Shark Bytes

This show seemed to hope that style would distract its viewers from its otherwise obvious faults. Chief amongst these was its uniformly bland cast, whose faulty talent was emphasized by a dearth of compelling scenes. Somehow, the combination of stock writing and acting made Barry Allen — the comics' most boring version of The Flash — even less interesting. Any version of The Flash is tough to translate to live action, but using ex-soap opera actors in a version of the present too-heavily influenced by the 1940s only made capturing the essence of the character that much more elusive.

While the temporally ambiguous setting was a huge problem — indeed, the show might have gone further simply by having a different art director — the main fault of the program was that it featured the secret identity more than the costumed alter ego, yet did relatively little in terms of giving Allen any real character motivation. With more of an emotional hook, the greater presence of Allen might've been justified. Unfortunately, it became a show chiefly about waiting for The Flash to show up and use his powers in an incredibly lame way.

All that being said, though, it is only fair to comment that DC themselves have only recently gotten a true dramatic handle on the character. Most of the emotionally resonant stories featuring any version of The Flash postdate this series. The network and producers deserve kudos for at least trying with a character that wouldn't seem a natural fit for a weekly series. Lessons learned on this failure of a series undoubtedly helped the comic finally find its footing.

Thanks to all the variety of good comments we have received on THE FLASH T.V. show we will bring back the classic T.V. show on CBS we have different projects being accomplished, and we hope this show will be a success.

This is a show I missed as a child [as in wondered why it wasn't on anymore] and still miss and yearn again for it now. PLEASE CBS, bring it back!

After watching a few episodes, I can see why this mess didn't last. You get yourself some Batman music, a Gotham-esque city, bad acting, piss-poor stories, a lead actor who bears no resemblance (physically or personality-wise) with the comic book version, the second worst super-costume ever designed for tv (Cathy Lee Crosby's Wonder Woman outfit gets the top "honor") and a whole lotta yawns and you get this scarlet crap. And it's a shame...the Flash would make a great tv show or movie if done right.

zEW6Sg Wow, it can be truth

Never jumped.The show is so classic.

Great show. I think the changing time slots messed things up though. I actually met John Wesley Shipp (The Flash) at my gym 2 years ago, and he was an o.k. guy.

special effects capabilities being so limited for tv series in 1990 not withstanding, this show never jumped. it wasn't given an opportunity for special effects technology to catch up with where they wanted to take this show.

This show was awesome,first you have to take into account that when this show aired 16 years ago that no other tv show had such good special effects,good costumes,big budgets.it took awhile before the used real super-villians,but they did it and it turned out ok.This is by far the BEST comic book tv show ever except for one other,which is SMALLVILLE.The only reason the show never took off like it should have is because CBS execs are a bunch of idiots.I mean this is the network that produced such **** as "major dad".They do not know how to make a succesful show,no matter how good or bad the material is.Seinfeld would have tanked on CBS.They are a joke.If this EXACT show would have aired on ABC,FOX OR NBC it would have lasted longer.CBS killed the show,plain and simple!

What The Flash did was shark jump backwards. In other words when the producers changed the show mid run it got better. While reading the other comments, I have noticed that everyone blames CBS for airing The Flash against The Cosby Show and The Simpsons. However, while Bill Cosby's sitcom was a huge hit, I doubt that it's audience would be the same as those who watched science fiction/action/super hero shows. And lets not forget that everyone underestimated The Simpsons. I believe that if CBS had stuck with The Flash's original time slot that it would have built an audience needed to keep it alive, just as The Simpsons built it's own audience in it's Thursday night timeslot until one week it beat Cosby in the ratings. Millions of people did watch Cosby, but there were millions more who were already sick of the 80's family sitcoms. Something else blamed for The Flash's bad ratings was how CBS kept moving the timeslot. In fact the show was not moved that much. I do recall one day coming home and having to extend my VCR timer at the last moment because I found out that CBS moved it from 8:00 to 8:30, but other than that it spent most of it's run on Thursday before being moved to Saturdays at 8:00. What really did hurt it as well as many other of CBS's shows was the month or so of the Gulf War coverage followed by the Basketball finals. This is probably where the myth of CBS moving it's timeslot around every week came from, because during it's Saturday timeslot it would be delayed as the afternoon games went into overtime. Then one of the first weeks that the games weren't scheduled was the week that President Bush had surgery and Dan Quayle who became acting president called for an emergency press conference. The networks all cut in because they thought that there would be an announcement that the President had taken a turn for the worst, perhaps even had died, but instead was told by Dan's spokesman that Bush was doing fine and what a great job that acting president Dan Quayle was doing. This press conference started around 8:45, just as the third act of the episode was taking place, and was dumped out of around 8:45, by which time The Flash had already saved the day. [ this only affected the Eastern states, the west coast was three hours behind and unaffected by the game overtimes or press conferences. ] For those who did like the show, they did follow it to it's different time slots, if they knew when they were. What was not brought up here was that midway into the shows run the star of the show, John Wesley Shipp, was outed as being gay. That couldn't have helped. But what really hurt the show was that many people did not think that The Flash would make a good show. After all, his power was that he ran fast. I myself, who only watched the show as a goof, was surprised how good the show turned out to be. Originally when the first wave of superheroes came out in the 40's, their popularity did not last long. Sure it was cool seeing a superhero use his powers, but once you did the novelty began to wear off. The solution was to give the heroes new powers. For instance, Supermans original powers were super strength, speed, and the ability to leap over tall buildings. As the readers grew bored with that he gained X-ray vision, heat vision, flight, ice breath, and a host of other powers. The same can be said for the Flash who gained the power of phasing through solid objects. But soon all the hero comics were failing, all except Detective Comics which featured the one hero that had no powers, Batman. Batman's secret was his interesting costumed villains as well as how Batman had to solve the crime before he went after that issue's villain. In contrast Superman found out over the news wire that the bank was being robbed and simply showed up. As the other comics failed they were all bought out by DC [ Detective Comics ]who then gave each hero a makeover, having them all solve mysteries and fight super villains. Each hero was made more like Batman. Batman was in turn made more like the other heroes. This brings us to the 90's and once again superheroes were being modeled after Batman, only this time after the Tim Burton movie. And it worked, even if it did reinvent what the Flash was. Another complaint was that there were no villians. And yes the Flash would have been a better show with his supervillians, even if they were blatant ripoffs of Batman's arch villains. There, of course, is a reason why villains hardly show up on superhero shows. As you remember, the original Superman series had no supervillians, nor do I remember any being in Wonder Woman. The Incredible Hulk had no supervillians in it's run [ unless you count the later t.v. movies with Kingpin ] The only series to use supervillians on a weekly basis [ aside from the cartoon series ] was "Batman". Usually the reason is this: You have to pay royalties for every comic book character you use. So unless you plan to use the same villian almost every week, as was done with Lex Luthor in "Lois & Clark", then you are wasting a lot of money on what could be a one shot character. Most producers simply didn't use super villians, or even made up their own. In the case of "The Hulk" not only were no villians used, but none of the hulks regular characters were. Even the Hulks alter ego Bruce Banner was changed to David Banner to avoid having to pay for that character too. However, in the case of "The Flash", the producers from the start wanted to use super villians. It was CBS who refused to let them do it. CBS felt that the show had to have a reality base to work and that it's audience would not buy the super villians. So instead the Flash went after standard criminals. However, the producers were still able to sneak a few of their own supervillians in as with gang leader Pike introduced in the first episode/movie and six episodes later the villain Lesko. It was the episode "Ghost in the machine" that introduced the shows first official supervillian, The Ghost. But it was not until the series was twelve episodes in that the producers were able to convince CBS to let them use some of DC's supervillians. The Trickster was first, followed by Captain Cold. This is where the series jumped from being a normal crime drama whose hero just happens to have super powers and a Danny Elfman soundtrack backing him, to an all out superhero show with supervillians. A shark jump where the show got better. The producers had hoped for a second season and had planned that the season premiere would be a two hour movie where Captain Cold and The Trickster team up. That season never happened. So what really killed "The Flash"? It was the wrong hero to attract an audience, although once someone did give the show a chance they did seem to like it for what it was. It was the wrong year to debut any new show. With the basketball playoffs already scheduled it was the wrong network to debut any show on. And it was too damn expensive a show to make. Remember, the original Battlestar Galactica constantly won it's timeslot, but was so expensive that it was just shy of the ratings needed to break even on it's cost. Even with the newer less expensive special effects that were coming out in the 90's, the Flash would still need a huge audience for it to continue. What CBS should have done was to take the show and rerun it during the summer so that an audience would discover it. But to do that meant to commit to a second season. That is something you just can't do with an expensive show. So it was decided to just kill it off. And it's a damn shame too. Two more notes about The Flash. CBS did show some episodes out of order, which had the Flash making references to an episode that had not yet aired. Also, the Flash did return to television [ sort of ] as a one shot character in the series "Smallville" where a teen version of the Flash meets Clark Kent.

This happens to CBS every so often. Ten years after trying to ride shotgun on Superman's cape, the eye network attempted to capitalize on the phenomenon started by the first "Batman" film. In both instances, CBS made their attempts with comic book heroes less familiar than either the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader. And it didn't help matters that Jack Nicholson's over-the-top performance as Joker pulled the proverbial rug out from under Michael Keaton, who as Batman, began venturing away from comedy and delivering convincing dramatic turns. It wasn't the Scarlet Speedster's fault. Perhaps the big screen is the place for "The Flash". "Spider-Man" didn't work on CBS, but blew movie-goers away. Maybe the Flash and the others that flopped on CBS will get their shot at movie houses one day.

What looked like a potentially good episode became utter crap in this series. It was titled "Twin Streaks" (obviously a pun of the late series Twin Peaks, get it?). Basically the lowdown is that this dorky scientist wants to make his own superhuman who is to have super speed like the Flash. His own creations burn themselves out of existence so he decides to take the shortcut of getting the Flash's blood and make a clone. He calls in a false alarm of a bomb at the local bus station where Flash takes the bait, gets slashed by a cute looking toy robot and the scientist is well hidden and gets the necessary blood. He gives it the special treatments, puts in his clone chamber and 1 hour later, instant Flash clone. This process has so many goofs it really wouldn't have been feasible. First, Flash should have had the common sense to clean the blood off the floor. It's a sure bet the cops would have wanted to investigate the crime area and likely would have found the blood to analyze. Of course, Barry is a lab cop, but others in forensics would have known about it, so it's unlikely he would have been able to hide it from them, let alone destroy the evidence without anyone knowing about it. Second, it's unlikely the Flash clone could have survived its birth, let alone growing into instant adulthood. Considering how much the real Flash eats, the clone would have needed tons and tons of vitamin supplements in order to grow from infancy to adulthood. And what the hell was that scientist thinking? Having the clone grow into an adult without so much as an education, or at least some sort of subliminal programming that would have been able to teach him to be mature in normal society. Now that's just asking for trouble! Of course there was going to be such with the fact he threw a fit when he couldn't even stack a few blocks together. Eventually, he escapes, falls for Tina, is recaptured, and becomes much more of a brat. The scientist's second effort to stop him becomes disasterous as his dorky assistant becomes victim of a Flash square dance and he can only cower as Pollux escapes again. The clone goes around town, then sees a picture of Tina in a local newspaper and decides to make himself over to look cool for her. But he screws this up big time by putting on an outfit that looked like something from a French gay fashion show! Tina can only chuckle when she sees who she thinks is Barry looking like a meterosexual (or more likely homosexual)! But realizing he's really the clone, she calls the real Barry who flashes over and meets his twin. He and Tina talk discreetly, but Pollux doesn't like what's being discussed and bashes Barry with a beaker and makes off with his police badge. Next thing you know, he passes himself off as the real Barry at police HQ as Julio makes a crack about his gay outfit and then he gets into a confrontation with Garfield. Luckily, he didn't use his Flash powers there, otherwise the real Barry would have returned to a major surprise. Pollux eventually feels he's not going to be accepted and decides to leave Central City for good. He decides to say goodbye to his creator who has his own plans to off him. He stands there with a gun ready to shoot him---WTF?!? Is this for real?!? Shooting at a person who's faster than bullets?!? One of the most insanely stupid scenes for sure here! Isn't that what that dorky scientist created him for in the first place? As expected, Pollux catches the bullet and throws it back to him at Flash speed as he pays the price for his stupidity for sure! The real Flash and Tina show up just afterward and try to convince Pollux to stay with them, but he decides to run off where Barry steps in his way and a Flash fight breaks out. Shockingly, the real Flash loses to the clone and is pasted on the wall as the dork not quite dead aims his gun again. But blacking out, he shoots at the real one and is unable to react in time. For some reason Pollux flies in and takes the bullet when he could just have easily caught it! It's impossible to know why he did this as he begins to die. Tina removes Barry's mask so Pollux can "see himself" one last time and within seconds begins to superheat and disintegrates in a scorching flash of white light. Tina figures his super healing abilities did too much to save him from injuries that couldn't be properly healed without immediate surgery. So the fact is he was done for regardless. Barry of course was horrified seeing himself "die" and figures this was what Tina was warning him about as he had been becoming overly stressed in his duties as the Flash before all this happened. But of course, this episode itself as a mess before the first half of it was over.

I watched the first 10 or 11 episodes to realize that you have a super hero with no super villains. LAME. He had to carry his super suit around in the trunk of his car...... WTF?

The Flash was as good on the last show as the first. It is too bad it didn't have the audience to support it. CBS moving all over the time zone all the time didn't help. If anything the constantly changing of its time is what killed it.

Jumped before it was aired, but in this case I'll concede that it just jumped on day one. First, it bore almost no resemblance to the comic book. That would have been okay, as in the case of "The Hulk," but in return the show has to give us a likeable substitute. This show gave us nothing to like. The character was miscast; Barry Allen is a geek, blond-haired but no Adonis, and as drawn by the great Carmine Infantino, even in his costume he wasn't all that. Next, they did the same thing to Iris, his brown-haired wife. I can't recall the name of the actress who got the role, but that wasn't Iris. That was a bitchy 90's BRAT with greasy BLACK hair. Then there's the set. Century City modeled after Tim Burton's Gotham didn't work, was never going to. That dark **** didn't even work for long in the movies; by the third sequel most people were praying no more "Batman" movies were coming. Next you have to mention the costume, turned from a thin and fairly tight, bright red to an obviously thick, padded, heavy and deep brick red made out of something that looked like suede leather. This was one of the worst costumes in TV history. Then there's the supporting cast. That whining father of Barry's is a character actor whom I have always loathed and whose name I have blissfully forgotten, hopefully forever. The lab assistant with the dreads was dreadful, no pun intended, but his part got worse and worse, and that's coming from an opening in the pilot that was bad enough. The two cops who were supposed to be the comic relief, Murph and, uh, what's-his-name, sucked. If that's what the city's cops were like, it was no wonder that things were so bad. And let's not forget good ol' Doctor Tina, played by an absolutely beautiful actress who was squandered so badly here that I can't recall her name, either. Her role on this show was ridiculous from the start; she wasn't believable as a scientist in a lab with such little lab equipment and a ****** unit that had too MUCH. And finally, there's the writers, the whipping boys used by the producers, who were the real villains here. This bullshit was not Flash material; it's that simple. In the end, I think one of the biggest strikes this show had against it was the subject chosen. Someone had discovered a new way of making a special effect in ***** that eventually gave us the character's blurring illusion of speed, and this show was built around it, a horrible mistake since it wasn't really used to its potential. The Flash is not a comic book character worthy of a solo series. Outside of the comics, he's a hero that would best be utilized as a backup for other, bigger names. He's a member of the Justice League of America, at least the classic one, and in those comics he was always thrown in with a mix of other heroes, and it worked. This show would have done better as a team-up series with perhaps alternating members of the league on as semi-regulars. That is, IF they had taken it seriously and not built the thing around a gimmick. With so much potential, this show's shark jump was sad. And here's the true irony: Since way back when, it was always Marvel's characters who did badly on screens both large and small; witness the 70's weekly "Spiderman" and the many iterations of "Captain America." D.C. hadn't done that much better, but both "Superman" and "Batman" series were passable as they were. In the late 80's, Tim Burton, and Michael Keaton as Batman, seemed to place D.C. characters on a solid footing at the top of the hill. Starting with the "Flash" in late 1990, all that began to change, and look at Marvel vs. D.C. today. "Spiderman" has had two superior movies, "Hulk" a truly epic turn with Eric Bana, and there's more. D.C. fans are left with the sour memories of Alicia Silverstone's fat-lipped Batgirl and Ah-nold's truly horrible Mr. Freeze. See what one shark-jump can start?