(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

And a little less ranty entry, too.

I'm making good progress on my active plan of passively watching enough old TV and movies to finish everything I've not watched yet. I got through a full disc of Futurama, and another episode of Smallville. I have to say something about the latter.

Dude, does having Aquaman necessarily make a show suck, or is it just a coincidence? darkling1 assures me that the animated Justice League Aquaman is pretty interesting, and I'll take his word for it (he is the insidious force that brought Firefly into my consciousness and viewing purvey, after all, and I wouldn't really have gone to see Superman Returns with any real interest without the encouragement of his enthusiasm). But still. TWoP's review of that episode was more interesting than the ep itself, which isn't saying much, I suppose.

How stupid was it? There were fish puns. Fish. PUNS. Nothing hurts like a pun, unless it's a fish pun and then it burns a hundred times worse. This is made more terrible for the much better done allusions to James Marsters' character's eventual future and the fact that his character had some killer dialogue and awesome mindviews to share from the second he entered frame. He was erudite, ascerbic, insightful, and, okay, James Marsters is finally showing his age, but he looked like a learned, truthful, if not always tactful guy that you could trust.

Aquaman looked like a neanderthal and spoke just about as eloquently. I'm surprised Clark--of all people, not the brightest--was the only one to find it strange that this college jock boy was out in the middle of Kansas fighting for an environmental cause (and even then only because he registered on the Smallville-brand powered-up freak-o-meter). That should have set off flags with everybody. I mean not even Al Gore would go to Kansas for that fight, so Flipper the swim jock should have stuck out like...you know what? I'm not making that pun. I'm just not.

You know a show has got to be fighting for its renewal pretty hard when they drag Aquaman in to do some leg work for them. On the flip side, I need to see the episode where the Flash showed up as I actually like that character, and Clark's mention of him makes it sound like he made a fairly canoniacal impression on Smallville--"A kid who runs too fast for his own good." Was it Wally? I bet it was.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

You know, I think that may have been the last episode of Smallville I watched. And they had Aquaman wear the orange and green too. You'd think they'd have learned from Bryan Singer's example that it doesn't make sense to slavishly stick to the comic character's costume if it looks ludicrous on the screen.

The Flash ep was decent. I don't remember which Flash it was, but he had passports with the names of all the others. But it was, like so many latter SV eps, a one-trick pony. They bring in a comic character so that all the interest in that episode is generated from fans saying, "Look! It's the Flash!" rather than actually generating interest with story writing. I think the only such episode that was well-written was "Perry" back in season 3.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Actually, if they'd made more of "A.C" (::shudder::) being a University of Miami student--say, by having him hanging out with his swim buddies also in the orange and teal--that would have explained the poor fashion sense. Miami's colors really are that ugly.

Yeah, the Superman animated series did the same thing--hey look! Flash! Supergirl! And, uh, Aquaman. I thought the Perry episode was fantastic, but Michael McKean is always great, and this was one episode that actually made the Superman-future-story that we all know and love possible. It explains, at least, why a guy with almost no reporter instinct as Clark is usually shown to be, gets a job at all with the Daily Planet.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

The Flash episode of Smallville was the one good episode of the entire fourth season. The ONE good episode. It was pretty fun, so that's not even just in comparison to the rest of the season.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

He gave his name as Bart Allen (who is Impulse/Kid Flash in the comics), and the fake IDs said Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West. The general concensus (where such things exist) is that he was actually Wally, given that modern continuity has Superman/Wally pretty much as contemporaries. (Kinda, sorta. Selective aging and all. But you know what I mean.)