Does the new Flash series ever give up the idiot ball?

Cafe Society
1

I just started watching the new Flash TV series on Netflix. I know the second season is airing, so I had a question for those who have watched more than I: Does he ever stop being a total idiot with his powers? Or more accurately, do the writers ever figure out to create logical threats and tension?

I have only seen the first four episodes and it is starting ridiculous:
Spoilers for stuff that aired over a year ago below:

Episode 1: Weather control villain. Not too bad, first time out, more focused on stopping the tornado than the bad guy, but still could have just punched the guy out at super speed, or used a stun gun, but learning curve and all that.

Episode 2: Cloning villain: A little harder to suspend disbelief when he can’t just run away from the mob of clones and gets beat up instead. But early days, he is learning, I can cut the writers some slack.

Episode 3: Mist villain: Finally, a mostly logical and thought out fight. Nothing pulls me out of the story. Guy turns to poison gas at will or when struck, using speed can’t directly stop him, so keep away from him and wear him out. A more experienced/faster speedster may have been able to create a vortex or something, but for the speed level he is showing this is a reasonable response. You could nitpick about the science, but if you do you shouldn’t be watching this.

Episode 4: Setup first recurring villain, presenting the first enemy to beat the Flash and get away, drum roll, wait for it, it’s…douche bag with a fancy gun. What? How? Why is this guy even a threat? The only way he can hit the Flash is if the Flash stops and holds still. There is no trap, or trick that makes him. He just stands there and lets himself get shot. We see that he can move almost as fast as the energy beam, so he could move out of the way easily. Or even easier still, he could take away the gun before the douche bag even knew he was there. Yet everyone is worried, douche bag beats the flash, and recruits someone else to have another stupid special gun.

Any regular gun would be just as deadly if he stood there and let them shoot him. He is able to disarm other people, pull them from fires, move them out of the path of bullets, etc. But the sight of the “cold gun” makes him stop moving and just stand in the path of the beam.

I am ready to stop watching if this is the level of thought the writers are going to put into this. Does it get any better? I am not expecting realism here. In reality, all the people he saves at super speed would be dead due to massive trauma from acceleration and deceleration. I can suspend disbelief that far, but it is the inconsistent and just plain stupid use of the powers that drive me up the wall. If you can’t think of a logically consistent within the framework of the fictional world way for an opponent to pose a threat to the hero, then you need to rethink your villains, your hero, or your career choices.

Am I being unreasonable in my expectations? Am I just spoiled after watching Daredevil? Is DC going to be able to overcome this kind of issue with the rest of there projects (TV and movies)?

2

My wife and I do find ourselves yelling, “Just run really fast around him!” a lot, but I do think it gets a lot better.

3

Low bar though it be, it’s way better than Arrow.

4

There is just no way to make a credible threat for a speedster that isn’t another speedster, everything else he should be able to easily overcome with zero problems. A few episodes ago he ran towards a bad guy at super speed then started punching him at regular speed, cringy stuff like that is par for the course for the show.

5

Yeah, people still punch him in the face and it works. They’re getting better about finding plots that involve using his powers to do stuff other than fight people, but it seems like half the time he’s fighting people, he gets tagged by normals. My explanation for this is that just as he has super-speed, he has a super-short attention span and SQUIRREL! bam, he gets punched in the face again.

6

In the first season, Barry is basically getting used to his powers and discovering exactly what he can do with them. He’ll slowly learn that it’s not always a matter of running real fast, such that by the finale he’ll… (I’ll leave you to find that out.)

In season two he starts doing the stuff as a matter of course, plus discover new stuff to do, but there’s still some stupid shit as already mentioned.

7

It could also be fanwanked that, in order for him to punch somebody and not put his fist clear through him, he has to slow down (hell, technically, he has to stop, if he punches somebody in the chest). If the super speed is a power that he has to activate & deactivate, there may be some kind of lag time involved (like the sequence in Ant Man, where he was learning to time his jumping & size changing so he could jump through a keyhole). The lag time gives people a chance to punch him. Yeah, that kinda works.

8

There could be more to it even than that. They could discover that he isn’t actually moving fast. Rather he is creating a field where time moves at a different rate. That could explain his weak punches and why he doesn’t jelly the organs of everyone snatches out of danger.

It doesn’t have mesh with real science. Just make it internally consitent and not dependant on supposedly smart characters being ignorant.

9

This is, in fact, how Zoom works in the comics. The Flash, on the other hand, has always just moved really, really fast.

10

However, he’s also been shown to be able to (possible spoiler for season 2)

catch a bullet even if caught unawares, when Captain Cold’s dad shot him.

It seems hard to argue that he can pull that off, while not being able to switch into fast mode in time for evading a punch.

ETA: I fixed the coding for you. You used the wrong / in your spoiler box [/Loach]

11

If he wasn’t an idiot he’d be stupidly powerful. Take a minute to calculate how much kinetic energy a 1 kg brick moving at 3000 m/s has. Every episode should end in seconds. A bad guy shows up, Barry hits him with a chunk of hypersonic masonry, go to credits.

12

Telepath/mind control?

13

At best, I think the usage of his powers remain mixed. It gets better in the last half of the season as Wells continues to coach him. A lot of times you’ll think to yourself, why didn’t the Flash simply do X really fast… Boom! Game over. But then you’d have the same resolution to every show, and that’d get old too.

IIRC, the villains do find ways to complicate matters, or handicap him in some way, so it does get more clever in that regard.

It’s still the best superhero show we’ve had, and that is on air atm. Better than Arrow, and way better than Supergirl IMHO (I haven’t seen Daredevil yet).

For me, the real draw, besides watching people with cool powers, is the chemistry between the characters, Cisco, and the mythology/arch villain. The s1 finale was really good.

14

Flash is hokey, but it’s one of those shows where you park your brain at the door. The interaction between the cast members is its true strength. It’s best just to ignore the flawed technical logic, or you’ll be screaming and flailing the entire hour.

15

If superheroes were written to their full potential every comic would be one page, TV and movies would be over in 30 seconds. You have to look past the illogical stuff and just enjoy it for what it is.

The show gets much better as it gets going. As others have already mentioned it is the best superhero show on TV. It has consistently delivered the inherent silliness of comic books, but in a believable way.

16

It’s no where close to being as good as Daredevil.

17

Good to know, I was just about to begin watching.

18

Third best. Daredevil, then Gotham, then Flash.

19

Whoops! Thanks. Should probably have used preview there… I guess that’s what happens if you’ve been writing a TeX document all day (where commands are prefixed by a backslash).

20

Mostly I get grumpy when they start abusing actual science. Want to claim that Flash can phase through a truck by vibrating quickly? Sure, I’ll buy that. Want to claim something is demonstrated by Darwin’s theories? FUCK YOU THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

Just make with the sci-fi technobabble and stop trying to tie things to real science.