Davide Cantelmo, TV Blogger

A blog dedicated to all the binge watchers and TV Series' fans. Reviewing shows like Gotham, The Flash, The Affair. Inspired by the work of Kevin Spacey in House of Cards and Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. 

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Quick Recap: GOTHAM SEASON 3 PREMIERE

‘MAD CITY: BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL’

Gotham’s third season opened this week with a new episode that both recaps and launches many new plot lines for the rest of the year to come. We were left with the aftermaths of the Indian Hill’s escape after Hugo Strange’s plan was defeated by GCPD’s and Jim Gordon’s combined forces.

The episode opens with Jim, who’s trying to find his ex Lee, only to discover she’s living happily with another man. Broken and alone, Jim now works as a bounty hunter for the GCPD, bringing in Indian Hill escapees. This is probably the darkest version of Jim we have seen on the show yet. He is left alone by all his friends: Bullock, Lucius Fox and Barnes have new and different occupations and barely stand his intromissions into the police department.

On the other side of the stage, the bad guys are facing each other. Penguin’s going crazy running after Fish Mooney’s traces, and he’s offering a lavish compensation for anyone who’s able to bring her alive, dead or “cut into pieces”. Fish, on the other hand, is the leader of the super-powered humans who are slowly dying without Hugo Strange’s cures. The more they use their powers, the more they risk to lose their lives.

The most memorable scene of the all episode, though, is Penguin’s and Nygma’s encounter. Ed Nygma, a.k.a. The Riddler, shows Penguin his intolerance of being still held in Arkham. At the same time he offers Oswald some recommendations on how to defeat Fish. Riddler’s words of advice are simple for his old friend: Remember that penguins eat fish.

Gotham’s premiere episode showed us that this third season has a lot on the table and we can’t wait to see more.

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It happened: The Flash Finale - “The Race of his Life” review

I have to say it this time: I’m overwhelmed. I closed my pc crying, of joy? or sadness? I don’t know. What we know for sure is that it has happened what nobody really could ever predict: Flashpoint.

The Flash season two has unfortunately come to an end. With its 23rd episode, “The Race of his Life” this second season closes into what might be the biggest event ever in the history of TV series. The episode ranks amongst one of the best of the series together with season one’s finale. The expectations were really hard to meet, however the show managed to create a finale that did the least to close the Zoom’s arch, but it laid a notable groundwork for the future. Flashpoint, as it happened in the comic series in fact was as well one of the biggest moments and Flash’s stories ever written. So it’s still hard to guess what will the outcomes be in the next seasons of both The Flash and Arrow.

But let’s start clear: Barry has just witnessed Zoom killing his father. Because they have such back story in common, Zoom believes that killing Henry would make the two of them even more similar and so eventually turn Barry into his evil side. Even if the premises for such death were a bit inconsistent and not so well built in the past episode, the outcomes of such developments are totally justified for what happens next.

We found out that Zoom eventually still wants to be the fastest man alive, and to do so he wants to race Barry in order to clearly establish who really is faster between the two. As we found out later in the episode, this is just an excuse to create enough energy to power a device that would eventually erase every other Earth except that specific one where the show is set; and that’s because, as Zoom explains, Earth-1 is the master junction of every other Earths existent.

This whole episode constantly brings on the surface the pure fury that Barry keeps inside and the desire of revenge he feels towards Zoom, even if that means taking away from him his life. That is the reason why, TeamFlash autonomously decides to close Barry in one of S.T.A.R. Labs’ cells and try to defeat Zoom by themselves. Only incurring in both Zoom and Joe to be caged in Earth-2, after Cisco reopened the breach. That felt like the weakest moment of the episode, as the narrative arch of Joe being abducted by Zoom is only a plot device that keeps something to say before the final battle. Final battle that eventually comes when Barry is set free by Wally and decides to take on Zoom in the race, even if that means basically giving what he wants: enough energy to power the world-wrecker device.

But Barry has a plan B: and that plans is called Time Remnant. As Zoom himself explained Barry at the start of the episode, in one of the best CGI fighting scenes, Barry is not yet willing to kill himself (to kill a remnant version of himself). But after that race starts, we saw another Barry appearing besides him. It is his time remnant he generated after he came back from the Speed Force in order to defeat Zoom.

While in fact one Barry fights Zoom, the other sacrifices himself destroying the device, and recreating exactly the same visual experience of The Flash’s storyline “Crisis on Infinity Earths”. I won’t pretend to understand what a time remnant is, but I say that it played very well in letting our hero scarify for his friend without having him to actually die.

In fact, more than a finale, this episode has really been a very good fan service. The episode managed to recreate three major Flash’s storylines, which are Flashpoint, Crisis and Black Flash.

After Zoom is defeated, in fact, it’s not Barry’s duty to kill him. Two Dementors Speed Force time wraiths happened to be there and to take Zoom with them, eventually giving him the form of the comic version of Black Flash, who is the Death for speedsters.

I have to say it. The whole Zoom’s story arch felt overall a bit inconsistent. The villain started off pretty greatly with his terrifying presence; then he was diminished by the reveal that his main goal was to drain Barry’s speed. The idea of Zoom actually improved a lot in the months later when he was found out to be Jay Garrick/Hunter Zolomon all along. At the end of the day, Zoom was portrayed like a twisted mirror image of Barry Allen. But the idea of his master plan was revealed to later in the show and the killing of Henry Allen was always just meant to unleash Barry’s grief and to bring him to the Flashpoint.

With Zoom gone, TeamFlash has the opportunity of setting the man in the iron mask free. We eventually found out, as it was widely predicted, him to be Henry Allen doppelgänger. He is from Earth-3 and his name is Jay Garrick and he has that history suite and helmet of the real Jay Garrick, from the Golden Age. This, in addition to be a nice showing of the Golden Age’s hero, is a tribute to John Wesley Shipp (Henry Allen) who played Barry Allen in the 90s TV Series adaptation. Of course this revelation breaks Barry’s heart once again. All this setting of feelings from Barry is the key to justify what happens in the very last moments of the finale.

Barry leaves his family and decides to come back in time to the night on the murder of his mother. He faces against Reverse-Flash and saves Nora Allen creating what is known to be Flashpoint. Barry might have been pleased with himself, but seeing his younger self fade out of existence was all the proof we needed that something terrible is about to happen.

Now, this final development might have serious repercussion, not only on the future of third season, but on the others CW’s shows.

If the writers are going to write the next seasons as they would in the comics (and the addition of Supergirl to the family to me it’s clearly a hint), everything that has happened in the last two season should be erased (Laurel Lance’s death too): The Flash together with Arrow, probably Legends and maybe even Supergirl.

There nothing much we can now so far, but it’s likely that at some point, maybe in the season’s three finale, we will see once again that tragic scene of the night Nora Allen died. Only this time there will be a Barry who tells the other Barry not to save her, because he has seen what the consequences of a Flashpoint might look like. And I’m quite hyped about the possibility of seeing Thomas Wayne in the vests of Batman.

Run Barry, Run!

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Gotham’s Finale - Transference

Gotham as a proper comic book transposition into the much wider enjoyable medium of the TV is desperately trying to stay true to the ultimate essence of the comic books themselves. And it pretty nailing it. Comics are full packed with characters coming all over the universe of narration of superheroes and super-villains. The TV series edition of Gotham seemingly play with the same rules and sometime this ends in great quality, sometime it becomes just a mess. I loved to see how Gotham itself managed to balance between these two different results and no matter what the final outcome was, I always could’t help but loving this series. There’s no need to acknowledge that “Transference”, this second season’s finale is full of characters, some of them coming straight from the very first episodes of the show, but it eventually manages to give them all enough credit.

Bruce Wayne, who apparently shouldn’t have had such a prominent role in the series, has slowly gained the trust of his audience in so far as many of the series’ viewers (me comprised) are literary craving to see him under the vests of the Cape Crusader. It will happen someday eventually, but in my mind, it’s going to be somewhere like the very last moment of the very last episode of the very last season. And if the series is capable of keeping this quality level, that very last moment isn’t gonna come any time soon. We left the whole crew of characters, most of them trapped inside the basement of Arkham, thanks to the wicked actions of Professor Strange.

In this episode, however, big revelations are around the corner for what it concerns Dottor Strange and his evil plan. Strange is in fact, as we had might guessed in some previous episodes, controlled by a board of mysterious people who have supported him in his fringe plans of bringing villains back from the dead and unleash the on the city. It’s exactly one of the last villains, Theo Galavan aka Azrael, whose release and course of action haven’t please the secret board who runs (we later discover to be the Court of Owls) not only Arkham but Wayne Enterprise and so the whole Gotham too. In the aftermath of such change of plan, Strange is forced to activate a nuclear bomb to destroy all of his creatures who had gone out of his hands.

In the developments of the episode, Gotham had some great moments from The Riddler and Fish Mooney Bitch who get enough screen time to, once again, proving the audience their madness and wickedness.

The show overall always feels a little bit too predictable. Even this week, with the doppelgänger twist of Jim Gordon being abducted and replaced at the GCPD and the disarmament of the warhead, I could easily predict how the episode will eventually develop, but it didn’t stop me from keeping my eye sticked to the screen all the time.

This is the controversial beauty of Gotham. For who loves the immortal figure of the Dark Night, this series is nothing but a great celebration of the villains and the city itself. It’s the city in fact to be the real main character in here, with its atmosphere and it natural wickedness from which no one can escape. Neither the brave Jim Gordon who we have seen him turning from the pure good cop to a much more layered and multifaceted, rounded character.

At the end of the episode, everything seems to be back to normal. But nothing has actually. Bruce has new clues about the bigger truth and he is too close to find everything out to give up. Professor Strange is in custody, but I bet my life that he is going to be back somewhen next year. Fish Mooney is the big surprise.

If there was something that I hated about Gotham was its incapacity of letting some characters go for good. But Gotham is just a comic on television and as such when someone dies, nobody really die. That is applicable to Fish which is back to stay and thanks to her new powers I thrilled to see what’s in store for us next season.

In the end it’s always the same: in Gotham everyone seems to be gone for good but everyone will eventually come back. I won’t be surprise to see a reprise of Jerome’s Joker next year. Together with all the bad guys such as Firefly, Mr. Freeze, Penguin, The Riddles and the ones to come. 

See you next year Gotham.

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Is Barry Allen really ‘Invincible’?

Last week’s Flash episode — one of the best of the whole series — served as build up of what we all expected to be the gran finale of this second season.

“Invincible” instead proved to be an unexpected and unnecessary toned down episode before the actual finale nest week.

In doing so, many characters came into help amongst TeamFlash.

We where left with the very dramatic image of a more than ever evil Zoom, assembling his own army of metahumans from Earth-2, ready to cement his grip on Central City and going rogue in Barry’s city.

Needless to say, as usually happens with this series, the “metapocalypse" as it was depicted on TV and newspapers, ended up pretty quickly thanks to the boring help of The Flash who managed to bring back peace in a matter of a run. Sadly, it all finished with Central City brought back to a sort of ‘normality’, even though apparently many more villains were still on the loose throughout the streets of the city.

To be honest, the abrupt shift of was symptomatic to me of a bigger problem with “Invincible”. Left asine very few moments the episode had, it definitely failed in providing that big drama we all expected as penultimate instalment of the second season.

It was really bizarre how much “Invincible” played out as a very normal Flash’s episode with the gang ready to fight another meta of the day. This time around is Black Siren, aka Earth-2 Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy), going crazy while Barry is experiencing one of his worst moment on the series: Barry is back from the Speed Force experience of the previous episode and that has made him failing victim of overconfidence. His arc came to be very forced and unnatural since the latest developments of his character, having also an unnecessary argument with his father Henry.

Seeing Barry this arrogant before the final battle seemed a bit misplaced, considering all the character has passed, with finally overcoming his mother’s death.

Speaking of deaths, Henry’s turn was totally predictable and turned out to be a little unsatisfying moment, while it should have been one final twist that made me scream on my chair. His figure as newly found father and his relationship with Barry were two great established points of the season and seeing the series letting him go so easily makes me thing only one thing: Henry Allen is going to be back in one way or the other. Next week’s episode The Man in the Iron Mask will finally reveal who the man in the mask is and, considering the revelations about Henry’s mother’s maiden name, my bets are on his doppelgänger, aka the real Jay Garrick (?).

“Invincible” had its few greats moments though. I really enjoyed seeing Katie Cassidy coming back to play another version of herself, and it was as satisfying as seeing Killer Frost and Reverb the first time on Earth-2. Each of this portrayals made me cheer for how good these actors are in give a trusty version of themselves which is totally its opposite.

Speaking of Reverb and Killer Frost, this episode managed to bring them back… sort of. Cisco and Caitlin, in the attempt of persuading Black Siren to not join Zoom’s crusade, dressed up as their doppelgänger truly proving a great piece of acting. We got to see Cisco and Caitlin attempt to impersonate their evil doppelgängers and even pull off the illusion for a few minutes. Valdes and Panabaker really nailed that scene. They weren’t merely playing Reverb and Killer Frost, they were playing Cisco and Caitlin trying to play Reverb and Killer Frost. And when the masquerade was revealed, Cisco took a step further and demonstrated to have some potential of Reverb inside.

Caitlin’s arc was one good point of the episode too. She manages to escape (or being released) from Zoom’s hands and in her time afterwards, she is victim of scary visions of Zoom himself. The arc was pretty impressive and the character had the treatment it deserved considering that Caitlin has a network of true friends to rely on, making a good point in differentiating her from her counterpart evil, Killer Frost.

I should talk about Wally too. I love how the show is managing to playing with Jesse and Wally, not rushing anyone’s transformation into superheroes and giving them the chance to have personal growth. Wally in particular has been developing a sense of justice and will of being useful, or being a hero. His path is towards becoming a cop and I like how it is settling throughout the season. Until eventually he will uncover his powers and become a speedster himself.

Overall, the episode clarified that Earth-2 is genuinely populated by evil versions of everyone. No good meta seems to exist, with all the heroes we came across on Earth-1 having their counterpart who use their powers to comply the dark lord.

I kind of like the idea that another version of the main Earth may be fully evil. It raises some good philosophy as a choice.

I didn’t much liked how this episode was handled, considering that it was the penultimate before the season’s finale, feeling it too much toned down a with an unexploited potential.

Henry’s death in the final scene was big twist mishandled and needlessly prepared.

“Invincible” wasn’t quite what “The Dinosaur Runaway” finale promised and the metapocalypse ended to quickly, leaving Barry to face another very expandable metahuman.

Barry’s weird behaviour wasn’t consistent with what the series had built up with the result of dragging the episode down.  

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Barry Allen is Alive - "The Runaway Dinosaur” review - The Flash

Kevin Smith's directed episode, "The Runaway Dinosaur" could easily be one of the greatest chapter The Flash has ever had.

Two more episodes are on the run for this second season and Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg managed to create yet another one, heart-breaking, tears-streaming story like they did on the finale of season one.

I have yet to forget the picture of Barry, travelling through time, and having the chance to save his mother from certain death. And I have yet to accept the idea of a future Barry, in the same context, that warns season one's Barry to not doing that. He is The Flash and that is the first time we come to know and accept the idea that Barry life is way more valuable that his mother's.

“The Runaway Dinosaur” takes off after the particle accelerator tried to give Barry his speed back. Only resulting in a disastrous explosion that brought the scarlet speedster to literally disintegrate.

The show is not ready to get completely rid of his main character and replace him with the already struck by meta-energy Wally West, though. We do know that the future brights red and with a lot of lightning for the newly found Joe's son, but his destiny as yet to unravel.

After the particle accelerator exploded, both Wally and Jesse were struck by the same energy that gave Barry his powers in the first place. Joe is then right to assume that Wally may have become a newly formed metahuman as well.

Wally managed to survive the accident without any serious damage, conversely to Jesse who retained the same clinical conditions that affected Barry after he was struck by his lighting at the beginning of season one.

But what happened to Barry?

Let's get started by saying that Barry is fully alive. Cisco vibes him a fees minutes after realising he was gone and that gave hope to Henry, Joe and Iris that their beloved hero could still be saved. The equation is easy then: Barry is trapped into the Speed Force, that magical energy that gave him his speed in the first place.

From the insight of Barry's narration we come to know, however, that the Speed Force is somehow a living thinking being (who was there when the first particle of matter exploded during the Big bang and that will be there, when the Big Crunch will happen as well), aware of itself and ready to help Barry face his demons from the past and come back to his world.

«My world is in danger and I'm the only one fast enough to stop Zoom.» That's what Barry keeps saying to the embodiment of the Speed Force. This energy in fact seems to know Barry this good that decides to appear to him in the form of Joe, Iris and Henry, the people he loves the most. To get his speed back, however Barry has to catch a shadow speedster that randomly runs in the place where he is constrained.

Barry finally manages to get over his mother's death in one of the most heartbreaking scene of the season. Comparable to the one at the end of the past season, Barry gets to talk with his mother again and to understand that she knows about his sacrifices and she is proud of him.

In the episode, the Runaway Dinosaur represents one of the short stories Nora Allen used to read to his child. The story is a metaphor for their relationship and adds an overlay of depth to the building motivations of the characters. And, my god, Grant Gustin’s interpretation is everything.

This truly touching moment gives Barry the moral force to overcome his demons of the past and to finally catch the shadow speedster which is revealed to be himself in the Flash's suit. This really represented to me one of the finest moment the series always had. And the comic-y idea behind the show stands out once again when we end up cheering for Barry to come back and save his world. Barry is a superhero, eventually and he has to carry the weight of his choices and he is responsible for the fate of his world and friends. This may be sometimes a lot to take in, but Barry manages to do that in the most super-heroic way.

«Run Barry, run!»

The Flash comes back from the Speed Force's limbo where he was constrained thanks to the help of his beloved one, Iris. Barry's future wife, that inside the comics has always been the "anchor" figure that helps him keeping his life from falling apart. It's her hand that Barry grasps inside the vortex of Speed Force that Cisco opens to get to his friend and it’s her that first hugs as soon as he comes back.

The episode unravels consequentially then, with Barry saving the day once again, eliminating the expandable meta of the day, which happens to be a zombie version of Girder from season one. I won’t stop saying that I love how the shows manages to add that layer of humor and lightness even in the most dramatic situation. Cisco is always the author with funny referencing to The Walking Dead.

But the surprises aren’t over. At the CCPD in fact Hunter Zolomon as taken over the city by building his own army of meta humans and he is ready to let the city fall into chaos. The next two episodes will prove how great The Flash’s screenwriters are.

As Teddy Sears (Zoom/Hunter Zolomon) teased in an interview with Kevin Smith, “How do you go to season 3? But they must've had a conversation, where like if we're going to do this we must, what happens when we land because the jump is glorious.”

Sears seconded that opinion, saying: "The jump is glorious, but if you don't have something to land on then why jump, ya know? Then the jump is a gimmick ya know, but it is so not. They so have it nicely figured out I think for where to launch season 3."

Big things are on the horizon for The Flash when it returns next week on the CW.

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“Unleashed” recap - what’s wrong with Gotham

Gotham: Wrath of the villains - Unleashed

It does appear that Gotham’s totally predictable storytelling can’t help but using deus ex machina and magical external intervention when they are needed.

Just like this week happens when Penguin conveniently appears to save the day and get Azrael, or Theo galavan, or Azrael again, miraculously die after being hit by a rocket launcher.

Gotham’s beauty and fault is to be to unrealistic and comic-y to make the next step forward. It has enormous potential to be one truly great series, but it just can’t. Just think about it: a prequel series about the origin stories of all the many villains from Batman sounds almost like heaven for who had always loved the Cape Crusader and his set of criminals.

The first season attempted to do just fine, with the focus on few character developed through the episodes and with a couple of great actors, Penguin (Robin Taylor) and Ed Nygma, now The Riddler (Cory Michael Smith), to just scary the hell out of its audience.

The second season took off quite as well, making us falling in love with Theo Galavan’s plot line. However, as soon as Strange made is tv debut as Arkham’s psycho mentalist, the whole thing became messed up.

So we are, with Azrael running unleashed through the gothic city of Gotham, with flashes of his past life. In this context, his sister, Tabitha helps him remember just that only things he should have forgotten. This episode decides then to go again on the story of “The Son of Gotham” with Galavan intended to kill Bruce Wayne.

This plot twist showed a bit of laziness from the screenwriters who could have just gone with something radically different rather than exploring something already seen, just half season before. I personally would have been more interested in seeing Galavan fully remember his past life and face justice for what he has done.

Instead they decided to let Butch and Penguin come into the stage with a rocket launcher and blow Azrael entirely, leaving to plan to bring him back in the future.

That leads us to how silly looks Strange’s plan to conquer Gotham (?). Yes, even Strane’s plan is not clear at all. He has been bringing back from the dead many villains we have already seen, just have them destroy themselves again or fall from the hands of the GCPD. It is like Dr. Strange’s plan is to build an army of expendables villains for no apparent reason. Maybe just for the sake of science!

Leave alone all the silly mistakes that the characters seem to helplessly commit, like Bruce and Alfred splitting up unwisely instead of running away or hidden themselves inside the Bat-Cave.

Or how easy is to run away from any Arkham’s cell, given Nygma magical escape. 

Or how miraculous is for both Barnes and Tabitha to magically survive a sword to the stomach. I already expected Barnes to survive, seeing him rushed to the hospital in the past episode, but saving Tabitha seems not so clever. Really comics like, actually.

We can only hope big things are in store for her given this random save.

But I love Gotham anyway. Its style and sometimes cruelty and how they make me cheer for one character or the other is what keeps me hooked up to the screen.

I’m only concern for what the story will lead us.

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What happened to Barry Allen? The Flash - Rupture

This week’s episode brought a lot of interesting cues and hints to the table. After last week’s episode in which we watched 40 minutes of non super-powered people - of which Barry is now one of those normies - we finally got to see some more interactions between Cisco’s potential and yet another expendable metahuman from Earth-2.

This time around it is Cisco’s doppelgänger brother, Dante, (Rupture on Earth-2) whom is brought forth by the evil will of Zoom to spark the madness in Central City. It was really something that felt a bit overdue as for a while the writers needed to fully explain and go deeper inside Cisco’s relationship with his brother. The show needed to bring his doppelgänger from the alternate universe to provide us with something remarkable that would fuel Cisco Ramon’s character development.

The episode, overall, was fully packed with brutal and gut-wrenching addictions that made it a fully deserving member of a slot in the top five of my favourite episodes of The Flash. It really felt like a mid-season finale and that was extreme satisfying since another three episodes are on their way before we can call close to this second season.

There is Barry Allen, struggling to be a hero without his speed. He is facing his worst moment on the show ever and as powerless as he is, he is torn apart by the idea of recreating the particle accelerator condition that gave him the speed in the first place. To mix up the drama a little more, there is Barry’s father coming back from the mountains that creates kind of a foursome between Barry and all his father figures. This was a nice addition, with Joe taking a step back in order to make Barry enjoy his time with his biological father and Harrison Wells which creates a really fun dualism between him and Henry Allen.

Harry Wells has always been, in fact, a true father figure for Barry. He always brings the darkness out of Barry and that is one of this best features. Henry, instead, is guilty of leaving his son right after he has been set free from his long staying in jail. Apparently, however, Henry will be finally back for good.

In the midst of this family drama situation, Zoom is terrorising the city, adding another layer of evilness to the character and making him more interesting than before. I have struggled with the idea of a reasonless villain that attacks the world for the sake of evilness. This is the case again, with Zoom in the need of pure speed, although it hasn't explained yet why he still has the blue light features on his costume. Does he need others’ pure speed in order to live?

Let’s not forget that Zoom is creating around him, a true atmosphere of darkness, by killing half of the Central City Police Department just for the sake of maintaining his promises. That scene, where he literally freezes the time to break almost anyone’s neck, was something that really scared me and made me want more pure evilness from the character.

This reign of terror is made possible thanks to the “wait-and-see” tactic that a scared version of Barry decides to choose. He is well concerned with the idea of another particle accelerator explosion and the consequences the it may bring to Central City. Another wave of metahumans around the corner would mean bringing the whole series back to season one and to the pattern of freak-of-the-week.

In all the craziness that’s going on in the episode, Iris decides to confess her feeling for Barry, which doesn’t seem to take them really well, especially since Iris refused him not so long ago. That felt like the lowest moment in a very nailed instalment. 

Barry, eventually, decides to activate the particle accelerator again and gain his speed back. In a truly emotional and deep conversation between Barry and Henry Allen, Barry explains how he feels like he is nothing without his powers and that all the good things in his life have always been taken away from him. (daddy come back, please — hint). This didn’t feel like a really superheroistic argument, but it fitted perfectly with the character development behind this version of Barry Allen.

After that, everything falls apart.

Barry is injected with a cocktail of chemicals he received the night he was struck by the lightning and, once the particle accelerator has been activated, TeamFlash manages to recreate a lightning to strike Barry’s body. This is a quite clear example of how the show succeeds in keeping its comic-like tone high by adding an overlay of humor to the drama. Even in the middle of the dramatic, emotionally harrowing climax of this episode, we still had Cisco standing on a roof doing his best Harry Potter impression, while trying to catch lighting.

The next moment, we see Barry literally falling into pieces, unable to bear all that energy from the particle accelerator, and eventually die. In that moment, as I was really inside the episode, I started to despair at the chance that they had really killed the main character of the series (though I’ve already seen a conspiracy theory that WB is forcing this show to kill him off so as not to conflict with the movie universe).

After a while, though, I started to remember a bunch of comics storylines and everything was clear to me. Barry has most likely gotten lost in the Speed Force and will be brought back in a matter of episodes.

The particle accelerator explosion, however, served as a handover moment for Barry, Wally West and Jesse Wells, as the two teenagers are invested by the energy that is liberated from the explosion. After a whole season of giving hints about Wally’s need and love for speed and his will to help the others and so on, we will finally see the Young Flash taking his role on the show, probably to fill the apparent death of Barry.

The idea of four speedsters on the show seems quite exciting to me and it would be really engaging to see for the finale, Barry, Jesse and Wally team up in order to defeat Zoom.

It was a very eventful moment, when Henry stated that his mother’s maiden name was Garrick. At first it felt like a nice add on, but it is immediately recognisable as something that will likely matter in the nearest future.

We have seen, in fact, Jay Garrick’s legacy brutally corrupted by the actions of Zoom. This might be the case for the legendary Golden Age superhero to receive a nicely welcomed come back, under the appearance of Henry’s Earth-2 doppelgänger. The twenty-third episode, “The Man in the Iron Mask”, will probably address all fans’ theories and drop the long awaited revelation.

For all that happened, and for this particular revelation, I’m looking forward to next week’s episode with a little bit of trepidation as well as excitement.

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Everything wrong (and right) with ‘Versus Zoom’ - The Flash

The CW’s speedster has finally recovered from the terribly long hiatus that left us with nothing to watch for weeks. Fortunately, every single time The Flash stops, it comes back with a very satisfying episode. Versus Zoom was no exception this week, preparing the ground for a finale where everything still remains unscripted and unpredictable.

This situation is mainly given by the many law points this episode delivered.

We have been waiting the whole season for Team Flash to interact with the malicious villain Zoom from Earth-2 that we have discovered being Hunter Zolomon. Unfortunately, this first encounter between the two sides hasn’t been satisfying enough, at least as I pictured in my head.

This is everything wrong with Versus Zoom.

What the hell happened with Jay Garrick? He was the legendary super hero of the golden age and his legacy has been drastically compromised after Hunter Zolomon, aka Zoom, revealed to have just made up that name in order to confuse Team Flash and hide his identity.

Thankfully, in a recent tweet, showrunner Greg Berlanti promised fans "we love Jay Garrick and would never make him a baddie.” No reinvention, then. Keep watching.

Nonetheless, we have definitely seen a statue of an old super hero on Earth-2, also confirmed by Harrison Wells. So, how exactly did the helmet ended up being in Hunter’s father hands?

On, the other side, we still have the unconfirmed presence of the man in the iron mask. I personally still believe he is some sort of speedster, since that mask certainly is the speed blocker we have known it to be. And therefore, he can definitely be the real Jay Garrick, who has been previously held by Zoom. Has he suck all his speedforce too?

Will the real Jay Garrick please stand up?

In the first part of the episode, Harrison Wells is surprisingly moved when he hears the real Zoom’s name. On his earth, criminals are so rare that the few of them are automatically recognised by everyone. As a consequence, Hunter Zolomon’s origin story is well known to the scientist. Unfortunately, no one apparently ever thought that the serial killer and the darker speedster called Zoom maybe the same person.

Other moments, such as when Zoom faces the team in StarLabs, felt extremely unrealistic and only created to make the plot moving. The whole Team Flash had numerous chances to defeat Zoom, especially since Barry, thanks to the improved tachyon device, has finally outclassed the other speedster. No plan B was made by Harrison Wells, since we spectate Barry loosing his powers without doing anything to prevent it. That tachyon device, originally, permitted Barry to travel to other dimensions, including the one where Supergirl comes from. It’s crazy how they totally and purposely forget to state that Barry actually travelled through dimensions. That would have saved a lot of plot. 

Nonetheless, there still are some good ideas inside the episode. The whole instalment is focused around the idea of family and Zoom’s origin story appears to be symmetrical to the one Barry lived the he was just a kid. This idea stresses the fact that Hunter Zolomon is the real Barry’s doppelgänger. They had similar story with the only difference that Barry had someone that helped him when he was in need, conversely to Hunter who was brutally sent into an orphanage.

Carlos Valdes’ performance as Cisco is one of the best moment of the whole episode (if not of the whole series). His talks with Barry when he is in need are the finest moment of the episode, with long reference to Star Wars and Anakin Skywalker.

Joe’s development as a character, as renewed father and main character of the series is simply clever and Teddy Sears’ interpretation as Zoom, Hunter Zolomon and Jay Garrick is really noteworthy. Although I personally don’t like where the character has gone with his crazy, psychopath behaviour, I acknowledge he has done a terrific job in interpreting this season’s villain.

Zoom is now more powerful than ever even as Barry is at his lowest ebb. “Versus Zoom” set up a massive underdog scenario for Barry, while also proving that some trace of Jay Garrick the hero still exists within the bloodthirsty heart of Hunter Zolomon.

[truedetectv-blog]

Flash Back

Time travel is serious business.

It’s hard to outclass yourself after one of the most clever, exciting and beautifully made first season was completed. And yet, The Flash managed to produce another one great episode just right before the spring break. Flash Back – the seventeenth instalment — is that one other step that is guiding us towards the season finale.

This week’s goal was figuring different ways to improve Barry’s speed. Flash has been craving to get faster in order to defeat Zoom and, in doing, so also see Caitlin comparing his way of running to the other two speedsters we already have encountered. Barry is said to move his legs at the same pace of both Reverse-Flash and Zoom but unfortunately, they both manage to run faster and this is explained by saying that the time they lay their feet on the ground is fewer.

Barry has to get faster and, since the Velocity-9 is a road no-one, inside StarLabs wants to take, he figures out that he has to learn how to do that from someone he really knows how to. The choice is made and Barry voluntarily travels back in time, in disagreement with Harry Wells, to a precise moment in season one.

Time travel has since first season been quite a conflictual and bittersweet experience for The Flash. He is very much aware of the risks he might encounter if something from the past is changed and this time around Barry faces the most unpredictable and unthinkable consequences of such actions. Pied Piper’s storyline from season one is that very moment when Barry find himself after the time travel.

The original goal was to come back in the frame time when nobody still knew about Eobard Thawne in order to learn from him the secret of the mysterious speedforce equation. Barry finds himself during his past fight with Pied Piper and somehow manages to take his younger version’s place.

It was really fun to see Barry engaging with his past events. It would have been an easy road, just to see Barry dealing with the past events of “The Sound and the Fury” and slightly alter them in order to get what he came for. The episode, instead, shows us a clumsy Barry who can’t help but being personally involved in the events the same way he had been told not to do that time he space travelled to Earth-2.

Barry is simply helpless and it is really intriguing to see his a supposedly more mature version of the character still making mistakes and truly being the real villain of his own story and the architect of his disaster.

It’s simply beautiful to see Eobard Thawne, under the appearance of Harrison Wells, literally face palming when the two Barry, the one from the future and the one from that time, appear at the same time on the scene. This reveals eventually who Barry really is and it looked so true and yet powerful that made me forgive how embarrassing it would have been. Barry’s clumsiness eventually attracted the attention of a Time Wraith.

This new character is something that never really appeared in any comic books. I would say that this little particular was the lowest element of the whole episode. The Time Wraith resemblance with Harry Potter’s Dementors was nothing compared to the other choices the writers could have to replace this figure.

It clearly made me instantly think about the Black Flash, an aspect of death designed specifically to claim the souls of speedsters. But, overall, the Time Wraith meets a role that a Time Master could have filled much more easily.

The Time Wraith, in fact, came to take Barry down after he started screwing with the time-line. It was a really clever idea, until I realised that the show could have simply put in scene some of the Time Masters from Legends of Tomorrow. It also made me wonder why Rip Hunter and his team have never encounter any of these Time Wraiths during their time travels.

Tom Cavanagh gains a special mention regarding this episode. His conversation with Future Barry inside the Time Closet highlights how versatile he can be as an actor. Once again he dressed with the mind of Eobard Thawne and perfectly embodied the role of the first season. Their conversation is simply a masterpiece, when there is Eobard that understands Barry isn’t the one from his timeframe. Eobard, then, reveals himself standing upright rather than sitting on his wheelchair.

Barry, instead has to convince him that is important that he lives and that Eobard has to teach him how to run faster.

Thawne, indeed, realises that the only reason why a future version of Barry is still alive is that his original place to steal Barry’s speed and come back to his time has eventually failed in the future. The moment of realisation is one of the finest of the whole season.

Another great moment is the later scene where Caitlin and Cisco discovered the truth about Barry’s mission. The way Cisco tries to identify which one is his Barry is simply amazing.

They also focus on the white badge with the lightning on the chest of Future Barry and they question themselves if they would have change it in the future intentionally or simply because Future Flash has now given the idea of that. This moment reminded me of something similar that happened in season one when they discover the paper of the future with The Flash’s picture on the front page: eventually I think it signified that it was meant to be.

The Flash once again proved to be at the same time entertaining and full of suspance and fine moments. It faces really deep arguments like time travel and manages to do so while keeping an ironic and sarcastic tone, represented by a yet to be a time travel expert Barry Allen. And this all is what makes me love, again and again, this series.

[truedetectv-blog]

When Long John Silver became a legend

The most satisfying finale: Black Sails

I started following Black Sails as soon as I heard about it back in 2014. I have always loved pirates’ stories and before I started off with another binge-watch series, I managed to read Robert Luis Stevenson’s masterpiece Treasure Island.

Black Sails is, in fact, set up as a twenty-year prequel of the legendary classic novel that follows the challenges of Captain Flint before he was known as the infamous buccaneer who stole the Urca Gold and buried it in a lost island in the neighbourhood of New Providence Island. Season three finale, however, marks the rise of one of the most charming and interesting characters of the story: Long John Silver.

Björn Larsson wrote a novel called Long John Silver (1995) in which the Swedish author narrates the life of the infamous Peg Leg (aka Silver) before meeting Captain Flint. Both Black Sails and Bjorn Larsson’s novel, being prequels of an original story, aren’t reliable in terms of continuity and consistency, but they both insist on bringing material to the legendary figure of Long John Silver. For this reason, I grew up loving this character, for his set of qualities and his ability to face every difficult situation in life with irony and deceitfulness. It was probably the first anti-hero figure I fully appreciated as such.

That is why, Black Sails’s third season’s finale was really satisfying and overwhelming at the same time. It provided great development in the main plot and in each of the subplots. It gave an awesome finale with a continuous crescendo and an amazing battlefield, with plot twists and taste of philosophy and morality as the world around prepares for war.

Three are the cornerstones of the episode.

There is Flint and Silver that create surreal moments while burying the treasure. The writers had the good idea to splice in throughout a night-before-the-battle scene between Flint and Silver and it worked perfectly. The planned the battle of the next day, creating a split narration that works greatly for this episode. Silver is afraid that his persona will eventually become somehow like his captain. He is at the same time feared and loved by the crew which makes him the perfect leader for the battle to come. At the same time, Silver is afraid that his relationship with Flint may come to an end sooner or later.

Flint on the other hand is sure that his legacy will survive in a foreseeable clash between the two. He is a tough man and he has survived many speed bumps that a normal man wouldn’t have.

Their conversation addressed all of Flint’s story thus far while pitching us forward into Season 4 and it helped building the momentum towards the end of the episode.

Meanwhile, In the bay near the island, Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny are having some spectacular moments when they have the chance to team up with Teach. He is aware of the death of his spiritual son, Charle Vane, and he is intended to take is revenge against the people who murdered him. This setting is the perfect breeding ground for the figure of Rackham to raise. The Jolly Rodger is smart and talented and, thanks to his clever decisions during the battle, they all succeed in defeating the British navy.

Back in Nassau, the resistance, guided by Billy Bones and some other member of Flint’s crew, is creating caos within the island. They try to instigate the rebellion to the British government by bringing back old laws of piracy. Billy Bones is counting on the fame of Long John Silver to convince with fear the people of Nassau to join their crusade. You’re either are with us, or against us. It will be interesting to see how Eleanor and Max will react to this new threat.

The closing scene of the show is something very remarkable. After the initial victory against the British navy, the champions of this victory have formed a kind of Arthurian knights of the round table, where all voices are equal in the coming fight. There are Flint, Silver, Jack, Teach and Mr. Scott’s daughter. Jack and Blackbeard are most likely seeking revenge, while Silver and Flint have promised to help the people of the island.

This final moment marks the closing episode of this season as one of the finest finale of my binge-watcher’s career. It was skilfully mastered, in a continuous crescendo of feelings and it managed to do so while teasing the upcoming season.

See you in 2017 Captain Flint. But be worried: Long John Silver is raising.

[truedetectv-blog]

Why Spider-Man Should Get His Own Netflix Show Before Joining the MCU

I am a big supporter of the format that a TV series’ follows. I love how it has evolved in the last few years and I firmly believe it’s currently surpassing movies in terms of quality and acting.

I also wrote an article, a few months ago, where I explained why, according to me, this phenomenon was actually taking place. The fact that many Hollywood actors are moving to the small screen and acting in different TV series must be, for this reason alone, the explanation for the change in the quality of television and a possible consequence for the big screen.

It is this perspective which is the premise to what I am going to write about.

Last week I wrote about the darker side of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, represented by darker comic TV series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. All that writing about why superheroes should get their own series made me think.

So here are my reasons why (if there are any) at least some major Marvel’s superheroes should be brought to the small screen.

When I think about Daredevil, I can’t help but feel personally involved in all the matters related to the blind vigilante. This feeling of being part of something originally alien to you is what made me fell in love in the first place with the obscure world of TV.

Like Breaking Bad and many others I have had the pleasure to binge-watch, Netflix’s Marvel series have the ability to hook you from the start and never let you go. The televisual format also helps characters get their own in depth analysis and the character-evolution we all praise the writers for. Something like this simply will never happen in movies and the answer is as easy as it looks: time.

Yesterday, I went back home after spending two and a half hours in the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square to experience the IMAX feeling of the galactic fight of man vs god, day vs night… Yes you got it, it was Batman v Superman.

153 minutes isn’t an unusual showing time for movies anymore and what left me unsatisfied was that, even after all that screening of superheroes doing superhero’s stuff, I still felt like I didn’t know neither Bruce Wayne’s Batman, nor Clark Kent’s Superman at all. That is why TV series are genuinely better.

However, it must be said that not every show which is currently airing on TV is satisfying enough to reach Breaking Bad’s level. Especially when we talk about super powered men.

I follow almost every superhero series, from Arrow to The Flash and from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Jessica Jones. Even if the quality of the shows are pretty high, most of them fail to reach a coherent and satisfying narration that differs from the “freak-of-the-week” style.

Netflix’s comic experiments are doing something slightly different.

Daredevil’s first season was entirely built on the attempt from Matt Murdock to track down Wilson Fisk and to put an end to his rise through the ranks.

The simplicity of one season one main villain. That’s how superheroes’ narrative should be constructed.

Superhero stories have always been about fragmentation and deep paths assembled step by step just like in comic books where each narrative arch is composed by many issues. From this viewpoint, making one-shot superhero movies doesn’t really make much sense.

I immediately started thinking which hero/antihero, within the Marvel Cinematic Universe currently on the big screen, would be more suitable to get his own show.

Who would be a better fit in the dark environment of Daredevil’s Manhattan? Peter Parker would.

Bear with me: Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin is one major villain that associates with both Daredevil and Spider-Man. Peter Parker has history with him and, after all the major developments of Daredevil’s second season, it seemed natural to me that the two of them would eventually end up being enemies.

Daredevil also reveals that after the events of the first season, many people inside Manhattan have decided to become vigilantes as well (The Punisher and Jessica Jones).

This key change would easily explain the existence of Spider-Man. And since the first known appearance of Peter Parker is set to happen inside Captain America: Civil War, it seems too good an opportunity to let it pass. The chance of having Peter Parker join the Netflix side of the Marvel Universe is a golden opportunity. The chance at having a proper back story be told in full and have different scenarios already triggered through other shows and films would signify an even bolder SpiderMan movie in the distant future.

Such a drastic move would actually highlight the business of Netflix’s superheroes thanks to Marvel’s most famous character. And it will bring an extremely loyal audience from the video streaming service directly into theatres to keep following Spidey’s adventures.

I know this all sounds like the ultimate nerd’s dream but, since the evolution of the small screen and the possibilities that such a medium can still offer, I definitely believe in adapting as many superheroes as possible into the TV world.

And if not a proper show, then at least to join Daredevil in the same way The Punisher entered the second season.

[truedetectv-blog]

Marvel’s Darker Cinematic Universe

Barely a week ago or so, Daredevil’s second season premiered on Netflix worldwide which means that 13 episodes were dropped onto the famous video streaming platform all in one go.

This well-received and long awaited addition to the already wide range of shows and movies comes to complete one of the most interesting and flourishing cinematic universes of our generation: the Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Since the screening of the first Iron-Man movie in 2008 starring Robert Downey Jr , Marvel’s cinematic board of directors led by Kevin Feige has cranked out twelve movies and five TV series and, in current development, more than eleven other movies and at least three new series.

Since the very beginning, the movies’ sector has been divided into phases. The Phase One, called Avengers Assembled, gathered all the stories that eventually led to the great choral movie, The Avengers.

Phase Two started off right after 2012 and culminated in the 2015 film Age of Ultron where the main characters from the previous movies, once again, assembled together to defeat a common enemy. Ant-Man (2015) started out our current Phase Three and it will take us straight through to the grand finale where the Avengers’ trilogy will be eventually completed by the two-part movie Infinity War.

In the meantime, the MCU has managed to expand itself beyond the big screen into our houses and our laptops.

The experiment called Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. proved that superheroes belong to the small screen too. It was the first attempt from Marvel to drag a different kind of audience into the mix. The results where initially very promising: creating a TV series that would follow in perfect parallel to the events of the main movies and the reaction it had on fans consequently, was something nobody had never seen before.

As a keen supporter, I am genuinely excited about this whole shared universe (like it always happened in the comics). I have devoted myself to watching every single episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the very beginning.

Listening to characters from the small screen talking about Captain America and The Avengers, was something I couldn’t believe was real. Sometimes, throughout the series, some characters from the movies, like Nick Fury and Maria Hill, would pop up in the series just to prove that this was all part of something bigger. I believed it.

What eventually brought me down was the lack of crossing over between the movies and the series. I would have loved to see more crossovers. I would have happily seen the characters from TV cleaning up the mess Thor had made in the movie or fighting against an inner crisis inside the Agency whilst at the same time, Captain America was battling the same events in the movie. I started to feel something was missing.

It’s clear that some of the reasons are the lack of budget for the small screen, but I would have loved to see at least Captain America helping the Agents out sometime. Some characters from the TV shows, however, are expected to make the big jump to the movies - at least when the Inhumans storyline will be dealt with - in 2019.

After the S.H.I.E.L.D. disappointment phase ended, my interest was eventually teased again when the Netflix’s universe came along. Back in 2014, Marvel signed a few contracts to bring some “minor” characters to the well-known streaming platform. That’s when some of the greatest superhero’s stories were born.

First was Daredevil, the mighty Hell’s Kitchen’s blind fighter. Then it was Jessica Jones’ turn. Netflix has proven to be the best platform to let a little cinematic universe breed within the bigger one.

At the current state, three other tv series are in the developments for Netflix and rumours of a fourth started rising through the net recently.

What we know of this little universe is that everything takes place in the infamous area of Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan NY.

Up until now, no crossover has been made, but still Rosario Dawson, an actress who spent most of her time stitching Daredevil up after his fights, has been spotted in one episode of Jessica Jones, proving the audience that we all live in a bigger universe.

Both Matt Murdock’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones will eventually team up together with Luke Cage and Iron Fist in a mini series called The Defenders. According to upper management, they will constitute a secret parallelism to The Avengers.

If Tony Stark, Captain America, Thor and so on, are well-known superheroes to the general public, The Defenders will be that group of heroes who act in secrecy and without much attention by the mainstream media.

Daredevil has already premiered with its second season and Luke Cage (a character that first appeared on Jessica Jones) will premiere with his own series at the end of 2016.

In March 2014, Jeph Loeb, Head of Marvel Television, stated that the series would begin filming after Iron Fist, being the fourth of the new individual series. By March 2015, it was instead slated to be the third of the individual series, beginning production after Jessica Jones. Regarding Iron Fist, instead, by March 2015, it was expected to be the fourth of the individual series, entering production following Luke Cage.

The assembly-like series called The Defenders is set to begin filming after all of the individual series have had their first season. This would actually mean that it is more than likely that series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones will be in theirs fourth and third season, respectively, when the mini-series cross-over will premiere.

I have started to appreciate what Marvel (in conjunction with Netflix) is doing about these less-super-more-human heroes. I easily binge-watched all the first season of Jessica Jones and Daredevil in less than three days and I’m extremely appreciative of the style and tones of these two series that don’t really belong to the more colourful and comic-like style of the movies.

Netflix’s series narrate stories of homicides and reveal lives ruined by local mafia and crazy powered people. It is the most “Batman-ish” side of the MCU and I started loving it because of this exact difference.

Because of the unpredictability of the Marvel Netflix series, this allows the writers to build up a more consistent structure which contains more intriguing stories.

The Defenders and their world of suffering and emancipation will hopefully join the bigger universe in 2018/19 when the whole of the Marvel world will need to assemble all of its forces in order to fight Thanos, the main villain of Phase Three.

I would personally (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) love to see my favourite small screen Netflix characters on the big screen, fighting along with the big name heroes we have come to know.

And if this isn't going to happen, I will live happily anyway, knowing that the characters I have come to know on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen belong to a much darker side of the Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, the one that no-one wants to rouse.

[truedetectv-blog]

The Flash, Trajectory

There’s a new speedster in Central City and this time around it happens to be a girl. Her name is Trajectory – it is a self given name – and as Cisco said, when they name themselves it means things are getting crazy.

This week’s episode was all about Velocity-9 (V9), the mysterious drug that gives speed to anyone who inject themselves. Even regular humans are subjected to the effect. V-9, however, is pretty much like a drug and more often than ever, drugs will kill you. So don’t do drugs.

Eliza Harmon is chemist who helped Caitlin when she was synthesising the compound in order to get Jay Garrick gain again his speed. Unfortunately, as things turned out, Eliza Harmon is easily subject to addiction and eventually decides to complete the formula and to try the V-9 on herself. This is her origin story.

Back to the present we have another tough pain for our guys at StarLabs. Barry has been forcing himself to train stronger in order to become faster and one day to defeat Zoom. And while the whole gang is out for drink in order to chill a bit out, Trajectory comes into the stage in order to get her screen time.

Barry has to move quickly, as she starts messing around in Central City, many more people are starting to believe that Flash is uncontrollable and unreliable, not knowing it’s actually another speedster’s fault.

For as much as I love this show, the episode turns out to unravel itself pretty predictably. Trajectory reveals herself to be nothing but a drug addict a that is what gets her killed eventually.

After a chase between her and Barry throughout the city, with a destroyed bridge in the middle, she eventually gets caught.

Barry gives his superhero speech in the attempt of redeem her but Trajectory is too physically addicted to V-9 to avowing taking another dose.

That moment results to be lethal for her. As she runs away from Barry she ends up dissolving leaving no trace of her body with the exemption of her beautiful suit.

Fun fact: after taking the deadly dose, Trajectory starts running and as she runs away she emanates blue lightning. These blue flashes screamed too Zoom when I first saw them that it felt pretty obvious to connect the two factors. In fact, back in StarLabs, it’s Barry the first one to recall the event.

If Zoom emits the same blue lightnings it’s because he had been taking the V-9 too and can’t get anymore because he is dying. He needs Barry’s speed to save himself from certain death. That’s when all the pieces of the bigger puzzle get together and an epiphany shocks all our protagonists: and what if Jay is Zoom.

Well, as Harrison Wells can remember, he and Jay had been originally working together on the speed-serum. And then, there’s the thing Cisco hasn’t yet told anyone. He has been vibing about Zoom pretty much all the time since they have come back from Earth-2, especially when he is in proximity of Jay’s helmet.

The sudden revelation brings us to the finest five minutes of the whole episode. Barry breaks the glass that contained Jay’s helmets and let Cisco vibe again.

This time the vision is way more clear: Jay is Zoom, confirmed.

At the very last scene, Barry runs away mad at Jay’s legacy and how he betrayed all of them and scream all the rage out of him.

The next few episode will ultimately set the plot for the gran finale. Stay tuned.

[truedetectv-blog]

Gotham, Mad Grey Dawn

Wrath of the Villains

The Riddler rises.

It’s been one year and half until we we got our first full Riddler-style crime. Edward Nygma has been completely ingested by his slip evil personality. The villain that was inside has come out and he’s ready to take over.

Organised within a museum, Nygma stole a painting and damaged two others defaced. Jim Gordon and Harvey are left on the crime scene with just two great question marks on the facades of the two damaged paintings. From this point on, the Riddler’s plan unravels and Jim is at its centre, unfortunately.

Since last episode, Edward Nygma was moved by the chance of Jim to outsmart him in terms of his cleverness. Nygma was quite afraid to the idea that Jim might discover what he had done to Miss Kringle. He therefore plots against the number one investigator with the Gotham Police Department to frame him and get rid of him.

The crime scene at the museum is just the first step towards a plan designed to throwing Jim off track. Gordon, within few days, reaches what he thinks is the ultimate clue that will help him solve the case. Instead, that is another subtle plot device skilfully planned by Nygma in order to get him caught on a different crime scene.

Jim is caught by Captain Barnes, who has been harbouring doubts about Jim’s honesty regarding Galavan’s death, and eventually sent to prison. Jim is incredulous, but every little clue steers directly to him and his being guilty. Jim Gordon is then believed to have one fellow policeman murdered because he had discovered the truth about Galavan’s death. As we discover from flashbacks, it’s Edward Nygma, more Riddler than ever, that orchestrated everything to set Jim up.

In this half episode Gotham set one of the most well constructed personality of the whole series. Edward has come to reach his momentum and he couldn't do better. The Riddler ruthlessly acts just for the sake of masterminding very difficult riddles and to use them to arrange crime scene after crime scene.

In this stage, Jim is caught in the middle of the storm, powerless and with everyone who believes in him, unable to help his cause. Gotham skips the narration four weeks after when the trial has already took place. Jim Gordon has been convicted for four years in jail.

In the meantime, things have happened in the city. Bruce has been living with Selina ‘Cat’ Kyle. He’s willing to learn how to live the thug life and after one difficult situation, Bruce who has been learning the ropes, proves himself to have started building his future legacy. That has to be the most "Batman" moment we have seen out of our young Bruce Wayne yet. While this season has shown a few of them, including him manipulating Silver and refusing to kill the man who killed his parents, Bruce's fight — and the feeling he described after it — really saw the shadow of the Bat coming down.

"It was like nothing else existed. The emptiness and confusion… it just vanished. For the first time in a long time I knew I was going to be okay," he told Selina as she literally stitched him up.

Even Oswald Cobblepot hasn’t been forgotten. His rehab comes along as he meets for the first time with is believed-dead father, Elijah Van Dahl. The pair hit it off famously, with Van Dahl welcoming Oswald in with open arms, bringing him into his home and making him part of his family. How this will all play out with our currently brainwashed (or is he?) Oswald Cobblepot remains to be seen.

The very end of the episode shows us Barbara Kean awaken from her coma as she hears, while asleep, the unpredictable destiny of her former boyfriend. Nothing is certain about her destiny since everything will be in Dottor Hugo Strange’s hands.

This week’s episode was a very strong one. Gotham is proving itself to be a game changer series able to accomplish astonishing results.

Its narrative has always improved and with this week’s Riddler’s revelation I can’t help but admitting that one of the best character ever has finally blossomed.

[truedetectv-blog]

First rule of Mr. Robot: you do not talk about Fight Club

Homage or mirroring?

A couple of days ago I was re-watching Fight Club as my Netflix’s subscription got renewed and I decided to give another shot to one of my favourite classics. I already wrote about Fight Club not long ago, about its idiosyncratic nature of understanding the modern man’s crisis. I compared it to other great classics, American Beauty, Matrix and more recently with Breaking Bad.

Fight Club popped up on my Netflix’s home screen and I immediately started watching as I was really eager to see again one of my favourite characters in the whole history of movies: Tyler Durden.

That was when I suddenly understood that there was more than one similarity between David Fincher’s 1999 work and 2015 TV series Mr. Robot. From the very first scenes of the movie I suddenly recognised the style of the narrative, the voice speaking over the stunning photography that was telling the story.

Fight Club vs Mr. Robot, then. Mr. Robot, a series hatched from the mind of Sam Esmail, stars Rami Malek in the role of Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer and hacker who suffers from social anxiety disorder and clinical depression. Elliot is then recruited by an insurrectionary anarchist known as "Mr. Robot", played by Christian Slater, to join a group of hacktivists that go under the name “F-Society”.

As in Fight Club, Elliot is a somewhat poor young man with great hacking skills and an inclination towards drugs. He cannot see life as normal people do. Elliot seems to be aware of the trivial lies we decide to cover our lives with. He is also addicted to hacking people’s digital lives and to scan their interests in order to understand how futile their passions, their idols and their beliefs are. Elliot Alderson has a different background from Fight Club’s narrator, but he suffers from the same mental disturbs. He is tired of his life and is ready to do something to see a change.

The narration of the series is pivotal, however, to understand the similarities. Both stories are mainly narrated by each protagonist’s thoughts. It’s just a matter of closing your eyes, and suddenly it feels like it’s the same character talking. The fragmented style of narration in each voice and the metallic undertone inside each word’s inclination sound almost the same. Elliot is just a more conscious evolution of Fight Club’s anti-hero.

The developments and ultimate revelations we get from Fight Club and Mr. Robot’s season one made me think even more that I was watching two different versions of the same story. Project Mayhem’s and F-Society’s purposes are similar they both intend to destroy the symbols of contemporary economy, banks and credit societies.

The infamous truth that made Fight Club’s ending one of the greatest twists in Hollywood’s history is resembled once again in Mr. Robot’s storyline when the main character, Elliot Alderson, finds out that Mr. Robot is his dead father, just like in Fight Club when Tyler Durden is revealed to be the narrator’s alter ego. This event, however, marks a transition from homage to mirroring.

In both stories, each protagonist comes to a moment when they realise how both Tyler Durden and Mr. Robot are figments of the narrators’ imaginations. Even more similarities appear in those scenes: both characters re-experience each moment where they were supposed to be with their imaginary friend. At that point, we find out how Marla had always believed to be related with a guy named Tyler. Likewise, both Darlene – Elliot’s sister — and Angela Moss – Elliot's childhood friend — come to ask Elliot who he thinks he has been talking to the whole time. Elliot’s father is real, however, unlike Tyler Durden who is entirely a figment of the narrator’s imagination. Adding this parenting layer to the story enriches the narration with a whole different meaning.

This is the cracking moment, when both characters realise the whole mystery behind the plot and thus have a mental breakdown. Fight Club’s narrator reacts by trying to stop Project Mayhem, by shooting himself in the attempt of eliminating his split personality and put an end to everything. Conversely, Elliot embraces the change and lets the social movement he has created guide him through the present, towards his future. Towards season two.

Mr. Robot belongs to that group of series I like to call ‘great television’ but I can’t help admitting that many eyebrows were raised after the connection with Fight Club, because it just didn’t draw inspiration from the same setting, but it went on copying the finale and many of its characters and ideas. From the secret society, to the final twist and the anti conformity and consumerism speeches, if not copycat, Mr. Robot is the illegitimate son of Fight Club.

There’s a fine line between homage and copy and Mr. Robot likely crossed it heavily. To the show’s credit, it’s great. It manages to create one of the most fascinating stories in television with great acting and one of the best photography I’ve ever seen. It succeeded in taking a 1999 story and fitting it perfectly for a new generation of people, tech savvies of our century, with phones in our pockets that outsmart our brains and contain all our sensitive information.

For this and for many other reasons, Mr. Robot still belongs to every bingewatcher’s shows’ list.

[truedetectv-blog]

Gotham, The Ball of Mud and Meanness

Wrath of the Villains

The Ball of Mud and Meanness is the journey of young-detective-Bruce, investigating the past to find out the truth about the killing of his parents.

Bruce, dressing the clothes of a younger Batman, in what could be called a Batman Begins Begins scenario, is on his way to find the name of his parents’ murderer.

The whole episode is soaked in madness and absurdity since when Bruce ditches Alfred to conduct his own investigations by himself. He has a gun, provided by Selina, which he intents to use to kill the persone he’ll judge responsible for his parents’ killing.

That time comes at the end of the narration, when Bruce comes face to face with Thomas and Martha Wayne’s killer Matches Malone. The conflict between the two is set as top-notch scene at the end of the episode. It arrives when the climax skilfully orchestrated reaches its peak of madness and confusion, throughout the whole episode.

Even if with a bit predictable ending, the scene gives us a lot of feelings and emotions: there’s Bruce confronting his parent’s killer, having the chance to put and end to his life and revenge the legacy of his family. Bruce has his gun pointed at Matches’ head. His hands are lightly shaking, but he is committed to go for it. Then Bruce waits. He wants to know things from Matches, like why he did it, or he remembers any details from that night.

Matches Malone is a paid seria killer who genuinely does not remember all the people he had been killing in the past. Only when Bruce mentions about the pearls he stole from his mother, Matches slightly flinches.

Matches is already a dead man, tough. During the discussion between him and Bruce, he proves to start hating himself for how he had conducted his life. He wants Bruce to just shoot him in the head and to put an end to his life. The scene is still a bit predictable, considering how it ends, but it contains so much drama that I think was worth it overall.

Bruce, in a pre-Batman’s ethic moment, decides to spare Matches’ life, judging to easy for him to just die. Bruce wants to make justice and killing him would mean not to. The second after, Bruce is out of Matches’ room and meet with Jim Gordon. A gunshot is heard from the inside of the room. Matches just shot himself to death.

Breaking Bad's Michael Bowen is a great actor and it’s such a shame that his life inside the series has already finished: he would have made a great villain, if only he would have been more explored.

Other great moments in the episode were Lori Petty guest starring as Jeri. She’s a Maniax-obsessed rock club who helps Bruce finding Matches. I love how Gotham, no matter the apparent death of Jerome, manages to keep winking at Joker’s legacy. In Jeri, both Bruce and Jim Gordon collapse. Jim is on the chase of Bruce. Jim ends up getting picked up and crowd-surfed against his will.

Alfred has his moments too, when he ends up winning a street fight against some street-gangster from which he and Bruce need information about their investigations. Alfred survives but he ends up in hospital were is left alone in the sleep by Bruce.

At the end of the episode, we find out Bruce has decided to temporarily leave his house and Alfred to strengthen is body and his spirit in the streets together with Selina. His experience with Matches has made him willing to become stronger. And the only way he can do it is to understand how the bad guys think. To do it, he has to live like them, eat like them and be like them. This appears to be the breeding ground of his future transformation in the Cape Crusader.

A nice addition was the catch up of Nygma’s transformation. Nygma made steps toward Riddler-dom. Long gone are the days he was somehow a loser and prey of everyone’s inside the GCPD. He is now stronger than ever and following the investigation of Miss Kringle’s disappearance, Ed thinks Jim Gordon wants to outsmart him. A great scene is given when we see Nygma drawing a green question mark on a picture of Jim Gordon on a newspaper. The Riddler is coming.

Elsewhere, Strange keeps messing around with Penguin’s mind. Our dear Oswald is reduce to a dog-like person who obeys blindly to everything he asked to. Hugo Strange opts to setting him free without any police authorisation. This is something that would never happen in a real life situation and it is made clear on the show. Penguin is in the hands of Strange and he is set to become Strange's pawn in a larger scheme.

I really like how Strange’s character is evolving. Gotham has a lot at stake and it will be interesting to see how every little piece will combine together.

Considering Bruce’s evolution, Nygma’s transformation, Jim’s journey and Strange’s villainy course of action, I have never been more excited to see how the story goes on.  

[truedetectv-blog]

Gotham, A Dead Man Feels No Cold

Wrath of the Villains

If I knew where the 13th episode of season two was going to end I would have better understand the title of last week’s instalment.

A Dead Man Feels No Cold is little glimpse into the future of one of the most scaring and terrific villains of the Batman’s universe.

Both this and the previous episode focused the storyline around the origin story of Victor Fries, the man who will become Mr. Freeze.

In the previous episode, following the events that brought Fries into looking for the cure to save his fiancé, the press already would call him with his villain name.

This week, Victor has to rescue his loved one from the hands of the Gotham City Police Department. He has discovered his able to cure her from her disease.

But things aren’t easy as they seem. Jim and company has a trap prepared when they decide to move Victor’s fiancé to Arkham. There would be the perfect place where she could receive medical assistance and at the same time the safest place where to keep her while Victor will try to rescue her.

Mr. Freeze, together with the help of Hugo Strange who, fort the first time, is actively involved in the scenes and ready to show his bad-guy-side, succeeds in entering Arkham’s facilities and found her fiancé together with Jim Gordon and Lee.

I would take a moment just to talk about Penguin. Since most of the episode takes place in Arkham, much of the attention is directed towards Oswald Cobblepot. He has been imprisoned and assisted with medical treatments as he is considered to be insane.

He is exposed to heavy treatments that apparently are torturing him. At same point towards the end of the episode, Oswald meets Jim and tries to get help from him denouncing what he’s been going through.

A cynical version of the Jim Gordon we have been knowing reassures Penguin that what happens inside Arkham is perfectly fine and it is for his own sake.

They aren’t torturing Penguin, they are just taking care of him.

We, spectators, however, are perfectly aware that things aren’t as they seem. Arkham is an evil place held by an evil character, Hugo Strange, who has plotting something really bad underneath the known floors of Arkham.

The last segment of the episode develops as everyone would expect. Victor succeeds in setting his fiancé free and tries to cure her, eventually failing thank to her desire to die. She swaps the freezing capsules making effortless any attempt of him to save her.

Victor eventually decides to put an end to his life, because of too much suffer for her death.

That’s how a random episode would have ended. But Gotham is Gotham and has tons of aces in the hole perfectly hidden and ready to come out at any given moment.

We are back inside Arkham’s hidden labs where Hugo Strange is facing a frozen glass window. In the exact same moment I was mad at the series for killing every potential major villain of Batman’s universe, we understand that something really cold is happening down there.

Inside the frozen glass wall there’s Victor, or what remains of his humanity. There’s Mr. Freeze, eyes and hairs completely frozen.

We understand from Dr. Strange that his body has somehow absorbed his own freezing formula and that is what made him survive after freezing himself to death.

Now he is only capable of surviving at a temperature below the zero. For this reason, Huge Strange tells him he has tweaked his suit in order to ensure a living.

And that was when Gotham actually created Mr. Freeze by letting Victor Fries die.