I can’t be the only one sick of all the superhero shows?

I stopped watching The Flash midway into season 3, after giving up on Arrow after season 1, and I might still watch the last season of Supergirl. I might. But Superman and Lois? Fuck that. Enough is enough.

Surely I’m not the only one to notice that Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl are all basically the same show? You have the hero, with a plug-in origin story, and a team of helpers. All the characters are generic and all the shows are formulaic. You could even swap characters out from one show and move them to another. Swap the tech geek from Flash and Arrow or Supergirl around, and it’s just a matter of unplugging them from the one show and plugging them into another. Even the dialog is so generic, it doesn’t matter and the characters will fit like pieces of a puzzle. Throw in a couple of romances, and if you’re team Supergirl, some plotlines related to the current political climate where Trumpertoodles/racists are the bad guys, and maybe throw in some LGBTQ characters and you’re good to go. (Make no mistake, I love Nicole Maines and I’ve read her whole history after seeing her character on Supergirl, but I do think the various topics are handled rather superficially on there.) However, it’s the one thing that keeps me watching that show – they do take on real subjects and that makes it better than the other shows. Even if they gloss over some stuff, they take on real subjects and infuse them all with this message of hope, and I like that.

But for the most part, those shows are all exactly the same. I gather Superman and Lois is different, but really, I’m not interested in yet another Superman Soap Opera like Smallville. I keep seeing the so-called “geeky” articles that mention Tom Welling’s character in Smallville, and I’m like… Did people really like that shit? That one was basically the same episode over and over again, taking predictability, repeatability, and pure cheese to a new level of boredom. For fuck’s sake, can’t we have some original TV?

Edit… I have to add this, I’m so sorry, but ever since I watched Flash season 2 one day and my mother pointed it out while walking by, that was it for me… The guy who plays Flash in the show, Grant Gustin, plays it like a whining, crying spoiled little boy, an annoying brat, a man-child. I could never unsee that. I could never take even a minute of that show seriously after that. And there are fans who love him. I don’t get it. He really is bad in the role. (Yet people dislike Ezra Miller who is perfect in the movie role. Why?)

2 thoughts on “I can’t be the only one sick of all the superhero shows?

  1. Putting aside your valid points about the superhero fad, your powerful topic of drugs has a very challenging public voice in the US: Carl Hart. Here is an introduction from a post in truthout.org:

    “That’s what acclaimed neuroscientist Carl Hart does in his new book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. Hart, a leading drug researcher and a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University, suggests a full-scale reframing: Don’t assume that drugs are bad. He recognizes that pretty much any drug can have benefits, including typically vilified drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines.”

    Further from the article:

    “He regularly uses illicit drugs, and shares how heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine, MDMA and others have served useful purposes in his life — including just relaxing and having fun. Hart notes that addiction affects “only 10 percent to 30 percent of those who use even the most stigmatized drugs, such as heroin or methamphetamine.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s difficult to separate the actual harm of addiction and drug abuse from the damage done due to the criminalization of addiction. I don’t know enough to make any kind of judgement about it, but he may be onto something.

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