into Earth-1 to seek the help of Team Flash, bringing an unconscious Kara with them.

There is a little bit of action out in the real world, as J'onn, Kid Flash, and Vibe team up to capture Music Meister. There's a small sideplot involving Kid Flash being freaked out now about the superheroing thing after Savitar messed with his head, and Music Meister even taunts him about being scared, but ultimately, bolstered by his teammates, Wally gets it together.

The real action is happening in the dreamworld, of course. We start with Barry entering the dreamworld just as Kara is pulling off a beautiful number on stage at a nightclub set in the roaring 20s. Music Meister appears to tell them how the game is played, and there is another musical number that features Carlos Valdes (Cisco) and Jeremy Jordan (Winn) and Music Meister himself (Darren Criss).

I did not know this, but Jeremy Jordan (Winn) is a young broadway star. The hell is he doing playing the dork on Supergirl?

Then you've got the actual stage legends in the form of Jesse L. Martin (Joe West) and Victor Garber (Martin Stein on Legends of Tomorrow), who play the two dads of Iris' in-dream character Millie. Yes that's right, The Flash just slipped in a gay romance we didn't even know we freaking needed, but we so totally do. Anyway, Martin and Garber belt out "More I Cannot Wish You" from Guys and Dolls, along with the third stage legend in this episode, John Barrowman, who plays the rival father and gangster.

I accept this new head cannon

Millie, aka Iris, is secretly in love with the son of the night club owner, and that son is played by Mon-El. So yeah, we had Iris West and Mon-El in love, and neither Barry nor Kara were very happy about it. But they had to move the romance plot forward if they want to get out of this West Side Story knock-off.

Guys. GUYS. There's a tap-dance sequence, which Grant Gustin freaking nails. I was sitting on my couch literally squeeeing with sheer joy. This sequence featured Barry and Kara singing a silly Rachel Bloom (of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) piece called "Super Friends," and it was super fabulous.

Photo credit: Vanity Fair/CW

Ultimately, when Barrowman, Martin, and Garber get into a gangster shootout because they don't want their kids dating, Barry and Kara get caught in it and get shot, despite Music Meister's warning that they can't die in the dream world. Prodded along by Music Meister, Iris and Mon-El have to go save their sweeties by vibing into the dream world and giving the kiss of true love. I swear to God I'm not making this up.

Hokey as hell? Yes! All the yes! But it was so... joyful. 

The lesson Kara and Barry learn has something to do with love and forgiveness (I told you the plot was kind of thin). Music Meister, who apparently has channeled all of us in being sick of the will they/won't they, is pleased that they seem to be in love again, and so his job is done.

I mean, it remains to be seen how Kara and Mon-El will fix things, although Kara was probably on the right track when she threatened to geologically drop a mountain on him if he ever lied to her again. But Barry and Iris have fully resolved their differences here, because at the end of this episode, we get one final musical number, this time in the real world. Barry serenades Iris with a beautiful piece written by La La Land's Benj Pasek and Justin Paul called "Runnin' Home To You" as he presents her with the engagement ring once more.

If you're not into romance or musicals, the final scene was probably way too sugary-sweet for your tastes, and the rest of the musical numbers probably annoyed you. But then again, maybe not. My husband is no fan of musicals (how did I marry this man, when I adore them?), but he wasn't greatly bothered by this episode. It will probably never be his favorite episode, but it didn't cause him to leave the room.

But if you're like me, and you love musicals and think that Kara and Barry are the most adorable superheroes ever, then this episode will probably make you as happy as it made me. Because while it did nothing to move the Savitar plot, or any of the other story arcs in The Flash this season, "Duet" was nothing but sheer, golden joy. I walked away from it feeling happy and delighted, a feeling I remember from watching The Flash back in season one. After a dark season two, and an even darker season three, it's nice to know that this cast and these writers can re-capture it... once more with feeling.

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

The Wrath of Savitar - The Flash Recap & Review

I don't know about anyone else, but I find it exhausting that the characters on The Flash have to constantly learn the same ruddy lessons every half season. Like not even every season... every few episodes it seems we have someone keeping secrets so monumental that it ends up hurting everyone. 

The other thing I find exhausting about this show is that in every season, at least once (and most of the time, it's more often than that), everyone has to get to Maximum Butthurt mode. That is, everyone has to end up pissed off (usually at Barry) and overly dramatic about something. 

Well we get the double-feature of both secret-keeping and contrived melodrama in "The Wrath of Savitar."

(Spoilers beyond the fold)

Wally is finally clocking fast enough to save Iris when Savitar murders her, but he is plagued by visions of Savitar, who keeps appearing only to him. Of course, Wally fails to tell anyone about this in the first of the idiotic secret-keeping of this episode. Team Flash only discovers Savitar has been plaguing him when Wally and Barry are running off to save people from a building burning, which apparently never happens, because Wally kind of gets beat up by his vision of Savitar.

Barry is so pissed that he tells Wally he's off the team, because how can they know that Wally isn't spying, even accidentally, for Savitar?

See ya, Wallace!

Mine! You can't have her unless you ask permission!

Side note: early in the episode, Barry and Iris tell everyone the happy news, that they are engaged, and although Joe is happy and misty-eyed, he gets a bug up his butt that Barry didn't ask his permission.

Wait huh?

What in the ever-loving hell? It's 2017 not 1817! Since when do Millenials ask permission from a father to marry a woman? Can she not make that determination for herself? Later on, even Iris dings Barry for not asking for Joe's permission. Iris uses this to bludgeon Barry over the head as proof that he asked her to marry him out of fear for her life (more on that later).

WHAT THE HELL?

Why did I join this dysfunctional team again? Death Eaters were more cohesive, FFS.

Much to poor Julian's reluctance, he is forced (*cough* I mean convinced), TWICE, to serve as a mouthpiece for Savitar, during which Savi basically just channels Hogwart's Draco Malfoy as a smug deep-throated taunting bastard. But Team Flash does learn from these talks that Savitar doesn't yet have all the missing pieces he needs to get out of his prison, but he soon will.

This forces Caitlin to reveal that she's also been keeping secrets of late: she apparently chipped off a piece of the Philosopher's Stone before Barry tossed it into the speed force, and has kept that chip secretly all this time. She kept it in the hopes of being able to use it to figure out how to undo her metahuman status, but hasn't yet figured out how.

Julian gets mad because he thinks the reason Caitlin has been keeping him around is solely as her metahuman expert in order to try to "fix" herself. This after he popped a shy and sweet kiss on her lips earlier in the episode.

Desperate to figure out exactly how he's supposed to save his sister's life, Wally convinces Cisco to vibe him into the future so he can see the murder happen. During that vibe, Wally realizes that Iris isn't wearing her engagement ring, so when he gets back to reality land, he announces to the team that Barry hasn't told them the truth about the engagement. Barry admits that part of his motivation in asking Iris to marry him was indeed because she appeared to not be engaged in the future.

So Iris is now pissed at Barry, and she takes off the ring (which incidentally, to me doesn't prove that she wasn't engaged in the future... she could have just not been wearing the ring).

Meanwhile, Savitar is still screwing with Wally's mind. He appears as Wally's mother, and although Wally eventually sees through it, Savitar's taunting forces him to take action. Idiotically, Wally grabs Caitlin's piece of the stone and decides it needs to be chucked into the speed force so that Savitar can't get to it.

Except of course this is precisely what Savitar wants, because as Barry belatedly figures out, Savitar is, in fact, trapped in the speed force. Savitar has 90% of the Philosopher's Stone already, so he needs Wally to chuck the last piece in. As soon as that happens, Savitar is released, but apparently someone needs to take his place, because now we're into Greek myth territory. Wally is sucked into the speed force, and Savitar is now free in Central City.

Good game, everyone! Savitar played you all like fiddles. Much like another Greek myth, the harder you attempt to run from your fate, the more you just run straight into it. HR kind of warned Barry about this, but no one listens to HR, because he's HR.

"You guys are dumb." -Savitar, probably

As a story, this whole fate/Greek myth stuff is pretty cool. And while this season's arc has dragged on horribly, it was nice to finally move it along this much in this episode. I can also appreciate the way Savitar orchestrated everything. He created Wally, and he set Wally up for failure. Truly, Savitar has been one step ahead of Team Flash, who has effectively run around like chickens with their heads cut off. As a villain, he's been pretty effective. Also, everything is Barry's fault, because of course it is: it was the creation of Flashpoint and the Kid Flash in that alternate timeline, that gave Savitar the idea of using Wally. Savitar is one smart dude.

But Team Flash has been written into the ground. They are idiots. They continue keeping secrets from each other even though every goddamn season they have to relearn this lesson at least twice. And they are constantly getting pissed off at each other over stupid crap. These people never learn, and after three seasons of the same writing shenanigans used to create tension between the good guys, it is getting beyond old. At this point, it's just lazy writing.

Team Flash, you guys can do better at writing this stuff. I know you can.

On the bright side, Entertainment Weekly has released photos of the upcoming Supergirl/Flash crossover episode, "Duet."

Bask in the joyous glory that is Grant Gustin in a tux and Melissa Benoit in a bombshell of a golden dress:

I need this much joy and happiness in my life right now.

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

TV That Didn't Suck 2016

In our final installment of Things That Didn't Suck in 2016, we list some of our favorite TV of the year. In case you missed the previous installments, we've covered news, comics, movies, and games too!

Without further ado, here are our top TV picks for 2016!

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is a dark anthology show that looks at current technological trends and socio-political tendencies and pushes them to the extreme, showing our darker side. And yet this year’s episode “San Junipero,” which is likely to be counted among the series’ best, is also its kindest and most hopeful (while still being undeniably a Black Mirror episode). Most importantly, it’s a beautiful tale of two queer women (Mackenzie Davis and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) discovering each other, with amazing, heartfelt acting from both of them. And in year with a record high of LGBTQIAP* characters killed on TV, it was a much-needed respite. (Dominik)

2016 is the year the creators of Welcome to Night Vale expanded upon it with Night Vale Presents, a fiction podcast network that launched three new serialized audio shows. "Alice Isn’t Dead," written by Joseph Fink and voiced by Jasika Nicole, is a story about a woman on a cross-country trip into a supernatural America on the search of her wife. "Within the Wires," written by Jeffrey Craynor and Janina Matthewson and voiced by the latter, is a story of an alternate world and a patient of research facility, subtly told via surreal relaxation cassettes. And finally, "The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air)" is an absurdist variety show in the style of old radio shows, created by Julian Koster of the Neutral Milk Hotel – voiced by a bevy of guest actors, including Koster himself as Julian the Janitor. All three podcast are terrifically written and performed tales, sure to only increase in quality in 2017. (Dominik)

Despite a dearth of superheroes on TV these days, superheroes almost didn't make it onto this list at all. But despite a somewhat mediocre year in terms of writing, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the really fun and important moments in the CWverse. I mean, there was nothing ground-breaking about the CWverse's giant crossover event, but for all its imperfections, it did what it set out to do: give the CWverse fans their first taste of a CW Justice League. With all four of its powerhouse superhero shows joining forces to fight an alien invasion, the CW also nabbed its best ratings ever for each of these shows. What mostly made the crossover magic were the character interactions. Overall, it was fun, adorable, and sweet, although the crossover event suffered from a lack of real use for Supergirl, who deserved more screen time with her fellow leads Green Arrow and Flash. Still, it was delightful and entertaining, and it was clear all the actors had a blast doing it. We look forward to future crossovers. (Ivonne)

Netflix shows are going to dominate end of the year lists - and rightly so. Between Luke Cage, Stranger Things and so many other titles, new and returning, they’ve proven themselves a worthwhile creator of entertainment. And Voltron: Legendary Defender is among their best 2016 releases. Created by two animation veterans and the studio behind Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, this remake of a classic US/Japanese cartoon is a fun romp. Featuring a diverse and lovable cast of characters, this tale of rebels opposing an intergalactic empire will bring a welcome respite from the year we’ve had. And Princess Allura is one of the best and most exciting characters of 2016. (Dominik)

Westworld is life. Based on a cheesy (but awesome) 70s film and a Michael Crichton novel, Westworld is the latest in powerhouse HBO’s line of original series. Not only did HBO spend some serious cash (and it shows, as Westworld is visually stunning), but the talent involved was nothing short of phenomenal. Rachel Evan Wood and Thandie Newton star as Hosts (androids) that begin to realize that their world is bullshit. Sir Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris add to an already-talented cast, but I would be remiss in not mentioning the awesome Jeffrey Wright, who was freaking fabulous as two different characters. This series is about artificial life gaining sentience, but it is also about women who have been violently used deciding they’ve had enough and want to rewrite their stories. These violent delights have violent ends. It should be noted that while off-screen rape happens, and that there is a great deal of both male and female nudity, this isn’t Game of Thrones. Every violent act and every nude scene serves a purpose within the narrative, which is a nice change of pace for HBO. (Ivonne)

Did we miss any TV shows? Let us know some of your favorites in the comments!

The Invasion Ends! - Legends of Tomorrow S02E07

Sadly, Legends of Tomorrow marks the end of #DCWeek, and the end of a fun Berlantiverse crossover. I'll be honest, this story really should have gone over the course of at least four episodes, if not a full 8 (or two weeks' worth of episodes). For all that it was a simple "bad aliens show up to kill everyone" story, this episode in particular drove home just how rushed the entire thing was.

With that said, let's talk about Legends and how it ended the Invasion storyline.

(spoilers beyond the fold)

Once again, the strongest part of this episode were the tiny bits of dialogue here and there between characters of all the shows interacting with characters they don't normally get to deal with on a daily basis. As with The Flash's Invasion episode, these were the moments that truly made this crossover work.

So anyway, we learned in last night's Arrow that the aliens have a weapon they are getting ready to deploy.

But who cares, because the CW and the Berlantiverse are freaking trolling us with this, right???

You better not be playing with our hearts, Berlanti. 

Okay, to be clear, the obvious Hall of Justice/STAR Labs appeared in The Flash's Invasion episode two days ago, but the end of the crossover seemed like a better time to freak out about it. My fondest wish is to see a live action Justice League (that isn't that grimdark mess of a Snyderverse, anyway), and I hope this wasn't just a troll.

Also, I'd like to know why the hell STAR Labs even has a building like this. Like for what purpose???

Anyway, our time traveling heroes come up with a plan that involves interrogating an alien to find out what their beef is with the Earth, so Nate, Rory and Amaya take the Waverider back to the 1950s to the original Dominator attack on Redmond, OR. Cisco and Felicity tag along and proceed to be the cutest geeks ever because time travel! In the 50s, the Legends tell the inexperienced tech nerds to stay behind (much to their disappointment), and Nate inexplicably decides to put on the fancy new costume that Ray made for him.

Rory is not impressed.

"Star-spangled idiot" ... I'm not sure how it happened, but Heatwave has become my favorite Legend. 

They do manage to knock out an alien, but then suits with badges show up and arrest all of them. They manage to question the alien before the government goons start torturing the poor thing. Cisco and Felicity have to come to the rescue of their Legendary friends, but the entire team decides they might do some good if they help the alien escape too. Which they do, and they even give the alien the escape pod from last night's Arrow, which was still on the Waverider. Armed with the knowledge that the aliens were first attracted to Earth because of Amaya's metahuman Justice Society team, our heroes head back to the present.

While they were gone, Oliver was being a dick. Or you know, just Oliver.

This is Kara's WTF face. 

 The new President of the US (remember the team let the original president get zapped by the aliens back in The Flash?), has apparently asked to meet with our heroes, but when Kara wants to go, Oliver tells her to stay behind. Because reasons, apparently. Something something I want normal back in my life. Normal? Are you kidding me? You're the freaking Green Arrow. When has your life been normal?

So The Flash, Oliver, Sara, and The Atom go to schmooze with the Pres, and instead suits with badges show up yet again. Honestly this scene is only notable because of the blatant Quicksilvering moment of awesome:

"I saw this in a movie once! Actually, three movies!" -Barry, probably

Turns out that the Dominators formed a peace treaty with Earth to keep their metas under control back in the 50s to prove Earth wasn't a threat, but Barry's Flashpoint shenanigans "broke the peace treaty" and the Dominators are demanding that Earth hand over The Flash or everyone will die.

There's no hesitation, because Barry does have the heart of a true hero, regardless of his mistakes. He is ready to die to save Earth. But his friends wont' let him.

The Justice League be all like: "Nope!"

Meanwhile, a vibing trip between Cisco and Nate reveals that the alien they saved back in 1950s Oregon is at the head of the invasion force, and he knows how dangerous metas beyond just Barry are, because he saw these guys in action. The aliens have no intention of letting Earth survive. Humans are far too dangerous now. So the trip back to the 50s? It actually changed the timeline. 

That moment when you realize you just did the thing that you hated your bro for all this time...

Contrived alien drama notwithstanding, this kind of plot was clearly needed for Cisco to come to the realization just how easy it is for meta humans to screw up with their powers, and that Barry's Flashpoint mistake isn't some anomaly born of asshattery. It was so easy for Cisco and the Legends to screw up time in a completely innocent and seemingly benign act, that Cisco suddenly forgives Barry for the death of his brother. 

Too bad Martin Stein hasn't learned the same lesson. He and Caitlin are back at STAR Labs working on an anti-alien solution, and end up getting the help of his super genius daughter. You know, the one he himself created when he told his younger self to romance Clarissa. Stein keeps his daughter at arm's length, and in a moment that spawned very loud jeering and hissing in my household, he arrogantly tells Caitlin that unlike Barry, he would perfectly repair the timeline and undo the anomaly that is his daughter.

OMG, the stones on these Legends! I mean, Martin Stein has always been an arrogant and selfish ass of a character, who has to keep relearning humility every so often, but geez. And yeah, he learns it yet again, when he finally lets his brilliant daughter into his life, and realizes he can't just erase her (even if he could, which, as Jay Garrick would tell him, is not going to happen). 

Not gonna lie, this is an awesome shot

So, Supergirl, who has inexplicably superfluous in like every episode of this crossover to the point that her presence was almost pointless, finally gets to kick some alien ass. Stein's anti-alien weapon is ready, and Flash and Supergirl have to race across the planet to plant the thingies, while the rest of the heroes keep the aliens busy in a fight. Meanwhile, Cisco and Sara use the Waverider's tractor beam to keep the alien superbomb from dropping and destroying everything, until Firestorm does a thing and destroys the bomb. 

The fight scenes were cool, and it was nice that Supergirl finally got some kind of action. But the real strength of both this episode and The Flash, were all the tiny moments, quick snaps, and quips that passed between the characters at various times. Truly, it was the chemistry between all these actors, and their fun interactions, that made this crossover successful. 

The fun continues right up to the end, with Rory asking Sara if he's right in thinking the new black female president is hot. 

Sara drinks and she knows things.

A second wave of loud jeering was heard from my living room, however, when the President is honoring the heroes for saving the planet, as the Berlantiverse thumbs its nose rather blatantly at Marvel. 

Earth's Mightiest WHO now??? Alert, alert! Shots fired!

That's right, they actually used the term "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" in describing this team. 

Not gonna lie, as a Marvel fangurl, I not only jeered, but I laughed my ass off. Well played, DC. Well played. 

Also of final note: Cisco gives Kara a thing that lets her cross into or call into Earth-1 anytime she wants to. Badass! Musical episode of Supergirl and The Flash, incoming!

Oliver somehow manages to be the most awkward part of this three-way hug...

No foolin', this crossover event was flawed. It wasn't perfect, the story felt super rushed and very simplistic, and Arrow's episode in particular almost didn't feel like it was even a part of it (despite the fact that it was a very wonderful episode of Arrow all on its own). Supergirl was badly under-utilized. The episodes usually sacrifice female characters to useless roles (like Iris West, but that appears to be her meta power anyway) or disappearing them entirely (like Artemis). Had the network spread the crossover over all four shows, or possibly into two weeks, there would have been more breathing room for everyone. 

But as a fan of these shows, as a fan of these characters, and especially as a fan of pretty much all of these actors... it was awesome. I felt good. I laughed, I cried, I shouted at the tv. 

In a word, I was entertained. And ultimately, isn't that what these shows are about? 

All of them can stand to do better, especially for their female characters (looking at you, The Flash!). But then the Berlantiverse goes and does a thing like make a black woman President of the US in Earth-1, and I remember why I'm still into these shows: 

They have heart.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

"Invasion!" Rocks the Arrowverse - The Flash S03E08

#DCWeek continues, with The Flash kicking off the real start of the alien invasion of Earth-1 (aka the Arrowverse). Don't come expecting Shakespearean story-telling, because the story is quite simple, but do come expecting lots of fun and a surprisingly good continuation of several existing storylines on The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. You may also expect plenty of butthurt, because someone always has to be angry at someone else in the Berlantiverse. Always. It is a universal constant.

In fact, last night's The Flash rocked its highest viewer ratings since December 9 2014. These crossover things, you might want to keep doing them, CW.

(spoilers beyond the fold)

Okay let's get the simple story out of the way, because it's quick and easy. An alien pod lands in the middle of Central City, and when Barry goes to investigate, a bunch of aliens pop out of it and run off. Lila of ARGUS reveals to him that this isn't the first time these aliens, called the Dominators, have been here, and that back in the 50s a bunch of soldiers got killed for messing with them. Lila and the official channels want Barry to step off and let them handle it, but we all know how that's gonna go. And yeah, the aliens end up coming for the President and abducting him.

So there's your setup. Let's get to the meat that matters (...mmm bacon).

The real Civil War!

The episode actually started off with a brief scene of the future, wherein Barry and Oliver are facing off against all the other heroes, because the Avengers are noobs and every DC fan knows it. Real heroes fight each other with completely lopsided odds: two against like 25, because we all know Supergirl counts as at least twenty of the Arrowverse heroes.

Ok but let's back up to see how we got here!

Some really fun Flashy moments in this episode!

The Flash figures he's in over his head with these aliens, so he gathers the troops, starting with Team Arrow, who includes Speedy for this one because Thea is super excited at the prospect of kicking alien ass. Felicity then calls for the Legends of Tomorrow to join in on the fun. So let's tally this up, shall we? We now have Green Arrow, Felicity, Spartan, Speedy, The Flash, Iris, HR Wells, Cisco, Caitlin, White Canary, Heatwave, The Atom, and Firestorm. Yes, that means the Legend newbies Steel and Vixen got left behind, as well as Green Arrow's proteges, and Joe and Iris are so busy lying to Wally about what a gifted meta he is, that he doesn't join in on the fun either.

But even with this teamup, Barry doesn't think it's enough, so he and Vibe open up a portal to Earth-38 and bring in Supergirl (we get the exact same scene in her apartment that we did in yesterday's Supergirl).

I think the moment I was most looking forward to with this crossover was the Arrowverse meeting Supergirl for the first time (especially Diggle), and boy I wasn't disappointed.

Team Arrow in particular isn't super impressed by the sight of a mildly petite pretty blonde girl in a skirt, as grumpy Oliver is all like, "I thought you said you were bringing an alien."

So Kara is all like:

Diggle's calmly-but-not-really "I'm convinced" is probably one of the great moments in this episode.

Okay, so we now have an alien on the team. Oliver still doesn't seem impressed, and Kara wonders if he doesn't like her, but Barry assures her he's that way with everyone. Despite the fact that Oliver tries to make Barry the team leader, it's pretty clear that Barry doesn't know what he's doing, and when Oliver quietly makes suggestions that Barry immediately echoes, there was another great moment when the Legends are like, "So are we supposed to just ignore the fact that he said that?"

I'm gushing about these scenes a little, but honestly the chemistry between all the actors is there, and these scenes were just super fun. Kudos on the care taken by the writers here, because I'm sure I wasn't the only one looking forward to these moments.

Oliver McGrumpyPants suggests that everyone else train against Supergirl, and he does ask Kara not to go easy on them. If you ask me, though, she went pretty easy on them:

I just adore Kara's expression here, because you know she's all like, "Hee hee that tickles!"

Surprisingly, even though this was The Flash's episode, the story ends up revealing the end of a plot thread that had been left open for weeks now over at Legends of Tomorrow. Stein and Jax reveal to Barry and Oliver that they discovered a message from future Barry in the Waverider's secret room, and we finally get to hear what that message was: future-Barry is telling Captain Hunter not to trust past Barry because of the major Flashpoint screw-up. This is the first time Oliver is hearing about Flashpoint, because apparently Felicity kept the secret pretty well. Oliver takes the news with a heavy sigh (Metas, emirite?) and then delivers another great line: "One sci-fi problem at a time." In typical Green Arrow fashion, he suggests they need to keep this a secret from everyone else until after the aliens are dealt with.

You would think by now these people would have figured out that keeping secrets from one another never ends well.

Because of course, Cisco ends up finding the recording from future Barry lying around (dammit, Stein, really?), and confronts Barry about it. That's the point at which everyone finds out about Flashpoint. And remember that butthurt I talked about in the beginning of this review? Yeah, suddenly everyone is super pissed at Barry, especially Diggle at finding out that Barry "erased a daughter out of his life."

This was also the point at which my partner and I booed, hissed, and jeered loudly at the television. Because wow, the stones on Sara and her team, as they express their disappointment with Barry being so selfish and changing time because of someone he loves. Sara Lance literally just spent the entire first half of her show's season screwing up her team's plans to deal with time anomalies because everytime she saw Damien Darhk she would go absolutely batshit and try to kill him to save her sister's life. And Stein... Stein... who gives Barry his best "I'm so disappointed in you, son" look! Stein, the man who walked his younger self happily around the Waverider! And I'm not so sure that the reveal of Stein's daughter in this episode is due to Flashpoint at all, but rather at Stein's own meddling in his younger self's romance with Clarissa! Jax wanted to kill white Southerners in Civil War Mississippi! And this team kills historical randos in every single episode!

I literally cannot even right now with the Legends.

Anyway, the team doesn't want anything to do with Barry, and Oliver shows solidarity with his speedster bro, so Supergirl leads the rest to go rescue the president. There's a pretty brilliant interaction between Heatwave and Supergirl that I never knew I needed in my life, before they storm the castle to save the president.

Meanwhile, Oliver and Barry bond in a really cute and sweet scene where Oliver says that if he had Barry's power, he would have saved his own parents too. Their moment is interrupted when STAR Labs comes under attack... by Supergirl and her team. Turns out that they not only didn't save the President, but they were brainwashed by an alien thing.

"Well, this sucks..." - Barry Allen, probably

There is a fight wherein Oliver and Barry are clearly going to lose, and Wally briefly zooms in to help, gets hurt, and Oliver has to carry him to safety. Meanwhile, Barry pisses off Supergirl and gets her to chase him all the way back to the alien thingie, and uses her to destroy it. 

Crisis averted! Or not! Because before we can really celebrate, heroes start disappearing!

"Run, Barry, R--" - Oliver Queen, probably

In a minor The Flash continuing plot point, after Wally nearly gets killed here, HR Wells agrees to train him. I mean, in season one, Barry had Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne to train him. And in season two, Cisco had Harrison Wells of Earth-2 to bond with. So it makes total sense that in season three, young padawan Wally West shall have a Wells to train him as well. Even if said Wells is... a novelist.

Sounds legit.

Anyway, some of our heroes have been beamed aboard by Scotty, apparently, and the story will continue in tonight's Arrow.

I think what I really liked about this crossover overall--despite the butthurt and the complete lack of a sense of irony on behalf of the Legends--is that this really felt like the Berlantiverse was fully interconnected, for once. I mean yeah heroes appear randomly in each other's shows, but often those moments seem incredibly pointless, like the writers are just saying, "Oh hey, don't forget, these universes are interconnected... now back to our regular storylines that have nothing to do with anyone else!" But other than Supergirl's episode, this crossover feels like okay, yeah, these guys all inhabit the same world. Their lives are interconnected as they go about their superheroing business. They effect each other: Barry and his time travel affected everyone, of course, but we also revealed two major Legends of Tomorrow plots here (future-Barry's message, and Stein's daughter), and Oliver Wayne *cough* I mean Queen, is the gruff and smart leader that everyone else naturally trusts, much like a certain dude in a bat costume in most of your Justice League teamups.

Let's see what Arrow does with this crossover. Hope you are enjoying #DCWeek!


Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

"Medusa" - Supergirl S02E08

I have not been doing recaps and reviews of Supergirl of late, due to time issues, but we do need to have a pretty serious chat about what the show has been doing with Alex. And of course, "Medusa" was the introductory episode for this week's massive Berlantiverse crossover.

(spoilers beyond the fold)

"Medusa" opened with the Danvers family Thanksgiving, which this year includes Winn, James, and Mon-El (who is freaking adorable in his cluelessness, as he brings "stuffing" for dinner, which means he tore up his bed and brought a bag of fluff), in addition to Eliza, Kara, and Alex.

Easily one of the best scenes any of the Berlanti shows have written this season, this fabulously scripted dinner scene juggled the many agendas of the characters with ease. Mon-El clearly has a crush on Kara and sucks up to her mom, and James and Winn have decided to tell Kara the truth about their vigilante activities. Meanwhile, Alex shuts them down because she wants to use Thanksgiving to come out to her mom, but her difficult announcement is interrupted by a freaking Vibe portal. But nothing comes through, it's just a rip in the space-time continuum. Still, rude!

Beyond that, this fabulous episode grapples with a host of different problems for the various characters. Mon-El continues to struggle with how to tell Kara he likes her, and ultimately he "tells" her by kissing her in a classic scene where he's pretty much feverish and sick from Cadmus' alien virus before passing out again. Later, he pretends he totes doesn't remember what happened, and clueless Kara also pretends nothing happened, so in typical--but adorable--CW fashion, we have ship drama.

Last week we found out that back when M'gann gave J'onn a blood transfusion, it kicked in a virus of sorts of its own, wherein her white Martian blood is causing him to turn into a... thing. J'onn hasn't really told anyone he's having problems, but Supergirl notices his pain later. And during a big fight scene with the ridiculously-named Cyborg Superman (who is actually a cyborg Hank Henshaw), J'onn embraces his new monster form and morphs into a green white Martian hybrid. He still kind of gets his ass kicked by Cyborg Superman, though. Despite his fear of becoming a white Martian, Eliza ends up waving a hand and creating a cure at the end of the episode. And Cyborg Superman Hank gets away.

Not impressed by the show's version of Cyborg Superman

Meanwhile, Lena Luthor is struggling with mommy issues, because as her mother plainly tells her, yes I did love Lex more, but "that doesn't mean I don't love you at all."

Parents: please don't ever tell your children this, even if its true. It's really, really painful. Just some random parenting advice from the internet.

Later, despite her pain, Lena is pretty upset when Supergirl tells her that her mom is in charge of Cadmus and created a virus to wipe out all alien life. Still, Lena listens and ends up "helping" her mom by "giving" her the isotype thingie needed to complete the Medusa virus to wipe out all alien life on Earth. But Lena proves she ultimately trusts Supergirl (and that she herself is not a villain), because she gave mom a fake isotype that ended up making the virus inert, thus saving all the aliens on the planet from death.

I'm not one for cackling villains who seem to be evil for the sake of evil, so I'm not a big fan of either Cyborg Superman, Cadmus, or Dr. Luthor. But I can really appreciate Supergirl taking on a broken mother-daughter relationship, especially when held up in comparison to the parenting-done-right scene later where Alex and Eliza have their talk.

To be honest, Supergirl is only superficially in this episode. I mean she is important to every storyline present, but this episode was more about all the other supporting characters (except Winn and James, who got sidelined completely). Supergirl has a thing in this episode where she struggles emotionally after learning that her own father created the vicious Medusa virus to wipe out alien lifeforms in case Krypton ever got attacked. Last season she learned that her mother was a pretty hard-assed judge and executioner, and this season she learns that her father was perfectly willing to commit alien genocide if it meant the safety of Krypton. Definitely a message here about parents being human, making mistakes, and not able to live up to the perfect ideals that young children often have of them. Parents can do wrong, and sometimes they even do wrong when they think they are doing right.

We need to talk about the Alex development over the last few weeks though. Part of the reason I haven't done Supergirl reviews has been because I wasn't sure about this Alex storyline and how to handle it, and I'm kind of glad I waited to see how it played out. Alex, in case you missed out, fell head over heels for Maggie, her cop friend, and has been struggling for weeks with the idea that she is gay. Maggie encouraged her to tell her family, and Alex started by telling Kara, several weeks back. I'm honestly not sure why that coming out was written the way it was, because it somewhat seemed to suggest that Kara had some kind of stake in the story, and there was a bit of a cringey moment where Kara compares being in the closet to "being in the closet" as an alien.

I'm not sure you should be comparing the two, Kara. I mean, I guess hiding that you're an alien to avoid the potential social repercussions from asshole humans is sorta like hiding that you're gay to avoid the potential social repercussions from asshole humans, but still... I wish Kara had made that whole thing less about herself.

Still, there is something to be said, definitely, about a major television show even doing this story at all. Coming out is kind of a big deal to gay and trans people, because they are often scared of rejection by the people they love. Alex was scared to tell Kara, and she drank herself almost silly in "Medusa" to prepare herself to tell her mother. This is reality for a lot of folks out there. And certainly Eliza handled the news like a parent should: she was 100% accepting. Although there is a part of me that cringed a little about Eliza telling Alex that it was okay for her to be "special." I am not gay, but I kind of felt like the script was mildly suggesting that being gay was not normal. Maybe I'm being one of those over-sensitive allies who gets upset for someone else's sake. Please feel free to tell me so in the comments, and tell me what you think about Alex's story overall.

Sidenote: after this episode, my straight husband said, "I realize this is probably an important story to tell for some people out there, but to me, there is nothing weird or different about gay people, so this was just a story about a person loving another person and angsting about it, so this story just seemed trite to me."

And I replied, yeah that's the point of telling these kinds of stories. Normalizing them. Because ultimately, the goal is to normalize LGBTQ+ people, not treat them like outsiders or freaks or people who need to be "cured" (I'm looking at you, Mike Pence). I am glad that there are people out there who already see gay people as just people, but there's still work to be done, so yes, these stories still need to be openly told.

Ultimately, the show ties up things nice and easy by having Maggie decide that she does want to date Alex, so yay, happy ending!

Speaking of happy endings, we got like, two minutes of this. 

There wasn't nearly enough Barry and Cisco in this episode. After several Vibe portals distracted fights throughout the episode, a successful one finally drops our dudes into Kara's apartment. This is a super short scene where Barry pretty much says, we need your help. But I would like to point out that Cisco got a pretty dark jab in, because when Barry introduces Cisco as his friend, Cisco says, "naw more like business associates."

Ouch. I guess he's totally not over blaming Barry for his brother's death via Flashpoint.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.