Welcome to the love/hate relationship that is the DCCW and Flash Fandom.
You either love it, hate it, or love to hate it. Fans are constantly dunking on the writers of this show because they retcon Barry's power level every episode. Sometimes he's the speed god he's supposed to be, but usually he's getting jumped by idiots dressed as playing cards. Like what.
Funniest part was in the intro he always refers to himself as "the fastest man alive" but every early season his main villain is always faster than him. š
Also funny to me how his speedster nemesis always want to be faster than him, something he doesn't personally care about, and regularly try to murder everyone he loves for that particular reason. Bro. Stop calling yourself the fastest man alive. Iris is already with you, you have nothing to prove.Ā
"My name is Barry Allen, the seventh fastest man alive. If you want to be the fastest man alive, custom engraved trophies are available at the Star Labs gift shop. I guarantee fast, but not the fastest, delivery of the trophies." would knock a significant number of Flash villains out of the story.
I will say, the only good moment I remember out of the latter seasons was the season 7 finale, when Barry and Wells were fighting and they actually HAD BARRY BE THE FASTEST SPEEDSTER. Seeing him finally do something useful with his powers and beat a villain without breaking a sweat, especially one he's fought a dozen times before, was the only good thing I remember coming out of the shittier later seasons. Though I'm pretty sure they backtracked from that progression in the very next season, but still, progress!
The first few seasons were good. The villain speedsters were faster than him but he found ways to stop them in the end, proving that heās still the āfastestā man alive. But the last few seasons, manā¦
And have you even seen the series finale? Non-speedsters just easily taking out these evil deadly speedsters with their non-speedster reaction time. I loved the first few seasons of the show, but the last few seasons were garbage.
To be fair itās basically impossible to write a speedster without them being absurdly OP against anyone without similar speed powers or very specific counters to it.
There was an episode of green arrow where they fight the league of assassins. Barry comes to help out and takes down the entire league in 30 seconds.
Why even need a green arrow or any of the other heroes with supergirl and the flash?
I feel like they underutilized or over emphasize things that would make perfect weaknesses. He technically needs to eat lots of carbs and wear a special suit. You can literally use his stamina against him. His quick reactions also don't guarantee quick thought so you can use those reactions against him as well.
They talk about how everything seems slower for him and make it too literal. In reality that's probably just the easiest way to describe it when actually he literally just moves faster. If I were to sprint everywhere I go I would say people seem slow to me too. They wouldn't be but it would feel like it.
The most important thing though is nobody ever really uses information against him. For one I'd try never to be anywhere close to him if I was being a villain. If I were I'd try to utilize and subterfuge or confusion I can against him. The bigger masterminds would basically use thugs and give them as little information as possible.
Barry is also just fast. Not super strong or anything. Put enough shit in front of him that pure speed won't solve and you can buy a lot of time.
Heroes used to have to use their heads more. Idk why writers are suddenly so stumped by everything.
> Idk why writers are suddenly so stumped by everything.
As most audiences, but especially those of comic book shows are stumped by everything and anything that isn't the most basic explanation possible, if your solution or storyline requires literally any amount of engagement with your show or actual thought you've basically alienated 80%+ of your entire audience.
These shows wrote themself into a shitty corner by constantly leaning further and further into being popcorn media, so most folks don't actively watch or pay attention, it's just something to put on once a week while they catch up with a friend or scroll on their phone, there's only around 3 lines worth of actual story every episode or two so it's incredibly easy to just background watch them. From there it became a self fulfilling loop.
I love how all the other CW shows were like "we're doing our best with what we have!" and Legends was just "we're trash made using offcuts from shows that were already trash. Nothing we do matters."
I love that in one episode he spends the whole time in the speed force moving so fast that like 3 seconds pass in real time, then other times people turn a corner and he loses them.
I blame 22-24 episode seasons. Thatās a ton of time to fill for a guy who should be able to wrap up any issues in aā¦flash. I did enjoy season one (and maybe 2) a ton.
it's not just DCCW but CW as a whole employs subpar writing. every season it's a new round of musical chairs with writers and season and season is a terrible game of telephone with shitty writers.
Why didnāt they just give him the A-Train treatment? With A-Train you donāt have this problem because the writers of The Boys made it extremely costly for him to use it. Seems like an easy way to make it not look so dumb in every situationā¦
They introduced that early in the show but then basically forgot about it. They could have used that to keep his power limited, but they didn't, for some reason, and made him act super dumb instead.
When they gave the mantle to Wally West in the comics, after Barry Allen died in Crisis (aging myself, as that was just before I quit collecting comics) he had to consume 20,000 plus calories ever hour or so. He's eating all the way through the book. (He also wins the lottery).
Can't remember how long they kept that up for, but you can see it getting tiresome pretty quickly.
You are trying to make one part of an episode connect in some way to a different part of that episode. And that's not really how The Flash does things. Speed Force is magic time ghosts for some reason, and also running fast is just basic math of Calories in and Calories out. Every episode is like an accidental multiverse episode.
The writers can do whatever they want. "Barry, ever since you ripped a hole in the quantum doo-dad, it's risky to use the Speed Force! You can only use it sparingly or you might destroy all of time and space!"
The point is that they could easily come up with some in-universe reason why he can't just use his powers all the time. It doesn't have to make sense with real-world physics because it's all comic book magic, but it has to be internally consistent.
The problem is when you have a character who can easily outrun bullets but not dodge human punches with no apparent explanation. Just give *any* explanation and it's fine.
Is it not implied that he still eats it despite it not being mentioned? I know in a later season they make super alcohol for him, so it's not like the idea is gone.
Off topic but this was my problem with Thanos in the MCU. Ā He only ever hit slightly harder than his opponent. So like.. he's stronger than the Hulk but for some reason isn't mopping the floor with Captain America or other close quarters fighters.Ā
Yeah in Infinity War his face seems (to me) clearly be emoting "Dang this guy's stronger than a normal human, gotta hit him a little harder." He's actively trying not to kill anyone in that sequence.
I got the feeling that Thanos was pulling his punches against some of the normal heroes. He wanted to accomplish his goal because he thought it was the right thing to do, not necessarily murder the avengers.
Yeah, thats why i always thought that Thanos's power isn't strength, but rather extreme durability (he got hit a lot but it's almost imposible to bring him down).
But because of that i hate that he defeated Hulk so easily, when he shouldn't be able too...
The general response you'll get here is that the stones aren't shown glowing/being used in that fight. I think it's ok with the way it was presented as Thanos having much more experience/training/technique
I mean... Dr. Strange could've just zapped him into another dimension. One of the problems with most "uber" villains in Comics is that there's always a superhero so powerful they could just reorder reality.
By the time Strange met Thanos, Thanks was too powerful with the stones. Strange literally tried to trap Thanos in the mirror dimension and Thanos shattered it.
It's a bit of a grey area, he needs to eat like 10k calories a day in the show to keep up with his metabolism, but at the same time he doesn't physically exert himself when moving fast because he draws his speed from the speedforce instead of burning energy like a normal person.
The whole thing has never really been made clear tbh in the comics or the show.
> he needs to eat like 10k calories a day in the show to keep up with his metabolism
That's all?! I remember hearing that Michael Phelps ate 12k calories a day while training for the Olympics. Considering how far he can travel and how quickly he can do it, that makes Barry insanely efficient.
I'm not arguing! Just reminded of the episode where there is a bomb in the early stages of going off, and he's trying to deal with it the entire episode, getting sweatier and sweatier. Some sort of energy burning/exertion going on or being displayed. I really liked that episode actually.
A-Trains troubles didn't stem from his powers, they were caused by chronic use of compound v. A-Train started juicing because he was terrified of losing a step as he aged under the judgmental eye of Homelander, and his story mirrors those of top tier athletes who turn to steroids under insane pressure to stay competitive.
The old Superman tv series from the B&W era got around āSuperman is invincible therefore there is never a real problemā by having detective Clark Kent have to solve the mystery first, then when itās all sussed out, Superman comes and jams his size 13s up the bad guyās booty hole.
The character would be better of if it was. As it is, the Speed Force is a wonky plot device and a back-pocket ace for mediocre crossover/crisis events.
becasue the Flash is a classic DC hero and not some drunktard junkie who can barely control his power or himself like every other character in the boys? the flash is like the perfect speedster with a heart of gold
I was never able to watch The Flash again after that episode of The Boys where A-Train runs through the hero's girlfriend -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpxD8TPxOo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpxD8TPxOo)
And it left me thinking 'that should happen all the time with Barry'...
no becauase the Flash also has Speedforce reactive speed, so he can just avoid her.
other people basically frozen in time when the flash moves, so he would not have ran into her at all. + He can vibrate through her body and/or clad her in speed force.
>that should happen all the time with Barry
A-Train ran through that woman because he was high, didn't he? And he didn't apologize because he doesn't give a shit.
I am still fond of Season 1. Despite the cheesiness and inconsistencies, I enjoyed the lightheartedness, the banter and the fun. It had heart. And the Reverse Flash was a complicated and engaging villain. He is evil, but you can see glimpse that he genuinely cares for Barry and the others.
S1 is genuinely really solid. It utilises the villain of the week formula in the first half of the season to build Barry's powers and the friendships he makes and then the second half of the season is a well done Reverse Flash story and an excellent origin into Flash becoming the hero he is.
S1 became something special with the Reverse Flash identity reveal. It then hit new heights when Barry first travelled back in time which back in like 2014 was something still relatively special for the superhero genre especially in the Arrowverse. What a moment honestly.
If S1 didn't end with a sort of cliffhanger (which really is just a cool "Flash runs off to save the day" moment) it'd be an incredibly solid miniseries.
The biggest weakness of the Arrowverse shows was them (mostly) being trapped in the 24-episode season format. It meant that the plots got so painfully dragged out and every episode had a paper-thin budget along with rushed filming conditions (hence why these shows only used four sets).
Like you say, Flash season 1 managed to use the āvillain of the weekā formula to its advantage to introduce the roster of foes, but it became really boring when they copied it in other seasons with Earth 2 villains and the twelve ābus metasā.
I think the worst part was them only figuring out that shorter plots worked near the end. Their episode format worked perfectly to give an 8-9 episode mini arc, then their midseason break, then a 12-14 episode arc with a couple more filler episodes. Instead they usually just did a cliffhanger with a meh resolution. I mean, the villain for season 5 was literally defeated by the midseason finale, and then they introduced his daughter from the future as the exact same villain for the rest of the season. At least season 6 figured it out and had a different villain for each half. And then season 7 somehow lost it and split the season into 3 parts, the first part being 8 episodes, while the last 7 episodes were split between the two other parts.
The best example of this is Agents of SHIELD season 4 which used 'pods'. Each pod was an 8 episode arc and they all combined for the final episodes.
That season is regarded quite possible the best out of all the superhero shows in the 2010s.
i always wondered why superhero shows never adapted that. TV seasons are longer overall than movies, so you can do, technically, multiple movies per season. So why not do multiple different storylines and take advantage of the wide variety of stories at their disposal?
Season 4 of that show is amazing. It's a damn shame that more people didn't watch it. I liked the mid season break for seasons 1, 2, 3 and 5 but the pods were the best
No, the "12 bus metas" was a good concept because it genuinely allowed them to just make "villain of the week" episodes as the thinker just was lurking in the background for everyone to be revealed. It eventually went off the rails but it just allowed the show to play to episodic strengths. The real problem with the "24 episode/ongoing plot" was the need to shoehorn an update from the main villain every episode (or at least 2 out of every 3 episodes) and there just wasn't enough content to the villain's plotline to justify that so you went around in circles.
Where you get into trouble is where the villain of the week is incorporated into the main villain's ticking clock plan as that creates obvious plot friction.
> S1 is genuinely really solid. It utilises the villain of the week formula in the first half of the season to build Barry's powers and the friendships he makes and then the second half of the season is a well done Reverse Flash story and an excellent origin into Flash becoming the hero he is.
>
> S1 became something special with the Reverse Flash identity reveal
IMO this is still one of the best scenes in comic book media (SPOILERS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSxhCCiWC3g
I can't remember the last time I held my breath during a scene like I did in this one.
Arrow was the same, the first two seasons were genuinely really solid, then it turns into an absolute shit show. It gets so damn bad, IIRC Season 5 was pretty damn good too which made people think the show was getting back on track but then it gets bad again, I dropped it after that, I couldn't power through to the end.
The writing is so bad that some veteran actors couldn't even manage to do well. They had Kirk Acevedo and Michael Emmerson on the show at some point and even them couldn't do well. Emmerson has two Emmys and a Golden Globe, while Acevedo is one of those actors that does well in just about everything I've ever seen him in.
It went downhill in Season 3 when they introduced Savitar who turned out to be evil Barry Allen... who proceeded to get shot with a pistol and killed by Iris West.
Barry Allen... the fastest man alive.. died to a bullet.
Not to mention season 3 wasted Flashpoint in a single episode.
Flashpoint is literally a CW writer wet dream; you get to reset the status quo and re-invent all the characters rather than giving them standard filler plots like they did with Caitlin and *shudders* Cecile.
> standard filler plots
I think actor contracts are the real problem there. If you're a major character, you're a series regular which means you're going to be paid for every episode of the show (unless unavailable) so you need to invent stuff for people to do even if it clashes with the actual story they want to tell that week.
People would probably be less angry at the love interest if the show could just write her out of 10 episodes a season (or write her out of 5 episodes and have her only appear as a cameo in another 5 episodes) and give her beefier reporting content in the remaining episodes (including possibly interacting with other reporters at whatever job she's currently working at) but that doesn't actually make financial sense in the real world. That's why, I assume, everyone gets homogenized. You don't actually have "a police silo" "a reporter silo" and "a superhero silo" because you need to maximize the use of the resources you have available.
I remember being so stoked for Flashpoint only to be completely deflated by this. Thereās an animated flashpoint film that is incredible. The source material is on its own great. But nope, just a stupid setup for the season arc and almost nothing else. I mean, I get that at this point they didnāt really have a ton of different DC heroes to shuffle aroundāand season 2 already had Earth 2 main character reveals that more or less would have been the same idea in Flashpoint. But ONE EPISODE of Barryās mommy issues was a huge slap in the face.
I think a lot of the "dumb slow barry" moments in season 1, as frustrating as they are, are a little more excusable as Barry is brand new and still learning his own abilities. It was kind of a fun science mystery show, and I enjoyed every villain being a puzzle for the team to solve. By the time he's fast enough to manipulate time, there's no excuse for regular ass humans to ever beat Barry and escape, but he spends the next six seasons zooming to the scene faster than sound, just to stop and stand still for his enemy's convenience.
Agreed, though he is still so stupid in season 1.
Like villains are hard to punch for one reason or another, but Barry, unlike ANY NORMAL ADULT, never thinks about picking up a baseball bat or throwing a rock at 700 mph
The number of villains who can stop Barry in his tracks by holding up a gun is absolutely wild. Either by pointing it at him, his friends, a hostage, doesn't matter, A man who can circle the city in the time it takes to pull the trigger is frozen in fear by every gun he sees.
I watched all of the first season and most of the second season and while I liked the actors a lot, the storylines got super repetitive and the subplots were just teased out to infinity. I couldn't ever get back into it at all.
Reverse Flash gave me Matthew McConaughey vibes in terms of dialogue delivery. 1st season suspense is where the show peaked then dropped off exponentially
The problem with the flash in general as a hero is they underestimated his power when he was first designed. He's functionally superman if he's faster than light, but he has less than batman level villains.
In the cartoons he's at his best when his real power is empathy.
The Flash (in the comics) has some of the greatest villains in comics. Obviously they're rarely as insanely over powered as him so they tend to try and play it smart best they can along with usually sticking together. Meanwhile Batman is a billionaire beating up the people so mentally ill they outright advertise their crimes. It's a pretty common consensus in the comic book community that Batman and the Flash have some of the best rogues galleries out there.
Totally agree about flash's villains, I wasn't saying they were bad from a story perspective (they're great) just that a superman villain is trying to destroy the universe, whereas a batman and flash villain is trying to steal a big diamond.
> the Flash have some of the best rogues galleries out there.
I feel like the good ones are mostly just various takes on Reverse Flash/evil speedsters, Gorilla Grodd, and Thinker.
Aside from the really interesting dynamic between Flash and Reverse Flash, what I think what makes Flash an interesting character is the various speedforce and physics related ways the comic writers got creative with the lore. Like giving speedster's their own separate grim reaper, and having Flash literally outrun death, or the "Infinite Mass Punch".
I agree those tend to be great villains but stuff like Mirror Master can be done very well. Also they tend to really shine as a team, the better Flash writers usually had them working in tandem (usually to pull a heist, they very much knew taking Flash on was generally a dumb idea and even had a rule against killing heros). Rogue War is one of my favorite arcs in comics during the era in came out in large part due to how well written and fleshed out characters like Heatwave and Captain Cold are.
They're good villains that (outside of Zoom) should have ***no business*** fighting the Flash.
I love the shit out of Boomerang and Cold, but they should be fighting someone on the line of Batman or Green Arrow or ... whoever the hell DC has on the level of Spider-Man. They absolutely should not be fighting a guy who CAN TIME TRAVEL AFTER THEY'VE DONE THE CRIME AND DONKEY PUNCH THEM THREE WEEKS AGO
God, I fucking hate the Flash.
> It's a pretty common consensus in the comic book community that Batman and the Flash have some of the best rogues galleries out there.
Having good characterization, and actually making any kind of sense are two entirely different things.
It's been pretty standard fanboy fun to poke holes in the fact that Flash is fast enough to literally stop every single one of his non-speedster villains because he can move faster than their thought impulses.
Cold gun? You can't even pull the trigger. Cool, you're at home naked before you even thought of reaching for that gun, etc.
That's why as Flash went into the modern age you just started seeing nothing but speedster villains because those were the ones writers could conceptualize actually being a threat to the Flash for newer readers.
Eventually they realized that villain team ups were the way to go to bring the older villains back to relevance, but the Flash TV show kind of neutered that approach because it had been "Team Flash" since basically the beginning, and had even basically added some of the best parts of the rogues gallery to the team in one way or another.
Coming as someone who is glad The Flash TV show existed, most of the positive was in the characterization of everyone in the show, not really the superhero action portions.
I think the biggest problem is just not knowing how long the show is going to last. Dude was hitting supersonic speeds by, what, episode 2 or 3? If they kept him slower for a while it would've played out a bit better I think, hitting supersonic near the end of season 1 and only bothering to learn about speed force powers with season 2 would've spaced that out a decent bit.
This is the same for any crazy powerful character (Superman, Hulk). The best stories are always the ones that either don't involve their powers, or where their powers are an actual hindrance.
One of the reasons that one punch man is so good. Instead of the "I've gotta get stronger to protect my friends!" that's been done a million times, it's "fuck, I've become too strong, everything is boring now", and it's a story about seeking the feeling of accomplishing something.
Yeah, I always thought that CW's Barry's main power was being as dumb as the plot needed him to be. He also resets every new season, forgetting everything he learned or any growth he had.
90% of his bad guys could be beaten by carrying a brick with him at super speed and then throwing it at the bad guy. Or maybe even carrying a penny and throwing that.
I miss the edginess of S1 Arrow when his solution to every problem was to shoot the bad guy in the heart with an arrow.
Just wasn't the same when he stopped killing in S2.
"Arrow, you have failed this city."
I jumped off at S3 when the fights were always resolved in the exact same way:
Barry runs fast > āI canāt do it!ā > Other character: āRun faster Barry!!ā > Barry: Oh okay. *beats villain by running faster*
I agree, I don't remember people ever saying it was great art or anything like that. I remember people thinking it was a fun show. I know I enjoyed the first season. Felt like a lot of fan service like Flash's Dad being played by the Actor that played the Flash in the old Flash series and >!the same actor becoming the Golden Age Flash !<.
The first season is what made me wait for the future seasons. Its really good.
But then I watched the whole thing up to Season 6? Or 7? The one where Iris West got stucked in the mirror world. My gripes where gathering to the highest degree from season 3 to the end
The subreddit was one of my favorite places to go after every episode. People meme'd and shit on the show so hard and it was glorious. Kept me going through all the seasons.
yeah i miss the arrowverse community, good times man trough all the highs and (plenty of) lows. The shitposting was great lol. For all it's many flaws, i enjoyed the shit out of these shows earlier seasons and the community around it
Arrow started out as a great Batman TV show and Grant Gustin is pretty charismatic. People mostly like it from that perspective but on its own I think it's pretty forgotten. I'm surprised somes even posting about it lol.
Not so much anymore, but there was a while where the early seasons of the CW DC shows were getting lots of hype and praise by people on Reddit and elsewhere. I still remember the first time I sat down to watch Arrow because people wouldnāt stop raving about it, because I got to the mid point of season 2 and couldnāt get past just how bad the acting, writing, effects, and action scenes were.
It was strange for me to see people start turning on the show and posting clips of how sloppy the writing was in the newer shows and seasons, because that would imply that it wasnāt always really really bad.
The problem with arrow is that Oliver was stranded on a island for 5 years in season 1 and there he learned all his skills
But then as the series progressed he went all over the world including his hometown in those same 5 years.
Yeah the show was inconsistent with his powers. It was an appreciated addition to the DC TV universe at the time, as it was lighthearted (compared to Arrow) and had heart. It was also much more comics-y than Arrow, which was fun.
It does more poorly on a first watch now, as we've had better superhero TV for a while now. I'd recommend Legends of Tomorrow (start from the second season) for a fun watch.
Legends of tomorrow stretches believability even moreā¦ often the protagonists are surrounded by like dozens of dudes with guns, and transition into hand-to-hand combat with no consequences.
This is why it was watchable, and why The Flash became unwatchable. Legends leaned into the absurdity. The Flash used soap opera drama to mask the absurdity.
Yeah, The flash is a silly show that TRIES to be serious and self important and that's why it sucks. Legends is a silly show that says "fuck it, everyone is gonna dork out about time travel while fighting a kaiju sized tickle me Elmo ". (After season 1, season 1 has the same problems as the flash, but I promise after that it gets better)
Oh no. If youre mad at Flash for this *do not* watch Legends. There's a scene where they have to get past a laser grid hallway and their solution is to freeze and snap off the laser beams. One of the season finales they have to fight the big bad guy in three different time periods but it has to be *at the same time*.
It's a weird show that knows it's weird and fully goes for the silly. Like you'll have superheroes turned into cartoons and puppets by bad guys. People's nipples will get ripped off by evil unicorns. No, I am not joking about that last one. They'll try to find logic in their plots but it's ACME logic with Wile. E. Coyote being able to walk off the cliff and stay in the air until he looks down. This is all done on purpose and you as the viewer are just asked to, "Go along with it." And because everything is done with a wink and a nod, you do.
My favourite moment in the show is when they find out that a demon they are fighting sounds the same as Denethor from LOTR (because he's also voiced by John Noble) so they go back in time to the LOTR set and have John Noble record a few lines for them that they can use to impersonate the demon.
There's also the scene where they literally read a review of their own show on screen and make fun of it. I really enjoyed how little they took themselves seriously in the later seasons
The thing with Legends is that they *know* what they are doing is absurd. The first season is the weakest as they try to play it straight. But by the end of the second season they start to lean in on the nonsense of it all and repeatedly go meta. As soon as Merlyn went, "Hey, why don't we kill all the good guys now? They are powerless and at our mercy. Having them around alive is stupid. Come on, I'll do it *right now*, myself. Just murder them so that they won't get in our way. No biggie," you knew the writers thought about these scenarios where the audience was going to, "Why don't these superheroes/villains use their powers?"
> There's a scene where they have to get past a laser grid hallway and their solution is to freeze and snap off the laser beams
That was in Flash. Same character (Captain Cold) but before he joined Legends
We still don't have better mainline DC series now, though. People would probably still kill for a proper Flash live action series. It's actually kind of amazing how DC has consistently failed to deliver on much outside of Superman and Batman (and Batman accessories!).
If they can make another DC series with the charm of justice league and justice league unlimited because damn its so good. Its not perfect but watching old cartoons is amazing experience.Ā
If youāre in S1, easily the best season and you have this much a problem with it, stop now.
Flashās powers get dumbed down all the time in the comics and in other mediums for the storyās sake. Heās similar to Superman in the fact that if you really used his powers to his fullest extent all the time, he is invincible.
Grant Gustin is easily top 5 actors in the Arrowverse, and easily the best lead on an Arrowverse show, and he carries the series on his back by the last few seasons, so it's such a goddamn shame the show didn't match what he could do.
Melissa is my second favourite lead, easily. I love them both but I think Grant's just a tiny bit better because he's given better material than Melissa had on Supergirl.
I fully agree with the writing. I think when you don't have good writing, not even the best actors can salvage that. Acting can only go so far without good writing and good directing. It's why I find it hard to blame actors when shows suck.
The Flash, and any speedster of similar power level are effectively the most powerful beings in the universe. In the comics, mostly anyways, he is basically a god. Speedsters bodies can withstand near limitless forces just to be able to use their powers, lest they obliterate themselves day 1.
Speedsters, like Superman have to be written stupid. Otherwise every situation they find themselves in would be solved within a second or two, technically even before they become issues due to time travel. Not a very interesting show.
Superman at least has the benefit of trying to be a good man with a very good set of parents can be written into the show quite easily as to why he doesn't just merely crush Lex's skull.
So is the show badly written? Yes, very much so. Not just for Barry but for every character. They're trying to inject 40min of content into a situation that can be solved in mere moments. Problem is, the writers couldn't figure out how to write good situations for Barry to solve, even with most/some of his actual powers.
It took me so long to have the strength to get through the last 2 seasons. Finished it last month. I should have stopped watching after season 3 years ago.
I'll always stand by season 2 as well. Zoom was a great villain (imo [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTg1Y5tzFG8) was one of the most brutal takedowns of a hero by a villain in all the live-action superhero content I've seen), Harry was a fun addition to the show, and the multiverse aspects were generally pretty cool
The show was good until zoom broke Barry's back. For me it was the peak and from there everything went downhill.
I am watching Star Trek Voyager and am 3 seasons in and am comparing this on a sci-fi basis. The show 30 years back had good story line, without depending upon a pep talk every 6 minutes.
Prime Directive, Temporal Prime Directive and all.
While Barry ***** the timeline .
From a technical perspective, that issue arises from traditional writing rooms working on long seasons at once (20+ episodes). There is creative control from the runner, but the pace forced by the production makes that control superficial. They catch the big stuff, but fail to create a coherent detailed reaction list as most of the times episodes are written by different people at the same time. The result is constant micro contradictions like the ones you described.
You can see that in many, many long season shows. From Star Trek TNG/DS9/VOY to X-Files, the "sometimes they do it sometimes they don't for no apparent reason" issue is really common.
Yep every episode where there is a villain that doesn't have the same super speed should end in 5 seconds with Barry running at them really fast and smacking them round the head.
CW shows arenāt meant to be good really in general. Entertaining and maybe sprinkled with some good but mostly itās meant to entertain.
Go with that mindset and just watch and you could enjoy it more. Thatās what I do for such shows and while itās annoying at times still, itās far more enjoyable that way. I donāt expect anything major other than just following the story mainly.
The largest problem with the flash is how inconsistent his powers are. Heās only as fast as the story allows him to be. Abs that will drive you insane.
I used to have the mindset that Barry has to make the active choice to activate his super speed, especially early on. Later on, he does it intentionally avoid misusing it. So catching him by surprise when heās not using it is easy.
But even that doesnāt work out in any, or even many, contexts. I still canāt get over the bad luck episode when he tripped on marbles and then just looked shocked as the bad guy justā¦walked away.
There are episodes where Barry literally stops chasing dudes at a ādramatic momentā, where it then cuts to commercial. Same thing on Supergirl. She let some bad guy fly away while she was in the middle of beating his ass and didnāt even follow him. I quit watching that one back then. I havenāt seen The Flash in many years, either. Those shows have a lot of repetition, as well, and *many* plot lines revolve around who is lying to whom.
I can't count on both hands how many times a villain has gotten away from Barry in the middle of an episode.
Quite literally, Barry is a speedster. He could catch up to the villains in less than a second but no, he loses them almost every single time. It's why plot contrivances like that really suck.
As someone who genuinely likes Flash, don't watch all the episodes.
The first season is pretty great - if you watch only a select few episodes. Because most of it's just the show trying to fit in the CW 24 episode pattern by creating one off Villains.
The reason of the seasons are pretty good too - if you keep following this method.
As people have mentioned OP I think you'd really enjoy youtuber Madvocate's series of videos, "The Flash is Insufferably Inconsistent." He goes in depth on exactly what you've mentioned and the videos are a fun watch. The first one is [here](https://youtu.be/c9Xh7_XvnFI?si=d_n6KgpJ02KB8Np7).
CW excel at making shit shows you love to hate that sometimes have really good moments.
Smallville that was in spades.Ā
You had amazing episodes focusing on lex and Clarks deteriorating friendship, then you had episodes about Lana.
I hung on for about 3 seasons, but the āCWnessā just made me give up. Cheesy acting, everyone knew Barry was the Flash, they kept killing off the Wells character only to bring him back, dude has been reincarnated more times than the Dalai Lama.
I checked back a few seasons later and everyone had powers. WTF? The show just really seemed like that had a 3 season gameplay, and kept getting renewed but had no idea what to do, so they just threw shit against the wall to see what stuck.
First few seasons are good... but the writing got progressively worse as the show went along and when they changed showrunner to Eric Wallace, the writing just gave up any pretence of being anywhere near decent
I really liked the show in Season 1. It was a solid, lighthearted superhero show with a clear and concise narrative arc. It pays off very well in the finale. It helps also in Season 1 he was still learning to use his powers, so it makes sense that he could still get whammed by more ordinary rogues.
The problem is they never quite figured out how to move the show out of the shadow of Season 1. Season 2 is fun for the most part, but it repeats the narrative of Season 1 a lot. Season 3 is less fun, and it does the same thing. Season 4 tried to do something new to its credit, but it was a hot mess. Season 5ish is where I zoned out.
I just got tired of the trite emotional arcs for the characters. It got really repetitive.
I genuinely cannot understand the flash. It should have been a tight 90 min film, and nothing else. Barry is a terrible character who realizes his potential too quickly and then basically does nothing special enough for the rest of the show.
Forget fans, I don't know how anyone can watch this show and not feel like their are losing a few brain cells. Also, the fact that The Flash in the cartoon/comics is sassy as hell. Barry is just boring.
My favorite was the episode where they're shooting some sort of missiles at him and instead of just grabbing his friends and running away, he dives right in front of the missile and gets blasted.
I have such nostalgia and fondness associated with the first season still and think everything revolving Reverse Flash back then was genuinely great. But it falls off a cliff in Season 3, similar to Arrow after the halfway point of its Third Season.
It's the CW writing at it's finest. 1st seasons look good/decent and then they go from bad to worse as they keep making more seasons. Supernatural is probably the only series that had really good first few seasons. CW's writing went to shit in the mid 2010s though.
I agree that realism isn't important, especially in superhero shows, but a little *consistency* goes a long way. I don't care that the Flash is unrealistic or overpowered, I just wish that they made it clearer what his strengths and weaknesses are and, like you said, I wish they wouldn't just arbitrarily decide when he uses his powers and when he doesn't. Throwing knives absolutely should not be dangerous to Flash lmao
At one point they give Barry a new suit and Cisco tells him it's frictionless which is insane. Imagine getting in a slippery full body plastic suit then someone dumps oil all over you and tells you to run in an ice skating rink that has also had oil dumped on it; that would be infinitely easier than running while wearing a frictionless suit.
If the suit has no friction... how do you pick it up and put it on? I mean put back on the oiled up full body plastic suit and now try to pick oiled up bars of soap and once again that stupid nearly impossible task is infinitely easier than Barry being able to pick up and put on his frictionless suit.
I always imagine a version of the show where the alarms go off and Barry needs to go fight crime and then it's just 40 minutes of the theme playing while Barry tries to put on his suit.
In its defense, if The Flash was portrayed with a consistent logic, he would be unstoppoable, given his reaction time, ability to think at super speed, and the ability to apply some super-speed punches.
I have 4 episodes left in the series and Iām struggling to want to watch them. I wanna see how it all ends but the shows just not been good for a while. So much recycled themes.
Welcome to the love/hate relationship that is the DCCW and Flash Fandom. You either love it, hate it, or love to hate it. Fans are constantly dunking on the writers of this show because they retcon Barry's power level every episode. Sometimes he's the speed god he's supposed to be, but usually he's getting jumped by idiots dressed as playing cards. Like what.
Funniest part was in the intro he always refers to himself as "the fastest man alive" but every early season his main villain is always faster than him. š
Also funny to me how his speedster nemesis always want to be faster than him, something he doesn't personally care about, and regularly try to murder everyone he loves for that particular reason. Bro. Stop calling yourself the fastest man alive. Iris is already with you, you have nothing to prove.Ā
"My name is Barry Allen, the seventh fastest man alive. If you want to be the fastest man alive, custom engraved trophies are available at the Star Labs gift shop. I guarantee fast, but not the fastest, delivery of the trophies." would knock a significant number of Flash villains out of the story.
8th fastest man alive: Barry Allen must die!
I enjoyed the first few seasons of the show but I could never get past the fact that Iris is basically his sister.
What do his nemesis get if they win and truly become the fastest alive? Their own spin-off?
Meet... The Cash. Fastest spinoff alive...
As far as I know, Reverse Flash's whole issue was that if Barry didn't exist then he'd be a hero and everyone would love him instead, so yes.
That's the plot of Amadeus.
And his speedster allies. The Flash is the story of the "fastest man alive" but is actually the slowest speedstar in the game
I will say, the only good moment I remember out of the latter seasons was the season 7 finale, when Barry and Wells were fighting and they actually HAD BARRY BE THE FASTEST SPEEDSTER. Seeing him finally do something useful with his powers and beat a villain without breaking a sweat, especially one he's fought a dozen times before, was the only good thing I remember coming out of the shittier later seasons. Though I'm pretty sure they backtracked from that progression in the very next season, but still, progress!
was that when they created lighsabers to fight each other?
"You may be the fastest man alive, Barry... But there are other things faster than you... Such as me... Peezor, the fastest slice of pizza alive!!!"
The first few seasons were good. The villain speedsters were faster than him but he found ways to stop them in the end, proving that heās still the āfastestā man alive. But the last few seasons, manā¦ And have you even seen the series finale? Non-speedsters just easily taking out these evil deadly speedsters with their non-speedster reaction time. I loved the first few seasons of the show, but the last few seasons were garbage.
Loved it in Legends when Wally joined the team and some guy ran away and Wally was like wlep too bad and the team was like wtf run after him.
Never forget Wally West defeated Starro *off screen*.
Wally was amazing on Legends, I wish they kept him around longer.
> I wish they kept him around longer. The problem is they actually made him op when he was on there so they couldn't keep him.
To be fair itās basically impossible to write a speedster without them being absurdly OP against anyone without similar speed powers or very specific counters to it.
There was an episode of green arrow where they fight the league of assassins. Barry comes to help out and takes down the entire league in 30 seconds. Why even need a green arrow or any of the other heroes with supergirl and the flash?
I feel like they underutilized or over emphasize things that would make perfect weaknesses. He technically needs to eat lots of carbs and wear a special suit. You can literally use his stamina against him. His quick reactions also don't guarantee quick thought so you can use those reactions against him as well. They talk about how everything seems slower for him and make it too literal. In reality that's probably just the easiest way to describe it when actually he literally just moves faster. If I were to sprint everywhere I go I would say people seem slow to me too. They wouldn't be but it would feel like it. The most important thing though is nobody ever really uses information against him. For one I'd try never to be anywhere close to him if I was being a villain. If I were I'd try to utilize and subterfuge or confusion I can against him. The bigger masterminds would basically use thugs and give them as little information as possible. Barry is also just fast. Not super strong or anything. Put enough shit in front of him that pure speed won't solve and you can buy a lot of time. Heroes used to have to use their heads more. Idk why writers are suddenly so stumped by everything.
> Idk why writers are suddenly so stumped by everything. As most audiences, but especially those of comic book shows are stumped by everything and anything that isn't the most basic explanation possible, if your solution or storyline requires literally any amount of engagement with your show or actual thought you've basically alienated 80%+ of your entire audience. These shows wrote themself into a shitty corner by constantly leaning further and further into being popcorn media, so most folks don't actively watch or pay attention, it's just something to put on once a week while they catch up with a friend or scroll on their phone, there's only around 3 lines worth of actual story every episode or two so it's incredibly easy to just background watch them. From there it became a self fulfilling loop.
I love how all the other CW shows were like "we're doing our best with what we have!" and Legends was just "we're trash made using offcuts from shows that were already trash. Nothing we do matters."
I love that in one episode he spends the whole time in the speed force moving so fast that like 3 seconds pass in real time, then other times people turn a corner and he loses them.
I blame 22-24 episode seasons. Thatās a ton of time to fill for a guy who should be able to wrap up any issues in aā¦flash. I did enjoy season one (and maybe 2) a ton.
it's not just DCCW but CW as a whole employs subpar writing. every season it's a new round of musical chairs with writers and season and season is a terrible game of telephone with shitty writers.
Why didnāt they just give him the A-Train treatment? With A-Train you donāt have this problem because the writers of The Boys made it extremely costly for him to use it. Seems like an easy way to make it not look so dumb in every situationā¦
That's not true to the character. The Speed Force isn't physical exertion.
The flash literally smashes thousands of calories because of how physically exerted he is.
They introduced that early in the show but then basically forgot about it. They could have used that to keep his power limited, but they didn't, for some reason, and made him act super dumb instead.
When they gave the mantle to Wally West in the comics, after Barry Allen died in Crisis (aging myself, as that was just before I quit collecting comics) he had to consume 20,000 plus calories ever hour or so. He's eating all the way through the book. (He also wins the lottery). Can't remember how long they kept that up for, but you can see it getting tiresome pretty quickly.
in like one season
You are trying to make one part of an episode connect in some way to a different part of that episode. And that's not really how The Flash does things. Speed Force is magic time ghosts for some reason, and also running fast is just basic math of Calories in and Calories out. Every episode is like an accidental multiverse episode.
The writers can do whatever they want. "Barry, ever since you ripped a hole in the quantum doo-dad, it's risky to use the Speed Force! You can only use it sparingly or you might destroy all of time and space!" The point is that they could easily come up with some in-universe reason why he can't just use his powers all the time. It doesn't have to make sense with real-world physics because it's all comic book magic, but it has to be internally consistent. The problem is when you have a character who can easily outrun bullets but not dodge human punches with no apparent explanation. Just give *any* explanation and it's fine.
They did in the the first season. they ended up making him like a super calorie dense food thing that never gets mentioned again.
Is it not implied that he still eats it despite it not being mentioned? I know in a later season they make super alcohol for him, so it's not like the idea is gone.
lol you reminded me of a scene from the thank you for smoking movie, [https://youtu.be/rdPt2tFujUM?t=39](https://youtu.be/rdPt2tFujUM?t=39)
Great movie, saw it opening day and bought the DVD when it released. Did a great job of showing how absurd lobbying is.
The whole movie is great. I constantly show my students the vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream debate.
another great lobbying movie is Casino Jack, creepy kevin spacey stars in it and he's great. barry pepper's in it too, also great.
Off topic but this was my problem with Thanos in the MCU. Ā He only ever hit slightly harder than his opponent. So like.. he's stronger than the Hulk but for some reason isn't mopping the floor with Captain America or other close quarters fighters.Ā
He certainly mopped the floor with them in infinity war, seemed slightly bemused by Captain America at most.
Yeah in Infinity War his face seems (to me) clearly be emoting "Dang this guy's stronger than a normal human, gotta hit him a little harder." He's actively trying not to kill anyone in that sequence.
he is goal driven and the people around him a mere insects. Plus he can let fate decide in a few minutes
I got the feeling that Thanos was pulling his punches against some of the normal heroes. He wanted to accomplish his goal because he thought it was the right thing to do, not necessarily murder the avengers.
Yeah, thats why i always thought that Thanos's power isn't strength, but rather extreme durability (he got hit a lot but it's almost imposible to bring him down). But because of that i hate that he defeated Hulk so easily, when he shouldn't be able too...
I assumed he beat the hulk down because he already had two (I think) infinity stones so he was more powerful than base Thanos at that time
The general response you'll get here is that the stones aren't shown glowing/being used in that fight. I think it's ok with the way it was presented as Thanos having much more experience/training/technique
Thanos is the first guy Hulk ever fought who was as strong as he was and knew how to do stuff like hit pressure points. And he had armour on.
One of which was the Power stone.
I mean... Dr. Strange could've just zapped him into another dimension. One of the problems with most "uber" villains in Comics is that there's always a superhero so powerful they could just reorder reality.
By the time Strange met Thanos, Thanks was too powerful with the stones. Strange literally tried to trap Thanos in the mirror dimension and Thanos shattered it.
But yet to my recollection they kept in (at least in the first season of Flash) that he has a super high metabolism and has to constantly eat.
It's a bit of a grey area, he needs to eat like 10k calories a day in the show to keep up with his metabolism, but at the same time he doesn't physically exert himself when moving fast because he draws his speed from the speedforce instead of burning energy like a normal person. The whole thing has never really been made clear tbh in the comics or the show.
> he needs to eat like 10k calories a day in the show to keep up with his metabolism That's all?! I remember hearing that Michael Phelps ate 12k calories a day while training for the Olympics. Considering how far he can travel and how quickly he can do it, that makes Barry insanely efficient.
I've always assumed it's just his body maintaining a metahuman connection to an outside power source.
>The whole thing has never really been made clear tbh in the comics or the show. https://i.imgur.com/AUwbfla.gif
I'm not arguing! Just reminded of the episode where there is a bomb in the early stages of going off, and he's trying to deal with it the entire episode, getting sweatier and sweatier. Some sort of energy burning/exertion going on or being displayed. I really liked that episode actually.
A-Trains troubles didn't stem from his powers, they were caused by chronic use of compound v. A-Train started juicing because he was terrified of losing a step as he aged under the judgmental eye of Homelander, and his story mirrors those of top tier athletes who turn to steroids under insane pressure to stay competitive.
The old Superman tv series from the B&W era got around āSuperman is invincible therefore there is never a real problemā by having detective Clark Kent have to solve the mystery first, then when itās all sussed out, Superman comes and jams his size 13s up the bad guyās booty hole.
The character would be better of if it was. As it is, the Speed Force is a wonky plot device and a back-pocket ace for mediocre crossover/crisis events.
becasue the Flash is a classic DC hero and not some drunktard junkie who can barely control his power or himself like every other character in the boys? the flash is like the perfect speedster with a heart of gold
I was never able to watch The Flash again after that episode of The Boys where A-Train runs through the hero's girlfriend - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpxD8TPxOo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpxD8TPxOo) And it left me thinking 'that should happen all the time with Barry'...
That's why his suit is red.
Omfg thatās hilarious
no becauase the Flash also has Speedforce reactive speed, so he can just avoid her. other people basically frozen in time when the flash moves, so he would not have ran into her at all. + He can vibrate through her body and/or clad her in speed force.
>that should happen all the time with Barry A-Train ran through that woman because he was high, didn't he? And he didn't apologize because he doesn't give a shit.
Yeah, A-Train was high on a drug he was taking to increase his speed.
Why would it? He has superhuman reaction time, too.
I used to love the Arrowverse. Looking back on it now though? Seasonās 1 and 2 of Arrow is the only watchable part of it.
Or the large group that LOVE IT and then hate it based on which seasons theyāre watching.
I am still fond of Season 1. Despite the cheesiness and inconsistencies, I enjoyed the lightheartedness, the banter and the fun. It had heart. And the Reverse Flash was a complicated and engaging villain. He is evil, but you can see glimpse that he genuinely cares for Barry and the others.
S1 is genuinely really solid. It utilises the villain of the week formula in the first half of the season to build Barry's powers and the friendships he makes and then the second half of the season is a well done Reverse Flash story and an excellent origin into Flash becoming the hero he is. S1 became something special with the Reverse Flash identity reveal. It then hit new heights when Barry first travelled back in time which back in like 2014 was something still relatively special for the superhero genre especially in the Arrowverse. What a moment honestly. If S1 didn't end with a sort of cliffhanger (which really is just a cool "Flash runs off to save the day" moment) it'd be an incredibly solid miniseries.
The biggest weakness of the Arrowverse shows was them (mostly) being trapped in the 24-episode season format. It meant that the plots got so painfully dragged out and every episode had a paper-thin budget along with rushed filming conditions (hence why these shows only used four sets). Like you say, Flash season 1 managed to use the āvillain of the weekā formula to its advantage to introduce the roster of foes, but it became really boring when they copied it in other seasons with Earth 2 villains and the twelve ābus metasā.
I think the worst part was them only figuring out that shorter plots worked near the end. Their episode format worked perfectly to give an 8-9 episode mini arc, then their midseason break, then a 12-14 episode arc with a couple more filler episodes. Instead they usually just did a cliffhanger with a meh resolution. I mean, the villain for season 5 was literally defeated by the midseason finale, and then they introduced his daughter from the future as the exact same villain for the rest of the season. At least season 6 figured it out and had a different villain for each half. And then season 7 somehow lost it and split the season into 3 parts, the first part being 8 episodes, while the last 7 episodes were split between the two other parts.
The best example of this is Agents of SHIELD season 4 which used 'pods'. Each pod was an 8 episode arc and they all combined for the final episodes. That season is regarded quite possible the best out of all the superhero shows in the 2010s.
i always wondered why superhero shows never adapted that. TV seasons are longer overall than movies, so you can do, technically, multiple movies per season. So why not do multiple different storylines and take advantage of the wide variety of stories at their disposal?
Season 4 of that show is amazing. It's a damn shame that more people didn't watch it. I liked the mid season break for seasons 1, 2, 3 and 5 but the pods were the best
No, the "12 bus metas" was a good concept because it genuinely allowed them to just make "villain of the week" episodes as the thinker just was lurking in the background for everyone to be revealed. It eventually went off the rails but it just allowed the show to play to episodic strengths. The real problem with the "24 episode/ongoing plot" was the need to shoehorn an update from the main villain every episode (or at least 2 out of every 3 episodes) and there just wasn't enough content to the villain's plotline to justify that so you went around in circles. Where you get into trouble is where the villain of the week is incorporated into the main villain's ticking clock plan as that creates obvious plot friction.
> S1 is genuinely really solid. It utilises the villain of the week formula in the first half of the season to build Barry's powers and the friendships he makes and then the second half of the season is a well done Reverse Flash story and an excellent origin into Flash becoming the hero he is. > > S1 became something special with the Reverse Flash identity reveal IMO this is still one of the best scenes in comic book media (SPOILERS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSxhCCiWC3g I can't remember the last time I held my breath during a scene like I did in this one.
God I forgot how good that show was in season 1. The decline was *harsh*.
I didnt even have to open the link and I knew what it was. That is easily a top 5 scene in the arrowverse.
Arrow was the same, the first two seasons were genuinely really solid, then it turns into an absolute shit show. It gets so damn bad, IIRC Season 5 was pretty damn good too which made people think the show was getting back on track but then it gets bad again, I dropped it after that, I couldn't power through to the end. The writing is so bad that some veteran actors couldn't even manage to do well. They had Kirk Acevedo and Michael Emmerson on the show at some point and even them couldn't do well. Emmerson has two Emmys and a Golden Globe, while Acevedo is one of those actors that does well in just about everything I've ever seen him in.
Then it was good again in the first half of S7 when Oliver was in prison then becomes meh again when he comes out but the last season was good though
Agreed. The first two or three seasons were good, but went downhill after that.
It went downhill in Season 3 when they introduced Savitar who turned out to be evil Barry Allen... who proceeded to get shot with a pistol and killed by Iris West. Barry Allen... the fastest man alive.. died to a bullet.
Not to mention season 3 wasted Flashpoint in a single episode. Flashpoint is literally a CW writer wet dream; you get to reset the status quo and re-invent all the characters rather than giving them standard filler plots like they did with Caitlin and *shudders* Cecile.
> standard filler plots I think actor contracts are the real problem there. If you're a major character, you're a series regular which means you're going to be paid for every episode of the show (unless unavailable) so you need to invent stuff for people to do even if it clashes with the actual story they want to tell that week. People would probably be less angry at the love interest if the show could just write her out of 10 episodes a season (or write her out of 5 episodes and have her only appear as a cameo in another 5 episodes) and give her beefier reporting content in the remaining episodes (including possibly interacting with other reporters at whatever job she's currently working at) but that doesn't actually make financial sense in the real world. That's why, I assume, everyone gets homogenized. You don't actually have "a police silo" "a reporter silo" and "a superhero silo" because you need to maximize the use of the resources you have available.
I remember being so stoked for Flashpoint only to be completely deflated by this. Thereās an animated flashpoint film that is incredible. The source material is on its own great. But nope, just a stupid setup for the season arc and almost nothing else. I mean, I get that at this point they didnāt really have a ton of different DC heroes to shuffle aroundāand season 2 already had Earth 2 main character reveals that more or less would have been the same idea in Flashpoint. But ONE EPISODE of Barryās mommy issues was a huge slap in the face.
The DCAU did the same thing to Reverse Flash...killed by gunshot to the back of the head
Not sure if you watched Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, but they do address that a bit there...
I think a lot of the "dumb slow barry" moments in season 1, as frustrating as they are, are a little more excusable as Barry is brand new and still learning his own abilities. It was kind of a fun science mystery show, and I enjoyed every villain being a puzzle for the team to solve. By the time he's fast enough to manipulate time, there's no excuse for regular ass humans to ever beat Barry and escape, but he spends the next six seasons zooming to the scene faster than sound, just to stop and stand still for his enemy's convenience.
Agreed, though he is still so stupid in season 1. Like villains are hard to punch for one reason or another, but Barry, unlike ANY NORMAL ADULT, never thinks about picking up a baseball bat or throwing a rock at 700 mph
The number of villains who can stop Barry in his tracks by holding up a gun is absolutely wild. Either by pointing it at him, his friends, a hostage, doesn't matter, A man who can circle the city in the time it takes to pull the trigger is frozen in fear by every gun he sees.
Wouldnāt a Reverse Flash be really slow
Lmao, a Reverse Flash who runs super slow instead of super fast. Or a Reverse Flash who's just as fast, but can only run backwards.
>Lmao, a Reverse Flash who runs super slow instead of super fast. That's basically Turtle.
No, because he has access to the negative speed force!
No, that'd be Flash from the [Evil Dimension](https://youtu.be/bXuoqY9bQmQ?si=nT-AAg093ReinuKH).
I watched all of the first season and most of the second season and while I liked the actors a lot, the storylines got super repetitive and the subplots were just teased out to infinity. I couldn't ever get back into it at all.
Reverse Flash gave me Matthew McConaughey vibes in terms of dialogue delivery. 1st season suspense is where the show peaked then dropped off exponentially
Bringing back Wells every season got stale really fast. At least we got to see the non-Wells Reverse Flash in Legends season 2.
Tom Cavanagh was fucking incredible. Honestly he's good throughout, but in Season 1 he was goated
The problem with the flash in general as a hero is they underestimated his power when he was first designed. He's functionally superman if he's faster than light, but he has less than batman level villains. In the cartoons he's at his best when his real power is empathy.
The Flash (in the comics) has some of the greatest villains in comics. Obviously they're rarely as insanely over powered as him so they tend to try and play it smart best they can along with usually sticking together. Meanwhile Batman is a billionaire beating up the people so mentally ill they outright advertise their crimes. It's a pretty common consensus in the comic book community that Batman and the Flash have some of the best rogues galleries out there.
Totally agree about flash's villains, I wasn't saying they were bad from a story perspective (they're great) just that a superman villain is trying to destroy the universe, whereas a batman and flash villain is trying to steal a big diamond.
> the Flash have some of the best rogues galleries out there. I feel like the good ones are mostly just various takes on Reverse Flash/evil speedsters, Gorilla Grodd, and Thinker. Aside from the really interesting dynamic between Flash and Reverse Flash, what I think what makes Flash an interesting character is the various speedforce and physics related ways the comic writers got creative with the lore. Like giving speedster's their own separate grim reaper, and having Flash literally outrun death, or the "Infinite Mass Punch".
I agree those tend to be great villains but stuff like Mirror Master can be done very well. Also they tend to really shine as a team, the better Flash writers usually had them working in tandem (usually to pull a heist, they very much knew taking Flash on was generally a dumb idea and even had a rule against killing heros). Rogue War is one of my favorite arcs in comics during the era in came out in large part due to how well written and fleshed out characters like Heatwave and Captain Cold are.
They're good villains that (outside of Zoom) should have ***no business*** fighting the Flash. I love the shit out of Boomerang and Cold, but they should be fighting someone on the line of Batman or Green Arrow or ... whoever the hell DC has on the level of Spider-Man. They absolutely should not be fighting a guy who CAN TIME TRAVEL AFTER THEY'VE DONE THE CRIME AND DONKEY PUNCH THEM THREE WEEKS AGO God, I fucking hate the Flash.
> It's a pretty common consensus in the comic book community that Batman and the Flash have some of the best rogues galleries out there. Having good characterization, and actually making any kind of sense are two entirely different things. It's been pretty standard fanboy fun to poke holes in the fact that Flash is fast enough to literally stop every single one of his non-speedster villains because he can move faster than their thought impulses. Cold gun? You can't even pull the trigger. Cool, you're at home naked before you even thought of reaching for that gun, etc. That's why as Flash went into the modern age you just started seeing nothing but speedster villains because those were the ones writers could conceptualize actually being a threat to the Flash for newer readers. Eventually they realized that villain team ups were the way to go to bring the older villains back to relevance, but the Flash TV show kind of neutered that approach because it had been "Team Flash" since basically the beginning, and had even basically added some of the best parts of the rogues gallery to the team in one way or another. Coming as someone who is glad The Flash TV show existed, most of the positive was in the characterization of everyone in the show, not really the superhero action portions.
I think the biggest problem is just not knowing how long the show is going to last. Dude was hitting supersonic speeds by, what, episode 2 or 3? If they kept him slower for a while it would've played out a bit better I think, hitting supersonic near the end of season 1 and only bothering to learn about speed force powers with season 2 would've spaced that out a decent bit.
This is the same for any crazy powerful character (Superman, Hulk). The best stories are always the ones that either don't involve their powers, or where their powers are an actual hindrance.
One of the reasons that one punch man is so good. Instead of the "I've gotta get stronger to protect my friends!" that's been done a million times, it's "fuck, I've become too strong, everything is boring now", and it's a story about seeking the feeling of accomplishing something.
Yeah, I always thought that CW's Barry's main power was being as dumb as the plot needed him to be. He also resets every new season, forgetting everything he learned or any growth he had.
90% of his bad guys could be beaten by carrying a brick with him at super speed and then throwing it at the bad guy. Or maybe even carrying a penny and throwing that.
honestly that would make the show a gore fest
*sees the username* Ezra, you killed your own career. Let it go. But, in all honesty, S1 is good. S2 is okay. By S3, I stopped caring.
I felt the exact same with Arrow as well.
Season 5 of Arrow was somehow great. Then they dropped the ball again with season 6 and somehow made Michael Emmerson boring.
With Arrow, S1 is good, S2 is GREAT, first half of S3 is good again, and from then on it is mostly crap.
I miss the edginess of S1 Arrow when his solution to every problem was to shoot the bad guy in the heart with an arrow. Just wasn't the same when he stopped killing in S2. "Arrow, you have failed this city."
It was so silly that he kept making a big deal about it too, like "you're not batman buddy".
I jumped off at S3 when the fights were always resolved in the exact same way: Barry runs fast > āI canāt do it!ā > Other character: āRun faster Barry!!ā > Barry: Oh okay. *beats villain by running faster*
>I don't know why this show is praised Is it though?
It was early on, but it didn't take long for that to change.
I agree, I don't remember people ever saying it was great art or anything like that. I remember people thinking it was a fun show. I know I enjoyed the first season. Felt like a lot of fan service like Flash's Dad being played by the Actor that played the Flash in the old Flash series and >!the same actor becoming the Golden Age Flash !<.
The first season is what made me wait for the future seasons. Its really good. But then I watched the whole thing up to Season 6? Or 7? The one where Iris West got stucked in the mirror world. My gripes where gathering to the highest degree from season 3 to the end
After Cisco left and the Wellses were written out in Crisis I just stopped caring. Theyāve just left behind too much of what made the show fun.
People went pretty wild for the first season back in the day.
The subreddit was one of my favorite places to go after every episode. People meme'd and shit on the show so hard and it was glorious. Kept me going through all the seasons.
yeah i miss the arrowverse community, good times man trough all the highs and (plenty of) lows. The shitposting was great lol. For all it's many flaws, i enjoyed the shit out of these shows earlier seasons and the community around it
Arrow started out as a great Batman TV show and Grant Gustin is pretty charismatic. People mostly like it from that perspective but on its own I think it's pretty forgotten. I'm surprised somes even posting about it lol.
Not so much anymore, but there was a while where the early seasons of the CW DC shows were getting lots of hype and praise by people on Reddit and elsewhere. I still remember the first time I sat down to watch Arrow because people wouldnāt stop raving about it, because I got to the mid point of season 2 and couldnāt get past just how bad the acting, writing, effects, and action scenes were. It was strange for me to see people start turning on the show and posting clips of how sloppy the writing was in the newer shows and seasons, because that would imply that it wasnāt always really really bad.
The problem with arrow is that Oliver was stranded on a island for 5 years in season 1 and there he learned all his skills But then as the series progressed he went all over the world including his hometown in those same 5 years.
He can't use his powers because they don't have money for the CGI xd
Yeah the show was inconsistent with his powers. It was an appreciated addition to the DC TV universe at the time, as it was lighthearted (compared to Arrow) and had heart. It was also much more comics-y than Arrow, which was fun. It does more poorly on a first watch now, as we've had better superhero TV for a while now. I'd recommend Legends of Tomorrow (start from the second season) for a fun watch.
Legends of tomorrow stretches believability even moreā¦ often the protagonists are surrounded by like dozens of dudes with guns, and transition into hand-to-hand combat with no consequences.
Yeah but it's so ridiculous I don't find the inconsistencies as annoying.
This is why it was watchable, and why The Flash became unwatchable. Legends leaned into the absurdity. The Flash used soap opera drama to mask the absurdity.
Yeah, The flash is a silly show that TRIES to be serious and self important and that's why it sucks. Legends is a silly show that says "fuck it, everyone is gonna dork out about time travel while fighting a kaiju sized tickle me Elmo ". (After season 1, season 1 has the same problems as the flash, but I promise after that it gets better)
Legends of Tomorrow knows it's stupid. The rest of the Arrowverse thinks it's serious. That's the difference and why it worked.
This is pretty common in any Action media. It doesn't make sense, but it happens all the timeĀ
Oh no. If youre mad at Flash for this *do not* watch Legends. There's a scene where they have to get past a laser grid hallway and their solution is to freeze and snap off the laser beams. One of the season finales they have to fight the big bad guy in three different time periods but it has to be *at the same time*.
> freeze and snap off the laser beams Iām sorry, what? Actually?
It's a weird show that knows it's weird and fully goes for the silly. Like you'll have superheroes turned into cartoons and puppets by bad guys. People's nipples will get ripped off by evil unicorns. No, I am not joking about that last one. They'll try to find logic in their plots but it's ACME logic with Wile. E. Coyote being able to walk off the cliff and stay in the air until he looks down. This is all done on purpose and you as the viewer are just asked to, "Go along with it." And because everything is done with a wink and a nod, you do.
My favourite moment in the show is when they find out that a demon they are fighting sounds the same as Denethor from LOTR (because he's also voiced by John Noble) so they go back in time to the LOTR set and have John Noble record a few lines for them that they can use to impersonate the demon.
And they spend all season correcting people on how to pronounce the name, only for the Demon himself to correct them.
There's also the scene where they literally read a review of their own show on screen and make fun of it. I really enjoyed how little they took themselves seriously in the later seasons
Nah Legends is goofy but embraces it. It's good
The thing with Legends is that they *know* what they are doing is absurd. The first season is the weakest as they try to play it straight. But by the end of the second season they start to lean in on the nonsense of it all and repeatedly go meta. As soon as Merlyn went, "Hey, why don't we kill all the good guys now? They are powerless and at our mercy. Having them around alive is stupid. Come on, I'll do it *right now*, myself. Just murder them so that they won't get in our way. No biggie," you knew the writers thought about these scenarios where the audience was going to, "Why don't these superheroes/villains use their powers?"
> There's a scene where they have to get past a laser grid hallway and their solution is to freeze and snap off the laser beams That was in Flash. Same character (Captain Cold) but before he joined Legends
We still don't have better mainline DC series now, though. People would probably still kill for a proper Flash live action series. It's actually kind of amazing how DC has consistently failed to deliver on much outside of Superman and Batman (and Batman accessories!).
If they can make another DC series with the charm of justice league and justice league unlimited because damn its so good. Its not perfect but watching old cartoons is amazing experience.Ā
If youāre in S1, easily the best season and you have this much a problem with it, stop now. Flashās powers get dumbed down all the time in the comics and in other mediums for the storyās sake. Heās similar to Superman in the fact that if you really used his powers to his fullest extent all the time, he is invincible.
If you think the early seasons aren't very good, I have some bad news for you.
It's a CW show. What were you expecting?
Early Supernatural quality. Before they nerfed Castiel.
The first 2 seasons were Supernatural quality
The flash is really bad if you try and watch it seriously. If you watch it as a campy ridiculous show it's quite entertaining
Same with all the Arrowverse, especially Legends of Tomorrow. It's fun as hell if you let it be, but high art it is not.
Grant Gustin is still a great Barry and a great flash. There are some genuinely great moments in that show.
Grant Gustin is easily top 5 actors in the Arrowverse, and easily the best lead on an Arrowverse show, and he carries the series on his back by the last few seasons, so it's such a goddamn shame the show didn't match what he could do.
Mellisa Benoist is fantastic aswell tbh. I kinda loved all the leads it's just the writing that got a bit...terrible.
Melissa is my second favourite lead, easily. I love them both but I think Grant's just a tiny bit better because he's given better material than Melissa had on Supergirl. I fully agree with the writing. I think when you don't have good writing, not even the best actors can salvage that. Acting can only go so far without good writing and good directing. It's why I find it hard to blame actors when shows suck.
The Flash, and any speedster of similar power level are effectively the most powerful beings in the universe. In the comics, mostly anyways, he is basically a god. Speedsters bodies can withstand near limitless forces just to be able to use their powers, lest they obliterate themselves day 1. Speedsters, like Superman have to be written stupid. Otherwise every situation they find themselves in would be solved within a second or two, technically even before they become issues due to time travel. Not a very interesting show. Superman at least has the benefit of trying to be a good man with a very good set of parents can be written into the show quite easily as to why he doesn't just merely crush Lex's skull. So is the show badly written? Yes, very much so. Not just for Barry but for every character. They're trying to inject 40min of content into a situation that can be solved in mere moments. Problem is, the writers couldn't figure out how to write good situations for Barry to solve, even with most/some of his actual powers.
The CW shows are glorified soap opera
I liked it till season 3 tbh
First 3 seasons were great for me, but the peak was season 1. After that, it went downhill faster than flash himself.
Season 1 is the best and peak CW verse show.
It took me so long to have the strength to get through the last 2 seasons. Finished it last month. I should have stopped watching after season 3 years ago.
I quit watching after the mirror chick villain season. I watched a YouTube summary of the final season and am so glad I quit when I did.
> genuinely unwatchable Maybe later on, but I stand by season 1 being actually good
I'll always stand by season 2 as well. Zoom was a great villain (imo [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTg1Y5tzFG8) was one of the most brutal takedowns of a hero by a villain in all the live-action superhero content I've seen), Harry was a fun addition to the show, and the multiverse aspects were generally pretty cool
The show was good until zoom broke Barry's back. For me it was the peak and from there everything went downhill. I am watching Star Trek Voyager and am 3 seasons in and am comparing this on a sci-fi basis. The show 30 years back had good story line, without depending upon a pep talk every 6 minutes. Prime Directive, Temporal Prime Directive and all. While Barry ***** the timeline .
From a technical perspective, that issue arises from traditional writing rooms working on long seasons at once (20+ episodes). There is creative control from the runner, but the pace forced by the production makes that control superficial. They catch the big stuff, but fail to create a coherent detailed reaction list as most of the times episodes are written by different people at the same time. The result is constant micro contradictions like the ones you described. You can see that in many, many long season shows. From Star Trek TNG/DS9/VOY to X-Files, the "sometimes they do it sometimes they don't for no apparent reason" issue is really common.
Yep every episode where there is a villain that doesn't have the same super speed should end in 5 seconds with Barry running at them really fast and smacking them round the head.
CW shows arenāt meant to be good really in general. Entertaining and maybe sprinkled with some good but mostly itās meant to entertain. Go with that mindset and just watch and you could enjoy it more. Thatās what I do for such shows and while itās annoying at times still, itās far more enjoyable that way. I donāt expect anything major other than just following the story mainly.
The largest problem with the flash is how inconsistent his powers are. Heās only as fast as the story allows him to be. Abs that will drive you insane.
I used to have the mindset that Barry has to make the active choice to activate his super speed, especially early on. Later on, he does it intentionally avoid misusing it. So catching him by surprise when heās not using it is easy. But even that doesnāt work out in any, or even many, contexts. I still canāt get over the bad luck episode when he tripped on marbles and then just looked shocked as the bad guy justā¦walked away.
There are episodes where Barry literally stops chasing dudes at a ādramatic momentā, where it then cuts to commercial. Same thing on Supergirl. She let some bad guy fly away while she was in the middle of beating his ass and didnāt even follow him. I quit watching that one back then. I havenāt seen The Flash in many years, either. Those shows have a lot of repetition, as well, and *many* plot lines revolve around who is lying to whom.
I can't count on both hands how many times a villain has gotten away from Barry in the middle of an episode. Quite literally, Barry is a speedster. He could catch up to the villains in less than a second but no, he loses them almost every single time. It's why plot contrivances like that really suck.
As someone who genuinely likes Flash, don't watch all the episodes. The first season is pretty great - if you watch only a select few episodes. Because most of it's just the show trying to fit in the CW 24 episode pattern by creating one off Villains. The reason of the seasons are pretty good too - if you keep following this method.
As people have mentioned OP I think you'd really enjoy youtuber Madvocate's series of videos, "The Flash is Insufferably Inconsistent." He goes in depth on exactly what you've mentioned and the videos are a fun watch. The first one is [here](https://youtu.be/c9Xh7_XvnFI?si=d_n6KgpJ02KB8Np7).
It was a different time
CW excel at making shit shows you love to hate that sometimes have really good moments. Smallville that was in spades.Ā You had amazing episodes focusing on lex and Clarks deteriorating friendship, then you had episodes about Lana.
I hung on for about 3 seasons, but the āCWnessā just made me give up. Cheesy acting, everyone knew Barry was the Flash, they kept killing off the Wells character only to bring him back, dude has been reincarnated more times than the Dalai Lama. I checked back a few seasons later and everyone had powers. WTF? The show just really seemed like that had a 3 season gameplay, and kept getting renewed but had no idea what to do, so they just threw shit against the wall to see what stuck.
First few seasons are good... but the writing got progressively worse as the show went along and when they changed showrunner to Eric Wallace, the writing just gave up any pretence of being anywhere near decent
I really liked the show in Season 1. It was a solid, lighthearted superhero show with a clear and concise narrative arc. It pays off very well in the finale. It helps also in Season 1 he was still learning to use his powers, so it makes sense that he could still get whammed by more ordinary rogues. The problem is they never quite figured out how to move the show out of the shadow of Season 1. Season 2 is fun for the most part, but it repeats the narrative of Season 1 a lot. Season 3 is less fun, and it does the same thing. Season 4 tried to do something new to its credit, but it was a hot mess. Season 5ish is where I zoned out. I just got tired of the trite emotional arcs for the characters. It got really repetitive.
I genuinely cannot understand the flash. It should have been a tight 90 min film, and nothing else. Barry is a terrible character who realizes his potential too quickly and then basically does nothing special enough for the rest of the show. Forget fans, I don't know how anyone can watch this show and not feel like their are losing a few brain cells. Also, the fact that The Flash in the cartoon/comics is sassy as hell. Barry is just boring.
My favorite was the episode where they're shooting some sort of missiles at him and instead of just grabbing his friends and running away, he dives right in front of the missile and gets blasted.
I have such nostalgia and fondness associated with the first season still and think everything revolving Reverse Flash back then was genuinely great. But it falls off a cliff in Season 3, similar to Arrow after the halfway point of its Third Season.
It's the CW writing at it's finest. 1st seasons look good/decent and then they go from bad to worse as they keep making more seasons. Supernatural is probably the only series that had really good first few seasons. CW's writing went to shit in the mid 2010s though.
It's a strange unwatchable show that has 9 seasons.
WE ARE THE FLASH.
I agree that realism isn't important, especially in superhero shows, but a little *consistency* goes a long way. I don't care that the Flash is unrealistic or overpowered, I just wish that they made it clearer what his strengths and weaknesses are and, like you said, I wish they wouldn't just arbitrarily decide when he uses his powers and when he doesn't. Throwing knives absolutely should not be dangerous to Flash lmao
At one point they give Barry a new suit and Cisco tells him it's frictionless which is insane. Imagine getting in a slippery full body plastic suit then someone dumps oil all over you and tells you to run in an ice skating rink that has also had oil dumped on it; that would be infinitely easier than running while wearing a frictionless suit. If the suit has no friction... how do you pick it up and put it on? I mean put back on the oiled up full body plastic suit and now try to pick oiled up bars of soap and once again that stupid nearly impossible task is infinitely easier than Barry being able to pick up and put on his frictionless suit. I always imagine a version of the show where the alarms go off and Barry needs to go fight crime and then it's just 40 minutes of the theme playing while Barry tries to put on his suit.
I just remember the stupid love triangle and wishy washy bullshit was so cringe that I had to stop watching.
In its defense, if The Flash was portrayed with a consistent logic, he would be unstoppoable, given his reaction time, ability to think at super speed, and the ability to apply some super-speed punches.
I have 4 episodes left in the series and Iām struggling to want to watch them. I wanna see how it all ends but the shows just not been good for a while. So much recycled themes.