What Makes Barry Run?

I just finished Season Three of The Flash last night and I'm more than half-way through Season Three of Roswell: New Mexico, from which the astute reader will conclude I'm taking the reckless step of watching two CW series at the same time. And without a net, too.

I can't speak to the whole of the CW's output because mostly I've just watched the DC superhero shows and not all of those yet, either. Also a few of the Sci-Fi/Supernatural ones, I think. Based on the shows I have seen, there are more than a few tropes that are just hard to miss.

The Plots Make NO SENSE! - Seriously, do they even run these things past a grown-up before they put them into production? It's like a seven-year old telling you the plot of a movie he just watched. There's a lot of hand-waving and nothing connects with anything else. I pity the person who has to write the summaries for the TV Guide, assuming such a job still exists. Never mind about the plot, though, because...

The "Science" Makes Even LESS SENSE! - Okay, I get it. This is comic-book science we're talking about. No-one expects it to make sense. But this is another level of gibberish entirely. I'd say it might as well be magic (A character in The Flash actually pulled out the old plum about "Any advanced science..." in an episode I watched last week.) but weirdly magic, when they feature it, seems to be more grounded and cosnsistent. I gave up even trying to figure out what they were on about in both series weeks ago, which is a pity because every damn episode of each of them features at least ten minutes of pseudo-scientific gobbledegook. And that's mostly because...

Everyone's A Genius. - I mean, it's just as well, because they'd need to be to keep up with anything anyone else is saying. The ratio of pseudo-scientific jargon to regular conversation is off the scale half the time. I pity poor Max Evans, one of the Roswell:NM leads, who's playing a small-town cop (Who also happens to be the alien clone of an interplanetary Tyrant King but let's not go there right now.) surrounded by savants, scientists and seers. Half the time he's the action hero and the rest he stands there looking confused, as well he might. The viewers certainly have to be. Detective Joe West performs much the same roll in The Flash so I guess every CW show needs at least one player who can hold up his hands and say "What, now?!" on behalf of the audience. But no-one cares about the science because...

It's A Soap Opera - Okay, soap opera first, superhero/SciFi/supernatural drama second, like Third Rock From The Sun is sitcom first, SciFi second. It's why they work so much better as comic book shows than almost anything else I've watched in half a century. I've been telling people all my life that superhero comic books are first and foremost soap operas but no-one ever believes me. Finally, someone gets it. Of course, if I'd grown up elsewehere, I might have said...

It's A Telenovela! - Liz even makes a sly, metafictional reference to it in one episode. Admittedly, I'm on shaky ground here because I've barely ever seen a telenovela but I feel I have a basic understanding of the form and cross-checking against the Wikipedia definition confirms my thesis: "...telenovelas tell one self-contained story, typically within the span of a year or less whereas soap operas tend to have intertwined storylines told during indefinite, continuing runs...This planned run results in a faster-paced, more concise style of melodrama compared to a typical soap opera." They left out the part about them being bat-shit crazy but otherwise that pretty much sums it up. Or it would, except  for the very un-soap-operatic, telenovelistic fact that...

Everyone Is So Damn NICE! - It's like someone watched Friends and thought, y'know what, that'd be quite a good show if it had people in it you didn't want to slap. There's a relentless, almost demented positivity about the whole thing. Everyone is someone's best friend or soulmate or perfect parent, even when they're acting like the exact fucking opposite, which is about every other episode on a conservative estimate. After a while you feel like they're your best pals, too. I know all TV does this but it's another level of emotional appropriation when...

Even The Villains Are Friendly - Well, some of them. It feels bad when they get caught. I don't know what Peekaboo did to deserve the treatment they give her for a start. She's just trying to make a living. Half of the bad guys seem like they'd be good company on a long road trip and the rest look like they'd be cool as hell to hang out with, even if they would get you into trouble then bail. Of course, there are the total psychopaths, the ones who just want to set the world on fire to watch it burn, but even they have their moments. And it's hard to hold anything they do against them because...

Absolutely No-one Has Any Kind Of Moral Compass. The heroes? Ha! The police? Are you kidding me? The authorities? Are there even any? Everyone does whatever they think they "have" to do or "need" to do at all times because the end always justifies the means. Screw due process! Screw human rights! Lock people up without trial in cells the size of postage stamps with no facilities of any kind and keep them there in solitary confinement, for life, the justification being that they're bad guys and... no, that's it. And they're the lucky ones! Some just get killed. Some get sent to other dimensions like convicts on the ships to Australia. And it's all because...

Everyone Has A God Complex - It's like fascism and altruism had a baby and that baby grew up to believe it was God. Some of the people they lock up or execute haven't even killed anyone, just committed a few robberies. So what? Bang 'em up for life! And the goodies don't even lock up all the baddies. They pick and choose who they imprison based on... I don't know... how nice they think they could be if someone was only nice to them? If they had similar childhoods? Whether they're physically attracted to them? If they have a "connection"? Maybe it's what color costume they're wearing and whether it clashes or co-ordinates. Might as well be. Still, you can't tell these people anything because...

They're The Best At What They Do... NOT! - This applies to many CW/DC heroes but The Flash is the king of incompetence. Does he ever win a fight? Not on his own, that's for sure, and not with anyone that matters, either. No wonder he needs about twenty people to help him. No wonder they call themselves "Team Flash". They're doing all the work! About the only thing The Flash is consistently good at is rescuing people from burning buildings. He can put out out fires, too, mostly by running in circles, which is what he does best. He should leave his day job with the Central City Police Department and join the Central City Fire Department instead. Added to that, his tagline is "The Fastest Man Alive" but it seems as though every other episode someone gets to say "I think they may be even faster than Barry". The whole conceit is a lie, which is only fair since... 

Everyone Lies To Everyone Else ALL THE TIME! - Here's a good drinking game. Take a shot every time any character lies to a friend, lover, relative or colleague about something it is absolutely obvious they should not be hiding from them. And two shots every time anyone comes out with some variant of "From now on, no more lies." when the lie is inevitably revealed. You'll never see the ending of any episode because you'll be totally shitfaced. Still, I guess it doesn't much matter whether you tell the truth when...

There Are No Consequences - Lies are always forgiven just like life-threatening injuries always turn out to be no more than a flesh wound. Almost every episode of The Flash has someone, usually The Flash, since he is the world's least-skilled, least self-aware, most overconfident superhero, being stabbed, blown up, set on fire or beaten to within an inch of their lives. It happens less frequently in Roswell:NM but it still happens several times every season. Sometimes, when it happens, people just get up and carry on as if they'd tripped on a kerb. Other times, they need life-saving surgery. Either way, on average it seems to take the unpowered civilians at most a couple of days to recover while all speedsters are fully fit in minutes thanks to the mysterious and previously undocumented healing powers of the Speed Force (Really, do not get me started on the Speed Force...). If it ever does turn out to have been something fatal, no problem! Just go back in time for a do-over or pop across to another Earth and grab a doppleganger to replace whoever just died. Swapping deaders out for alts always seems to work. Going backwards or forwards in time to fix your mistakes? Not so much because...

The Multiverse Is Fine But Time Travel's A Bitch - This mostly applies to The Flash which, although I did not realise this until I watched it, is a show about time travel. I knew Legends was, because the guy who put that team together is called Rip Hunter, Time Master but I haven't watched that one yet so I'll save any comments about it for the future, which seems appropriate. I do remember The Flash time-travelling in the comics. He did it sometimes because it's well-established in DC continuity that anyone who can run (Or fly.) fast enough can break the time barrier but I don't remember it being the main subject of every storyline, which it certainly has been in the three seasons of The Flash I've watched so far. Unfortunately for the writers - and the audience - as everyone certainly ought to know by now, it is quite literally beyond the ability of the human mind to conceptualize time travel so naturally not one of the storylines make any sense. The concept of the multiverse, on the other hand, is surprisingly easy to get your head around. Just give all the Earths a number and we're fine with it, especially if you throw in a monorail or two for visual reference so we  always know where we are. Wait, what do you mean, that's outside the...

Special Effects Budget? What Special Effects Budget? - Super-speed is very hard to illustrate with a static 2D image, which is why all you get in comics is motion lines and freeze-frames. As anyone who's seen the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie knows, it used to be even harder to portray someone running superhumanly fast convincingly on film but that was several special effects eras ago and now super-speed looks pretty good even in a cheap TV show. Of course, motion lines and freeze-frames are still pretty much all you see but they look really pretty and very dramatic. Meanwhile in Roswell: New Mexico the budget stretches to some 1970s disco lighting and people holding their arms out and pointing but it doesn't matter because...

Acting > CGI - The visual effects may be, shall we say, variable but the acting in all the CW shows I've seen is way, way better than it ought to be. Okay, Max is a plank but the same actor plays Max's clone, Jones and Jones is creepy as hell, so clearly Max is a plank on purpose. This becomes especially apparent in The Flash where, thanks to the aforementioned multiple Earth situation, half the cast end up playing various versions of the same character, which gives the actors a fantastic opportunity to show off their versatility. Every time it happens, the new variant character is significantly and convincingly different from all the others. It's impressive and also highly entertaining...

And I could go on. Believe me. But I'll leave it there for now. I can't imagine anyone wants to hear much more of my sarcastic, back-handed praise for some old TV shows no-one watches any more. 

Maybe I'll come back for another round when I've finished the two series, which at the rate I'm going is likely to be sometime next Christmas. I'm pretty sure I'll have a lot more to say by then. 

Or maybe I ought to wait until I've watched Legends too. And I know if I'm doing this at all I ought to watch bloody Arrow, even though I really don't want to...