DC TV Weekly #40

The Flash 'Run, Iris, Run' Review
These past two episodes have been perfect examples of how to do filler episodes well and how to do them poorly. Last week's filler was creative and against formula, this week's filler is just that, filler. A random meta with generic fire powers tries to rob a bank...without a mask...in the city with the Flash...dumbass. However there's another bus meta who can take people's powers, and at first he seems to want to help people, but then he holds Iris hostage and runs away...for no reason. Then another guy gets the powers and instantly goes into crime because apparently everyone is evil. For nothing else at least they addressed an issue I've had since season one, that being Iris' uselessness. I'm not convinced they've fixed that issue in the long run, but having at least one episode of her being physically active is nice, plus the purple lightning made for a nice change of effect to look at. Then there's the subplot of Harry trying to recreate DeVoe's experiment and everyone except Cisco is totally up for it, even though Cisco has a very reasonable argument that it was this same experiment that turned DeVoe from a smart pacifist to an evil genius, and they give no reason to why the same won't happen to Harry...speaking of this subplot, it also contained the line "Have you not seen Spider-Man 2?" which means Marvel movies exist in this universe, except in the first Sam Raimi movie they reference Superman, who is canon in DC Television and this creates one heck of a paradox that I'm obviously thinking way too deep into but this episode as a whole was kinda meh and that's one stuck out to me the most and now I'm just babbling. 5/10.

Legends of Tomorrow 'Amazing Grace' Review
Perhaps Legends has just gone so far down the path of weird & wonderful that an episode all about Elvis having the power to summon ghosts with the power of music seems rather underwhelming by their standards. Not that there's anything wrong with the concept, more so the execution. At no point in this episode did there actually feel like there were any stakes, no villains, no tough obstacles, if the characters used their powers even once then any "problem" would disappear in an instant. Elvis didn't push back against the Legends, the ghosts didn't turn out to cause any problem, there was nothing, because of that, this whole episode just felt hollow. The closest I got to caring about anything was Axel the rat, and when I find myself caring more about the rat than any of the actual characters on the show, I think we can sum it up as a dud. Nothing bad about it per se, but nothing good either. 5/10.

Black Lightning 'The Book of Revelations' Review
And we're back to everything the way it always was, where everything is simply decent, mostly the plot progression. Jennifer's powers are starting to activate, but we all knew that was going to happen eventually, it's another case where there are certain story beats it has to hit before it can get interesting, but I'm glad they got through most of them in this one episode. That's another positive I can say about Black Lightning, it knows when it has to deal with specific story tropes that most superhero shows go through, so it tries to rush through them as quickly as possible to get to the good stuff. For example, Anissa is already going out on missions as Thunder, because wasting time with Jefferson saying no when we all know it's gonna happen eventually is boring, they dealt with it last episode and now they're just acting like a superhero duo. Then there is Gambi admitting his history to Jefferson and of course he's pissed and I'm excited for where that's gonna go. So yeah, good balance between advancing already established storylines and establishing entirely new ones with Jennifer and Lala. 7/10.