The CW DC "universe" (Smallville, Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning)

[Thalolli]

I'm curious if anybody is watching or at one point has watched any of them?

I have checked out all of them at least once. They are naturally much more hokey than the Netflix show, but I think Smallville deserves quite a lot of credit to bring superhero shows to tv, showing that it can be done.

I think it's kinda interesting what they are doing with their animated short series Vixen and the upcoming The Ray, trying them together with their live action stuff (characters from Vixen will show up on Legends of Tomorrow, The Ray will feature heavily into the crossover this year, which is all about evil nazi counterparts from Earth X).

[Dînadan]

Just personal opinion, but I find the Arrowverse shows far more enjoyable than the Marvel Netflix shows, sort of an inverse of how the DCCU films are compared to the MCU films.

[Darth Wedgius]

I'm curious if anybody is watching or at one point has watched any of them?

I watched about six Supergirl episodes and stopped, and don't plan to continue, but that's because I disliked the political side of it. Someone who leans toward the left in politics or who doesn't care might appreciate it more than I do; I won't be going into more detail on that in these forums. I didn't have a problem with the acting or the plots, but I didn't love it before I stopped watching, either.

I've seen one season of The Flash and I enjoyed most of the episodes, but it didn't really thrill me. I don't know why, though. I don't have anything bad to say about it. The first-season villain was really good, IMHO -- one of the better ones I've seen in TV lately. I'll probably watch season 2, but I'm not in a hurry to do so.

I watched about half a season of Legends of Tomorrow and... I think it's OK. I don't like the acting as much as the other two shows', overall, but nobody's Beltran levels of bad. I'll probably watch more, but I'm not sure.

[Megabob452]

I stopped watching Supergirl around that "Invasion" crossover they did with the other shows. The writing quality definitely dropped after the move to the CW, and it wasn't the best to begin with. I can't remember the name of the episode, but it was the one where Kara got captured by Cadmus that sank my interest in the show. She got hit with the idiot ball hard that time, and not just her either. Yeah sure, the cage may have supposedly been indestructible, but the building wasn't. Just rip it out of the floor and fly out with Mon El in tow, problem solved. Then they "trick" Kara into depowering herself, more idiot ball at work, at which point it seems the villains have basically won. But then they get hit with the idiot ball too and don't just kill Kara there and then, instead putting her back in that cage for no apparant reason other than she's the title character. This is followed by an escape so laughably easy that I was dead certain it was a set-up, but nothing came of it.

At this point I was already skipping through much of each episode, the Alex romance in particular and the awkward "Kara fumbling as a reporter" scenes. When that really bad episode came, I had enough and stopped watching.

[Thalolli]

I watched about half a season of Legends of Tomorrow and... I think it's OK. I don't like the acting as much as the other two shows', overall, but nobody's Beltran levels of bad. I'll probably watch more, but I'm not sure.

Just out of curiosity, did you watch season 1 or 2?

This is followed by an escape so laughably easy that I was dead certain it was a set-up, but nothing came of it.

Every time I watch that episode, that part where Mon-El first gets captured I think ... wait, I thought Mon-El had superspeed too?

I wonder whether they'll ever pick up that thread again about Alex father/Dean Cain. It kinda seemed to just get dropped by the end of season 2, presumably because Dead Cain didn't have time or didn't want to be around Teri Hatcher. But so far nothing I read about season 3 suggests any progress on that front. The mystery around Jeremiah is one of the choppiest things I've ever seen, started with the bit in season 1 where Alex and J'onn suddenly run off on motorcycles to find Jeremiah.

That said, for me the episode I hated the most for stupidity was the one which had the actually great scene where Alex is on the alien space ship and Kara stops it. But I couldn't just get over how stupid that made the plot of the main villain.

Now the original plot about using Supergirl's blood, using it to open to Fortress of Solitude, stealing the virus from the Fortress database (wait, how did they know again that it would be in there?) and using some airborne agent to kill all aliens on earth was some fairly normal villain planning (I hated it less than female green body paint Brainiac in season 1 being used to brainwash all humans until they are saved by hope). But then the backup plan is to manually pick up aliens and shoot them into space? Like how many of them were on that ship, 30, 100? That probably barely were all the ones from National City, let alone from presumably other cities and who is gonna stop more aliens to show up on earth? To me that just sucked out all menace of Cadmus as an opponent.

The whole stupid one episode "forced marriage" plot in turn was so unnecessary and really hurt Teri Hatcher as a villain, who before wasn't exactly good or smart, but still some campy, scenery chewing fun to me.

I still liked some episodes this season, like the alien fight club, the flashbacks to Mars and the Kevin Smith episode where Kara and Mon-El go to the red sun planet (probably because the alien they meet there looked like such a Star Trek/Star Wars alien). Okay, and I did laugh my ass off at the episode where Mon-El works at CatCo (also the villain plot of giving high powered alien weapons to normal criminals to cause a public debate actually struck me as pretty neat).

"Kara fumbling as a reporter" scenes.

I was more generally annoyed that they made her a reporter at all rather than giving her a different career from Superman, but it didn't bother me that she's bad at it. I prefer that to her being good at it from the start. Too bad that their "mentor" character Snapper was played in such a one note mean boss kind of way.

Legends season 2 was my favorite DCCW show that season, it was just fast paced and fun, compared to what everybody else was doing.

Just personal opinion, but I find the Arrowverse shows far more enjoyable than the Marvel Netflix shows, sort of an inverse of how the DCCU films are compared to the MCU films.

I can see the quality of the Netflix shows (Kingpin in season 1 of Dardevil was amazing). But because they are more serious they feel more draining to watch, so when it comes to watching, I enjoy watching the DCCW shows more.

[excalibur]

Wait, isn't technically Smallville and oddly enough, Supergirl aren't in the same universe as the rest?

[Darth Wedgius]

I watched about half a season of Legends of Tomorrow and... I think it's OK. I don't like the acting as much as the other two shows', overall, but nobody's Beltran levels of bad. I'll probably watch more, but I'm not sure.

Just out of curiosity, did you watch season 1 or 2?

I watched some of season 1. If you think it gets better in season 2, I'm more likely to persevere to that one. I never actually disliked the show, after all.

[Thalolli]

I thought season 2 of Legends was more entertaining than season 1, mostly because I thought the season 1 villain was pretty boring and they also got rid of the main romantic story of season 1. The romantic story of season 2 wasn't really great either (pretty rushed) but at least it wasn't a triangle. The downside that Wentworth Miller (Captain Cold) wasn't a regular in season 2 anymore and in season 1 he was responsible for a lot of the good lines.

I though season 2 was just upbeat, fast paces sort of popcorn entertainment. It didn't take it as seriously as season 1 did at times.

Wait, isn't technically Smallville and oddly enough, Supergirl aren't in the same universe as the rest?

Well Supergirl is in another universe in the same extended universe XD which I thought was actually a pretty clever way to handle the situation. But yeah, Smallville is the one that I think is genuinely out of continuity with everybody. They also have claimed that Black Lightning wouldn't be connected to anything else, but let's see whether they'll stick to that. I remember liking Black Lightning's daughters in the comics, I could easily picture them crossover over to other shows.

[Dînadan]

Wait, isn't technically Smallville and oddly enough, Supergirl aren't in the same universe as the rest?

Supergirl is in a parallel universe within the same multiverse, while Smallville is compleately seperate. However, in one or two episodes of The Flash, while he's running he (or at least the audience) gets a glimpse into other parallel universes and gets a glimpse of the 90s Flash show, explicitly placing that show as part of the same multiverse, so it's not unreasonable to assume that other DC shows such as Smallville are also part of the same multiverse (although it's highly unlikely there'll be any crossover episodes with them, and a crossover with the 90s Flash show, while also unlikely, would only be possibly anyway because three of the actors from it already are recurring guest stars on the modern show).



Small tangent to the main thread, but I think it's a shame Mark Hamil will probably never get a chance to play the Joker in live action as I think his acting as the Trickster on The Flash shows he could easily pull it off (and he's already perfected the voice from decades as Joker's voice actor in animation and computer games).

[MissKittyFantastico]

I remember seeing the start of Smallville, but it didn't grab me and I didn't stick around - I'm not a great Superman fan so the prospect of a slow-burn towards the distant prospect of (maybe) the larger-than-life spectacle I do enjoy wasn't for me.

I have friends who watched Arrow from the beginning, but again, not invested in the character so I never felt I was missing out. I did join them from the start of Flash though, and continue to really enjoy it.

Supergirl had me from episode one, and I'm still a huge fan. Season two had its troubles - mostly I think born out of trying to do too much too fast in changing the status quo to accommodate Cat leaving and shoehorning in Mon-El, they really seemed to just throw everything at a wall and hope it stuck, with Winn at the DEO turning out okay, James floundering around incoherently and developing Chakotay's dice-rolling approach to lifelong ambitions, and Snapper and the journalism angle used opportunistically without any real sense of solidity (I mean, what the heck are they even publishing, we see Kara's articles being read out of glossy magazines, but they all seem to behave like they're doing a daily paper). But Melissa Benoist can do no wrong even when the writing's not backing her up, Alex is even better and adding Maggie made for a great beta couple, and Lena, oh Lena (hashtag Supercorp).

We had a look at the pilot of Legends, but didn't persist - Captain Cold, while cool (a-ha), wasn't quite enough on his own, and nobody else brought much to the party beyond "Oh, yeah... that guy too" (except Hawkgirl, whose intro on Flash was diabolically uninteresting). At this stage we don't mind when they show up, but can't be bothered getting caught up. Black Lightning had a good trailer, but that's all there is until it airs - we're not so caught up in the Flashverse that we have to watch it all (see Legends), and I gather it's not in the same parallel anyway.