The Flash: Faster than Arrow
So I just binge-watched the first season of The Flash, and I’d like to know how the production company that is shooting Arrow in the knee can do such a near-perfect job on The Flash?
WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT (aka Practically Everything):
They’re working with a comic book premise and they embrace it: a hero who runs really fast, villains with singular super-powers, lots of bright colors and action, with very little slowing down the action to Talk About Their Feelings. As the second season review in Variety put it:
In the past, television has often kept one foot on the floor, as it were, when it comes to fully embracing comics. . . . By contrast, “The Flash” – more unabashedly than “Arrow,” its DC-related predecessor – has plunged pretty deeply into comic-book lore and simply asked the audience that isn’t steeped in its minutia to follow along.
All of which is to say, even you’re not a comic book geek, you can love this show.
They cast terrific actors (which Arrow also did, to be fair): The people are so good that when they talk about their feelings (always briefly), they often make me cry. Okay, I’m an easy crier, but still. Grant Gustin is dead-on perfect as The Flash: charming, vulnerable, brave, and always late. The only flaw I see in how they use him is that they only had him sing a few bars in a karaoke scene, which is a waste. And the rest of the cast is equally stellar, including Jesse L. Martin, Tom Cavenaugh, Victor Garber, and Wentworth Miller.
They focus on the central team–Barry, Cisco, and Caitlyn–and stick with it, giving the show its action center, and then support that with a family–Barry, Joe, Iris, and Barry’s dad–that has remarkably few soap opera moments, and a workplace that provides plot movement–Barry is a CSI–instead of distractions.
They embrace their major themes unashamed, especially the omnipresent fathers theme, but they don’t wallow in them.
They focus on the main plot–Barry saving his parents–with only one major subplot, the truly terrible Barry/Iris non-romance (these people need to hire a romance writer as an advisor, but not me). And the villain-of-the-week plots are always fun and almost always pay off later in the season. This show is tight.
They keep the story moving with no delays in plot developments and no padding.
They honor their roots, both in the comics and on TV, with special attention to that old Flash series; casting the actors from that show is partly an Easter egg to Flash fans, but also just smart because that cast–John Wesley Shipp, Amanda Pays, Mark Hamill–was really good. Special points for bringing Hamill back as his old character, the Trickster, who’s spent the intervening twenty years in prison.
They do crossovers with Arrow that work beautifully; bonus: Arrow characters who are annoying on Arrow are charming on The Flash (looking at you, Laurel Lance).
They use the classic ridiculous Flash villains, and they’re not ashamed to flaunt them, which means their cast of supporting players on the other side is always interesting. Extra points for Captain Cold who sounds like every villainous frat boy in every movie ever made; the sneer is his voice is delightfully evil, plus he has a sense of humor. Also, extremely fun to look at. Yes, I will be tuning in to Legends of Tomorrow.
What They Didn’t Get Right
The women are all little girls. Caitlin Snow is a wide-eyed gee-whiz girl genius; Iris West is a wide-eyed, happy girl reporter. The fact that both of these characters are supposed to be smart, independent women is undercut by the writing and the way they are played, although Caitlin drunk was great.
They learned to lie from Arrow. This show should be subtitled Everybody Lies (to) Iris. Every male in the show treats her like she’s a mentally deficient child; it’s about the only thing I don’t like about the male characters. And since Arrow does the same thing, I trace this back to the production company again, whose motto must be “No Smart Women.” Lying: it’s the new Fridging. My fantasy: Iris gets a cat and it’s Lying Cat.
Even so, I’ll be back watching this season. There’s so much good in The Flash, including the cliffhanger-which-is-not-a-cliffhanger (will Barry save the world from being sucked into a black hole? Duh.), and so much potential (the meta-criminals at large, Cisco and Caitlin about to discover their meta-selves, how the hell they’re going to bring Tom Cavanaugh back now that his character was never born, Grant Gustin doing anything . . . ) that I wouldn’t miss it.
The Flash: Not a Guilty Pleasure because I don’t feel the slightest guilt in settling down to watch Barry run across the screen. Second season premieres tonight.
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