Batwoman

[Cassandra]

8 minutes ago, pinecone said:

This, I consider Buffy a classic "Street level Champions" character.

 

All my builds are 250 Points.  I started with the 1st Edition and love the challenge.

[Greywind]

1 hour ago, csyphrett said:

I believe that Buffy is actually as strong as Blade, or maybe Captain America at the upper end. It takes a lot of omph to jam a pencil through a human rib cage.

CES

 

Considerably less if you miss the bone.

[pinecone]

1 hour ago, Cassandra said:

 

All my builds are 250 Points.  I started with the 1st Edition and love the challenge.

I also started on v.1  I consider Buffy to be street level because no costumes, though rather than fighting "normal" criminals she fights monsters...so "Urban fantasy Hero"?

[Greywind]

Might be more "Suburban Fantasy Hero".

[Cassandra]

18 hours ago, pinecone said:

I also started on v.1  I consider Buffy to be street level because no costumes, though rather than fighting "normal" criminals she fights monsters...so "Urban fantasy Hero"?

 

Many of our favorite characters are "Superheroes" just without the costumes.  

 

One of my templates would work well for Jason but I'm concerned if I put it up he'll show up.

[Bazza]

On 10/27/2019 at 4:16 PM, Pattern Ghost said:

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.

 

 

 

Finished season 2 of Black Lightning. PG is right, BL is just a better show than Batwoman.

 

If they are only up to episode 7 (or so) and need a Kate-is-not-Batwoman-because-double then Batwoman is incompetent as a Bat-superhero. 

[Ranxerox]

6 hours ago, Bazza said:

 

Finished season 2 of Black Lightning. PG is right, BL is just a better show than Batwoman.

 

If they are only up to episode 7 (or so) and need a Kate-is-not-Batwoman-because-double then Batwoman is incompetent as a Bat-superhero. 

 

No, if they are past episode 3 and none of the heroes loved ones have figured out their secret, then the NPCs are overly stupid or are just being asked to carry the idiot ball too much.

[Spence]

On 11/18/2019 at 12:59 PM, Cassandra said:

 

Frank Castle actually weights more then the gun.  

The second time today someone has made me snort my drink.....

[Greywind]

Alcohol burns nasal passages. News at 11.

[Cassandra]

On ‎11‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 12:02 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

The kick ass grrl syndrome in entertainment has long been a problem.  Joss Whedon's power waifs, the latest Charlie's Angels where the angels look like they couldn't punch out of a wet paper bag, etc.  Up to a certain point I'm okay with it (in the right genre or setting) but it is tiring watching a 5'1 97 pound actress pretend she can beat up a 6'7 280 pound bodybuilder.  Even Chuck Norris movies had him struggle against really big, strong guys.  That increases drama: dang this target is huge, how am I going to beat this one??

 

 

The opposite of this is the quiet female character like the police woman in Emergence.  There were so many awkward pauses in the show I watched I had to make sure the screen wasn't frozen.

[Cassandra]

19 hours ago, Spence said:

The second time today someone has made me snort my drink.....

 

Did the first time have to do with Nicholas Cage being perfect for Ghost Rider because his head looks computer animated anyway?

[Cassandra]

I'm going to save some time here by reviewing tomorrow's episode now.

 

The latest episode of Batwoman was terrible.  How could Kate done that?  Alice is so predictable and yet Batwoman hasn't caught her yet. 

[Bazza]

Next episode is the week after. 

[Bazza]

Last night I saw a superhero 

she was black

she said “this is for the street.

Blackbird’s back”.

[Pattern Ghost]

I think you meant "saw" . . . it's a common type-o. The "w" and "y" keys are so close to each other after all.

[Bazza]

Thanks. Fixed. Also posted it hoping you’d see it. 

[Cassandra]

I know that Batwoman last night was a repeat, but it actually got pretty good with the Green Hornet and Kato showing up.  But I might have been channel switching over to Decades.

[Cassandra]

On ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 2:48 PM, Cassandra said:

I'm going to save some time here by reviewing tomorrow's episode now.

 

The latest episode of Batwoman was terrible.  How could Kate done that?  Alice is so predictable and yet Batwoman hasn't caught her yet. 

 

Called it.

 

Kate confronted Alice and left her alone to kill Katherine.  Alice was talking about a tea party and Batwoman didn't get that it might be the Charity Awards?  And Batwoman was basically useless as she took forever to fight a bunch of rent a cops and then let herself get broadsided by Alice's henchman.

[Lord Liaden]

That's sad, because Batwoman's debut performance during the last CW crossover was intimidatingly impressive.

 

But almost all these CW superheroes seem more impressive during the crossovers.

[zslane]

Yeah, makes you wonder if a completely different crew writes the crossover events.

[Spence]

10 hours ago, zslane said:

Yeah, makes you wonder if a completely different crew writes the crossover events.

 

17 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

That's sad, because Batwoman's debut performance during the last CW crossover was intimidatingly impressive.

 

But almost all these CW superheroes seem more impressive during the crossovers.

That would make sense.  I'm thinking that Crisis may be my last CW supers show for a while.  They have become too meh and Batwoman  is getting to be a painful watch. 

[zslane]

You know, I'm not entirely convinced that Batwoman needs to follow the serialized Big Bad For the Season structure established by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It could benefit from a Villain of the Week structure instead, allowing them to use their creativity to establish a whole new rogue's gallery for Batwoman rather than focusing so much on a single antagonist for the whole season (or even for a big chunk of it). Because right now, the show is really straining under the weight of how tiresome Alice is as the featured antagonist.

[Cassandra]

23 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

That's sad, because Batwoman's debut performance during the last CW crossover was intimidatingly impressive.

 

But almost all these CW superheroes seem more impressive during the crossovers.

 

That's because we are dealing with the Superheroes in the crossovers, and not the "Characters" behind the mask.

[zslane]

7 minutes ago, Cassandra said:

That's because we are dealing with the Superheroes in the crossovers, and not the "Characters" behind the mask.

 

That's a very good point!

 

And that succinctly explains why I find the crossovers much more engaging than the individual shows themselves. I get a more pure superhero action story, undiluted by the need to give us the Slice of Life melodrama in between the key adventure beats.

[Cassandra]

37 minutes ago, zslane said:

You know, I'm not entirely convinced that Batwoman needs to follow the serialized Big Bad For the Season structure established by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It could benefit from a Villain of the Week structure instead, allowing them to use their creativity to establish a whole new rogue's gallery for Batwoman rather than focusing so much on a single antagonist for the whole season (or even for a big chunk of it). Because right now, the show is really straining under the weight of how tiresome Alice is as the featured antagonist.

 

That's the biggest problem with the CW shows except for Legends.  All of them have a main villain who is unstoppable until they accidentally step into an open manhole.  Legends avoids this by traveling through time taking on missions so they don't get bogged down with focusing only on one villain.