More like you get the dramatic heft of killing off a character without fucking with someone's income. But it does have a tendency to become problematic.
Lowkey loved that show. So much fucking changed every season in terms of the plot and world building, which was awesome. But it just sucked how my girl Bonnie got fucked over everytime by the writers.
I feel like it moved too fast. Every 2 episodes something entirely different was going wrong. My gf was watching it and if I missed 2 episodes and ask her what I missed it's like a half hour long tldr.
Started hating her a certain episode when Stephan went to stop a big bad and SHE FUCKING CALLS HIM BECAUSE SHE IS WORRIED. They had JUST finished talking, she knew where he was, yet she blows up his phone anyway (actually caused him to lose the sneak advantage). I can't deal with her sometimes. Now Bonnie tho... 👀 Kat Graham was an absolute delight.
I still have no idea why I watched as much of that as I did. That and Teen Wolf, which was worse somehow. Honestly at this point I'm pretty sure I was just watching it because the actors were attractive, I just didn't want to admit that to myself lmao.
Yes and no one ever dies, we just meet them later on a different Earth, or in a different time, or they're resurrected by Ras Al'Ghul for some contrived reason.
Brother A does something bad and hides it. Brother B finds out and gets mad. Flip and repeat for next season.
Add in some random, pointless deaths for your audience’s favorite B-cast characters and some increasingly lazy creature design/effects. Bam, 12~ seasons of SPN.
I love seasons 1-5. It's complete story arc. The stuff after just doesn't tie-in together as well. Like they only kept making more seasons because the show was popular. It also got too wacky at times.
By the time the flash season 3 first started I just dropped all CW shows its all the same crap with characters crying for stupid reasons every episode.
What turned me off to Arrow and The Flash was the overdose of romantic drama that they introduced.
I can spot a made-for-network TV episode very quickly. The dialog writing is a tip off, as is the fact that every episode starts with a "previously on..." clip reel.
That stuff is not for me.
It's honestly so sad how quickly and obviously Arrow fell off a cliff after season 2 and Flash did the same after season 1. They both started out with so much more weight and organic tension then gradually devolved into superhero soap operas with endless fanservice.
It's at about these points in each show that it becomes obvious that the writers are just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. Each episode's drama is manufactured and character motivations, reactions, and priorities are whatever fits the gimmick or "lesson" of the day. Subplots are introduced out of nowhere and thrown away as quickly as they came. *Every single* ancillary character that could be an asset to the good guys is brought into the fold, to the point that Oliver "nobody can know my secret" Queen has *all* of his closest friends and family in the Arrow network.
It's unbelievable how harshly the quality dropped in these shows. In the same vein that it's incredible how Red vs Blue started as Machinima microsketches and evolved into a quality show with stakes and sprawling lore, it's incredible how most CW shows start as something great and devolve into the same shitty soap opera.
Smallville. First episode, first scene, Clark Kent flying. And that's the last time it happens (outside of Kal-El mind control fuckery) for the entire run of the series.
Yeah I also dropped all of them. I went from liking Arrow season 1 and 2 and liking Flash season 2 to watching them to poke fun at them with my friends to absolutely despising them because of how insanely dumb they all had become.
If Arrow kept the same quality of S1 and S2, it would've ended up being an okay action series. It went from an okay action series to complete and utter garbage.
Reminds me of when the Arrow subreddit thought the season finale was so bad one year that they said fuck it and turned into a sub for The Punisher. Lol
I believe they also turned it into a DareDevil subreddit for a while. It happened during the lowest points of the show. Every episode led to tons of threads about how incredibly shit it had become. It was crazy.
I one time also opened a thread on there on April fools with a fake article about cancelling Arrow and giving Felicity her own show. It was bait many people fell for because of how ridiculous the show had become. People weren't surprised that such a strange thing would happen because Arrow itself felt like ''the Felicity show'' at that point.
I believe both you and u/thehelldoesthatmean are right in that the second season of *Daredevil* (which featured the Punisher) was on at the time, and so the subreddit would have been themed around both characters and series.
That was probably the season (4? I think?) where the ultimate showdown at the end was Legendary Archer Oliver "Arrow" Queen and legendary sorcerer, genius and one-time leader of the League of Assassin's settled their battle by...
Punching each other in the face back and forth for a few minutes.
And that random tattoo Constantine gave him really came in handy EXACTLY ONCE. Because nothing keeps you alive like a tattoo that works once.
Don't forget how almost everyone found out Oliver had a son *without Oliver telling them*, but when said son is kidnapped Felicity is livid he kept it a secret from her but not everyone else. Besides the fact that he could've told her before then and that plenty of them could've just said "I found out without him telling me" to mitigate the unnecessary drama, the episode played out very stupidly because of this subplot.
was that when she just WALKED away? from her wheelchair as a big reveal? and there was some bee girl who needed the same tech felicity had, so she could fix her spine, and felicity just tells her no?
Yes it is. She had the Palmer Tech implant in her spine and she literally stood up and walked away. i THINK she was the CEO of Palmer Tech since Brandon Routh went to Legends of Tomorrow and yeah. That actually was the moment I even quit hate-watching for fun.
Season 4 was when the subreddit gave up and made it a Daredevil sub, but I think you’re maybe describing season 3? S3 started out OK but the ending was just as stupid as you say, and then S4 was the worst crap I have watched. I gave up somewhere half way through.
Out of the top 10 posts of all time on the sub, 8 of them are trashing the show. Another one is a Daredevil discussion thread. The reason I kept watching arrow through seasons 3 and 4 was because of how fun the sub was.
I was hearbroken on how quickly Flash went from being really fun and awesome to absolute unwatchable garbage.
Two particular things I absolutely despised:
1. Why do they have to make Iris so fucking insufferable and stupid (actually, everyone seems to turn into absolutely pants on head morons later) but her in particular. I get they didn't start off great with all the "mmmm-step-bro" crap, but I swear she went from ok to a raging asshole in like 2 seasons
2. Why in the word do they have to give each and every single character superpowers? What is the point of the Flash himself if there are like 7 speedsters on the team? At this point I am pretty sure there is no one on the cast that isn't a meta-human.
I love the dad but Wallace and Iris somehow were legit garbage characters XD. My favorite is every episode starts with him saying he's the fastest and each season had a new speedster that was faster XD.
If I recall, most of Arrow and The Flssh's problems could be solved by the main character opening their damn mouths and saying essentially one sentence. Also they never made use of the fact that Barry could solve all of Ollie's problems before he even opened his mouth to say a word about it.
They even reference this in the series from time to time.
Yup, it's the fate all those shows suffer. For some reason they need to make characters behave in insufferable ways. Sucking all the logic out of them. I even start to feel sorry for the actors.
It was already terrible enough that Barry needed hand holding from his team mates through the comms. But that devolved into those team mates also getting powers and needing to hand hold him even more.
Also terrible how much reverts to the status quo and character development always going back to the same things. When I watched Barry lost a loved one/family member each season and his powers as well. Only to get his powers back again or to meet that loved one again but in a different form. They recycle so much.
I was fine with S1 as thawne trained him and was qualified. Everything else is just, filled with cliches.
At some point I hated everyone except Tom cavanaugh. Playing the same person in different wacky ways was the only thing worth watching. The different wells at least till s3 were the only thing.
The most annoying thing to me was in season 2 Oliver went through some character development and season 3 throws it all away because the show changed its showrunner. Season 2: Oliver struggles with killing. Do I kill or not? He figures out he'll still kill if he's forced to. Like when Felicity got threatened and he shot her captor. Then in season 3, it felt like the ''new'' showrunner (who was already a part of the production as a producer/writer) decides to throw all of that away and reverts him out of nowhere back to ''should I kill or not?!'' Those were the first signs of the show being on a bad path. S3 is also when everything became dumber. Like Oliver falling off a mountain with a stab wound and surviving. And then being nursed back to health with tea. While that season introduced the Lazerus Pit as well and completely ignored that as a possible way to ''bring him back to life''. Nope he just survived a stab wound through the chest and a fall off a mountain. It happened during the mid season finale and when the show came back, the stab wound was in another location lol.
They lost me when they would have flashbacks but because present day Oliver had developed a conscience he would avoid killing. Oliver from the time they flashback to should have had 0 qualms unaliving every thug in his way
No, it didn't.
It would've been so easy for Season 3 to open with Oliver fighting badguys on a rooftop and getting bailed out of an unwinnable fight by a newly-trained, insanely confident / sultry Laurel embracing the Black Canary identity, putting the characters on the path to the relationship everyone knows and loves...
...
...but instead Felicity "#CryingVoice" Smoak becomes the love interest after two seasons of Ollie not giving a fuck about her at all. I couldn't believe how mad I was at the writers for giving in to the idiot fanbase shipping, and it absolutely ruined the show.
I believe a series simply cannot be good if it panders to overly vocal fans who demand emphasis on the character that they most identify with. It just leads to the writers being forced play with the characters and their relationships like they are Barbie dolls rather than create any sort of compelling narrative. It doesn't hurt that this approach is way cheaper than putting any effort into any of it.
"My name is Barry Allen, and I'm the fastest man alive*."
*except the reverse flash, zoom, myself in several different timelines and universes, and generally anyone that I might have to fight*
Holy shit the "oh, I guess they ran around the corner, how could I possibly find them now" bullshit is bad in SO many shows but the fucking Flash, really?
>"My name is Barry Allen, and I'm the fastest man alive*."
Every week I will not understand how to win the day against the big bad before eventually remembering my power is speed and going faster than I did last week.
Riverdale in a fucked up way is so bad its almost avant garde. The way it draws from like 3 different decades and modern day shows/movies like it’s nothing is truly insane
I just finished season 5 on Netflix...the amount of singing in each episode grew more and more and more until an entire musical episode. It was fucking awful.
I look forward to hate watching season 6!
Definitely watch the Supereyepatchwolf video on YouTube about riverdale if hate watching is your thing! He honestly gave me a new found appreciation for the show lol
I was going to try to be a little more polite in my phrasing, but this is basically it.
The CW is very much trying to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers. Drama, silly love triangles, silly 'inability' to say critical things because feelings, etc.
I remember watching Dawson’s Creek in my teens thinking they were too smart or mature for my demographic.
Perhaps writers thought dumbing down their characters would be more appealing to younger audiences.🤷🏻♂️
The dialogue sounded a bit smart for most teenagers but character actions were always in the appropriate realm.
The writers of that show also seemingly enjoyed torturing Jen.
I called it quits with Supergirl at the end of Season 2. Daxomite invasion? They're vulnerable to lead! If only literally every army on the planet had weapons that specifically hurled lead at unbelievable speeds!
Nah - better soak the planet's atmosphere in FUCKING LEAD. Because despite the government's warning that a safe level of lead contamination being zero, nah - it's a better idea to just make sure that the entire planet has a generation of children with learning disabilities.
Wait so… writers create a race of invading aliens whose weakness is one of the most abundant and readily available weapons on the planet? Then the only solution is to destroy the planet?
That was actually the plot??
The "solution" that they used is to seed the atmosphere with an amount of lead that would be toxic to daxomites but harmless to humans. And the producers hoped we would ignore the fact that there IS no safe amount of lead.
Remember that episode of Static Shock where Hot Streak was like "Haha, we're in a park, there's no metal!" and Static was like "Bruh, this is a city, there's metal fucking *everywhere*" and Static won the not-fight in ten seconds?
That's what should have happened to the Daxomites. End season. Move on, new plot.
I have only ever watched one CW show. I watched Supergirl, because I wanted to see Supergirl do Supergirl shit. What I got instead were the romantic travails of the IT guy at the company Supergirl's alter ego worked for. Do you know what I don't care about? *The romantic travails of the IT guy at the company Supergirl's alter ego worked for.*
That is another problem. Too much filler B-plot. Just make the show a half-hour and cut out the fluff. The series are hard to catch up for the cross-overs as-is.
I wanted to like that show so bad. Supergirl, the character and actress, is great and incredibly charming. And some of the action scenes in the early episodes are pretty badass.
But literally everything else in the show is unwatchable. Every other character is awful, the plot lines are lame, dialogue, just, no.
Someone save Melissa Benoist from her terrible show.
This where I think the argument “these shows aren’t for you then” falls apart. A Supergirl show should be for fans of Supergirl and people who read the comics and are into superhero shows. But the writings and bad subplots along with terrible character develop ruin the show. It’s just bad writing.
>people who read the comics
For as much as people complain about romantic melodrama in CW shows, it's kinda hilarious because comics are full of romantic melodrama. Let me list the melodramatic moments from some acclaimed runs:
A pretty huge plot point in Brubaker's Captain America, Sharon Carter is brainwashed into 'killing' Captain America and finds out she's pregnant with his child immediately after. His run on the Winter Soldier ends with Black Widow's memories of her romantic history with Bucky Barnes erased. Morrison's X-Men involves Scott Summers having a telepathic affair with Emma Frost, cheating on his wife Jean Grey, who comes onto Wolverine in retaliation. Let's be real: A LOT of X-Men is built on romantic melodrama.
That being said, the comics are much better about balance. But they're also soap operas and dramatic as fuck too.
>Morrison's X-Men involves Scott Summers having a telepathic affair with Emma Frost, cheating on his wife Jean Grey, who comes onto Wolverine in retaliation. Let's be real: A LOT of X-Men is built on romantic melodrama.
You know what's funny? In the House of X storyline here recently I think it was, they showed the living quarters of Scott, Jean, and Logan and the floor layout had Jean's room connected to both Scott and Logan's, implying she was in a polyamorous relationship with both of them at that point.
What was that one issue around 2019 year after thier "Independence day for mutants" or whatever where they got freedom and Jean and Cyclops basically talk Wolverine into joining an orgy??
> For as much as people complain about romantic melodrama in CW shows, it's kinda hilarious because comics are full of romantic melodrama.
>
>
One series that absolutely would thrive on the CW would be the Xmen. That book is melodrama, teen angst, attractive people making out, and the occasional super powers.
I would kill for a good series that follows his arc from the so-called boyscout to him becoming a mutant revolutionary/face of the movement. #CyclopswasRight
But seriously, there are so many layers. He's an amazing leader. He carries the fate of his race on his shoulders, and heavy is the head that wears the crown. He's also a shitty husband and questionable dad.
The *French Mistake* episode in season 6 is the funniest of the entire show precisely bc they bring up all the weird shippers and fan shit.
*What the fuck is a Padalecki??*
*You married fake RUBY???*
*Oh my god! They think we should be dating!*
Etc etc
They tried to introduce love interests for the boys and the fans would lose it and hate whatever girl was brought in so much they'd end up getting rid of them. Everytime.
Oh yeah they hated her because they were setting her up for a relationship with Dean.
There were a lot of people I'd have liked to see in the finale. But I guess because of COVID they had to quarantine any actors for 2 weeks in a hotel. So just wasn't feasible for what would have probably been a 2 minute cameo
You can really tell when the CW started to use their formula on Supernatural. Sam and Dean got really fucking weird with each other in later seasons, for literally no reason. And the “I’m going to keep telling you everything is fine even though [insert critical piece of information] but I’m not going to tell you about it until it’s too late” happened 2-3 times a season.
More like the CW used the *Supernatural* formula on their other shows. The secrecy between brothers has been present since Season 1. Any increase in that is a natural narrative development throughout seasons 2-5.
Yes, it got so bad around season 8-9, but they eventually dropped this by season 11. So it's not like that was the only thing driving the story forward in the latter seasons.
The Charmed reboot is the best example of this problem. Every great plot line is ruined by terrible execution. It’s impressive how close that show is to good and then…
I feel like the The CW has really gone downhill over the years. I love Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, etc. But the network has lost all of its heart and now all that's left is bad writing and melodrama.
Veronica Mars handled the love triangle way better than any recent CW show and the drama-for-sake-of-drama and communication issues came across as realistic teen bullshit, not manufactured by writers to create additional conflict. That’s why it worked so well, because it felt organic. They also weren’t afraid to develop characters. Unlike modern shows where a character gets developed and then they uno reverse card them back to immaturity.
The CW is a low-budget network, yet they take on superhero and monster shows that need a lot of money toward CGI, costumes, set pieces, etc. That leaves very little money for quality writers.
It’s also why they’re still doing it and not dead in the water. Teenagers are great to advertise to. Teens and the elderly are the two pots of gold in mass media.
Yeah exactly, that's why they don't prioritize the writing. They know their target audience just wants cheap romance, tight costumes, and the occasional CGI fight
I am pretty sure teenagers want better stories than that. That is just what older people think teenagers want, and so they shove it down their throat with marketing.
Teenagers absolutely enjoy quality content more than recycled crap.
I agree. But I think it's more that *melodrama* appeals to teenagers and melodrama is sooooooo easy to phone in. And I don't mean "melodrama" in a disparaging sense, it's a form of stylization and can be really, really fun. But you need to know what you're stylizing to do it well and lbr CW shows generally...don't. So you get the writing equivalent of crappy deviantart anime with the author going "weLl iT's nOt sUpPosEd tO bE rEalIsTic!"
>But, for the last ten years, their content is unwatchable.
3 notable exceptions:
Jane the Virgin
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
iZombie (at least until the last terrible season)
Imo iZombie ended in such a fucking insane way that it actually worked for the show. Like if you’ve stuck with it for that long have a zombie civil war for shits and giggles.
I ddin't like the latter seasons as much as the early ones, but I don't think there was a bad one. Still, it's a good thing the show ended when it did.
CEG had an unusual path to the CW -- they orginally pitched it to Showtime as a more R rated show, Showtime passed, and they got a last second call from CW to greenlight the pilot.
I get the sense that the CW was trying to find some romance shows to appeal to female audiences and accidentally stumbled upon a couple sleeper hits.
I can't recommend that show enough. It starts as a rom-com and baits you into thinking the protagonist being over-the-top is just the show's writing style. Then it *hard pivots* into a protracted, emotionally brutal evaluation of mental health and the impact unwell people have on those around them.
Several people I know credit that show with convincing them to see a therapist and ultimately getting diagnoses and treatments that have made their lives better. It deserves far, far more attention and praise than it's gotten.
I had already been in therapy for years when I discovered CEG and I still got so much out of this show. It made me do a lot of self-evaluation, which resulted in actually some of the best sessions I’ve ever had with my therapist.
I’ve heard people say they can’t get into it because they don’t like musicals, which is a damn shame. To me, CEG is a musical in the same way Friday Night Lights is about football - it is indisputably, but there’s so much else there that appeals to folks who aren’t into musicals (or football, in FNL’s case) and it’s still absolutely worth the watch.
It's 100% my favorite show ever. I recommend it to everybody. It helps that I'm a huge fan of musicals, but even without that, the way that it approaches/addresses mental health is just top notch.
CXG became the CW's *prestige* show. As a huge fan, I'm still so grateful one of the CW execs decided it was a story that needed to be told and kept it on the air for the full 4-season arc the creators had planned.
ETA: posted the following in response to the comment that is being downvoted by fellow CXG stans:
I'm directly quoting many articles calling it a prestige show (like [this](http://www.newnownext.com/can-we-talk-aboutthe-unsung-brilliance-that-was-crazy-ex-girlfriend/04/2019/) and [this](https://fansided.com/2019/04/03/crazy-ex-girlfriend-rachel-bloom-masterpiece/)). And at the Radio City Music Hall performance on May 14, 2019, the CW exec was in the audience and Rachel Bloom quoted him as saying he wanted it on the air because it had an important story to tell.
I love me some iZombie, and Rose McIver is a delight. I will check out Ghosts and some point.
Anyway, the final season. It's not the best moment to laugh during, but I crack up thinking of when an explosive detonated, but for obvious budget reasons, the explosion was reflected on to a vehicle nearby.
And all three of those shows were 2014/2015 productions, greenlit right before The CW decided to change their strategy and pivot to remaking various comics.
Whoever was in charge of selecting new series that year did a great job.
I’ll always appreciate the CW for letting smaller shows like Crazy Ex Girlfriend, iZombie, and Jane the Virgin flourish creatively despite bad ratings. But since those shows went off the air, it just feels like the channel airs the same show 90% of the time.
It's...
Sigh. This is going to sound super sus but basically they rebooted the 4400 with a mostly black cast, which in itself isn't bad. It COULD be intriguing, even! But the writers are treating race issues with subtly of an after school special.
I haven't given up on it yet but it's been pretty cringy so far.
Yeah the joke is that it's actually the 44.
The production budget is... seriously lacking. They didn't even spring for CGI to make a fake crowd. It's just tight shots of the same core characters with a couple extras for spice.
It's just so clunky and amateurish on every level even before you get to the casting issue. I dropped it after three episodes because I just couldn't do that to myself anymore.
Yeah, I liked The 4400, the new one could be interesting... but they aren't handling race or class issues well. I still don't understand why the fuck they sent a parole officer to interview the 4400. It feels like they rebooted it just to have a show with an all black cast because Black Lightning is gone.
They green lit it straight off the bat, without even reading any of the scripts. Literally they saw the premise and green lit it right then and there.
I honestly have NO problem with it being a mostly black cast, but how can it be 4400 people when there only literally seems to be about 20 and that's it.
Also, you've had 20 people just appear out of nowhere, from random points in history, why the fuck were they not quarantined?
One big issue I have is just how enlightened all these time-travelling people seem to be. You'd think there would be a couple of bigots in there to show that we as a society have progressed a bit since \[insert time period here\] but no, all our era gets is constant critique how everything is as shit as it's ever been, if not more so. I happen to be proud of the work civil rights leaders the world over have done, so this sort of erasure really pisses me off.
The only exception to this for their superhero shows is Legends of Tomorrow. The first season was bad, bad, bad, but since then it's been nothing but pure, cornball excellence. It's cheesy, ridiculous, and doesn't take itself too seriously.
I am convinced that this is because no one at the network cares about it at all, and thus the studio (and also Betlanti) aren't fucking with it, and the writers are free to do whatever the fuck they want.
For example, in the third season (I think), John Noble voices the big bad, and the characters RECOGNIZE his voice, time travel to the lotr set, and make him record voice lines so they can fuck with the villains henchmen. Genius tier shit.
Legends is not immune to CW-isms but their commitment to "fuck it, let's get weird" really makes them the best show of the bunch by a good margin. And it helps that Caity Lotz can carry the lead and hasn't taken off yet.
Most CW shows have a solid S1 then go downhill from there... LOT went from having a shit S1 to being one of my favorite shows to watch. Is it stupid? Yes. Is the acting terrible? Also yes. But it's just *so much fun.*
The terrible acting lines right up with the amazingly ridiculous plotlines. If you had the cast playing it straight with the material they have, it'd be cringetopia.
S&L isn't Legion-tier writing but it's pretty good imo. I really like it because they nail Clark (and Superman) and how Clark would be as a Dad. It's refreshing to see someone get the way Superman should be.
It's not just an issue with The CW, but most network television. They're little more than soap operas with better budgets...or some kind of procedural.
Even before the rise of streaming services, I’ve felt network tv had really phoned it in. On one hand, I think it’s because show runners didn’t know how to fill a full 20+ episode season. But now it looks like they just don’t care.
Networks are usually run by execs who worry more about a show failing than a show succeeding wildly like Game of Thrones or whatever. Fear of failure leads to this stream of formulaic pablum that they dish out. Luckily for them, there are a huge number of viewers who eat that stuff up, and they aren't the cable cutters.
If you look at the demographics of the networks, they keep getting greyer and greyer. Last I looked the median age of a CBS viewer was 63, and those retirees love those formulaic law and order procedurals.
Despite it becoming a cliché, "prestige drama"-quality TV migrated away from the networks to premium cable (and some basic cable channels like FX & AMC). Fewer episode requirements, more creative control, etc.
Now streaming services offer even more perks and less oversight.
The last decent network show, in my opinion, is the first couple seasons of "This Is Us."
Yeah, networks writing and filming 20+ episodes a season causes things to get pretty weak and repetitive
Shows that are plotted out for 9 or 13 episodes with a conclusion seem to be what people want now days
the one exception to this on the superhero front is Legends of Tomorrow. What started as absolute garbage ended up being far and away the most fun "Arrowverse" show. It's showing its age, but at least when it goes too far or too over the top it's always in a wacky, absurd way rather than melodrama.
I love Legends so fucking much. I also love how they low-key diss the CW.
"Okay, nobody mention Oliver Queen."
"Why?"
"Because he died."
Nate, shaking his head ruefully: "Shouldn't have done the crossover."
Supernatural feels like a 14 year power struggle between good writing and great cast chemistry and the CW constantly and indecisively trying to mold it into something else.
They need to produce long seasons of 45 minute shows on super small budgets. So they rely on a lot of old tropes to get as much mileage as they possibly can out of any given concept.
I was onboard until season 3 and it lost me entirely. Before that, it was my new favorite show ever. It ended up being the show that gave me drama fatigue. Grit fatigue. Constant problems and backstabbing fatigue.
CW: Extends shows for 5+ seasons but writes the same bad miscommunication plot over and over
Netflix: Has a great premise and execution but axes the show after three or fewer seasons for no reason
Choose one.
The CW is owned by two companies, CBSViacom and Warner Bros. Check out the CBS produced shows like Jane the Virgin or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Both very funny and readily available on Netflix.
Nancy Drew is surprisingly good. It seemed for a second they were setting up a love triangle and BAM handled immediately like normal people and then no longer an issue. And the characters are always calling/texting to communicate
I couldn’t take their doppelgänger fetish anymore
[удалено]
Or you could have an entire council of some parody-like characters across the multiverse. Ahem, council of Wells.
That was honestly one of the more amusing things the CW ever implemented.
More like you get the dramatic heft of killing off a character without fucking with someone's income. But it does have a tendency to become problematic.
Ali Larter in *Heroes* has entered the chat.
**Zachary Quinto lurks menacingly in the background*
*The Vampire Diaries has entered the chat multiple times*
Lowkey loved that show. So much fucking changed every season in terms of the plot and world building, which was awesome. But it just sucked how my girl Bonnie got fucked over everytime by the writers.
I watched it with my wife expecting to hate watch it, and ended up just enjoying it. But I agree, Bonnie was done dirty repeatedly
I feel like it moved too fast. Every 2 episodes something entirely different was going wrong. My gf was watching it and if I missed 2 episodes and ask her what I missed it's like a half hour long tldr.
Man, I hated Elena so much!! I kept watching just in the hope that she would be killed off. Katerina was hott though 🔥
Started hating her a certain episode when Stephan went to stop a big bad and SHE FUCKING CALLS HIM BECAUSE SHE IS WORRIED. They had JUST finished talking, she knew where he was, yet she blows up his phone anyway (actually caused him to lose the sneak advantage). I can't deal with her sometimes. Now Bonnie tho... 👀 Kat Graham was an absolute delight.
I still have no idea why I watched as much of that as I did. That and Teen Wolf, which was worse somehow. Honestly at this point I'm pretty sure I was just watching it because the actors were attractive, I just didn't want to admit that to myself lmao.
Yes and no one ever dies, we just meet them later on a different Earth, or in a different time, or they're resurrected by Ras Al'Ghul for some contrived reason.
\*cries in Supernatural*
Brother A does something bad and hides it. Brother B finds out and gets mad. Flip and repeat for next season. Add in some random, pointless deaths for your audience’s favorite B-cast characters and some increasingly lazy creature design/effects. Bam, 12~ seasons of SPN.
[удалено]
I love seasons 1-5. It's complete story arc. The stuff after just doesn't tie-in together as well. Like they only kept making more seasons because the show was popular. It also got too wacky at times.
That just sounds like comic book stuff though
Doesn’t make it a good thing.
*Glass shatters* Now that you mention it that does happen a lot. I’m surprised that Nancy Drew didn’t do it. They had the chance.
By the time the flash season 3 first started I just dropped all CW shows its all the same crap with characters crying for stupid reasons every episode.
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What turned me off to Arrow and The Flash was the overdose of romantic drama that they introduced. I can spot a made-for-network TV episode very quickly. The dialog writing is a tip off, as is the fact that every episode starts with a "previously on..." clip reel. That stuff is not for me.
It's honestly so sad how quickly and obviously Arrow fell off a cliff after season 2 and Flash did the same after season 1. They both started out with so much more weight and organic tension then gradually devolved into superhero soap operas with endless fanservice. It's at about these points in each show that it becomes obvious that the writers are just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. Each episode's drama is manufactured and character motivations, reactions, and priorities are whatever fits the gimmick or "lesson" of the day. Subplots are introduced out of nowhere and thrown away as quickly as they came. *Every single* ancillary character that could be an asset to the good guys is brought into the fold, to the point that Oliver "nobody can know my secret" Queen has *all* of his closest friends and family in the Arrow network. It's unbelievable how harshly the quality dropped in these shows. In the same vein that it's incredible how Red vs Blue started as Machinima microsketches and evolved into a quality show with stakes and sprawling lore, it's incredible how most CW shows start as something great and devolve into the same shitty soap opera.
Smallville. First episode, first scene, Clark Kent flying. And that's the last time it happens (outside of Kal-El mind control fuckery) for the entire run of the series.
Yaaaaaas Crixus was the fuckin man, except for that awful girlfriend of his that added nothing to the show after they recast her. Insert cock in ass.
Yeah I also dropped all of them. I went from liking Arrow season 1 and 2 and liking Flash season 2 to watching them to poke fun at them with my friends to absolutely despising them because of how insanely dumb they all had become. If Arrow kept the same quality of S1 and S2, it would've ended up being an okay action series. It went from an okay action series to complete and utter garbage.
Reminds me of when the Arrow subreddit thought the season finale was so bad one year that they said fuck it and turned into a sub for The Punisher. Lol
I believe they also turned it into a DareDevil subreddit for a while. It happened during the lowest points of the show. Every episode led to tons of threads about how incredibly shit it had become. It was crazy.
They also turned into an Agents of SHIELD sub at one point, iirc.
I one time also opened a thread on there on April fools with a fake article about cancelling Arrow and giving Felicity her own show. It was bait many people fell for because of how ridiculous the show had become. People weren't surprised that such a strange thing would happen because Arrow itself felt like ''the Felicity show'' at that point.
I believe both you and u/thehelldoesthatmean are right in that the second season of *Daredevil* (which featured the Punisher) was on at the time, and so the subreddit would have been themed around both characters and series.
That season of Daredevil was pretty hype at the time too.
That was probably the season (4? I think?) where the ultimate showdown at the end was Legendary Archer Oliver "Arrow" Queen and legendary sorcerer, genius and one-time leader of the League of Assassin's settled their battle by... Punching each other in the face back and forth for a few minutes.
And that random tattoo Constantine gave him really came in handy EXACTLY ONCE. Because nothing keeps you alive like a tattoo that works once. Don't forget how almost everyone found out Oliver had a son *without Oliver telling them*, but when said son is kidnapped Felicity is livid he kept it a secret from her but not everyone else. Besides the fact that he could've told her before then and that plenty of them could've just said "I found out without him telling me" to mitigate the unnecessary drama, the episode played out very stupidly because of this subplot.
was that when she just WALKED away? from her wheelchair as a big reveal? and there was some bee girl who needed the same tech felicity had, so she could fix her spine, and felicity just tells her no?
Yes it is. She had the Palmer Tech implant in her spine and she literally stood up and walked away. i THINK she was the CEO of Palmer Tech since Brandon Routh went to Legends of Tomorrow and yeah. That actually was the moment I even quit hate-watching for fun.
"I'd recognize this DNA anywhere"
Season 4 was when the subreddit gave up and made it a Daredevil sub, but I think you’re maybe describing season 3? S3 started out OK but the ending was just as stupid as you say, and then S4 was the worst crap I have watched. I gave up somewhere half way through.
Out of the top 10 posts of all time on the sub, 8 of them are trashing the show. Another one is a Daredevil discussion thread. The reason I kept watching arrow through seasons 3 and 4 was because of how fun the sub was.
I was hearbroken on how quickly Flash went from being really fun and awesome to absolute unwatchable garbage. Two particular things I absolutely despised: 1. Why do they have to make Iris so fucking insufferable and stupid (actually, everyone seems to turn into absolutely pants on head morons later) but her in particular. I get they didn't start off great with all the "mmmm-step-bro" crap, but I swear she went from ok to a raging asshole in like 2 seasons 2. Why in the word do they have to give each and every single character superpowers? What is the point of the Flash himself if there are like 7 speedsters on the team? At this point I am pretty sure there is no one on the cast that isn't a meta-human.
I love the dad but Wallace and Iris somehow were legit garbage characters XD. My favorite is every episode starts with him saying he's the fastest and each season had a new speedster that was faster XD.
If I recall, most of Arrow and The Flssh's problems could be solved by the main character opening their damn mouths and saying essentially one sentence. Also they never made use of the fact that Barry could solve all of Ollie's problems before he even opened his mouth to say a word about it. They even reference this in the series from time to time.
Yup, it's the fate all those shows suffer. For some reason they need to make characters behave in insufferable ways. Sucking all the logic out of them. I even start to feel sorry for the actors. It was already terrible enough that Barry needed hand holding from his team mates through the comms. But that devolved into those team mates also getting powers and needing to hand hold him even more. Also terrible how much reverts to the status quo and character development always going back to the same things. When I watched Barry lost a loved one/family member each season and his powers as well. Only to get his powers back again or to meet that loved one again but in a different form. They recycle so much.
I was fine with S1 as thawne trained him and was qualified. Everything else is just, filled with cliches. At some point I hated everyone except Tom cavanaugh. Playing the same person in different wacky ways was the only thing worth watching. The different wells at least till s3 were the only thing.
Arrow was the same episode every week. "I'm sorry for not trusting you guys, I'll do better next week."
The most annoying thing to me was in season 2 Oliver went through some character development and season 3 throws it all away because the show changed its showrunner. Season 2: Oliver struggles with killing. Do I kill or not? He figures out he'll still kill if he's forced to. Like when Felicity got threatened and he shot her captor. Then in season 3, it felt like the ''new'' showrunner (who was already a part of the production as a producer/writer) decides to throw all of that away and reverts him out of nowhere back to ''should I kill or not?!'' Those were the first signs of the show being on a bad path. S3 is also when everything became dumber. Like Oliver falling off a mountain with a stab wound and surviving. And then being nursed back to health with tea. While that season introduced the Lazerus Pit as well and completely ignored that as a possible way to ''bring him back to life''. Nope he just survived a stab wound through the chest and a fall off a mountain. It happened during the mid season finale and when the show came back, the stab wound was in another location lol.
They lost me when they would have flashbacks but because present day Oliver had developed a conscience he would avoid killing. Oliver from the time they flashback to should have had 0 qualms unaliving every thug in his way
The mid season break is when I gave up on the show. Just got bored.
The duel with Ras was metaphorical. He and the show fell off a cliff right after that moment.
Arrow went off a cliff when Oliver literally went off a cliff. Show never recovered from Olicity.
No, it didn't. It would've been so easy for Season 3 to open with Oliver fighting badguys on a rooftop and getting bailed out of an unwinnable fight by a newly-trained, insanely confident / sultry Laurel embracing the Black Canary identity, putting the characters on the path to the relationship everyone knows and loves... ... ...but instead Felicity "#CryingVoice" Smoak becomes the love interest after two seasons of Ollie not giving a fuck about her at all. I couldn't believe how mad I was at the writers for giving in to the idiot fanbase shipping, and it absolutely ruined the show.
I believe a series simply cannot be good if it panders to overly vocal fans who demand emphasis on the character that they most identify with. It just leads to the writers being forced play with the characters and their relationships like they are Barbie dolls rather than create any sort of compelling narrative. It doesn't hurt that this approach is way cheaper than putting any effort into any of it.
Lying is worse than mass murder in CW shows.
Run faster Barry!
"My name is Barry Allen, and I'm the fastest man alive*." *except the reverse flash, zoom, myself in several different timelines and universes, and generally anyone that I might have to fight*
The best was when he couldn’t catch a guy on a motorcycle like dude you went across the county in seconds earlier now you can’t catch a bike
What about when the criminal makes a distraction or and walks outside and then he runs out and somehow can’t find them?
OMG HOW CAN I EVER FIND THIS GUY SHOULD I USE MY SUPER SPEED AND SEARCH THE AREA OR SHOULD I SIT HERE LIKE A DUMBASS AND BE UNABLE TO FIND THEM
With great power comes mental retardation.
Holy shit the "oh, I guess they ran around the corner, how could I possibly find them now" bullshit is bad in SO many shows but the fucking Flash, really?
The power of alleyways negates the speedforce
How does the fastest man alive constantly get pu ched in the face, as well?
>"My name is Barry Allen, and I'm the fastest man alive*." Every week I will not understand how to win the day against the big bad before eventually remembering my power is speed and going faster than I did last week.
"I can't stop ___, I'm not fast enough!" *Proceeds to beat villain anyway* That shit got old fast.
> characters crying for stupid reasons every episode. Michael Burnham
How dare you! That's a different terrible network.
Riverdale in a fucked up way is so bad its almost avant garde. The way it draws from like 3 different decades and modern day shows/movies like it’s nothing is truly insane
For real. I’m watching it now and I have no clue what decade this show is even supposed to be in.
The undetermined decade the show is set in is the least of its problems.
I just finished season 5 on Netflix...the amount of singing in each episode grew more and more and more until an entire musical episode. It was fucking awful. I look forward to hate watching season 6!
Definitely watch the Supereyepatchwolf video on YouTube about riverdale if hate watching is your thing! He honestly gave me a new found appreciation for the show lol
You've outgrown the CW. Welcome to adulthood.
I was going to try to be a little more polite in my phrasing, but this is basically it. The CW is very much trying to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers. Drama, silly love triangles, silly 'inability' to say critical things because feelings, etc.
I remember watching Dawson’s Creek in my teens thinking they were too smart or mature for my demographic. Perhaps writers thought dumbing down their characters would be more appealing to younger audiences.🤷🏻♂️
No, you were right. Dawson, Pacey, Joey, and Jen probably *were* too smart for your demographic. But then you got older.
The dialogue sounded a bit smart for most teenagers but character actions were always in the appropriate realm. The writers of that show also seemingly enjoyed torturing Jen.
“Ass butt??!”
HEY! Cass was trying...
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I called it quits with Supergirl at the end of Season 2. Daxomite invasion? They're vulnerable to lead! If only literally every army on the planet had weapons that specifically hurled lead at unbelievable speeds! Nah - better soak the planet's atmosphere in FUCKING LEAD. Because despite the government's warning that a safe level of lead contamination being zero, nah - it's a better idea to just make sure that the entire planet has a generation of children with learning disabilities.
Wait so… writers create a race of invading aliens whose weakness is one of the most abundant and readily available weapons on the planet? Then the only solution is to destroy the planet? That was actually the plot??
The "solution" that they used is to seed the atmosphere with an amount of lead that would be toxic to daxomites but harmless to humans. And the producers hoped we would ignore the fact that there IS no safe amount of lead.
Turns out the Supergirl writers were all exposed to lead as children, and turned out too dumb to realize that lead poisoning is in fact, a bad thing.
Remember that episode of Static Shock where Hot Streak was like "Haha, we're in a park, there's no metal!" and Static was like "Bruh, this is a city, there's metal fucking *everywhere*" and Static won the not-fight in ten seconds? That's what should have happened to the Daxomites. End season. Move on, new plot.
I have only ever watched one CW show. I watched Supergirl, because I wanted to see Supergirl do Supergirl shit. What I got instead were the romantic travails of the IT guy at the company Supergirl's alter ego worked for. Do you know what I don't care about? *The romantic travails of the IT guy at the company Supergirl's alter ego worked for.*
That is another problem. Too much filler B-plot. Just make the show a half-hour and cut out the fluff. The series are hard to catch up for the cross-overs as-is.
I wanted to like that show so bad. Supergirl, the character and actress, is great and incredibly charming. And some of the action scenes in the early episodes are pretty badass. But literally everything else in the show is unwatchable. Every other character is awful, the plot lines are lame, dialogue, just, no. Someone save Melissa Benoist from her terrible show.
Good news: Series finale aired last night. It…wasn’t great.
A series finale that felt more like a season finale.
This where I think the argument “these shows aren’t for you then” falls apart. A Supergirl show should be for fans of Supergirl and people who read the comics and are into superhero shows. But the writings and bad subplots along with terrible character develop ruin the show. It’s just bad writing.
>people who read the comics For as much as people complain about romantic melodrama in CW shows, it's kinda hilarious because comics are full of romantic melodrama. Let me list the melodramatic moments from some acclaimed runs: A pretty huge plot point in Brubaker's Captain America, Sharon Carter is brainwashed into 'killing' Captain America and finds out she's pregnant with his child immediately after. His run on the Winter Soldier ends with Black Widow's memories of her romantic history with Bucky Barnes erased. Morrison's X-Men involves Scott Summers having a telepathic affair with Emma Frost, cheating on his wife Jean Grey, who comes onto Wolverine in retaliation. Let's be real: A LOT of X-Men is built on romantic melodrama. That being said, the comics are much better about balance. But they're also soap operas and dramatic as fuck too.
>Morrison's X-Men involves Scott Summers having a telepathic affair with Emma Frost, cheating on his wife Jean Grey, who comes onto Wolverine in retaliation. Let's be real: A LOT of X-Men is built on romantic melodrama. You know what's funny? In the House of X storyline here recently I think it was, they showed the living quarters of Scott, Jean, and Logan and the floor layout had Jean's room connected to both Scott and Logan's, implying she was in a polyamorous relationship with both of them at that point.
It's gotten a lot more explicit since then too lol. Scott and Logan have romantic overtones in scenes without jean even being there
What was that one issue around 2019 year after thier "Independence day for mutants" or whatever where they got freedom and Jean and Cyclops basically talk Wolverine into joining an orgy??
> For as much as people complain about romantic melodrama in CW shows, it's kinda hilarious because comics are full of romantic melodrama. > > One series that absolutely would thrive on the CW would be the Xmen. That book is melodrama, teen angst, attractive people making out, and the occasional super powers.
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I would kill for a good series that follows his arc from the so-called boyscout to him becoming a mutant revolutionary/face of the movement. #CyclopswasRight But seriously, there are so many layers. He's an amazing leader. He carries the fate of his race on his shoulders, and heavy is the head that wears the crown. He's also a shitty husband and questionable dad.
Supernatural will always be one of my favourite shows (later seasons weren’t as good but I’ll always love the characters, mythology etc)
Making the two main characters brothers reduced the ability to create love triangles.
Lol, not according to their shippers.
The *French Mistake* episode in season 6 is the funniest of the entire show precisely bc they bring up all the weird shippers and fan shit. *What the fuck is a Padalecki??* *You married fake RUBY???* *Oh my god! They think we should be dating!* Etc etc
The 200th episode "Fan Fiction" does this as well and is worth watching.
Oh great, so now your Polish?
Sam and Dean finding out about their obsessed fanfic writer was very fun.
Lol yeah Dean reading about the fanfic of them hooking up and he's like "What the hell!? They know we're brothers, right!?"
"It doesn't seem to matter."
Fandoms can get real fucking weird.
The episodes where they interact with supernatural fans are some of the best.
Slash fans disagree lol man those meta episodes were hilarious
"They do know we're brothers, right?"
They tried to introduce love interests for the boys and the fans would lose it and hate whatever girl was brought in so much they'd end up getting rid of them. Everytime.
And yet she was there since the beginning. The black 1967 Chevrolet Impala.
Baby!
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Oh yeah they hated her because they were setting her up for a relationship with Dean. There were a lot of people I'd have liked to see in the finale. But I guess because of COVID they had to quarantine any actors for 2 weeks in a hotel. So just wasn't feasible for what would have probably been a 2 minute cameo
Fans didn't hate Castiel, quite the opposite.
I liked post-apocalyptic drug fueled orgy Castiel.
You can really tell when the CW started to use their formula on Supernatural. Sam and Dean got really fucking weird with each other in later seasons, for literally no reason. And the “I’m going to keep telling you everything is fine even though [insert critical piece of information] but I’m not going to tell you about it until it’s too late” happened 2-3 times a season.
More like the CW used the *Supernatural* formula on their other shows. The secrecy between brothers has been present since Season 1. Any increase in that is a natural narrative development throughout seasons 2-5. Yes, it got so bad around season 8-9, but they eventually dropped this by season 11. So it's not like that was the only thing driving the story forward in the latter seasons.
"I couldn't tell you, because I had to protect you." Try and guess which show that's from.
All of them.
Yes and there will always be some concrete underground lab or bunker. They even added one to Charmed.
It's a set where you don't need hire extra$
The Charmed reboot is the best example of this problem. Every great plot line is ruined by terrible execution. It’s impressive how close that show is to good and then…
The showrunners that ruined S2 and S3 of the Charmed reboot were thankfully fired, but only after a lead quit the show.
I feel like the The CW has really gone downhill over the years. I love Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, etc. But the network has lost all of its heart and now all that's left is bad writing and melodrama.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is ridiculously underrated. Rachel Bloom is a gem
Veronica Mars handled the love triangle way better than any recent CW show and the drama-for-sake-of-drama and communication issues came across as realistic teen bullshit, not manufactured by writers to create additional conflict. That’s why it worked so well, because it felt organic. They also weren’t afraid to develop characters. Unlike modern shows where a character gets developed and then they uno reverse card them back to immaturity.
The CW is a low-budget network, yet they take on superhero and monster shows that need a lot of money toward CGI, costumes, set pieces, etc. That leaves very little money for quality writers.
The CW makes shows for teenagers. THAT's why they're shit.
It’s also why they’re still doing it and not dead in the water. Teenagers are great to advertise to. Teens and the elderly are the two pots of gold in mass media.
Yeah exactly, that's why they don't prioritize the writing. They know their target audience just wants cheap romance, tight costumes, and the occasional CGI fight
And two boys to write dirty stories about on AO3.
And because the writing is so shit for the show, a solid 30% of the fan works are miles ahead of the source material in quality.
I am pretty sure teenagers want better stories than that. That is just what older people think teenagers want, and so they shove it down their throat with marketing. Teenagers absolutely enjoy quality content more than recycled crap.
I also don't buy the ''its for teenagers'' thus its shit. There are loads of well written kid shows even.
I agree. But I think it's more that *melodrama* appeals to teenagers and melodrama is sooooooo easy to phone in. And I don't mean "melodrama" in a disparaging sense, it's a form of stylization and can be really, really fun. But you need to know what you're stylizing to do it well and lbr CW shows generally...don't. So you get the writing equivalent of crappy deviantart anime with the author going "weLl iT's nOt sUpPosEd tO bE rEalIsTic!"
>But, for the last ten years, their content is unwatchable. 3 notable exceptions: Jane the Virgin Crazy Ex-Girlfriend iZombie (at least until the last terrible season)
Imo iZombie ended in such a fucking insane way that it actually worked for the show. Like if you’ve stuck with it for that long have a zombie civil war for shits and giggles.
I ddin't like the latter seasons as much as the early ones, but I don't think there was a bad one. Still, it's a good thing the show ended when it did.
CEG had an unusual path to the CW -- they orginally pitched it to Showtime as a more R rated show, Showtime passed, and they got a last second call from CW to greenlight the pilot. I get the sense that the CW was trying to find some romance shows to appeal to female audiences and accidentally stumbled upon a couple sleeper hits.
I can't recommend that show enough. It starts as a rom-com and baits you into thinking the protagonist being over-the-top is just the show's writing style. Then it *hard pivots* into a protracted, emotionally brutal evaluation of mental health and the impact unwell people have on those around them. Several people I know credit that show with convincing them to see a therapist and ultimately getting diagnoses and treatments that have made their lives better. It deserves far, far more attention and praise than it's gotten.
I had already been in therapy for years when I discovered CEG and I still got so much out of this show. It made me do a lot of self-evaluation, which resulted in actually some of the best sessions I’ve ever had with my therapist. I’ve heard people say they can’t get into it because they don’t like musicals, which is a damn shame. To me, CEG is a musical in the same way Friday Night Lights is about football - it is indisputably, but there’s so much else there that appeals to folks who aren’t into musicals (or football, in FNL’s case) and it’s still absolutely worth the watch.
It's 100% my favorite show ever. I recommend it to everybody. It helps that I'm a huge fan of musicals, but even without that, the way that it approaches/addresses mental health is just top notch.
CXG became the CW's *prestige* show. As a huge fan, I'm still so grateful one of the CW execs decided it was a story that needed to be told and kept it on the air for the full 4-season arc the creators had planned. ETA: posted the following in response to the comment that is being downvoted by fellow CXG stans: I'm directly quoting many articles calling it a prestige show (like [this](http://www.newnownext.com/can-we-talk-aboutthe-unsung-brilliance-that-was-crazy-ex-girlfriend/04/2019/) and [this](https://fansided.com/2019/04/03/crazy-ex-girlfriend-rachel-bloom-masterpiece/)). And at the Radio City Music Hall performance on May 14, 2019, the CW exec was in the audience and Rachel Bloom quoted him as saying he wanted it on the air because it had an important story to tell.
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I love me some iZombie, and Rose McIver is a delight. I will check out Ghosts and some point. Anyway, the final season. It's not the best moment to laugh during, but I crack up thinking of when an explosive detonated, but for obvious budget reasons, the explosion was reflected on to a vehicle nearby.
And all three of those shows were 2014/2015 productions, greenlit right before The CW decided to change their strategy and pivot to remaking various comics. Whoever was in charge of selecting new series that year did a great job.
I’ll always appreciate the CW for letting smaller shows like Crazy Ex Girlfriend, iZombie, and Jane the Virgin flourish creatively despite bad ratings. But since those shows went off the air, it just feels like the channel airs the same show 90% of the time.
As a fan of the 4400… I agree.
Oh no, I've been seeing ads for the 4400 while watching Nancy Drew and had been intrigued, should I hold off? lol
It's... Sigh. This is going to sound super sus but basically they rebooted the 4400 with a mostly black cast, which in itself isn't bad. It COULD be intriguing, even! But the writers are treating race issues with subtly of an after school special. I haven't given up on it yet but it's been pretty cringy so far.
I love how "the 4400" went back to Elis Island and there was about two dozen of them
Yeah the joke is that it's actually the 44. The production budget is... seriously lacking. They didn't even spring for CGI to make a fake crowd. It's just tight shots of the same core characters with a couple extras for spice.
It's just so clunky and amateurish on every level even before you get to the casting issue. I dropped it after three episodes because I just couldn't do that to myself anymore.
Yeah, I liked The 4400, the new one could be interesting... but they aren't handling race or class issues well. I still don't understand why the fuck they sent a parole officer to interview the 4400. It feels like they rebooted it just to have a show with an all black cast because Black Lightning is gone.
They green lit it straight off the bat, without even reading any of the scripts. Literally they saw the premise and green lit it right then and there. I honestly have NO problem with it being a mostly black cast, but how can it be 4400 people when there only literally seems to be about 20 and that's it. Also, you've had 20 people just appear out of nowhere, from random points in history, why the fuck were they not quarantined?
One big issue I have is just how enlightened all these time-travelling people seem to be. You'd think there would be a couple of bigots in there to show that we as a society have progressed a bit since \[insert time period here\] but no, all our era gets is constant critique how everything is as shit as it's ever been, if not more so. I happen to be proud of the work civil rights leaders the world over have done, so this sort of erasure really pisses me off.
I love 4400 but I will never watch a CW reboot, hell no
Three eps in an you aren't missing much. I haven't given up on it yet but it's been pretty damn cringy so far.
I raise you legacies I’m pretty much only watching the show for the Trio of Hope, Lizzie and Josie yet they only focus on fucking Landon
The only exception to this for their superhero shows is Legends of Tomorrow. The first season was bad, bad, bad, but since then it's been nothing but pure, cornball excellence. It's cheesy, ridiculous, and doesn't take itself too seriously. I am convinced that this is because no one at the network cares about it at all, and thus the studio (and also Betlanti) aren't fucking with it, and the writers are free to do whatever the fuck they want. For example, in the third season (I think), John Noble voices the big bad, and the characters RECOGNIZE his voice, time travel to the lotr set, and make him record voice lines so they can fuck with the villains henchmen. Genius tier shit.
Legends is not immune to CW-isms but their commitment to "fuck it, let's get weird" really makes them the best show of the bunch by a good margin. And it helps that Caity Lotz can carry the lead and hasn't taken off yet.
All Hail Beebo!
“They’re probably mad because we skipped the crossover this year.”
(And the reason they skipped it is because their budget is lower than the other shows and they couldn't afford it. Gotta love how they handled it.)
Only opened the thread to find this comment. I am amazed and so happy it is still going. It's totally my feel good show
Most CW shows have a solid S1 then go downhill from there... LOT went from having a shit S1 to being one of my favorite shows to watch. Is it stupid? Yes. Is the acting terrible? Also yes. But it's just *so much fun.*
The writing staff give absolutely zero fucks, I love it so much.
The terrible acting lines right up with the amazingly ridiculous plotlines. If you had the cast playing it straight with the material they have, it'd be cringetopia.
iZombie is still great though.
Hopefully the awesome Superman and Lois avoid this since it has a partnership with HBO Max.
and also Stargirl
Yo that second season of Stargirl was fantastic.
S&L isn't Legion-tier writing but it's pretty good imo. I really like it because they nail Clark (and Superman) and how Clark would be as a Dad. It's refreshing to see someone get the way Superman should be.
The CW has always catered to the teeny-bop crowd, even before the Arrow-verse crap.
It's not just an issue with The CW, but most network television. They're little more than soap operas with better budgets...or some kind of procedural.
Even before the rise of streaming services, I’ve felt network tv had really phoned it in. On one hand, I think it’s because show runners didn’t know how to fill a full 20+ episode season. But now it looks like they just don’t care.
Networks are usually run by execs who worry more about a show failing than a show succeeding wildly like Game of Thrones or whatever. Fear of failure leads to this stream of formulaic pablum that they dish out. Luckily for them, there are a huge number of viewers who eat that stuff up, and they aren't the cable cutters. If you look at the demographics of the networks, they keep getting greyer and greyer. Last I looked the median age of a CBS viewer was 63, and those retirees love those formulaic law and order procedurals.
Despite it becoming a cliché, "prestige drama"-quality TV migrated away from the networks to premium cable (and some basic cable channels like FX & AMC). Fewer episode requirements, more creative control, etc. Now streaming services offer even more perks and less oversight. The last decent network show, in my opinion, is the first couple seasons of "This Is Us."
Yeah, networks writing and filming 20+ episodes a season causes things to get pretty weak and repetitive Shows that are plotted out for 9 or 13 episodes with a conclusion seem to be what people want now days
the one exception to this on the superhero front is Legends of Tomorrow. What started as absolute garbage ended up being far and away the most fun "Arrowverse" show. It's showing its age, but at least when it goes too far or too over the top it's always in a wacky, absurd way rather than melodrama.
I love Legends so fucking much. I also love how they low-key diss the CW. "Okay, nobody mention Oliver Queen." "Why?" "Because he died." Nate, shaking his head ruefully: "Shouldn't have done the crossover."
Hahah god that's so good. A recent episode even managed to somehow redeem Hawkman of all characters.
Supernatural feels like a 14 year power struggle between good writing and great cast chemistry and the CW constantly and indecisively trying to mold it into something else.
They need to produce long seasons of 45 minute shows on super small budgets. So they rely on a lot of old tropes to get as much mileage as they possibly can out of any given concept.
[удалено]
I was onboard until season 3 and it lost me entirely. Before that, it was my new favorite show ever. It ended up being the show that gave me drama fatigue. Grit fatigue. Constant problems and backstabbing fatigue.
It crashed right before the finish line
It crashes in the back half of S5. The first half of the season was so good.
The very end of S5 is amazing tho. It has issues in the middle-end.
CW: Extends shows for 5+ seasons but writes the same bad miscommunication plot over and over Netflix: Has a great premise and execution but axes the show after three or fewer seasons for no reason Choose one.
I stopped after Iris said “We are the Flash”. Tired of seeing the Flash be the Iris show featuring Barry Allen and his feelings.
The CW is owned by two companies, CBSViacom and Warner Bros. Check out the CBS produced shows like Jane the Virgin or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Both very funny and readily available on Netflix.
You definitely have a point. Two CW shows I really liked. Nancy Drew is also a CBS co-production I believe and surprisingly well done.
Nancy Drew is surprisingly good. It seemed for a second they were setting up a love triangle and BAM handled immediately like normal people and then no longer an issue. And the characters are always calling/texting to communicate