FTA-TV The Flash

[gaskin]

Is it worth watching the last season ? I missed it entirely.

That would be an emphatic no from me.

 

[kreglze]

I think Covid wrecked havoc with the show, but even then last season was very ehhh. Not too offensive, but not something I would go out of my way to watch.

 

[Vader]

I started watching this show recently, from the beginning of season 1. Yes, I know I'm 5 years behind the rest of the world...

I got to the season 1 finale, and came to BF to read what others thought of it. I can't help but think that I watched a completely different episode to everyone else. Everyone on BF was praising it, as a great episode, and a great season finale - I thought it was a poorly thought out piece of garbage, which almost ruined what had been (to that point) an excellent first series.

It opened with 20 minutes of tedious melodrama while Barry umms & aahs over whether or not he should go back in time to save his mother, knowing that doing so would destroy all of the relationships which made his present life worth living. Seriously, I could have just fast forwarded through the first half of the episode and not missed a damn thing. What a waste of 20 minutes... Having said that, I do like the solution the writers came up with - going back in time, and saying farewell to his mother, while still allowing her to die and thus not destroying the timeline.

What really annoyed me though was how poorly thought out the ending was. Detective Thawne kills himself, thus preventing Eobard Thawne (Reverse Flash) from ever having existed. Eobard disappears, as his timeline ceases to exist. So far, so good... and yet our heroes are left standing inside the particle accelerator which Eobard built. Oops... WTF?

The writers clearly failed to think through the implications of Eobard never having existed. In one huge Deus Ex Machina, the world should have reset to a completely different timeline, where none of our heroes (other than Joe, Iris & Detective Thawne) ever met each other, and there was no Flash. Worse, the writers have inadvertently created a paradox...

Let's consider the implications of Eobard never having existed... The Reverse Flash doesn't travel back in time, and doesn't kill Barry's mother. This means that Barry never meets Joe, who is tasked with investigating her death. Barry is never adopted by Joe, and never meets (let alone falls in love with) Iris. STAR Labs is never created, so Caitlin & Ronnie Raymond never meet either. With no STAR Labs, there's no particle accelerator explosion, and no meta-humans - including The Flash. With Barry's mother never having died, Barry doesn't become a CSI, and probably ends up delivering newspapers for a living (or something equally mundane). No particle accelerator also means no black hole, which is where the finale ended...

With Barry & Iris never having met, there's no bizarre love triangle between Detective Thawne, Iris & Barry. With no Eobard, no Reverse Flash, there's no crisis, and no reason for Detective Thawne to kill himself. In short, Detective Thawne & Iris get their "happily ever after", presumably going on to have babies together, ultimately resulting in the birth of Eobard Thawne. Oops... PARADOX!!!

We know that the writers are/were capable of considering the effect of changed timelines, as a result of people going back in time and changing events. They did it earlier in the season, with Cisco's death at the hands of the Reverse Flash being undone after Barry/Flash travelled backwards in time. Why they completely failed to consider the implications in the season finale is entirely beyond me...

If they had thought things through, then we should have seen the STAR Labs particle accelerator wink out of existence at the same time as Eobard Thawne. We should have seen the main cast disappear too, albeit reappearing in different locations - wherever they may have been at that point in time, in the alternate timeline where Eobard never existed. For example, we probably would have seen Barry Allen at home, in domestic bliss with his parents (now both alive and out of prison); we would have seen Iris & Detective Thawne at home, once again enjoying domestic bliss. As for Cisco & Caitlyn - your guess is as good as mine. At best, they could/should have had these strange memories/visions from the timeline where Eobard existed, as Cisco did earlier in the season.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these problems will be addressed early in season 2, because right now it's one unholy pig's breakfast. It's a damn shame though, because I really enjoyed the preceding 22 episodes.

 

[GROTTO]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these problems will be addressed early in season 2, because right now it's one unholy pig's breakfast. It's a damn shame though, because I really enjoyed the preceding 22 episodes.

Gosh you are going to be so disappointed the more you watch.

Unfortunately as I mentioned before, if they made this series into 10 episode seasons, you would have genuinely have got a quality product.

However, when you pad out seasons with too many convoluted storylines and senseless filler episodes it ruined the final product. A shame really.

 

[vast]

I started watching this show recently, from the beginning of season 1. Yes, I know I'm 5 years behind the rest of the world...

I got to the season 1 finale, and came to BF to read what others thought of it. I can't help but think that I watched a completely different episode to everyone else. Everyone on BF was praising it, as a great episode, and a great season finale - I thought it was a poorly thought out piece of garbage, which almost ruined what had been (to that point) an excellent first series.

It opened with 20 minutes of tedious melodrama while Barry umms & aahs over whether or not he should go back in time to save his mother, knowing that doing so would destroy all of the relationships which made his present life worth living. Seriously, I could have just fast forwarded through the first half of the episode and not missed a damn thing. What a waste of 20 minutes... Having said that, I do like the solution the writers came up with - going back in time, and saying farewell to his mother, while still allowing her to die and thus not destroying the timeline.

What really annoyed me though was how poorly thought out the ending was. Detective Thawne kills himself, thus preventing Eobard Thawne (Reverse Flash) from ever having existed. Eobard disappears, as his timeline ceases to exist. So far, so good... and yet our heroes are left standing inside the particle accelerator which Eobard built. Oops... WTF?

The writers clearly failed to think through the implications of Eobard never having existed. In one huge Deus Ex Machina, the world should have reset to a completely different timeline, where none of our heroes (other than Joe, Iris & Detective Thawne) ever met each other, and there was no Flash. Worse, the writers have inadvertently created a paradox...

Let's consider the implications of Eobard never having existed... The Reverse Flash doesn't travel back in time, and doesn't kill Barry's mother. This means that Barry never meets Joe, who is tasked with investigating her death. Barry is never adopted by Joe, and never meets (let alone falls in love with) Iris. STAR Labs is never created, so Caitlin & Ronnie Raymond never meet either. With no STAR Labs, there's no particle accelerator explosion, and no meta-humans - including The Flash. With Barry's mother never having died, Barry doesn't become a CSI, and probably ends up delivering newspapers for a living (or something equally mundane). No particle accelerator also means no black hole, which is where the finale ended...

With Barry & Iris never having met, there's no bizarre love triangle between Detective Thawne, Iris & Barry. With no Eobard, no Reverse Flash, there's no crisis, and no reason for Detective Thawne to kill himself. In short, Detective Thawne & Iris get their "happily ever after", presumably going on to have babies together, ultimately resulting in the birth of Eobard Thawne. Oops... PARADOX!!!

We know that the writers are/were capable of considering the effect of changed timelines, as a result of people going back in time and changing events. They did it earlier in the season, with Cisco's death at the hands of the Reverse Flash being undone after Barry/Flash travelled backwards in time. Why they completely failed to consider the implications in the season finale is entirely beyond me...

If they had thought things through, then we should have seen the STAR Labs particle accelerator wink out of existence at the same time as Eobard Thawne. We should have seen the main cast disappear too, albeit reappearing in different locations - wherever they may have been at that point in time, in the alternate timeline where Eobard never existed. For example, we probably would have seen Barry Allen at home, in domestic bliss with his parents (now both alive and out of prison); we would have seen Iris & Detective Thawne at home, once again enjoying domestic bliss. As for Cisco & Caitlyn - your guess is as good as mine. At best, they could/should have had these strange memories/visions from the timeline where Eobard existed, as Cisco did earlier in the season.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these problems will be addressed early in season 2, because right now it's one unholy pig's breakfast. It's a damn shame though, because I really enjoyed the preceding 22 episodes.

Well if you didnt like the season 1 finale. You should absolutely not continue watching the show. And if you thought that was full of plot holes what happens after is much worse. Even though Im personally not that bothered by it.

 

[Vader]

Gosh you are going to be so disappointed the more you watch.

Unfortunately as I mentioned before, if they made this series into 10 episode seasons, you would have genuinely have got a quality product.

However, when you pad out seasons with too many convoluted storylines and senseless filler episodes it ruined the final product. A shame really.

Damn... I really liked the first 22 episodes. I could have put up with the 20 minutes of melodrama at the start of the episode, if they hadn't failed so spectacularly in landing the ending.

 

[Vader]

Well if you didnt like the season 1 finale. You should absolutely not continue watching the show. And if you thought that was full of plot holes what happens after is much worse. Even though Im personally not that bothered by it.

I'm quite conflicted at the moment. I really did like the first 22 episodes.

 

[GROTTO]

I'm quite conflicted at the moment. I really did like the first 22 episodes.

So did I. I enjoyed it. In fact I watched and enjoyed the first 4-5 seasons comfortably and liked the ride, all though it got very messy.

I only stopped watching the show last year.

I might watch it as "background noise" in the future.

 

[GROTTO]

I'm quite conflicted at the moment. I really did like the first 22 episodes.

I would say watch it. You will know when you feel like giving up.

 

[vast]

I'm quite conflicted at the moment. I really did like the first 22 episodes.

I love season 1 especially the finale. I still watch the show but its all down hill from there. Even though season 2 was good going by your take on the finale you will hate it.

Part of the reason I have continued watching this show as stupid as it sounds is I have been watiing for a pay off to that finale moment when Barry stops Barry from saving his mother. In my mind we would get to a point in the show where that would come full circle but the show has gone so far off that course now it finally sunk in last night that will never happen. The return of the show was just terrible save for the last 5 mins where something huge happens but I didnt really care.

 

[vast]

I cant express how little I care about Allegra and Chester. Not even Curtis was that bad. At least when Arrow bought in new team members they werent this lame and by the end Rene and Dinah felt like they had always been there.

At least we are getting Cisco and Caitlin back next week.

 

[gaskin]

I'm quite conflicted at the moment. I really did like the first 22 episodes.

The first couple of seasons were pretty good and then it started to go downhill. If you are familiar with CW shows, I like to refer to it as getting CW'd. Now it is an almost unwatchable piece of crap.

 

[eth-dog]

Have heard the first episode was a steaming pile of s**t

 

[Punchy Bassett]

Anyone still bothering? I gave up didn't finish last season

 

[gaskin]

Nope. I gave up at the end of last season.

 

[gaskin]

So, someone has dug up some old offensive tweets Candice made years ago. I wonder if she will get fired like Hartley or whether The CW will show a clear double standard with her being a female person of colour. From what I can gather on the Flash subreddit, it is looking like the later.

 

[RobbieGray17]

Anyone still bothering? I gave up didn't finish last season

I get the inconsistencies with the show, but I see it for what it is. It's not a super high budgeted series so I'll take the good with the bad. Buuuuuuuuuut, there is a serious decline in the content by season.

Season 1 9/10
Season 2 9/10
Season 3 7/10
Season 4 6/10
Season 5 4/10
Season 6 7/10 (only due to Crisis) without I'd give 2/10
Season 7 6/10 Barely

The biggest gripe for mine is the lazy writing. It's terrible

Spoiler

Barry is constantly stupid, he falls over and just sits there. Surely the writers could do better than that. The general plot of every single episode goes like this: Team Flash discover villain, identify a weakness, or build a device. Barry shows his hubris and goes into the battle with arrogance, and gets owned, and then have to go back to the drawing board and find a clever way of taking down the villain. This started in Season 1 when Barry learned to use the lightning bolt.

In the most recent episode, Barry was to go back into the past yet again, and of course the meta commentary ensued, but the writers developed this clever little idea of creating a time bubble to avoid changing the past which made zero sense.

They're constantly bringing in s**t actors/actresses, and then they kill of one of the best ones in Abracadabra.
Brandon McKnight is about the only decent actor they've brought in.

 

[TRP1996]

The Trial of Killer Frost was just absolute ludicrous cringe. We get a judge showing blatant favouritism, a lawyer examining their own husband, dramatic conversations where Danielle Panabaker is attempting to act against itself, apparently there's no right of appeal from what is at most a district court, Killer Frost apparently being some kind of martyr for metahumans, someone who is not a prosecutor standing up and yelling things in what is surely contempt of court or something?

Spoiler

Then, in the other plot line, we get the incredibly obvious reveal that Speed Force Mommy is evil. Complete with the utter cringe ''You may be his lightning rod, but I'm his lightning.'' A line my brother had predicted in advance as something too stupid for them to actually say.

In general, the profusion of secondary characters who just... hang around really drags the show down. Allegra. Cecile. Does Kamilla still exist? Chester hasn't quite been around long enough to be tiresome yet, but I'm sure we'll get there. Why can't they go to live in Offscreen Land with Malfoy and (I guess?) Ralph?

This combined with Barry's constant stupidity, tendency to forget about powers that would seemingly be very useful, and ability to lose fights that he logically should be able to win in half a second.

Have great fun shouting at the TV about the show's deficiencies, though.

 

[eth-dog]

Rewatching this. S1-3 are great.

 

[GROTTO]

Rewatching this. S1-3 are great.

Those first few seasons of the flash were enjoyable, enjoyed especially in season 1 each episode would end with a intriguing spoiler for the future.

 

[gaskin]

If only they could have kept that quality. Or ended after season 5.

 

[eth-dog]

Those first few seasons of the flash were enjoyable, enjoyed especially in season 1 each episode would end with a intriguing spoiler for the future.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. And before they decided not to kill Iris.

If only they could have kept that quality. Or ended after season 3

FTFY

 

[gaskin]

IIRC season 4 and 5 were okay.

 

[eth-dog]

IIRC season 4 and 5 were okay.

"we are the flash" was S4. It really wasn't

 

[GROTTO]

"we are the flash" was S4. It really wasn't

They could have made a superb 3 season series with about 12-14 episodes each season.

The problem was they just pad filled seasons out and added too many filler episodes, not to mention idiotic story lines.