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I literally said to my self before watching the first Arrow of this season "if this episode is lovely, i'm not watching until Crisis". Good thing is started out with a bang. Rhyno posted:They're probably restricting the villains until they decide if they're going to bring Batman proper into the Arrowverse. I can't imagine they'd make the show without knowing if they're going to do this. I think they've just misjudged how interesting this whole plot is.
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Nov 9, 2019 05:35
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Their long term planning seems to be a mess. The Superman show will likely tell them if it's worth pushing out more big gun shows.
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Nov 9, 2019 05:42
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Decompressed ultra-serialized 'prestige' TV storytelling is really overstaying its welcome. If your plot is barely interesting enough to have supported a two- or three-parter, it's sure as hell not getting any better being bloated out to whole-season-length.
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Nov 9, 2019 08:46
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McSpanky posted:Decompressed ultra-serialized 'prestige' TV storytelling is really overstaying its welcome. If your plot is barely interesting enough to have supported a two- or three-parter, it's sure as hell not getting any better being bloated out to whole-season-length. Agents of Shield having its "pods" each season worked pretty well. You'd get like 2 or 3 different plotlines that followed each other but you knew that things would be wrapped up nicely after a few episodes. Arrowverse shows still have the "we need to have a big bad each season, they need to be relevant for all 20+ episodes, so we need to stretch things out".
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Nov 9, 2019 09:29
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RIP Lucius Fox.
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Nov 11, 2019 02:09
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Mary continues to be the MVP of this show.
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Nov 11, 2019 02:42
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Sophie is the worst and somebody should drop a rock on her head.
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Nov 11, 2019 03:41
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I think one of the fundamental flaws of this show is that Kate really doesn't feel like a badass. Today she stood around and let a car ram into her, then in the fight with the executioner she was overpowered right away. She seems like someone in over her head that has some fun toys that she can use as crutches. Compare it to batman on screen, or Oliver Queen on Arrow.
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Nov 11, 2019 05:05
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I appreciate that they used Jack Napier again as the Joker’s real name. That always seemed like the perfect option if the Joker was going to have a real identity instead of that overhyped Alan Moore “multiple choice” bullshit.
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Nov 11, 2019 05:08
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I thought the Crows were supposed to be the military force for the ENTIRE CITY!? Why are there different districts where they aren't allowed to cross??
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Nov 11, 2019 05:12
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Vietnamwees posted:I thought the Crows were supposed to be the military force for the ENTIRE CITY!? Why are there different districts where they aren't allowed to cross?? The Crows protect Rich Gotham. They don’t give a poo poo about Poor Gotham.
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Nov 11, 2019 05:14
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nine-gear crow posted:I appreciate that they used Jack Napier again as the Joker's real name. That always seemed like the perfect option if the Joker was going to have a real identity instead of that overhyped Alan Moore "multiple choice" bullshit. I like the multiple choice thing, but it doesn't work outside of comics I agree. I guess Ledger made it work, but I can't imagine any other actor pulling it off. howe_sam posted:Sophie is the worst and somebody should drop a rock on her head.  I know this is gonna end like a gayer Oliver Queen/Tommy Merlyn Arrow season 1 deal but it honestly cannot happen soon enough. I hate all of her and Kate's interactions.
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Nov 11, 2019 05:51
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drat, HOW MANY BATMAN-KILLING guns did Bruce have made!? We just had an episode about that, and now theres another one in Gotham!?
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Nov 11, 2019 05:53
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The Lord Bude posted:I think one of the fundamental flaws of this show is that Kate really doesn't feel like a badass. Today she stood around and let a car ram into her, then in the fight with the executioner she was overpowered right away. She seems like someone in over her head that has some fun toys that she can use as crutches. Compare it to batman on screen, or Oliver Queen on Arrow. Yeah, for all of her training she really hasn't shown to be a significantly better fighter than anyone she's come up against, including Alice. She straight-up lost the fight to Big Slow Axe Guy tonight. On Arrow, Oliver disappeared for five years and came back with scars and mysterious new skills. There was a sense his training had changed him. Kate seems to have learned to hold her breath for a long time, but otherwise appears to be pretty much exactly the same person she was in the military academy flashbacks. Edit: I wonder if the issue is that Ruby Rose just isn't on the same level as Stephen Amell or Caity Lotz. Even just a salmon ladder or maskless training session would go a long way to showing her as a physical force. ShakeZula fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 06:03
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ShakeZula posted:Yeah, for all of her training she really hasn't shown to be a significantly better fighter than anyone she's come up against, including Alice. She straight-up lost the fight to Big Slow Axe Guy tonight. The physicality of the actor shouldn't be a huge impediment given stunt doubles and CGI. Also things like good choreography help, but tonight wasn't a question of them not 'showing her as a physical force' adequately. The writing team made a deliberate decision to have Batwoman get clowned on by a random middle aged dude with no discernible hand to hand combat training. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 06:22
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It has nothing to do with her actual physicality or the amount of screen time spent building that up. It has everything to do with the writing and the ability of the actress to sell the character and both of those are failing, compounding each other.
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Nov 11, 2019 09:22
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ShakeZula posted:Kate seems to have learned to hold her breath for a long time, but otherwise appears to be pretty much exactly the same person she was in the military academy flashbacks. Hopefully they'll have an episode on her learning how to insult swordfight.
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Nov 11, 2019 10:18
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Ubik_Lives posted:Hopefully they'll have an episode on her learning how to insult swordfight. I want you to know that I appreciate this and the alternate universe where the Monkey Island movie actually happened rather than mutating into Pirates of the Caribbean is probably a much nicer place.
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Nov 11, 2019 10:47
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The Lord Bude posted:I think one of the fundamental flaws of this show is that Kate really doesn't feel like a badass. Today she stood around and let a car ram into her, then in the fight with the executioner she was overpowered right away. She seems like someone in over her head that has some fun toys that she can use as crutches. Compare it to batman on screen, or Oliver Queen on Arrow. This is why I’m teetering on being done. It’s the same exact problem I have with supergirl. She’s supposed to be a god but EVERY bad guy overpowers her. It’s not like the DC guys can’t write badass women but why does it feel like they’re ruining the two female lead shows?
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Nov 11, 2019 11:38
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howe_sam posted:Sophie is the worst and somebody should drop a rock on her head. I don't know what the point of Sophie is and the show would be improved by getting rid of her, but for me she's secondary to Alice in terms of things ruining the show. Sophie, at least, isn't taking too much focus away from the better, more interesting things that are going on, but Alice is all over everything and just awful. And yeah, Batwoman needs to be better at fighting and actually bring her sister into the loop. That line from Mary about not wanting to know Batwoman's identity could be an ironic hint that she's about to find out, or it could mean she's going to spend all of season one actively avoiding it, which would be terrible.
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Nov 11, 2019 12:53
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Watching right now Oh my loving god, run to the right you idiot!
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Nov 11, 2019 15:15
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I'll give my show criticism some updates.howe_sam posted:This is nuts, Batwoman isn't even Legends season one bad. While I think if forced on a chair to watch for all eternity as my hellish torment I'd pick this one up purely because its dullness is better than staring at the Hawk couple, this show seems to suffer of The CW tropes on steroids. Thinking back on Arrow S1, which also had a lot of insufferable family drama, there were at least some mysteries afloat and they were multi-layered. Not good, not great, but it was the premise of the show. The premise of this show so far is that two wealthy characters in a position of power want to find out what happened to their daughter/sister. This is an interesting premise. "What happened to Beth?" could be an entire season of True Detectivesque or even X-Filesesque mystery. It's not like Arrow didn't do it right off the bat, no pun intended, and managed to stretch it for seasons while still providing goalposts that were to one degree or another interesting. Right now we have: Beth: How does she have so many resources? Why? Her main character seems to be a Stockholm syndrome victim who got psychotic, fell in love with an isolated almost feral kid, and that doesn't make for a character who would need to create this huge network across the city over the years. We know Cath Hamilton knew about her and that she is not past doing anything illegal or criminal to shut her down, so considering Beth is a crazy psychopath, how did she even make to episode 1 alive? This would be an interesting mystery if her entire motivation didn't seem to so character-driven. The drama makes very little sense: She stopped believing in sisterhood because her sister found her, sensed her, and didn't do anything after she didn't reply. Which she didn't because she saw that as the best case scenario to her entire family being murdered otherwise. However the boy who imitates her perfectly well is a-ok in her book. I'm assuming at some point the two of them killed the jailer together and escaped and then ????. Became criminal masterminds that remained untouched and undiscovered by the police while influencing the entire city for years as an elaborate plan to get vengeance on her dad who got convinced by her partner that she wasn't there. Like, think about it, her motivation is "Thank you for convincing my father that it wasn't my voice and it's a good thing our captor threatened to kill my family so I couldn't reply to my sister, that really opened my eyes to how lovely they are and now I'm gonna get an entire elaborate shadowy organization going to get vengeance on them. I need corrupt cops, gang members, a lot of money, staying outside the media, and then eventually convince my father I'm his daughter before killing him. I guess I'm fine with his wife who faked my death as well." Jacob acts, constantly, as an rear end in a top hat - the typical CW antagonist who's on the good side. He's extremely one-dimensional. He looks like a worse version of Quentin Lance, and he reduces both the main character and the villain's motivations to what plot-wise is essentially daddy issues. Beth seems to have no agency of her own other than be guided towards hatred or love for her family. Almost every interaction between Kate and her father is confrontational and to add salt to the wound, his number 1 agent seems to be the person Kate loved and got split from because she denied "the below allegation of homosexual conduct". Her realization that she'd be a vigilante is when she noticed how her father would never make her a Crow, something that even Beth knew (???) so the entire story is a circle jerk about : 1) A woman who lost her sister in an accident, did not deny allegations of homosexual conduct and thus got expelled from the army, and then got denied entrance to her own father's private agency as cherry on top. 2) A woman who did deny "allegations of homosexual conduct" and thus got approved, and then later on became what Beth sees as the surrogate daughter of their own father, much to Kate's misery. 3) Their father who is like the Gendou Ikari of the Arrowverse and is constantly looking grumpy and unreasonable even in situations where he's in the right. 90% of his actions seem to revolve around, intentionally or otherwise, taking a dump on his daughter's feelings. Mary seems sad over her absent stepsister not paying attention to her, but I don't even remember Jacob acknowledging Mary's existence in the past few episodes. 4) The sister who really wants vengeance on her dad and the main character for not looking for them enough even though she knows that A) they were in danger B) her stepmother paid for her not to be found C) her best buddy ever can fool even her with his mimicry and was the plot device used so that she wasn't found. Everything revolves around this. There's no external mystery. Mary is the most interesting and least one-dimensional character. Jacob seems to be more responsible for Kate's woes than Beth's woes, to which in this episode she says she shows forgiveness and that's fine, but this character square is where everything starts and ends. We're presented a show in the format of a soap opera but you need a lot of branches in a soap opera for it to work. Every other character lacks agency. Luke Fox is basically a slave-character to Batwoman. This is the same tech-savvy character that shows up (see: Felicity, Mr. Terrific, etc) and once they show up the main character's tech knowledge drops to zero. Pre-Felicity Arrow he could use tech act like a 007 level agent and invent gadgets, track anyone anywhere, etc. Post-Felicity he's reduced to "I'm a dumb action hero" and whenever something slightly technical is said the general response is "please, speak English". They also not only lack agency but their lack of agency is played for comic relief ("yeah, sure, you go out and have fun while I stay here" he says while doing... unpaid work? I don't know) and the fact the show is savvy about it doesn't make the character more interesting ("Your father was better at this", "Yeah I know" etc). If anything it makes me feel sorry for the dude. To make things worse Batwoman's prowess is written exactly backwards: She's mastered every tech-gadget she's never seen immediately, but sucks super hard at hand-to-hand combat and has very slow reflexes, for CW superhero standards. Her friend gets shot: Good thing Mary is 24/7 available at ghetto hospital because Kate surely can't even bandage her. Batwoman has a fight of the week: She gets overpowered physically, saved by her dad, and then once again saved intellectually by Luke Fox. Like what the gently caress? I propose Beth, Kate and Jacob go to a group therapy session, Beth and Mouse get some serious psychiatric treatment (and then get in trial for who knows how many people they've murdered), Sophie and her husband leave to some place where wealthy crazy people aren't trying to kill her and her loved ones, Cath gets arrested over who knows how many crimes by now, and Mary and Luke, the two most competent and sensate characters, take control over the Crows and rename them the Bats. Elentor fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 17:21
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I thought Kate looked cool when she was wearing the costume with no wig/mask.
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Nov 11, 2019 18:35
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Of the things I'm most curious about is how Mary seems to keep up her double life as social media influencer while also running her clinic. Presumably an influencer has to be seen in public to match up with the appearances she posts on social media or maybe she has accomplices who help her keep up the act? The villain for the ep and the whole moral struggle seems kinda weak and not untrodden ground. It suffers from the same thing Supergirl has with the issue. Luke's issue with it was probably the most hollow just because of some vague worry that the person put away might go free from what? Procedural technicality? We barely know anything about him anyways so as a viewer it's a little hard to sympathize.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:00
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vseslav.botkin posted:I thought Kate looked cool when she was wearing the costume with no wig/mask. Yeah she should just switch to a domino mask or something because it's an infinitely better look.
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Nov 11, 2019 23:35
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vseslav.botkin posted:I thought Kate looked cool when she was wearing the costume with no wig/mask. turns out Ruby Rose is an attractive lady
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Nov 12, 2019 01:15
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Cobblepot brought back the firing squad. Ahahaha.
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Nov 12, 2019 04:37
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LongDarkNight posted:Cobblepot brought back the firing squad. Ahahaha. We see a cell in Arkham that's labeled O. Cobblepot too, so at least they're playing it true to real life with Chicago politicians who turn out to be crooks and wind up in jail.
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Nov 12, 2019 04:43
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Ugh, they're trying to make Alice and Mouse sympathetic at this point? What grade 7 creative writing class did the writers of this show flunk out of?
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Nov 12, 2019 07:07
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Elentor posted:Beth: How does she have so many resources? Why? Her main character seems to be a Stockholm syndrome victim who got psychotic, fell in love with an isolated almost feral kid, and that doesn't make for a character who would need to create this huge network across the city over the years. Her resources seem to fluctuate based on how the audience is supposed to perceive her. At the start, she's got a full gang that can outfight the Crows, because she's supposed to be seen as a full on super villain. As her motivations become more personal, her gang has all but vanished, leaving just her and Mouse.
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Nov 12, 2019 09:05
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twistedmentat posted:Ugh, they're trying to make Alice and Mouse sympathetic at this point? What grade 7 creative writing class did the writers of this show flunk out of? The Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too
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Nov 12, 2019 19:58
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The relatives of Batman characters theme continues as next week's episode is going to have Christina Wolfe as Julia Pennyworth, Alfred's heretofore unmentioned daughter.
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Nov 12, 2019 20:43
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muscles like this! posted:The relatives of Batman characters theme continues as next week's episode is going to have Christina Wolfe as Julia Pennyworth, Alfred's heretofore unmentioned daughter. Thanks I hate it.
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Nov 12, 2019 20:45
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muscles like this! posted:The relatives of Batman characters theme continues as next week's episode is going to have Christina Wolfe as Julia Pennyworth, Alfred's heretofore unmentioned daughter. Julia was reintroduced into comic book canon relatively recently. She originally showed up in the 80s but was removed after COIE https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Julia_Pennyworth_(Prime_Earth) In the comics, she ends up replacing Kate's father as her comms person after he forms his own organization and lets them operate more lethally.
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Nov 12, 2019 21:10
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muscles like this! posted:The relatives of Batman characters theme continues as next week's episode is going to have Christina Wolfe as Julia Pennyworth, Alfred's heretofore unmentioned daughter. Ughhhh it's terrible on several levels that Kate is just picking up cast off pieces of Bruce's life as she goes.
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Nov 12, 2019 21:12
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The important thing is do they kiss?
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Nov 12, 2019 23:06
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The Trivia section of that article linked says that it's implied that she's attracted to Kate, so they most definitely will.
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Nov 12, 2019 23:24
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bentacos posted:The Trivia section of that article linked says that it's implied that she's attracted to Kate, so they most definitely will. She's got to get a move on if she wants to compete with Captain Sara Lance, Time Bisexual.
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Nov 12, 2019 23:28
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Rhyno posted:Thanks! I hate it! The loving narration is in the form of letters to the real Batman because he's cool and important and Batwoman's a flunkie.
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Nov 12, 2019 23:43
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WSAENOTSOCK posted:For real. Every time Bruce isn't on screen, people should be asking, "where's Bruce?" I'm not gonna lie, I'd be cool with it if they just canned Kate's little Letters To Batman routine and just have more of Rachel Maddow saying something snarky instead.
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Nov 12, 2019 23:47
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