The Tragic Downfall of The Flash

[Music] god damn it the cw again do you ever take a break it's crazy to think that back in 2014 2015 the flash was one of my favorite shows on television it's easy to forget now but there used to be a lot of love for this show around the internet the fandom of the flash and the arrowverse as a whole was like a real thing back then and it was a lot of fun fans online created after shows where you could go and get even more flash talk right after an episode sometimes even the actors on the show went on those after shows to interact with the fans like it was a vibe people really liked it i made a video about supergirl a few months ago and in it i talked about how the arrowverse used to be insanely popular because when it comes to superheroes on television there used to be no competition for it it was the only thing we had and while it did pave the way for future shows and prove that it was possible for comic book adaptations to find themselves on tv with great popularity the arrowverse was very quickly outdone by other properties in 2015 netflix completely changed the game by bringing us a daredevil show that felt like somebody watched arrow and was like oh yeah let's do that but with good writing and also let's get rid of all the tired cw tropes that kill every single one of their shows without fail because they simply refuse to learn their lesson and since then well you know let's just say that the arrowverse doesn't look all that glorious next to the superhero stuff we have on tv so quick breakdown for the uninitiated the flash is the story of barry allen this guy barry is a forensic scientist working for the police department of central city one night after a failed science experiment resulted in a massive explosion in the city barry is struck by lightning and ends up in a coma for nine months and when he wakes up he immediately realizes that he's not the same barry is now fast very very fast okay you get it he becomes the flash and he saves lives let's move on the flash came out in 2014 and the arrival of this show is usually regarded as the best time in the arrowverse even to this day we were coming right out of the second season of arrow which is still considered to be the best season in the entire arrowverse and that came out in 2013 meaning the arrowverse peaked eight years ago the universe has been on a downward spiral for almost a decade now and when you look at the flash it's really hard to argue against that fact because boy how the mighty have fallen season one of the flash was pretty good i mean don't get me wrong it was still a cw show it was cheesy and a little cringe at times imagine that that dot is everything the human race has ever learned until this moment does that include twerking but back then people were ready to overlook some of the dumb stuff because they actually did a pretty solid job at bringing these characters to the screen it was exciting and there was some good writing in there which is not something you can often say about a cw show i just re-watched the pilot of the flash and all things considered it holds up fairly well it's pretty fun some things about it don't work but season 1 as a whole had a nice vibe to it and back when it was first airing i was eating this [ __ ] up but yeah i can't say the same now sitting through an episode of the flash has become very difficult for me in recent years and it's been a while since i've been able to watch an entire season of the show i think the last season i watch in its entirety from beginning to end was season 3 the savitar season and that was a real chore to get through i tried my best to get invested in season 4 but it was so boring that after the mid-season finale i just started skipping episodes entirely to get to the end quicker i eventually gave up on the flash completely about 6 episodes into season 5 and i was ready to leave it behind i was done with it and the truth is that the show never got better than its first season and since then each season had gotten worse than the previous one i was tired of it i had lost interest in the arrowverse as a whole and i was moving on occasionally i would catch up with the story of the show via paigey who's a great creator on the platform who recaps and speculates all things arrowverse for fans it was a great way for me to watch the show without actually having to watch it but then kovid changed things and when the flash came out with a new season after an extended hiatus caused by the pandemic i thought i would try and catch up with the show and see how time has treated it so i did just that and i gotta say the entire time i was watching there is one question that kept coming back somewhere in the very back of my head and that question is how did we get here how did this show get so bad don't get me wrong the flash was never like a masterpiece or anything like that but god damn this last season hit a new low that just blew my mind the show is almost unrecognizable the familiar faces are there it looks like the show i loved in 2014 but everything else feels off it feels out of place it feels tired and you know what i'm not alone in this most of the people who watched the show and had fun doing commentary on it on youtube with their communities or those after shows i talked about earlier you know massive nerds like me who really were an anchor to the fan communities online all of them today have either stopped watching the show or they stopped making content about it because they're just not enjoying it anymore and i would like to remind you that those were fans that were so passionate about this show that they made it their actual job to talk about it online i don't know about you i i always drop in and revisit the flash and it just seems a bit tired yeah it's starting to feel a little bit tired i feel like they're in their closing face now that we're in season seven i have to agree with what most people are saying that this is the worst season of the flash but not only that i find it to be so much worse than anything the flash has ever given us before the crisis that it's utterly unwatchable i've been saying since season four like i people thought i was crazy back season four when i was like should a flash be cancelled should they end the flash because season four already was like the beginning of this weird turn the flash i think has gone gotten so deep into a downward world downward spiral that it's hard to take any of it serious anymore i have not been very happy with what they've been doing with the flash so i haven't been doing episode videos for the season seven episodes so far like i didn't enjoy the mirror master storyline and i really didn't like what they were doing with the forces from the comic books today we're going to talk about flash season 5. what was that and this is where things get interesting because different people have different takes when it comes to figuring out when exactly the flash started to suck people who despise the show will just say it suck from day one but for fans of the show who actually got into it at the start it's very different i am part of this group of people that believe the flash officially became a bad show in season 3. some people will say that season 4 was the one that killed it but i think season 3 was the beginning of the end for the show season 1 was flawed but overall pretty awesome season two was kind of a rehash of season one but not as good it wasn't awful it was just a visible step down from what the first season gave us but season three was just an absolute massacre of the flash as a show and unfortunately it never recovered from it so that leads to the big question right what went wrong how did the flash fall so flat how did it get so bad why are so many people actively falling out of love with it well i think there are five major factors that really solidify the downfall of the flash over the years and we're going to break them down ready okay go number one the flash isn't a show about the flash anymore this is a problem that started to subtly show its face back in season two and it only got worse and worse from that point on now admittedly it's an issue that isn't exclusive to the flash in fact it's been a bit of a pattern with every single cw show i've ever watched aside maybe for one or two and i know this statement is going to sound really [ __ ] stupid and you would be right to think that because it is stupid but it's also true sadly the flash is a show where the flash himself is not the main character or at least not anymore i'm not kidding it's been a minute since our boy barry allen has been a main player in his own story and it's a little frustrating to see i think some of that is probably due to the cw problem of having their hero be supported by a team you know you have team arrow team flash team supergirl team batwoman and it's always the same [ __ ] thing every single one of these superhero teams are created the exact same way you have the technology expert who is usually not the fighting type and serves as the overbearing comic relief of the show most likely by throwing an infinite amount of pop culture references in every single scene they're in you have the more experienced hard ass who is usually ex-military or has a hardcore element of their past that is directly linked to the hero you have the younger more reckless member of the team who inevitably becomes the hero's sidekick and they have to be trained by the hero or whatever and then you have the overbearing love interest who is doomed to become insanely annoying once they find out the hero's secret because the writers never know what to do with them afterwards all of these shows have the exact same set of characters they're all the same they just have different faces and it sucks because none of these characters are good but they take so much space there is just too many characters in this show and since the writers are absolutely awful at balancing them which often ends up making barry take a backseat in his own story the flash ends up feeling like a show that has no real protagonist and it's weird it just feels like a show with really boring and repetitive storylines driven by a bunch of side characters none of these people feel like they are at the center of the story i swear barry is only here to do [ __ ] in the premiere and in the finale the rest of the season this show called the flash spends most of its time giving the spotlight to any character who isn't the flash and it's driving me crazy now it's even become common for barry to not be in an episode at all and this story just focuses on some side character no one really cares about season 7 alone has an entire episode dedicated to joe's girlfriend cecile and also an episode entirely dedicated to allegra that one by the way turned out to be the lowest rated episode of the flash ever and i get it it's not rocket science nobody wants to watch an episode of the flash where the flash isn't there it makes no sense and the problem with this abundance of characters is that instead of taking a step back to flesh them out individually writers go the other route and just keep on introducing new characters again and again constantly and they just stick around forever and they never do anything they never contribute to the story team flash in season one is really [ __ ] small it's barry cisco caitlyn and harrison wells that's it it's four of them and it works they all serve very specific functions barry is the hero he's the one on the field doing the fighting harrison is the mentor cisco is the tech science genius and caitlin is the exceptional doctor who patches barry up after his battles and learns about how his body works with his newfound powers it's excellent team flashing season one is simple and effective and it didn't need to be more than that it didn't need to be bigger team flash now in season seven is just a [ __ ] of empty characters that are completely useless team flash in season seven is composed of barry caitlin cisco nash wells killer frost iris joe cecile this guy whose name i don't remember because he's just cisco played by another actor this girl this other girl who can't have a coherent storyline because the love interest for which she was introduced was fired from the show the literal embodiment of the speech force and that allegra person nobody seems to give a [ __ ] about the cast of the flash is becoming bigger than [ __ ] game of thrones and it's never justified and the problem is that the writing of these characters is so thin and at the same time so brutally messy that it's just impossible to care about any of them they're all shoved into an infinite number of side stories that have for only goal to waste time and never have any impact on the story so much so that the main storylines with barry feel like a side quest of the season and if i can't care about the flash i don't know how you expect me to be invested in this show at all even when it comes to the og characters it's just impossible to keep them engaging because the writing is too sloppy so moments that should feel impactful to the audience fall completely flat for example season 7 saw the departure of carlos valdez who plays cisco they announced it early in the season that he was going to leave and people were really sad the media made a huge deal out of it it was a whole thing admittedly cisco is a beloved character but he had been completely useless since season 2 and his character had been progressively regressing every season and i can't remember the last time he was actually relevant to the story of the show carlos valdez seemed to be done with the show there had been rumors that he wanted to leave since like season five but people liked him because cisco was just too cool in season one and two he was a fun character and i liked him too it was kind of sad to see him go so yeah in season seven the show gives cisco this super emotional goodbye episode it's even marketed as his final episode everyone is really sad it's a big event people tune in to see his final goodbye the whole episode is full of feels and emotions he leaves and then he comes back three episodes later this is what i mean when i say the writing of the show is just too messy because we had to do the difficult goodbye and watch him leave just so that he can come back and leave again in the finale but now that he's leaving again it's just not the same that won't work twice you blew it riders and it goes like that for everything about the show nothing has weight none of the characters have any gravitas at this point like having a new harrison wells every season was cute for a minute mostly because tom cavanaugh is just way too good for this show and i'm actually glad that he left in season seven because i can't wait to see what he does next but it got annoying fairly fast it's not a gimmick that can hold up for such a long time team flash just doesn't work anymore especially since the show decided to make the dumbest leap with the cast with this little pet peeve of mine that i like to call everybody is a metahuman now i mean it there isn't a single character left in this show that doesn't have super powers it's so lame in season 1 barry is the only meta human in the gang until it's revealed that harrison wells was a speedster this whole time and it was better like that it's what makes him special that's what sets him apart from the other characters let him be the metahuman of the gang the dynamic is better that way but no instead every time the writers don't know what to do with the character they just turn them into metahumans and as the seasons go we watch as every single side character in the show inevitably begins to develop super powers cisco becomes a metahuman cecile becomes a metahuman allegra is a metahuman ralph is a metahuman this dude is a metahuman she's a metahuman him too even iris turns into a speedster from time to time like now there are more metahumans in the show than regular people and every single time the writers decide to give a character superpowers it all starts going downhill for them and nobody in this show serves as a better example than caitlyn snow aka killer frost killer frost is a terrible character i don't understand why the writers insist on having her in the show they should have gotten rid of her like three years ago at least she is so incoherent as a character she feels like different writers on the show had different interpretations of who she was so every single one of them just did their own thing they didn't care she has like three different origin stories and none of them have anything to do with one another they all contradict each other in the most shameless way possible killer frost has been in the show since season three and the writers still cannot figure her character out at first we are told that killer frost is caitlyn who had her meta-human gene activated after flashpoint an alternate timeline created by barry who went back in time to save his mom from being murdered that's her original backstory and it's a pretty simple one caitlyn was just caitlyn and then barry created a timeline where she was affected by the particle accelerator and she becomes killer frost the show never really explains why her powers make her evil but i don't want to get angry at how stupid that is so i'll let it slide i'm in a good mood today this is me being in a good mood then by the end of the season caitlyn goes through some [ __ ] in an attempt to get her powers under control and she says to barry and draco malfoy in the season 3 finale that she is no longer caitlyn or killer frost but that she has become something else and she needs to leave to figure it out ok cool i'm down with that but then season 4 completely ignores that and caitlin is still caitlyn and killer frost is still inside of her but now killer frost is not just caitlyn becoming evil when the gene is activated now killer frost is an alter ego a whole separate person that lives inside of caitlyn in other words out of nowhere in season 4 killer frost is now the hulk and caitlyn is bruce banner it's completely incoherent and it contradicts everything we know about killer frost but okay let's hold our kitkats for now let's see where they're going with this maybe it'll make sense oh wow look it doesn't make sense because later that season we learned that killer frost was not born due to flashpoint and was not created as a result of the particle accelerator explosion she was actually here the entire time even when caitlyn was a kid and she has a whole new origin story that introduces the characters to caitlyn's father who also has an evil alter ego with ice powers and now in season seven caitlyn and killer frost live in separate bodies and their sisters what it's so [ __ ] messy it never makes any sense so it's impossible to care about it so since season three or four killer frost is just there doing nothing hanging out chilling get it because because she had she has she's chilling but like she has ice powers you get it because her name is killer frost because she has a she has ice like she she can do the eyes thing but then i said i said she was chilling you get it because like chilling it's like and as a result caitlyn becomes an even more boring character that does even less and at this point i don't understand why she's still in this show it is so clear that the writers do not want to give her any attention which sucks because danielle panabaker is actually a really good actress her talent could be used so much better elsewhere but you know she's stuck with this character that has been regressing ever so slowly since season one the only good characters in the flash that i can think of now are the ones who left the show very quickly patty spivit was a really cool and fun character that was introduced in season 2 but she was written out of the show very abruptly due to a disagreement between actress chantel van santen and the showrunner at the time who got really upset and petty because of the fact that she was cast on another show and he kicked her out of the flash out of spike but i'm pretty sure the only reason why i remember patty's pivot so fondly is because her existence in the show was super short-lived and the writer didn't have time to ruin her look i digress here but you get my point it makes absolutely zero sense for the flash to have such an unreasonable amount of characters the cast has become bigger than the actual ensemble show of the arrowverse it's ridiculous and it just drags the show down the story feels very unfocused everything is all over the place and the flash has become a side character in his own show like i said earlier barry only ever gets to shine in a season during the premiere and during the finale which seems to be the only moments where the writers remember the show is supposed to be about him oh and that actually brings me to my next point number two barry is a terrible protagonist i hate having to say this i genuinely do because i actually love grant gustin as the flash i keep saying that i hope he's given a cameo in the flashpoint movie that's coming out next year because i think most people can agree that he is the flash i'm fine with ezra miller's version of the character i think this barry allen is very divisive some people think he's amazing and some people think he's absolute garbage i guess i'm somewhere in the middle but one thing that is absolutely sure is that if you mention the flash to me grant gustin is the one who will instantly pop in my head i love him in this role and in season 1 it's really cool to watch barry grow as a hero it's genuinely thrilling to follow him as he discovers the extent of his abilities and unlocks new powers for the first time for example a lot of people who never really read comics thought the flash was just the guy who runs fast so i remember the genuine surprise and excitement from the audience the first time barry ran so fast that he traveled back in time all of those little moments in his journey were a real joy to follow and people absolutely love barry me included which sucks to say because barry is just a terrible character now but why why is barry so awful now well surprise surprise it comes down to bad writing but mostly for one specific reason what i like about season 1 of the flash is that it operates as an extended origin story the entire season is not exactly about being the flash but more about barry figuring out what being the flash means he's kind of building the mantle what does it look like what are the values behind it how does that change the way he sees the world you know he's a rookie like you get to see a flash who doesn't really know what he's doing yet and you watch barry sort of building his morals as a hero i remember a specific episode where people kind of have to bring him back down to earth because he becomes overconfident and cocky because he thinks he's invincible because of his powers and it costs him that's great i genuinely like that and i'm pretty positive that this is one of the main reasons why people loved barry so much in season one the problem is that seven seasons later he's still in the same spot and that is one thing i cannot stand about him barry is a character that does not evolve for some reason the writers refuse to let him grow as a hero seriously we are on our way to an eighth season of this show and it still feels like barry is in origin story mode he's still trying to figure out the superhero thing but it's been almost a decade we know barry is 25 years old in season 1 which makes him around 32 in season 7. he never starts to feel like an accomplished flash and again it's mostly caused by the team flash [ __ ] barry cannot do anything by himself he always needs somebody to hold his hand and walk him through his issues he always needs a pep talk he never takes matters into his own hands he he just sucks as a hero he's so incompetent and whiny and lame he's terrible as a leader he's excessively inconsistent with his morals and he lacks a lot of the assertive attitude of comic book flag and it pisses me off because people who only know barry allen through the show will never know what they're missing out on you have no idea barry allen in the comics is a [ __ ] gangster my g that guy doesn't give a [ __ ] he doesn't take [ __ ] from anybody he is running [ __ ] he doesn't mess around and he gets things done he's a straight badass he's not a whiny little [ __ ] he doesn't need a team he's a [ __ ] superhero he makes mistakes along the way don't get me wrong but he learns from his mistakes he grows from his mistakes and he becomes a better hero for it which is the opposite of cw barry allen who in my opinion is ruined by this single factor the writers are insanely repetitive with his arcs he makes the same mistakes over and over again and he learns the same lesson over and over again but then he resets to what he was before the whole thing and he makes the same mistake again so he can relearn the same lesson later on let me give you an example in the season 1 finale barry travels back in time to the night his mother was murdered when he was 11 years old originally his plan is to save her and create a new timeline where he got to live with his parents but when he gets there he sees a future version of himself that stops him from saving her and he understands that doing that would be too big of a rip in time so instead barry decides to sit by his mother's side during her final moments he reveals his identity to her and explains that he's her son coming from the future and he spends her last moment reassuring her that he and his father are going to be okay because he doesn't want her to be afraid dad and i are both okay and we love you mom [Music] a really powerful scene and probably one of the best in the entire show and barry learns that just because he has the power to go back in time and change things does not mean he should whenever he feels like him the consequences are too big you know with great power comes great responsibility he has to be reasonable he now understands that in order for him to become the hero the world needs he needs to accept that his mother has to go his future comes at a cost that is the most important lesson he learns in this season and it should have been the driving force of his personality as a hero moving forward but then in season two barry just unlearns that lesson and he does the exact thing he grew to accept he couldn't do he goes back in time and saves his mother like a [ __ ] dumbass and all of that for him to relearn the exact same lesson in the following episode and undo it immediately and the worst part is that it's not the last time it happens it doesn't matter how many times he learns that lesson barry keeps messing with the timeline and it makes him particularly stupid it's the same thing with his sidekicks barry has had a number of sidekicks through the seasons of the flash there was kid flash jesse quick xs elongated men the forces whatever the [ __ ] they're called and every time it's the same thing barry has to train a sidekick and he gets impatient and too severe and it makes the sidekick feel bad but then barry feels guilty and realizes he was too hard on them and he learns that being a good mentor requires him to be patient and be accepting of mistakes he grows from that lesson and becomes a better teacher for the rest of the episode and then he immediately unlearns that lesson and goes through the same arc again with the next sidekick it has happened about five or six times in this show and it makes me angry barry as a character is just running in circles to the point where sometimes you feel like you're just watching the same episode of television over and over again i mean it how many times can you have an episode go the exact same way every episode barry fights the villain the villain kicks his ass he ends up on the ground and he's all sad and he says he can't beat the villain and then somebody comes in to tell him that no he can beat the villain because the power of love or whatever the [ __ ] and then somebody says run barry run and then he wins and everyone is happy and then the exact same thing happens in the next episode every time you can do this now run bury [Music] no i trust you iris then run barry run you can't burn in a vacuum so you need to create one run rod run run i know you can do it now run barry run what is that supposed to mean it means run bury run toward love run perry [Music] run hold on oh my god we get it run berry run is an iconic line from the comics we get it you don't have to put it in every [ __ ] episode barry just sucks as a protagonist he is so boring and one note he never feels like he is out of his initial origin story mode and the writers make him so dumb and incompetent that it's impossible to root for him pair that with the fact that he is now a background character in his own story and you're not left with much here and all of that leads me to my next big problem with this show number three iris okay listen i know some of the people watching this video right now are getting really excited about this because iris is now known as one of the most unlikable characters in modern television but let me just take a moment to burst these people's bubbles i am not going to [ __ ] on this character the way other people have but also i would be crazy to pretend that iris isn't a big problem with the show that deserves a lot of criticism so i have to address it and it makes me sad a little because i'm of the opinion that candace patton who plays iris is a really really good actress easily one of the best ones in the show and she's not the problem here if only the writers had ever figured out a way to make this character work candice would have brought that to life flawlessly i genuinely think there is a version of this character that could exist and be great but the problem with iris is that since season 1 it is very clear that the writers have no [ __ ] idea what to do with her in season 1 iris was more of a supporting character and if you ask me she worked just fine that way she didn't have that much to offer to the story aside maybe from being a love interest for barry but it wasn't a problem because she didn't take too much space in the show however over time the writers decided that they wanted iris to be more than just a love interest for male characters which is fine there was some groundwork here to make her more the issue though is that the writer started to make iris a main character but in a way that just does not fit her or the show and since they weren't too sure what to do with her the show found itself in a weird situation where iris started to take more and more space in the story but it was never really justified to make it short the writers constantly try to shove her into the front of the painting but it always feels forced and weirdly out of place they'll do something with her during a season that audiences will find strangely off-putting so they will try to ride the ship in the following season and do something drastically different and it ends up making the character very disjointed and incoherent and all of that stems from the fact that iris doesn't have much of an identity as a character because it seems like the writers never quite figured it out but they absolutely insist on making her a main character so it becomes frustrating for the audience because she just takes too much space for example in season 4 iris is not only the main character of the show completely she is also the leader of team flash now what's important to know is that team flash is usually headlined by scientists tech geniuses and metahumans who have a very solid understanding of the inner workings of that world now i don't want to sell her short or anything but iris is a regular girl she's a reporter she doesn't have any power she doesn't know anything about science and she's just an ordinary human being and furthermore she has zero experience on the field it makes absolutely no sense for her to be the leader of team flash and to run things at star lab it's just not coherent she just stands around and talks in a mic and given the fact that every single member of team flash is more qualified than her it's very hard as an audience member to buy into her leadership in the team i'm sorry but the ability of giving passable pep talks to people in the hallway it's just not enough to take on an army of metahumans as a leader the writers tried so desperately to give iris something to do in the show that every sense of logic went out the window especially when they make her say [ __ ] like this you are not the flash barry we are go let's let's consider this a whoopsie get out of here and then she just stops being the leader of team flash and she goes back to being a reporter in the most awkward way possible because it clearly didn't work and the writers couldn't avoid it iris is a character that is despised because she was just completely botched by the writers and it's not like there wasn't any interesting art to give her through the seasons iris is a reporter but in season 1 she makes it clear more than once that she doesn't like being a reporter in fact she finds it kind of boring and in the pilot it's alluded to that iris actually wanted to become a cop like her father joe but he didn't let her that could have been a great way to develop her character over time but for some reason it's never brought up again and iris remains a reporter for the rest of the show so now iris has become a vehicle for the writers to waste time and build up some [ __ ] drama in episodes that have no impact on the story whatsoever in other words the writers keep ruining iris and making her more and more unlikable in an effort to milk some pointless drama out of the show the best example of that is in season 5 when iris and barry meet nora their daughter who came to see them from the future nora is a character that doesn't work for a number of reasons we're going to talk about more later but the gist of that chapter in the show is that barry and iris find out that nora has been working with eobard thon the entire time barry realizes he can't trust her you know because thon is the man that murdered his mother so he sends nora back to the future and tells her to never come back okay cool that makes sense to me now here's how the writers ruin iris for melodrama iris gets upset that barry sent nora back to the future without telling him barry explains that he sent her back because thon cannot be trusted because you know he's the man that murdered his mother thon is a master tactician he doesn't do anything without a specific goal to benefit himself and clearly him getting close to the flash's daughter is not a coincidence the longer nora is here the longer thon's plan is in motion you can't trust him so you can't trust nora barry's reasoning is very logical it makes perfect sense but iris responds that she doesn't care and acts like barry is the bad guy in this situation maybe if he killed your mother in front of you you'd feel differently maybe you feeling differently barry is why we should have made this decision together she makes her husband feel like a selfish [ __ ] for refusing to put his trust into the man that killed his mother murdered her in cold blood out of pure hatred all of that to have 10 minutes of cheap tension in one episode please explain to me how you expect the audience to feel attachment towards a character you make so incredibly insensitive for the sake of melodrama it doesn't make sense and the same goes for her relationship with barry as a whole i am so over these two as a couple they are so annoying they had some level of chemistry in the early seasons i don't get why they had to make them technical siblings in the show it was just such a dumb idea but now everything about their relationship just feels so forced and it takes so much space in this [ __ ] show it's unbearable and i get that the writers do it because the very young teenagers who watch the show are very loud on twitter and [ __ ] and they don't even care about the storytelling or the quality of the show they just care about shipping and they lose their [ __ ] every time barry and iris are on screen together i'm convinced that teenagers nowadays will watch anything as long as the people on screen are good looking and since it appears that they're the only audience left watching this show religiously the writers double down on it constantly to try and please them which actively makes the show worse and worse it's kind of an issue with every show in the arrowverse they've all been completely ruined by ships arrow had the same problem with oliver and felicity shippers became so overbearing that the writers tried to make an entire season about them and it completely destroyed the show beyond repair seriously arrow never really recovered from season 4 and it's no secret that the actors themselves hated that season the only people who are still watching supergirl are the shippers who don't even enjoy the show anymore but are just desperately hoping that cara and lena luther will end up together canonically for some reason it's always the same with shows like that and barry and iris get it the worst i am so over these two and their excessive never-ending love declarations in every single episode everything is just so violently overdone with them it's unbearable and the other thing that bothers me is the fact that i don't understand why the writers are so obsessed with the idea of barry and iris being parents i swear to god if this show introduces one more character that refers to barry and iris as mom and dad i am going to shoot a cannonball right into the [ __ ] sun as of season 7 there are a total of seven different characters that call iris and barry mom and dad and only two of those characters are their actual biological children i don't know why this is a thing i don't know why the writers are so obsessed with them being parents it doesn't matter it's weird it's annoying and they need to stop but i digress as much as i hate to say it iris is a character that unfortunately drags this show down considerably i cannot wait for candice patton to be done with this show some people say that the flash probably killed her career for good and she will not be able to get roles in the future and i don't really know if i agree with that but i hope it's wrong i hope she gets plenty of roles in many different projects after flash because she's really good iris being such a failure never had anything to do with her performance anyways let's move on number four bad villains okay this one is gonna be fairly quick because i don't think it needs that big of an explanation but it does need to be mentioned i don't think it would be that crazy of a statement to say that one of the reasons why the flash never got better than season 1 is because season 1 is driven by the only good villain in the entire show and that villain is eobard thon aka the reverse flash theobarthon worked as a villain because we as an audience had a connection to him we grew to care for him throughout the entire season because he was one of the good guys and his betrayal is just painful yes the entire world saw the twist coming from a mile away but it was still impactful when it happened because people really got attached to tom that's because the writers made a point to build a genuine bond between thon and the other character he actually cared for caitlyn he saw cisco like his son and on a certain level it hurt him to betray them if you don't know eobard thon is a genius from the 22nd century when he was younger he became obsessed with the flash and became completely consumed by the idea of becoming a speedster he worked for years to make it happen and eventually he found a way to harness the power of the speed force and succeeded in his quest and then he became the reverse flash the ultimate nemesis of barry allen but he could never quite find a way to defeat the flash he was always losing until one day he found out the flash's name was barry allen so he decided to go back in time and kill barry as a child to ensure his victory but barry followed him there they fought barry got his younger self out of there in time and so in a fit of rage thon grabbed a knife and killed his mother instead he then tried to run back to his future timeline but he lost his ability to harness the speed force during the fight meaning he was now stuck in that time period he knew his only way to go back home was by getting help from the flash because he created the speed force so he stole the identity of famous scientist harrison wells and 14 years later he staged the particle accelerator explosion to turn barry into a speedster and by the same occasion recreate the speed force and that is why i like reverse flash as a villain in this show i can sympathize with his motivations at his core eobard thon is just the guy trying to find his way home he's insane and everything but within the context of the season he's just desperate to go home and he goes to crazy lengths to make that happen and because he got attached to some of the people he surrounded himself with in the 21st century going home kind of comes at a price for him and there's this weird element where he grew to care for barry but also he's still unable to shake his pure hatred of the flash and that's great because there are emotional stakes for both the hero and the villain it's so much more relatable than a villain who's just evil for the sake of being evil to this day i think one of my favorite scenes in the entire show is the time where barry and thon have a face to face and they just talk it's not a fist fight it's not a big action set piece they're just standing in the room and they talk that is your real name here barthon since the day i was born and when was that 136 years from now this is not what you want to know go ahead mary why did you kill my mother because i hate you and on the other side barry's heart is [ __ ] shattered because he finds out that his mentor the man he put all of his trust into the man he grew to love like his own family turned out to be the man who killed his mother realizing that he was being played from day one is just impossible to process for him and his morals go out the window barry actually wants to kill thon in this scene he's actually considering it and it works it's all really well executed and it makes thon a great villain he's actually menacing we have an attachment to him that makes it difficult for us to watch the heroes go against him and he has motivations we can sympathize with as an audience they never recreated that the villains that followed thon never really had any motivations that made sense zoom just wants to be the fastest person alive i guess savitar also wants to be the fastest he's eventually revealed to be an evil version of barry from an alternate timeline but his existence itself is a plot hole that's never explained the thinker wanted the world to be dumb because of reasons cicada wanted to eradicate every metahuman on the planet because of his daughter or something which could have been interesting but that theme is only showed to us in one episode and then cicada spends the rest of the season just being an insanely boring and generic villain i don't even remember this guy mirror monarch was just there and godspeed also wanted to be really fast because apparently that's all speedsters ever won but yeah the villains of the flash are notoriously terrible even reverse flash despite being brilliant in season 1 is subsequently ruined by the fact that the writers refused to let him go thon is brought back in some way shape or form in every single season of the show and every time he appears he gets worse and worse and worse and now when he shows up in the show i just kind of roll my eyes at him he just doesn't work anymore his story was perfectly contained within season one i mean hell the season ends with thon being literally erased from existence because his ancestor eddie commits suicide to prevent the reverse flash from ever being born you didn't have to bring him back the other villains are bad enough on their own you didn't have to ruin thon i can give a bit of an edge to zoom when it comes to villains because he was surprisingly intriguing in the beginning he did feel like a rehash of reverse flash but where reverse flash was menacing zoom was straight up terrifying the first time he fights barry in the show he literally destroys him barry gets bodied with little to no effort he gets the [ __ ] kicked out of him zoom beats him almost to death he breaks his spine he knocks him unconscious he stabs him and then he parades him through the city for everyone to see their hero fall like that scene was absolutely insane but unfortunately the more things go with zoom the more inconsistent he becomes and by the end of the season he turns out to be a pretty boring villain with one of the worst twists in the entire show especially because again his final motivation is just that he wants to be fast wow what a menace godspeed was probably the villain that had the biggest amount of potential but the writers completely [ __ ] him up as well then they tried to erase that first storyline to try godspeed again and then they [ __ ] him up again i could not believe what i was watching in season seven seriously i was absolutely baffled at how terrible godspeed was he makes no sense he doesn't have a point even his dialogue is pointless godspeed is literally a power rangers villain all he does is do a lame evil laugh and spit generic villain one-liners you've already heard a million times at last he has no motivation no philosophy no story no gravitas nothing he's just an empty shell for the heroes to punch it's so boring even in the end there is no resolution to his story he just gets stabbed and he dies and that's it i'm not kidding he shows up and says haha now i am the fastest man alive and then barry chases him around the city and then thon comes out of nowhere because yes seven years after the end of his story thon is still here for some reason and then they whip out speed force lightsabers out of [ __ ] nowhere and they fight like it's [ __ ] star wars and then thon kills godspeed and that's it there are no words exchanged there is no verdict no sense of closure no moral to the story yet nada godspeed is here he's villainous and then he's not here anymore and that's it it doesn't have an impact on anyone it doesn't have an impact on anything it has no point the flash fell to a whole new low in season seven it breaks my heart kind of and that's not just the problem with the flash unfortunately which actually leads me to my next and final point number five the cw refuses to evolve now look if you try to glance at the level of television we get right now in terms of quality writing etc it's not difficult to admit that the flash was never really great it's always been cheesy and a little heavy on the campy side but people used to be able to let that slide and enjoy the comic book shenanigans and so did i for a cw show the bar was pretty high and if you know me you know that i have very strong feelings about the cw and their habit of settling for mediocrity so believe me i'm not saying that lightly now that might be a bit unfair for the flash because it came out seven years ago and the cw as a whole has gotten much much worse ever since people will probably fight me on this and say that superman and lois is a return to form for the cwu and i actually like superman and lois but i can't fully count it in this argument because superman lois is not a cwu show technically it was created financed and produced by hbo max it just airs on the cw that's why the budget is bigger and that's why the writing is better because the cw didn't actually make the show i would be inclined to say that the first five seasons of supernatural are the best piece of television to ever be made by the cw closely followed by season 2 of arrow season 1 of gossip girl which surprisingly holds up pretty well and the first season of the flash i've never watched the 100 but i hear it's also pretty solid for a cw show but despite all of that it's also fair to say that the cw has been in a bit of a downward spiral for the last six to seven years i talked about it in my supergirl video but yeah the cw has become a symbol in pop culture for mediocre television the first thing people say when a new show looks particularly bad is wow it looks like a cw show that's what it's become the cw is a beacon of mediocrity for american television i've seen a couple of well-intentioned people try to defend it by saying it's a low budget network don't be too hard on it but no i'm sorry i get that it's a low budget network and i get that the flash is not going to have the cgi of game of thrones i understand that and i don't mind but you cannot use low budget as an excuse to justify terrible writing because that's the problem with the cw not the cgi the writing let me show you what i mean real quick here's a list of shows that have a lower budget than the flash and that are infinitely better and if you haven't seen those shows i highly recommend them true detective banshee dark misfits jessica jones breaking bad big little lies hannibal the first season of stranger things the leftovers humans fleabag the first five seasons of the walking dead narcos d-o-a la casa de papel or money heist lupine the good place skins i'm gonna stop here but you get my point the budget is not the issue with the cw the writing is stop making excuses for the writing there is a reason why all of the cw shows are so incredibly bad and there is a reason why i constantly say that the cw settles for mediocrity i'm not talking about the visuals on the contrary people will be largely forgiving of shows with lesser quality of visuals or special effects if the writing backs it up misfits is a show that looks particularly bad it looks like [ __ ] it has some of the worst visual effects i've ever seen they're laughable but it doesn't matter because the show is just so well written the cgi in the first season of stranger things is not awful but also not great it looks kind of rocky at times but i've never heard anyone complain about it because season 1 of stranger things when it comes to writing is almost perfect i can't really say the same for the following seasons but season 1 of stranger things is [ __ ] great and also it's a season that knew how to use its low budget and make it work visually keep the demogorgon in the shadows build a lot of terror without actually showing the big cgi monster that's just being smart you cannot have a budget like the flash and attempt something like this what the hell is going on and on the flip side of this you have the final season of game of thrones it looks fantastic it's the best cgi we've ever seen on tv it looks like a [ __ ] movie the acting is on point the directing is on point everything about season eight of game of thrones is perfect except for the writing so none of it matters writing is everything and i'm sorry you cannot blame the cwu and its awful shows on their budget that excuse is not acceptable i will not have it and if you want a more recent example if you haven't heard about the script of the cw's upcoming adaptation of the powerpuff girl that leaked online a couple months ago look it up the script was so bad it was roasted so violently on the internet people were so outrageously baffled at how terrible it was on paper that the cw motion for the pilot to be remade and you know what i have a feeling it's not going to be much better i'm sorry but the writing of the flash now especially in season seven is just embarrassing one of us couldn't resist adding a little something extra special to the festivities so without further ado my man that uses go i swear to god if he starts singing could you be that fire oh my god what happened to this show i was fine with the show being campy and all in season one i can take camp if you actually have something else to offer but now the show just feels like it's being made for five-year-olds the writing is just so laughable i don't get it it really feels like watching [ __ ] caillou but with the flash in it everything is just so childlike now i think the one character that completely broke my brain with this is nora barry's daughter from the future she becomes a main character in season five and i cannot stand this character because nora according to the timeline of season 5 is in her 20s when we meet her she's from the year 2049 and she's from a timeline when barry goes missing in 2024 after her birth meaning she's 25 years old at the very least she's an adult but for some reason the writers decided to give nora the personality of a child it's so off-putting she talks like she's 10 years old she throws tantrums everything about her character is coded like a child i don't understand it you're mad at me no nora we're not we're just please don't say disappointed it's so much worse i mean i just didn't think it was a big deal it was only gridlock if you wanted to make nora a child then cast a [ __ ] child in the role but when you cast an adult who by the way is older than both of the actors who play her parents and then make her act like she's five years old that's just awkward and that characterization just doesn't add up with how they want the character to be thematically or within the context of her arcs so you know it's just really bad writing especially when you have to watch 22 episodes of this [ __ ] now to be fair it's not entirely the writer's fault it's also because the cw is stuck in 2003 with a model of television that is just violently outdated these 22 episode seasons just do not work anymore audiences change audiences evolve over time and the way they consume media transforms and it's really important for networks and studios to evolve with audiences there used to be a time where 20 to 24 episodes long seasons like the cw were the gold standard of television i mean hell the first season of doc has 27 episodes which is insane to me people just aren't into that nowadays unless you're a sitcom like brooklyn nine-nine or new girl audiences enjoy shorter more focused stories that feel more like an extended movie than an episodic procedural and god damn the marvel netflix shows were 13 episodes long and some people still thought that was too long the cw model has been obsolete for almost a decade now it just doesn't connect with audiences today everyone seems to be moving on from it and evolving except for the cw they're just stuck in 2003 and they just refuse to evolve now sometimes shows can be smart about it instead of awkwardly stretching one story for 24 episodes they actually split the season into two or three arcs that stand on their own almost like many seasons inside of a big one teen wolf did that flawlessly in its third season mtv ordered a 24 episode season out of nowhere so they split it in two parts that they simply called season 3a and season 3b and both of them are their own seasons with different stories agents of shields also did this by cutting its 24 episode seasons into 3 arcs of 8 episodes each that's something the arrowverse took way too long to understand and because they don't split their seasons and just try to tell one long-ass story full of filler through 22 episodes people get inevitably bored because the seasons take forever to get to the point now the flash has clumsily been trying to split its season in different arcs for the past two seasons but it still relies on filler episodes way too much to complete its 22 episodes so it doesn't really work the way it should the point of splitting the seasons in several little stories is that you don't need to use filler anymore you can just focus on one story and keep it there but the flash doesn't understand that and the issue with that when it comes to the flash is that this character doesn't work in this type of show because the concept of a speedster is just too overpowered to function on such a small scale so as a result in order to tell 22 episodes worth of stories with the flash in the show the writers are kind of forced to be insufferably inconsistent with his powers they have to nerf him in a way that makes the show very stupid the reality of the matter is that if you stop to think about it one second ninety percent of the episodes of the flash should be solved in three seconds literally because barry can apprehend almost every villain in the blink of an eye there's no real tension here he could just run to a villain and grab him and throw him into prison before he even understands what's happening to him there's a very small amount of villains that can actually pose a problem to the flash like i believe it if you show me flash struggling to fight another speedster i understand if a character is able to mess with barry's senses stuff like that is comprehensible but when you show me the flash struggling to stop a normal ass robbery you're starting to lose me a little in order to create tension the writers have to make barry super incompetent otherwise every episode would end before the title card and because of that his powers are just too inconsistent to be believable sometimes barry is so fast that he can search an entire city to find an individual in less than one second but other times he will let a normal person run out the door and he will give up and say the criminal got away even though he could catch up to them before they even realize what's happening sometimes barry is so fast he can rip a hole in the space-time continuum and travel through time but sometimes he can't dodge a punch you get what i mean if you want more examples the youtuber madvocate made an absolutely hilarious compilation of every time barry could have saved the day in six seconds if he wasn't such an idiot and he does it by going episode by episode is it just me or does anyone else [ __ ] hate it when the fastest man alive shows up and just stands around to talk to his enemies am i the only one who would abuse the [ __ ] out of super speed and just immediately ko every criminal out there and run them to jail but what is unforgivable is when he doesn't surrender this idiot uses his super speed to knock back two of them and then he just stops why didn't barry knock back the third one too he just stops and lets him multiply and then he punches them at normal speed why use your [ __ ] superpower and then he gets ganged up on them for absolutely no reason i link these videos in the description i highly recommend you check it out that [ __ ] made me laugh hysterically the show also shot itself in the foot by playing a bit too much with time travel time travel stories are the hardest to tell you have to be super careful when you write it it requires a lot of attention to details because time travel is a massive plot hole magnet and if you want a perfect example on how not to do time travel in a story just watch the flash the writers got so lost in their own timelines and tried so many times to fix their own time travel issues with more time travel that now the entire show is a massive plot hole the chronology of the flash is so disjointed and weird it's completely senseless the rules of time travel established in the show also change every other episode so it's not very consistent some characters who are a result of time travel are totally nonsensical and their very existence in the show is a plot hole but the writers keep backing themselves into a corner and since they don't know how to explain this [ __ ] we just get justifications like this see that's the thing about time travel barry the more you do it the less the rules apply to you that doesn't mean anything that doesn't mean anything you know you have a writing problem when your timeline has gotten so [ __ ] and messy that you can't even explain why your villain exists ah look i could be here all day listing all of the reasons why the aeroverse doesn't work anymore and why i can't even stomach an episode of the flash now the flash is a show that just fundamentally refuses to evolve because it is a victim of a network that also refuses to evolve from what i've seen online season 7 seems to have been the last straw for a lot of fans who stuck with the show over the years and i can't really blame them i mean when you have speedsters fighting with lightsabers and lightning lassos and lightning ninja stars jesus this show has turned into a nightmare what is this what is this who approved this i apologize i know this video has been all over the place but really i made this one for me this video is my goodbye to this show this is kind of my way to pack up my thoughts and leave them behind after season 7 i am very comfortable in saying that i will not be watching any more of the flash i am perfectly okay with quitting this show you know for the second time it has officially entered this category of shows that i like to call sfr series finale returns those are the shows that i used to watch and adore but fell out of love with because they started sucking and quit watching after a while i don't have any desire to go back to them or keep watching them but when a final season will be announced i will tune in to watch the final episode and see how it all ends i've had a bunch of sfrs in my day arrow was one of them supernatural heroes suits how to get away with murder lost dexter and currently on my sfr list we have the walking dead archer and now the flash welcome my friend you disappointing piece of [ __ ] i'm curious what is your sfr list let me know in the comments i'm actually very curious to see who shows did that for you that [ __ ] fascinates me but anyways the flash sucks now it's probably here to stay because grant gustin wants to do 10 seasons and greg berlanti said the show would keep going for as long as grant wants to do it which is absolutely stupid but i hope season 8 will be the last and the cast can move on to greater things i am really tired of the cw ruining the careers of fantastic actors somebody please greenlight a flash movie with gran gustin [Music] anything you want on me

Channel: Friendly Space Ninja

Views: 1,565,968

Rating: 4.9194527 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: nrHqvUXyqJc

Length: 67min 1sec (4021 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BradeyWrites]

Great video; pretty accurately matches my feelings and experience with the show.

[u/Ad_Total]

Fanboys never acknowledge when these shows cater to their group. Instead they act like these shows only write for the shippers

The whole concept of team flash, the insistence of keeping the Wells character, Barry having a million meta sidekicks, Frost having more focus and presence, the idea that the team was truly the heart of the show..

Writers listened and now they have buyer's remorse lol