DC triumphs on the small screen.

Believe it or not, I used to hate superheroes. My dad has been a big superhero fan for ages, but whenever he would talk about the latest Captain America movie or Spiderman film, I would always roll my eyes. Finally, however, he managed to get me into Marvel with the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes animated TV show, and from there I went on to watch the films and become the massive Marvel geek you know today.

I never thought I’d get into DC. Marvel heroes were at least slightly believable, and had developed personalities and quirks and flaws that I found extremely interesting. The DC heroes, on the other hand, looked like mere cardboard cutouts, without any personality at all.

I did watch Batman Begins (and enjoyed it thoroughly), but I thought at the time that that would be the end of my interest in DC. But then, I discovered The Flash. Or, well, my dad discovered it, and watched it, and liked it, and said I should watch it too, so I did…

First things first: his show is a geek’s dream come true! There are tons of nerdy references, a delectable ammount of science (fiction) and Cisco Ramone, who will probably forever be my geek hero.

For the sake of clarity, I will do the rest of the review season by season, so that I can say what I liked about each season, and what I didn’t enjoy so much…

Season 1: Great plot, poor acting

The plot of Season 1 is masterfully written, complete with nods to the original comics, an overarching storyline that keeps you watching, and lots of twists and turns and surprises along the way. The acting, however, was not so top notch. Except for the brilliantly acted Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh), who really held the show together, the acting in the first few episodes was fairly cringe-worthy at times, and a bit stiff at others. Even the show’s star, Grant Gustin, didn’t quite seem to be in his element. The acting improved drastically as the season went on, however, and this season is definitely worth watching, if only for the amazing and exciting plot.

Season 2: Great acting, iffy plot

Season 2 seemed to have the opposite problem: The acting was very good, and I felt like all the actors had begun to really know and understand and play off each other very well, but the plot was significantly weaker, nowhere near as compelling as the first season. The introduction of more time travel and parallel universes was very interesting, but the use of another speedster as the main villain felt a bit like recycling the original plot. That said, this season was still really enjoyable (i.e. don’t skip it!) and I really liked all the stuff with parallel universes.

Season 3: Great acting, great plot, great show!

In Season 3, it really felt as if The Flash has finally found it’s feet: a tense, compelling plot, great acting and character development, the introduction of some awesome new characters… it was amazing! Even though the main villain was, once again, a speedster, I felt like the way he was portrayed was fresh and different enough for the Season to hold its own. However, I’m really hoping that they find a completely different type of villain for Season 4. The cliffhanger at the end of this season is also extremely unfair and I was almost crying; that’s how good it is!

Final rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Took them a while to really find their feet, but, then again, it’s not a BBC show, so we’ll cut them some slack.”

Content note: The show is rated as TV-PG, and it was fairly clean (not a lot of swearing or immoral references), but I would still advise some caution. At one point, a character does get very drunk, and there are also characters who are dating that living together throughout the story. It really annoys me when it is assumed that as soon as people start dating they are supposed to move in together. However, there was very little else of concern. I would say probably ages 14 and up.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed my review. Have you seen The Flash? Whose your favorite character? (Mine are Cisco and Harrison Wells). Do you like DC or Marvel, or both??? Let me know in the comments!

🙂