Double V

Yep, the trick with these shows is that there's usually so few characters in the episode and you know that the big reveal won't be one of the regular characters on the series. That left two characters - the Assistant DA and the guy at the bar. It had to be one of the two. Once you've seen enough of these shows and are familiar with the genre, it's rare to get genuinely surprised. It's like shows or movies with confidence games - either the con artist is betrayed by one of his fellow con men or the mark turns the tables and has been a con man running a con all along.

Maybe, maybe not. It just came across as a bunch of white writers trying desperately to deliver an authentic presentation, but it came across as very shallow. If the creative people on Black Lightning are indeed all or mostly black, that's actually worse. They delivered a very stereotypical and shallow presentation, like a view of a rough black neighborhood from a bunch of writers living in a nice gated community hundreds of miles away, and their only knowledge about these situations is from other tv shows. Yep. Goodlooking, young, cliched characters. Exactly the CW formula. Really.

Honestly, I had the opposite reaction. The collection of characters was fairly clichéd. The caring ex-wife that our hero still pines over. His two young daughters that wandered off of a CW show set. Some heavy handed stuff. Some strange inconsistencies (he decries the use of a metal detector at the school, but soon after someone shows up to the school with a gun & directly undermines his moral position), and some painfully bad dialogue. They presented the town or neighborhood as very rough but then it just looked like a nice neighborhood in Vancouver. Overall, an uneven presentation. Far from authentic, it came across to me as a bunch of white writers trying to present the setting and characters as authentic, but their frame of reference wasn't real people but just other, better tv shows (like The Wire). My other primary problem was that it was largely humorless. I don't think the superhero conceit works well without at least some humor (though they can go overboard). I think Arrow at it's peak did the humor best, while Flash is more of a comedy (and works with the character and presentation), and Legends is almost primarily an action-comedy (again, it works for that show). I like the adult actors, especially Cress Williams who is much better than the material he was given. The younger actors just weren't very good and presented with little depth. I appreciate the desire to take this show in a different direction than the other CW hero shows, but I think it really needs to find a core that's both compelling tv, a little more mature than the typical CW product, and a little more fun than what they delivered. If the show stays with this presentation, it will have a difficult time getting to season 2 and it won't get o season 3. Did anyone else think that "Inspector Henderson" was a deliberate homage/nod to the original Inspector Henderson? Nice touch if deliberate, nothing if a coincidence.

re: Imposter Red Clue? There was an episode a while back (maybe season 2?) when Red is talking with some shady guy poolside and Red casually mentions that he can't swim, and the shady guy calls foul and says "but you were in the Navy, weren't you?" and Red changes the subject. The Imposter Red had a slight screw up there.

By "extra 25 minutes," I think they meant an extra 20 minutes of commercials. :-)

The Flash is probably my favorite tv show right now, despite some problems (too many speedsters, "the villain was among us all along," "you can do it, Barry! I believe in you!") but this episode was unwatchable. Very forced. Cringeworthy. Painful to sit through. I only managed to get to the forced "dads reveal" about midway through the episode before I had to abort. This was also more suited to a Valentine's Day episode, but it landed in the latter half of March. Poorly conceived. Poorly executed. Forced to the point of unwatchability. A waste of time. I hope they don't try this again.

Anyone else think that Blacklist: Redemption is just recycling old scripts that the network bought in the 1980s, sloppily adapting them to the 21st century, and adding two or three brief scenes to weave it into the Blacklist setting?

Was this an update of an unused script from a 1983 tv show?

I think that's right. And I agree, I think most aliens among the population would have been more likely than not to believe Supergirl if she got the word out that they were in danger. Those that wouldn't believe her, wouldn't believe her. So be it. For me, it's not about what percentage of people would or would not believe it. It's about her putting her credibility on the line and not other people's credibility on the line. I think Supergirl has more credibility than Kara Danvers to the alien population and to the general population. Did Kara post the story on the CatCo blog? Or her personal blog where she identifies herself as a CatCo writer? I think for Snapper to fire her, she had to have done something improper with CatCo resources. But yes, a Supergirl Twitter post or a YouTube video (even better) would have got the word out, put the responsibility on Supergirl, and CatCo would have been out of the picture (and Kara would still have her job. I think this was just a forced way to write CatCo out of the show.

I'm not critical of Snapper. I think he was absolutely right. But this way Supergirl would be putting her personal crediility on the line, not CatCo or the Daily Planet if she went to Clark or Lois. Supergirl would just stand on her own reputation, which took some hits last season but is solid now. To me it's about Kara putting Supergirl's credibility on the line and not CatCo's, Cat Grant's, Snapper Carr's, or the Daily Planet's credibility on the line. She doesn't need anyone's permission to do that, and takes 100% of the responsibility for the consequences herself. Those that doubt her, doubt her. That's entirely fair. Snapper Carr is right, but it doesn't stop Supergirl from sounding the alarm herself if she thought she was right, thought it was important, and took the responsibility.

Couldn't Supergirl get a Verified Twitter @RealSupergirl ID and just tweet the story? It would be retweeted thousands of times in a few hours and reach more people than any blog post that Kara Danvers could write, and not jeopardize Kara's job.

Anybody else get the impression that right after Julie consummates her relationship with Coach Tom, he's feeling that he just had an incredible, moving experience and she's just sort of laying there, not particularly impressed? It's like he thought he hit a grand slam and she thought he got a bunt single.