Batwoman

[ScottishFox]

On 10/18/2019 at 10:34 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Rotten Tomatoes has lost its value as a review site, and mostly its just a curiosity for how often the official reviews are grossly at odds with normal viewers'

 

I completely ignore the critic ratings these days.  I go for the user reviews and that's it.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I completely ignore the critic ratings these days.  I go for the user reviews and that's it.

 

You are not wrong.

 

[Cassandra]

So she knows the bad guy has a radio detonator and doesn't think to take a signal jammer, or even make sure the rail gun deactivator has batteries, and then then gets into a overly long fight with a corporate guy.

 

Yikes!

[Christopher R Taylor]

I was kind of hoping this could be good, maybe it will get better over time

 

[Spence]

So I finally watched the last episode last night.  Now it is the afternoon of the following day and I don't remember much of what happened.

 

For me, I don't think Batwoman will last long if people in the audience don't remember a show for good or bad by the next day. 

[zslane]

On 10/21/2019 at 10:49 AM, Cassandra said:

So she knows the bad guy has a radio detonator and doesn't think to take a signal jammer, or even make sure the rail gun deactivator has batteries, and then then gets into a overly long fight with a corporate guy.

 

Yikes!

 

Um, yeah, preparation is not exactly her strong suit. She's no Bruce Wayne. But at least she knows that (and says it repeatedly). But hopefully she'll become a little smarter as time goes on, and won't entirely rely on the Wayne tech or Luke's proclivity for pulling her butt from the fire to keep her alive.

[Cassandra]

I think the main problem is they need to recast for the next season with someone who comes off more heroic.  I wonder if Tina Fey is available.

[zslane]

I dunno. Cassandra Cain wasn't exactly "heroic" at first either, and she gathered quite the fan following over time. Besides, I think the main narrative is going to focus on Kate's journey towards becoming more of a dedicated hero rather than a reluctant one.

[Greywind]

Why is it always the evil stepmother?

[Greywind]

https://batwoman.tv/batwoman-receives-full-season-order

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think they were trying to do a sort of Daredevil "beginner" arc, but I think most people are as tired of that as I am.  Jump right in with them as experienced costumed kick ass crime fighters, then you can do some flashback episodes to show the beginner parts.

[Greywind]

They did that with Arrow for 5 years. It got old.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well, that's because his training stuff and beginning backstory kinda sucked.  And I mean after 5 years pretty much everything starts to suck

[Cassandra]

7 hours ago, zslane said:

I dunno. Cassandra Cain wasn't exactly "heroic" at first either, and she gathered quite the fan following over time. Besides, I think the main narrative is going to focus on Kate's journey towards becoming more of a dedicated hero rather than a reluctant one.

 

Cassandra Cain was a fraud and a pretender.  Barbara Gordon is Batgirl! 

 

It's okay she got the name Black Bat.  I have no problem with new heroes, but giving the names to weak copies.

[Cassandra]

On the same point Arrow fell apart because not only did they keep the flashbacks going after he got off the island, but now has flashforwards about a team of heroes less interesting then the Arrow's own team.  That's on the same level as the DC Extended Universe making Aquaman the most popular male superhero.  It's an achievement, but I'm not sure anyone will want to pick up the award.

[rjcurrie]

 

 

On 10/19/2019 at 1:28 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its a lot easier to write soap opera side stories and subplots than actual gripping adventure.  Plus, its a lot cheaper to have the protagonist in regular clothes hanging out talking rather than in costume out doing deeds of heroism.  Nobody needs to train or practice fight choreography, nobody needs to be paid to come up with the fight choreography or do the stunts, etc.

 

Some people like the soap opera. I know I certainly prefer the lightness and soap opera of CW's DC shows to the Netflix Marvel shows. I've always viewed comic books as soap operas with action. And when I've run Champions, my emphasis was always on character interaction and the character stories. In at least one convention event, I have asked players if they made if we skip the battle to get on with the story. No one has ever objected. To each their own.

[rjcurrie]

On 10/18/2019 at 11:27 AM, ScottishFox said:

The show is getting straight up mauled on Rotten Tomatoes:

 

One take on this:

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/10/09/batwoman-is-getting-imdb-and-rotten-tomato-review-bombed-for-its-lesbian-lead/#74b37ae79185

[Christopher R Taylor]

They seem confused, though, even people who want to be fans here are panning it, and that has nothing to do with the lead actress' private life.  I mean its an easy way to get cheap political points but that does not seem to be the issue

[Pattern Ghost]

My wife and I have been considering whether to keep watching Batwoman past the premier. We've decided against it. When I saw the previews, I thought it could have some potential. The lead actress is OK, as far as I can tell. We'd seen her play a killer android in an episode of Dark Matter, and thought she was good/funny in that role. We'd seen the crossover appearance, and she seemed OK there. There were, of course, those few god awful virtue-signalling lines of dialog that kept coming up in the trailers, but we didn't see much problem there. That's about where Black Lightning started out, tossing in a few groan worthy scenes to make it super abundantly extra clear to the audience that this show had a message. But the show is excellent, and one of our favorites. I'm pretty sure there's a CW exec somewhere who doesn't think just showing inclusiveness or exploring a theme organically are good enough, because that audience they're  catering to, who they want the viewers to think they respect and care about are just too darned stupid to get the message unless it's shouted in all caps. So, notes get passed down, bad dialog gets tossed in, and the show rolls on. We figured it'd probably be much the same for Batgirl, and even in the pilot, that does seem to have been the case. However . . . it just didn't grab us.

 

That's all there is to it. It just isn't that engaging of a show. We may go back and re-watch if we hear it improves, but for now, we have too many better shows to watch to fill up our small amount of TV time. We're frankly backlogged, and this show just didn't make the cut on the first episode. I prefer to give two or three episodes, but we decided against that due to time constraints.

 

Now, as to that Forbes article ... give me a second to bypass their pathetic attempt to stop my ad blocker. OK, looks like the Forbes article is just going for the lesbian hate angle. They fail to note that the show simply doesn't have a good hook, doesn't draw us in to the family angle as well as, say, Black Lightning, doesn't adequately set up emotional stakes for the audience in caring about Alice's connection with Kate, etc. Seems like typical Forbes web content. The Forbes site, particularly these types of opinion pieces, doesn't seem to exercise any kind of editorial control over their trash web content.

 

Let's be real about the CW and the inclusiveness/SJW angle on these shows: EVERY CW show I'm currently watching (Riverdale, the DC shows) HAMMERS you over the head with inclusiveness. In some cases, it reeks of tokenism, in some cases, they develop some of their better storylines with great actors we care about. Hell, the CW runs ads specifically pointing out that they value inclusiveness, that everyone's welcome on their network, as a core value of the network. The ONLY difference between shows is how they handle it. If the show executes its story well, and the characters aren't simply one-dimensional, then it works. (Though you may have to discard some of that cornball dialog I mentioned earlier.) I was going to break down the characters in each of the CW shows I like, but that kind of analysis across several CW shows would drag on WAY too long and take all night to write. I guess that's the point, though: Nobody is shocked by Batwoman being a lesbian or being played by a lesbians. CW has lesbian and bi women sprinkled through pretty much every show.

 

Batwomans' just . . . mediocre. And there are too many other similar shows to watch for it to stand out. This wasn't the case when the Arrowverse started, so the Forbes "writer" can't do a direct comparison. The older shows have the better ratings simply because they were the first to build fan bases. They had a lower barrier to entry as far as audience buy in. They're also better shows. (Except season 1 of Legends.) If Batwoman matures into a decent show, I'd expect its ratings to go up.

 

 

[zslane]

The writing (which includes the overall creative/narrative direction) on these CW shows is about as consistent as the writing in comic books. Unfortunately, there is a lot more money (and more people's careers) at stake on a tv show than on a comic book. A publisher can just cancel a book and bring it back a year or two later if they find better writers. But for tv, you kinda get one shot at it and you had better cultivate your audience quickly or else you have to cut your losses and move on to something else.

 

When it comes to superhero tv shows, I want the plotting and characterizations and aesthetics to look and feel like the source material, and I don't really expect the quality of the writing to be any better than comic book writing. That's not a very high bar to set, but it is shaped rather uniquely, and so getting over it takes a little bit of finesse and effort. But it is quite doable. The fact that these CW shows rarely get over that bar cleanly is not the actors' fault, but mostly a failure of creative vision and decent writing on the part of the showrunners and writing teams.

 

It would appear that the CW sees enough potential in the Batwoman show to give it a full season order. Of course, with Arrow going away, they may feel they don't have much choice since there isn't anything else that is ready to step in and fill that void in the CW-verse. And hey, maybe Batwoman will be like LoT which sucked hard in the first season, but became watchable (or so I'm told) during the following seasons.

[Armory]

17 hours ago, zslane said:

It would appear that the CW sees enough potential in the Batwoman show to give it a full season order. Of course, with Arrow going away, they may feel they don't have much choice since there isn't anything else that is ready to step in and fill that void in the CW-verse. And hey, maybe Batwoman will be like LoT which sucked hard in the first season, but became watchable (or so I'm told) during the following seasons.

 

Well, Legends accomplished that by almost completely shifting tone to a self-aware, almost campy vibe.  It stopped taking itself seriously and became nothing but mindless fun.  I don't see such a tonal shift in the future for Batwoman.  DISCLAIMER:  I haven't watched it and don't plan to.  The whole idea of a "strong, independent woman" who has to adopt another man's money, gear, and entire schtick to be a strong, independent female hero is too much irony for me.  And I'm a guy who loves strong female protagonists.  I just like independent women to actually be independent.

[Cassandra]

I will admit that Batwoman was a little better last night.  Her relationship was a little forced and as awkward as Gomer Pyle explaining combat to Audie Murphy.  I don't mind her missing the batarang or even sneezing since it shows her getting used to the equipment and getting info by trading a selfie for it was cool.  But Katherine saying that they searched for Beth but didn't find so much as a "Sock" was a weird turn of phrase.  I mean I could understand a "Hair" or a "Clue", but a "Sock"?

 

 

[Cassandra]

6 hours ago, Armory said:

 

Well, Legends accomplished that by almost completely shifting tone to a self-aware, almost campy vibe.  It stopped taking itself seriously and became nothing but mindless fun.  I don't see such a tonal shift in the future for Batwoman.  DISCLAIMER:  I haven't watched it and don't plan to.  The whole idea of a "strong, independent woman" who has to adopt another man's money, gear, and entire schtick to be a strong, independent female hero is too much irony for me.  And I'm a guy who loves strong female protagonists.  I just like independent women to actually be independent.

 

Legends of Tomorrow is the best things on the CW.  Of course that's like being the finest ballerina in Galveston.

[Armory]

7 minutes ago, Cassandra said:

 

Legends of Tomorrow is the best things on the CW.  Of course that's like being the finest ballerina in Galveston.

 

😁   I think it's better than that, even.  I gave up on Arrow and Supergirl last season.  I haven't started watching this season of Flash yet and I may not.  I do plan to watch all the Crossover episodes 'cause that stuff is too much fun.  The only one I still really look forward to is Legends.

[Cassandra]

1 minute ago, Armory said:

 

😁   I think it's better than that, even.  I gave up on Arrow and Supergirl last season.  I haven't started watching this season of Flash yet and I may not.  I do plan to watch all the Crossover episodes 'cause that stuff is too much fun.  The only one I still really look forward to is Legends.

 

With Supergirl's new hair style they should have hired Kat Denning to be Batwoman and then it would have been Two Costumed Girls.