Yesterday, as I mentioned in my review of Aquaman, I had the some of the grandsons over.\u00a0 After we got home from the movies we played some games and had dinner but later on they got bored and not having much in the way of TV that they were interested in we let them use their parents\u2019 Netflix account to stream a show they liked, \u201cThe Flash.\u201d\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 Now, I know that the WB is one of the worst networks for quality and the low budgets they work with mean that things like special effects and scripts and acting skill are brought down to a sad minimum, but I wasn\u2019t prepared for just how bad it would be.\u00a0 In retrospect I\u2019m a little ashamed at how much ranting I did while they were watching the show.\u00a0 As much as they share my love of mockery, I\u2019m sure I must have been annoying to them.\u00a0 But to some extent it was justified.<\/p>\n
The plot, such as it was, revolved around the Flash character and his friends and relatives protecting the inhabitants of Central City from the depredations of various random metahumans of which the Flash is one.\u00a0 Apparently, they were formed by some kind of nuclear incident involving a particle accelerator mishap.\u00a0 The particular episode involved an unfortunate individual called King Shark.\u00a0 He has a shark\u2019s head but wears pants.\u00a0 He\u2019s also about twenty feet tall so it\u2019s not apparent where he shops for pants.\u00a0 He\u2019s a really bad guy and sometimes eats people he doesn\u2019t like but does it in such a slow fashion it\u2019s not clear why they can\u2019t just walk away from him.\u00a0 And despite his obvious evil nature, by the end of the show he is captured alive and once again incarcerated in an Olympic sized containment pool apparently being fed chum and awaiting medical treatment to turn his head human again.\u00a0 Most of the interaction with King Shark is the Flash running around him in circles while the shark head heaps verbal abuse on him.<\/p>\n
By the above description you have probably identified the limited dramatic value of the action adventure available in the Flash series.\u00a0 However, these limitations pale in comparison to the real problem with the series, namely, the personal problems of the characters.\u00a0 Probably eighty percent of the air time consists of the various actors whining about their emotional problems.\u00a0 One character is sad about some dead spouse, another about the alienation of not being able to reveal his secret identity, another has feelings of inferiority because he has no super powers, another is worried that a character that doesn\u2019t have super powers might develop them and become evil.\u00a0 The cast behaves like a whole high school full of neurotic teenagers which I assume is their target audience.\u00a0 If I\u2019m being objective, the plots are no worse than what passed for story lines in the old Superman tv show from the 1950s that I watched as a kid.\u00a0 But the emotional immaturity and obnoxious insecurity of all the \u201cgood guys\u201d in the stories is appalling.\u00a0 It may be a generational problem but to me this isn\u2019t science fiction it\u2019s a soap opera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday, as I mentioned in my review of Aquaman, I had the some of the grandsons over.\u00a0 After we got home from the movies we<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,244,240],"tags":[45,38,309,1632,154],"class_list":["post-5689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","tag-comic-book","tag-review","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-the-flash","tag-tv-review"],"yoast_head":"\n