OJ's TV Review - The Flash season 1

See! Not every DC property has to be dark and gloomy!

So The Flash is a spin-off from Arrow and is about this guy Barry Allen who can run fast and with the help of some scientist friends becomes the superhero the Flash! I really enjoyed when he first showed up in Arrow season 2 and again I enjoyed watching him here.
    Grant Gustin does a great job in his role, his performance was very entertaining during all the comedic, emotional and action scenes; a really good casting choice. Talking of cast, another great role is Tom Cavanagh as Harrison Wells, he was a such an interesting character to watch, I really did love all of his scenes. My favourite character was Cisco though, probably because I related most to him being a geek and I laughed at all his movie references. Joe West was also enjoyable to watch, he was basically the common sense of the show, he gave great advice, he reacted to things the same way any normal person would, he just seemed like a great father-figure and our eyes into this world.
     Plot-wise it was mostly your freak-of-the-week deal where they dealt with a new meta-human every week but I enjoyed it anyway, it worked for this kind of premise and allowed the series to show off Barry's various abilities. The overall arc was really engaging too and came to an epic, emotional, and downright entertaining conclusion; one of the best finale's I've seen in a long time.
    The special-effects weren't too bad either, you had the odd obvious CGI moment but for the most part, the Flash's running effect, the meta-human's abilities and the final scenes of last episode all looked great.
  The Flash really is a fun science-fiction drama; it goes to show that you don't have to make all your heroes depressingly dark and edgy, it can be fun and colourful without crossing over into cheesy (although The Flash did not outrun some cheesy lines). I cannot wait for season 2 and hope the spin-off Legends of Tomorrow will be as good.

9/10

OJ's TV Review - Arrow season 3

Back for a third run is our hero Batman, I mean Arrow!

As you probably know already, Arrow is about vigilante Oliver Queen and his team of friends tacking down criminals in their city. Now, Arrow is known for it's mystery, season one had a twist in almost every episode, but for some reason this season seemed to loose that. It didn't really have much for you to try and figure out at all. There was sort of an on-going case to begin with where they had to solve a murder but that was resolved before even mid-season. Mostly it was your bad guy-of-the-week format and then a story arc involving new villian Ra's al Ghul, which was OK and entertaining enough, just no mysteries which is what made Arrow so good.
    Of course every season has lengthy flashbacks to five years in the past to see what Oliver was up to while away from Starling City, and this time instead of being on a cool island...he's in Hong Kong. After watching the the full season, I definitely preferred when he was on the island, this just didn't seem as interesting and by the end it only amounted to a weak connection to the present day events of the final episode.
   Other than that, Arrow continued to be action packed, have awesome characters and this time it was fun catching all the references to The Flash and the like.

 6/10

OJ's TV Review - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2

Coulson and his team are back! Well, they added some new people and technically one old member left... also Coulson isn't really feeling himself, so... S.H.I.E.L.D. is back!...oh wait.

As you know, the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was not great, only getting better in the final
episodes; thankfully this season continued on it's path of better quality as it is now actually a pretty decent show.
  Since the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier Coulson has collected a few more team mates and is running special little missions as a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. organization; which is cool to see them as this special task-force in contrast to the big shiny S.H.I.E.L.D. we all used to know. Unlike the first season, this one doesn't do the whole different-case-every-week format, I mean it does have those kinds of episodes but for the most part it's story arcs influence the events which makes it flow nicely and very entertaining as the mystery and revelations make it worth it. It of course had a mid-season break so two different story arcs which are connected but still very different entities, both of which I enjoyed seeing play out.
  Character wise, I loved what they did with them. Fitz & Simmons had a great arc exploring the relationship they have, Skye had a huge role in things and was the main focus of more than a few episodes, we got to see a bit more about what kind of background Melinda May had so the original team were excellent. Three new members joined, one of which was Mac, he was good in his role moving the characters to do certain things when the plot needed; the others were Bobbi and Lance, I enjoyed those two a lot and were very well-defined characters. The only people I weren't as impressed with were Coulson, unfortunately he's quite a bit far from the fan favourite when he showed up in the movies, now because he has so many problems and worries it brings his character to a more serious and sometimes uninteresting personality. Grant Ward as well, although was a really cool character to watch, he had an odd story in the second half of the season which I was not a fan of.
  In the end, the second run of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has vastly improved and look forward to it's future!

7.5/10