What Do I Know?

I’m caught up on everything I’m watching in my geeky spheres, except for Arrow, because I missed a bunch of last season and I’m waiting to catch up on Netflix.  I have to say, I’m kind of suffering from an embarrassment of riches right now.

Star Wars Rebels

I love this show.  It’s like watching someone playing a good Star Wars RPG campaign put to animation, and it feels like classic Star Wars.  Out of the four episodes I’ve seen, two were great, one was good, and one was okay, but was understandably whimsical.  So long as we maintain that ratio, I’m going to be happy.

Flash

Flash loves being a superhero.  Barry is an endearing nerd, instead of being a clone of Wally.  We have a “voice” in show making sure we know what the supervillains should be called, they even managed to (directly) address the problems that other TV superheroes  (and some movie ones at that) have in killing off their villains.  Really pleased with this one so far.

Flash is the kind of show that isn’t afraid to actually be about a superhero, which seems to be the biggest hurdle DC has when making movies based on their own properties.  Now I’m just hoping that reference to Grodd wasn’t a Easter egg they never intend to follow up on.

Gotham

I’m pleasantly surprised with this one.  Yeah, its a name dropping police procedural with a side order of long term conspiracy theory looking to be solved.  It’s not ground breaking, but its kind of comfortable.  Batman used to be one of my favorite characters, until overexposure and reliance upon the cash cow made me groan at the mention of him, but somehow I’m enjoying this.

That said, this one has the potential to really swing wide to the other side.  I’m not sure how much they can do with this series before they have to either keep treading the same paths or wildly diverging from the Batman mythos.  The early introduction of the precursor to the Venom drug has me a little worried, and I’d complain about the age disparity between Riddler and Batman if I didn’t really like the idea of Edward Nygma as a CSI.

Agents of SHIELD

Wow is my opinion of this show different than it was when it first started.  It’s almost like the series started a few months too early and had to tread water until they could really pull out all of the stops.  All of my complaints about the least interesting characters on the show have pretty much been resolved.  I even kind of like Skye now, which is like saying “I warmed up to Jar Jar.”

Characters that were bland have a lot more depth, the show has a much more focused direction than it did at first, and new, interesting characters have been added, and all of it is managing to introduce Marvel characters that haven’t shown up in the movies yet and plot lines that tie into what is going on in the cinematic universe.  I really hope they keep this up.

Constantine

I’m kind of hoping that next year I feel the same way about Constantine that I do about Agents of SHIELD now.  I didn’t hate Agents of SHIELD when it came out, but it felt bland, like it needed a little something else to really get my interest up.  Constantine feels the same way to me.  I like the way Constantine is being portrayed, but there is something missing.  Of the two episodes I’ve watched, neither one felt particularly compelling, like Constantine needs something to do while the showrunners build up the Coming Darkness later in the season.

I don’t dislike it, I just wish I liked it more.  I wish I could put my finger on what’s not working for me.