It really says a lot about a genre show when the characterization and dialogue manages to consistently overwhelm the sci fi/fantasy aspects of it. The writing on iZombie has been pretty damn entertaining, managing to swing from funny to high action to borderline tragic with apparent ease. Add in some great dialogue and the show keeps impressing me.
Central City continues to get new metahuman criminals in “Fast Lane.” There are also several personal developments for the STAR Labs crew. They are making an interesting world that mostly reflects the rebooted “DCNU” comic book universe, but has some elements unique to the tv show as well.
Maxwell Lord continues to play supervillain for never specified reasons in “Bizarro.” Any fan of Superman, and most comic fans in general, know what’s coming from that title. Max has created his own faux-Supergirl, mentally conditioned her to hate the real Supergirl, and turned her loose.
Team Arrow largely gets distracted from their war with Damian Darhk in “A.W.O.L” Lyla and Diggle go out for a well-deserved night on the town, with some actual normal concerns like getting back in time for the sitter. Of course, that can’t last, and they get interrupted by the sudden appearance of Alan Chang, ARGUS agent. Chang then gets attacked and carried off by unknown assailants who are not Darhk’s Ghosts for once.
Agent Carter’s trip to California continues in “Better Angels.” In the wake of the disaster at Isodyne, Dr. Wilkes has been very neatly framed. Between his being black, and the paranoia about communists, it’s not a hard sell to most. Carter, of course, doesn’t buy it. Equally of course, Sousa is about the only one willing to listen to her.
In the second part of the pilot, Legends of Tomorrow finishes setting up the status quo for the show. They are still in 1975, now trying to get a better fix on where Vandal Savage is, after getting the information from Professor Boardman. They are already developing some quirks- apparently flying on the Waverider, whether through time or just normal space, doesn’t agree with Mick Rory, Heat Wave.
The new team is coming together. They’ve defeated their first foe, and are now trying to figure out where to go from there. Stark is having money problems, so a lot of the usual bells and whistles of being an Avenger are missing. Their headquarters is neither Mansion nor Tower, but an abandoned hangar in New Jersey that they are refitting. Stark does get one thing that most would consider an essential part of the Avengers experience- Jarvis.
As if Barry doesn’t have enough problems to deal with, a foe he thought was gone forever pops up in “The Reverse-Flash Returns.” Flash speeds through the city, to a voice-over about reasons to run, especially ironic from a speedster. He checks in with Cisco, who tells him he’s handled everything in Central City already. Barry ignores Cisco’s suggestion to take a break. Wells and Cisco, meanwhile, get into a humorous bickering match over coffee.
They are having fun with bits of the Superman mythos on Supergirl. This week’s title, Strange Visitor From Another Planet, is one of the descriptions of Superman from the radio and tv show days. It’s nice to see the nods to the decades-long history of the various characters.
After a lot of preview material, and a slow build across both Arrow and Flash, Legends of Tomorrow finally debuts, the newest addition to the CW-verse, or Arrow-verse, depending on which name you like better. Rip Hunter gathers a group of heroes and villains both to fight the immortal evil of Vandal Savage. Except for Rip himself, all of the other characters have appeared on Flash and/or Arrow. It really was one of the longest builds to a new series I can remember seeing. The CW shows are showing the same attention to continuity and building a cohesive world that Marvel Studios is using on their shows, and the DC movies so far have utterly failed to.
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