Riverdale season 2: A Showcase of Dreadful TV Writing

Last year, I watched a thirteen episode series that caught me off guard with how good it was and made me excited for more.

When the second season was announced, that excitement only grew, but it did take a little hit when it was announced that the second season was going to be twenty-two episodes. My concern that most of the season would be obsolete and forgettable soon accompanied my excitement. Then the second season of Riverdale arrived.

I couldn’t have been more right.

It’s not just that most of the second season of the show is pointless, it’s also that a lot of it is just bad. This season seemed like it was going out of its way to be a showcase of poor television writing, and if it really was, it succeeded.

I don’t even know where to begin here, but I’ll logically start with the plot point that I think was supposed to be at the forefront. There is a serial killer on the loose and nobody knows who it is. That’s pretty much it.  It is one of the two plots that actually work. The Black Hood story is not perfect – far from it – but at least it is a story that makes sense.

The rest of the season, however, falls flat, especially when it comes to how awfully written Veronica and Archie are. Without meaning to spoil anything, there are points in this season when both characters are written as definitive villains. There isn’t even an attempt to justify their actions, and at this point anyone watching should be questioning why they should care for two main characters who are just bad people.

But while Archie and Veronica are consistently written poorly, it’s Betty that suffers the lowest points on the show. Betty’s actual arc in the whole season is good, but there are moments – which I will not reveal – which are so bad for her character, you wonder how anyone on the writers’ team could have sold that to the show-runners.

The real star of this season is Cole Sprouse’s Jughead, who not only receives the strongest story and writing, but also the best performance. Jughead in this season is more rounded than anyone else, and everything he does feels right for the story. He is written the truest to his character and his entire arc is immensely satisfying.

Apart from the core four of Riverdale, there are clear hits and misses. Josie and Kevin are basically non-existent, Reggie is… There… And Cheryl has high points but suffers from severe inconsistency throughout the season. The parents of Riverdale have certainly stepped up this season, however, with Alice Cooper, Hiram Lodge and FP Jones being the most compelling.

This season also does a great job of humanising the South Side Serpents, which is really why everything with Jughead works. There is a major plot from start to finish surrounding the tension between the North and South sides of Riverdale, and while it has its questionable moments, it is a good plot. The Serpents also bring with them new characters that are welcome additions to the show, particularly Toni Topaz.

While I appear to have listed strong plot elements in the season, I need to make sure I’m not being misinterpreted. This is not a good season. There are twenty-two episodes, and I actually liked about nine of them. I loved three, and one of them is a musical and another is told in a very unique way, at least for Riverdale. That’s only because I have a soft spot for TV episodes that are stylistically distinct from most other episodes.

The biggest problem casting a shadow over this season is the fact that the show never really seems to know what it’s doing. Things happen and then other things happen after that, and you’re not really sure why you should care. The first season of the show, being only thirteen episodes, was crisp, focused and effective. While it is never easy to be gripping for twenty-two episodes, it could have definitely been done better. There’s no way around that.

The fact is that when I look back at this season of the show, despite it having a wonderful Jughead story among other good elements, I will always think about how much I disliked Veronica and Archie and how poorly almost everything was executed. That does make me upset, but I am not going to turn my back on the show because when Riverdale is good, it’s great.

I just hope it manages to be good again in the next season.

On a scale where M is the lowest and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:

Riverdale (season 2): MIHIR

Riverdale: The Much Better Version of 13 Reasons Why

I will not apologise for the title because it is nothing but the truth.

Riverdale is a CW television series which uses the characters from the famous Archie Comics to tell the story of a mysterious death in a small town, which is a statement I never thought I’d find myself writing.

Riverdale is fantastic. Not perfect. But fantastic. The only negatives are some of the acting, which does get better as the season progresses, and a couple of story elements that remain unanswered or just fade into obscurity as time passes.

Other than that, this is an excellently written, gripping story with characters that complement it. The key word is characters, because there are so many that it baffles me how the show managed to balance them all and make them compelling. This is the biggest praise I have for this show, because it’s like an overflowing beaker of an alkali metal and water that is somehow not chaotic but… Cohesive. There is so much going on with so many people and somehow everything seems necessary.

The takes on these characters really surprised me, because while they all have their core characteristics from their comic versions, they are all far more interesting and more human. While Lili Reinhart’s Betty Cooper, KJ Apa’s Archie Andrews and Camila Mendes’ Veronica Lodge are great in their own ways, with performances to match, Cole Sprouse’s Jughead Jones is the best acted and best written character on the show. Not only is he the one narrating the events of the series, his character has the most stakes and motivations, and is the most versatile of all.

Beyond this, the story of Riverdale stems across the whole town, and everyone is involved, from the main characters’ parents to the local gangs, and the mystery that is unfolding becomes one that is brilliantly told, thanks to the writing and the show’s understanding of its characters.

The season finale was a little strange because it had a lot of miscellaneous things going on, but I liked it, and I’m excited for more to come. When a show definitely doesn’t deserve another season, I know it. But when it does deserve one, it would be an insult to not deliver. Season 2 can’t come fast enough.

On a scale where M is the lowest, and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:

Riverdale season 1: MIHIR

Arrow Season 5 Hits the Mark and Brings the Show Back to its Very Best

There comes a point in the life of a television show when things get so hopelessly bad that you consider not even watching the next season.

In the case of Arrow, however, I couldn’t have been more proud of myself to choose to watch its fifth season instead.

After seasons three and four were questionable at best (that is being nice), Arrow’s fifth – and arguably most important season – makes one wonder how it was even possible that the same show could be as bad as it was.

Arrow is the first DC CW Network show, the one that kicked off the entire Arrowverse, and follows Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen and his crusade in Star City.

As was the case for my review of The Flash season 3 yesterday, there is a strong spoiler warning attached to this one.

One of the biggest reasons I didn’t like the previous two seasons of Arrow is because of ‘Team Arrow’, who didn’t blend together as well as they should have, making the show seem crowded. In seasons one and two, there were only two or three people on Team Arrow at once, and that worked brilliantly. Three and four took it a bit too far.

Then the promo for the fifth season arrived at San Diego Comic Con, and it promised a new Team Arrow… One that was bigger than ever before. I thought the writers had gone insane. My already low excitement for the season dropped even more.

However, I would be proven wrong in my doubtfulness. This Team Arrow actually had real chemistry, and all of them were great together on screen. It was refreshing for a show that was so bogged down by its main cast in earlier seasons.

Of course, having a new team was also intended for story purpose, as this season was quite possibly the most personal one for Oliver, which is really saying something.

As the season goes by, two of the Team Arrow members pictured above, both to the far right, are no longer on the team. Evelyn Sharp, or Artemis, betrays the team, and Ragman leaves for personal reasons. Another member is later added, that being Dinah Drake, the supposed ‘replacement’ for Black Canary.

Having said all that, I need to talk about all these characters. Dinah was a welcome addition to the team, one who didn’t receive the most attention for the season, but shone when she did. Having her connected to the particle accelerator explosion on The Flash all those years ago was a nice touch.

The returning characters this season are all basically core cast members that the show can’t go without. David Ramsey returns again as John Diggle, the greatest character in all of movies and television. That isn’t even an exaggeration. There’s just an air to him every time he’s on screen. His character may have evolved only a little this season, but that’s okay, considering the roller coasters he’s been on the past four years.

Felicity Smoak is back, and is the most mixed character this season. There’s a stretch in the middle of the season during which she works with a hacker group named Helix, that sort of… Dissolves away. Ultimately, Helix didn’t really have anything to do with the overall arc of the season, so the whole thing sort of felt tacked on. Emily Bett Rickards is always great, but Felicity’s character is really up and down this season. Also, Olicity is sort of a thing again, despite it being the single most agonising wound of season four. It was handled alright though.

Echo Kellum’s Curtis Holt was introduced last season, but this time returns as a regular, joining Team Arrow as Mr Terrific. There is nothing negative to say about him. He’s perfect.

Quentin Lance has had basically one role for the entirety of this show, and that is to have the saddest life humanely imaginable. This season gives him more than that, though, and it is actually nice to see him be more than the crying alcoholic.

Now, when it comes to the new cast, there is a bag of hits with a couple of misses, the biggest being Rory Ragan, or Ragman. He is set up for an interesting conflict with Felicity, who had to destroy his hometown and basically kill his family at the end of last season, but that just wraps up and he leaves early in the season, not to be seen again. He’ll probably return next season, but it’s still a little disappointing.

The other letdown was Evelyn Sharp, who betrays the team for the villain (who I will get to) in the middle of the season, and then just goes away until one episode in the middle and towards the end.

However, Wild Dog is great. His character is great, his interactions with the team is great, his backstory is great, his relationship with Lance is great. Everything is great.

I’ve written over eight hundred words and haven’t talked about the villain this season, who was the biggest highlight of the lot.

Prometheus is introduced as just another archer, and I really wasn’t looking forward to that. He felt too much like Malcolm Merlyn. However, as this character would develop, he would become my favourite Arrow villain of all five seasons.

The story this season initially felt like it was desperate for substance when it picked out a random target in Oliver’s initial killing spree from season one, and had the victim’s son be Prometheus, out for revenge. The identity of this masked figure was just some guy who was never seen before… Or was he?

Adrian Chase, pictured above, was the district attorney in Oliver Queen’s Star City administration (Oh yeah, Oliver is the mayor, no big deal), and spent the first half of the season just being a likeable guy who wanted justice for all. He even helped get Diggle out of prison after he turned himself in for killing his own brother last season.

As the Prometheus story developed, however, Oliver discovered that Prometheus was trained by the same person as him… None other than Thalia Al Ghul (This show loves Batman lore). After seeking out Al Ghul (who is another villain this season because she’s bitter that Oliver killed her father), she reveals to him who Prometheus actually is… And he was right under Oliver’s nose the whole time.

It’s at this point that this season truly turns into something special. Adrian Chase isn’t hinged when Oliver discovers who he is, and only uses it to his advantage. For a section this season, both men are bitter enemies but have to work together as colleagues, which was great to see. Prometheus’ plan just goes on and on and Oliver is never able to catch up with him.

With the help of Helix, eventually, Prometheus’ identity is made public, and still, Chase isn’t outsmarted.

There were flashbacks this season, of course. If this felt abrupt and interrupted something more interesting I was saying, that is exactly how I feel about the flashbacks on Arrow, which have been there from season one. The only good flashbacks, in my opinion, come in season two, when they are directly related to the main story.

This season, Oliver is in Russia, and the story is around his inclusion in The Bratva and his vendetta against Konstantin Kovar. When this story is good, it’s great. But there are large chunks of it that are very disposable. However, towards the end, the flashbacks are very compelling.

The flashbacks on Arrow are supposed to tell the story of Oliver’s five years away from Star City, and this being the fifth season, they culminated with the very first scene in season one, in which Oliver comes home. The ending of the flashbacks in the finale features a phone conversation between Oliver and his now-late mother Moira, and it is painful to watch, now that we know where all these lives will go.

Okay, back to the main story. Adrian Chase is out to prove that Oliver Queen kills because he likes it… And he succeeds. In what is possibly the best episode of the season, and maybe the best ever, episode 17, Oliver is captured and tortured by Chase until he finally discovers within himself that he likes to kill people.

This episode showcased two things. First, it displayed Stephen Amell’s ability to act to an insane emotional degree. Second, it really brought the entirety of the show and everything it stands for into question, making Oliver – and the viewers – have to look at himself and question his entire purpose.

This very personal conflict is what makes this season amazing, and enables it to come full circle from the five years Oliver Queen was missing to the five years the show has been running. Gone are the days when Oliver is running around killing rich people and (thankfully) becoming the heir to Ra’s Al Ghul. This is real. This is what this show needed and it is what made this season phenomenal. Oliver had to truly find himself.

Adrian Chase also complicates things with the inclusion of Oliver’s son (the existence of whom is a long story), and uses him as leverage leading into the season finale.

With two episodes left, Prometheus gives himself in after supposedly being ‘beaten’. In the next episode, he captures Team Arrow members one by one, and send them all to Oliver’s island hell, Lian Yu. Chase himself escapes while being transferred to another prison, and sets up the greatest season finale this show has ever seen, and maybe will ever see.

The past four years have seen Star City be in some kind of devastating scenario in the season finale. This year it was very contained and very perfect. This season was all about Oliver on a personal level. Having it culminate on the island that turned him into who he is was a brilliant, brilliant decision, and it helps serve not just as a finale for season five, but for the whole show over five years. Oliver is greatly outnumbered in his mission to rescue his friends, and so he has with him the big bad from season one, Malcolm Merlyn, the big bad from season two, Slade Wilson (Deathstroke) and the daughter of the big bad from season three, Nyssa Al Ghul. Having these three with him, particularly Deathstroke, was awesome. But it wasn’t just for cool fight scenes. Having these three on his team shows how far Oliver has come, being able to forgive the person who killed his father and the person who killed his mother. Seeing Deathstroke again, and seeing how much he’s changed, particularly with his conversations with Oliver, was very fulfilling.

The season finale had a lot riding on it, but in its essence, it was pretty simple. Oliver had to find his team and his son, and stop Chase. Of course, it’s revealed that Chase has placed C4s under basically every square inch of the island, so that’s there.

Chase himself doesn’t appear until the last third of the episode, and while that initially put me off, it made sense. He didn’t need to be around until then. Oliver rescues his team and still has to find his son, and Chase won’t give in. The only way for Oliver to find out is to kill Chase, and Oliver is adamant in his stance that he isn’t a killer anymore. Chase does not die, and instead takes a boat out away from the island.

Oliver gets onto the boat for the very final confrontation, and Chase reveals that Oliver’s son, William, is on the boat. With a gun pointed to William’s head and Oliver pointing an arrow at his, Prometheus offers Oliver a choice. If he doesn’t kill Chase, Chase kills William. If Oliver does kill Chase, then William lives, but the entire island’s explosives go off, and Team Arrow turns to dust.

Oliver shoots Chase’s leg and retrieves William. Everything seemed to be fixed.

Then Chase shoots himself. And the Lian Yu is up in flames.

And that is the cliffhanger to close out the season, because of course it is.

I don’t know what to make of this yet. I’m just going to wait until season six. But this finale was just amazing. Adrian Chase both lost and won. Oliver did not kill him, but apparently, that’s at the price of almost everyone he loves.

Arrow season five is not perfect. Felicity’s arc is questionable and the flashbacks are boring at some instances. But this is also my new best season, even better than the almighty season two. After two years of being the show I hoped would do something good for a change, it became something incredible. Adrian Chase is a motivated, correct villain who drives the plot along magnificently. Oliver Queen’s arc through the season is great to see. The entire show appeared to be coming to a head in the finale. Unlike last year at this time, I find myself so excited for the next season of Arrow that I wish it debuted tomorrow.

Thank you, DC, for reminding all of us why we ever loved this show.

On a scale where M is the lowest, and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:

Arrow season 5: MIHIR

I didn’t mention anything about the weird mega-crossover event with Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl in my reviews of The Flash and Arrow, mostly because I didn’t know how to include them. However, I will say that the Arrow episode of that crossover, which happened to be the 100th episode of the show, was quite simply perfect.

 

Hopefully, Season 3 of The Flash Will Be Remembered As the Worst in the Series

That title shouldn’t mislead you into thinking this season of The Flash was utterly terrible. It was just much worse than the previous two.

Also, what’s conventional for a weekly show is to review every episode as it goes by, but I’m reviewing the season as a whole, so this will be pretty long.

And for the first time ever, I’m writing a review without any care for spoilers, so you’ve been warned.

The Flash is a DC television show that airs on the CW Network, and is a part of the larger ‘Arrowverse’ that dominates the same network. After two great seasons, the finale of season two promised Flashpoint in the third season, so naturally, there was a lot of excitement.

So… Flashpoint. Kind of.

Look, nobody expected a Thomas Wayne Batman or a world war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman, but having Flashpoint basically last one episode was rather disappointing. Sure, the effects of it were felt throughout the season, particularly (and thankfully) bringing Tom Felton’s Julian Albert into existence. Tom Felton was a very welcome addition to Team Flash, and I hope he remains for season four.

When Barry returns to the normal timeline, things look great… And then they don’t.

The false flag for the big bad of this season, Alchemy, was bland but could have been potentially great. After only a few episodes, he is revealed to be Julian (big surprise), and to be a puppet of a bigger threat, Savitar… Another speedster.

After two seasons of having speedster villains, it was absolutely time for a break, and who the actual villain should have been will be discussed in a little bit. I don’t think Savitar was the right villain for this season, because tonally and narratively, he took the season down the wrong path.

The villains of seasons one and two were great. The Reverse Flash being hidden in plain sight for most of season one, and Zoom being there simply to test Barry’s abilities provided for interesting angles for the first two seasons of the show.

Savitar made it very difficult to effectively deliver on a hero-villain juxtaposition, 1: because the speedster-speedster clash has been seen twice before and 2: because Savitar’s own character was so uncertain until the very end of the season.

More on that later.

The real big bad of this season should have been Killer Frost, who was also created as an aftermath of Flashpoint. She does become the secondary villain, but the scenes that she’s in only serve as teasers for what could have been. Kaitlyn Snow, being the goody-two-shoes she was in the first two seasons, becoming a cold (no pun intended) villain provided great personal moments between her and Cisco, and between her and Julian. This is what the third season of this show needed. It needed to flesh out Team Flash and make them all as important as Barry Allen. Sadly, it did not.

Let’s talk about Team Flash for a second. Candice Patton’s Iris West served one purpose this entire season: Being the biggest plot device. The mid-season finale teased that she will die in Savitar’s hands, and immediately, one could see where the season was going. Not only did this make Iris a completely uninteresting character for the whole season, but it made the rest of the season very predictable.

Wally West. What in the world were they thinking with this character? This is his entire season arc.

• Wanting to be a speedster despite everyone not wanting him to be.
• Being gifted powers by Savitar.
• Becoming Kid Flash but wanting to prove himself.
• Finding love and having it taken away from him for nothing.
• Stupidly helping Savitar.
• Being trapped in the Speedforce.
• Escaping the Speedforce, and then being sidelined for the rest of the season.

The biggest reason I’m upset about this is that it appeared as if the writers didn’t even care about him after he got out of the Speedforce. They didn’t care about the effect it had on him, or how he was going to do anything at all to help Iris not die. It looks like he’ll have a bigger role in season four, but in this season, his writing was atrocious.

Cisco is only anything more than the geeky tech guy when he has encounters with Killer Frost. Other than that, he’s just Cisco who mopes around for half the season because Flashpoint killed his brother, and then becomes normal loveable Cisco again. He has a romantic arc this season with Gipsy (a character that I won’t bother explaining), and it’s… Okay, I guess.

Joe West does nothing except worry about his children and have a new relationship with a colleague in the police department. That’s it. However, Jesse L Martin never fails to amaze with his performances.

My favourite character this season has to be the new Harrison Wells (or HR, from Earth 19). Having a new Wells every season is weird, yes, but this particular one was not a science geek. He was more of an artist, coffee lover and team cheerleader, and he was so much fun to have on screen. I’ll explain more about that in a bit. Tom Cavanagh proves his amazing talent once again, this time even directing an episode.

Now let’s get back to the story. Unlike the first two seasons, the third season of The Flash is a drag. Savitar gets supposedly taken care of pretty quick, and later comes back through some magic time blah blah that the writers never truly bother to explain properly, and even then the season doesn’t kick into gear as well as it should.

There is a lot of filler this season, which is really saying something for a show that spent a lot of its first two seasons using one-episode-only disposable villains. Jesse Quick is in this for some time… For some reason. There’s an episode dedicated to Gorilla City and Gorilla Grodd. There’s a musical crossover with Supergirl. The third last episode of the season had Barry Allen lose his memory and spend the whole episode like that.

Savitar’s identity reveal takes a long, long time to arrive. Speculation on the internet led everyone in a few different directions, but when it was actually revealed, it was kind of a letdown because it was so late, and by then everyone had pretty much figured it out. Barry Allen himself (a time remnant from the future; some more magic time blah blah) being revealed as Savitar somewhere around episode sixteen or seventeen would have made for a much more intense, compelling season. But episode twenty? There was no reason for it to be held back that long. And even after this, the writing was horrible. There were virtually no effects of Savitar being Barry to all of Team Flash. They just ran with it. Perhaps this is why the reveal was held back so long, so that they wouldn’t have to use time to have Team Flash cope with this idea.

On that note, however, let’s just talk about the absolutely bizarre last few episodes of the season. These are the things that happen:

• Barry Allen decides to ignore the consequences he has learned of time travel to go to the future, to learn nothing except that a few years after 2017, a scientist develops something to trap Savitar in the Speedforce.
• When he comes back, they find this scientist to get her to develop this device ahead of time.
• Savitar’s identity is revealed.
• Barry loses his memory.
• They need a power source for this ‘Speedforce bazuka’, and so the penultimate episode is about a break in to ARGUS with the help of Captain Cold from the past showing Barry is still an idiot.
• Iris actually dies.
• Wait, she doesn’t. HR was in her place, and his death is quickly forgotten about to stop Savitar.
• Savitar doesn’t kill Iris so technically he shouldn’t exist, but apparently he will be erased from existence in a few hours rather than instantly… For no reason other than magic time blah blah to not have the season finale end abruptly.
• Barry decides to try and help Evil Barry, and actually believes that it’s working.
• Instead, Evil Barry just uses STAR Labs as his starting point to literally becoming immortal by being fragmented across time (it’s at this point that you wonder if the team of writers for this show are on acid when they’re thinking of where the story should go).
• Barry defeats Savitar with the help of Wally and Jay Garrick, who was placed in the Speedforce prison earlier in the series and was just forgotten about.
• Killer Frost isn’t so evil, but doesn’t give up her powers, which is a good thing for the show going forward.
• The Speedforce needs a prisoner now that Jay is out, and Barry voluntarily goes in, ending the season, as usual, on a cliffhanger. Sure, whatever. He’s going to get out in the first or first few episodes of season four, so this was entirely unnecessary, but sure, if it’ll help a few people keep interest.

All of these things just sum up what was wrong with this season. It was all over the place. There was barely any focus for the majority of it, and most of the time I was hoping something of substance would happen. But it just didn’t.

But that’s not it. The biggest reason this season pales in comparison to the first two is its tone.

Arrow is supposed to be mature. It’s supposed to be gritty and dark. When The Flash came around, the best thing about the show was how fun it was. There were dark elements to the show, but at its heart, it was so much fun. This season takes itself way too seriously, and it was a bad decision. It’s so sappy and depressing and tiring.

I mentioned that the episode in Gorilla City, the musical and the amnesia episode were fillers, but the truth is, they were the best episodes of the season, because they were reminders of how awesome this show can actually be. The episode in Gorilla City is so insane, but that’s what this show is about. The musical episode was just magnificent. And despite how late into the season the amnesia episode was, it displayed Barry Allen with such a sweet innocence to him. The purpose of the episode was to contrast how Barry was to how he is, and it’s pretty clear. Barry became so… Sad. In this episode he was so loveable, throwing smiles around everywhere and making everyone around him happier. One of the biggest reasons HR Wells seemed so great is because he was the only member of Team Flash who seemed to have a real spirit to him, and his death was pretty much a perfect character arc, despite the fact that there seemed to be almost no emotional impact to it.

Those were the highest points of the season, when it became more lighthearted. Sure, it should be more mature at this point, but not this much. The last episode of season two was titled ‘The Race of My Life’, and just the title itself is so much fun. That’s supposed to be the point of this show and it’s what made it so popular in the first place.

The biggest plus point about this season, though, is Grant Gustin, who has proven how versatile he can be with one character. In this one season, he had to be Barry Allen, Future Barry Allen, Evil Barry Allen and Memory-less Barry Allen, and he managed to make them all distinct characters. I like Ezra Miller, but I don’t think he’ll be able to top what Gustin has done with this character.

It actually hurts to give this season the rating I am going to give it, but I do it with the hope that the writers will learn from their mistakes and make the series better going forward. I really do love this show, and I want it to be as great as it can be.

The third season of The Flash is by far the worst of the lot. I maintain that season two is the best. This season was an overflowing cauldron of elements that just didn’t mix well to make an effective potion. I commend the writers for being ambitious with this season, but it really did not work. I hope the show become lighter, makes more sense and is a lot more fun going forward. And I hope it learns to handle its characters better. It really needs to.

On a scale where M is the lowest, and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:

The Flash season 3: MIHIR

My review for the fifth season of Arrow will arrive tomorrow, and it will be a lot more positive than this one.