The Flash - 'Who is Harrison Wells'

Inaugural meeting of the Association of Disappointing Canon Love-Interest's
Long-Suffering Cop Dads.

One of the problems of watching The Flash ahead of Arrow is that it does sometimes drop me some spoilers, like Felicity dating Ray Palmer after he bought out Queen Conglomerated and now Detective/Officer Lance being made up to Captain after discovering a heart murmur of some kind and Laurel Lance stepping into her (dead, thanks again The Flash) sister's kinky boots as Black Canary. So it goes.

Anyway, this comes out of Joe and Cisco taking a road trip to Starling City to look into Harrison Wells' car accident, discovering tachyon residue and the horribly distorted body of the original Wells, the latter finally convincing even Caitlin that Wells might be the Reverse Flash. While there, Laurel approaches Cisco to adapt her sister's sonic weapon into the throat-mounted 'Canary Cry'.

Back in Central City, Barry and Eddie hunt down a thief who can take on the form of anyone he touches, clothes and all. The metahuman frames Eddie for attempted murder, steals Barry's form - but despite some concerns, not his powers - and macks on a painfully uncomfortable Caitlin. While disguised as Barry he also gives the thumbs up to the name 'Everyman', provided by an atypically inspired Caitlin.

Standout moments include Lance and Joe discussing secrets, Eddie refusing to let Barry simply run him away from arrest, and Everyman's realisation that he can't recall or resume his original appearance.

The episode ends with Eddie telling Iris that he has been working with the Flash, and Team Flash discovering Wells' secret chamber of secrets, complete with yellow suit and 2043 newspaper headlines. One can only assume that next week is going to be big.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Fireflash'

"Well, I'm sure this can't go wrong."

In a bold move, the fifth episode of Thunderbirds are Go basically just rips its plot from the first ever Thunderbirds episode, 'Trapped in the Sky'. With Thunderbird S in the shop (not that we've yet seen it in use,) Kayo is obliged to travel first class on the massive hypersonic airliner Fireflash (poor thing,) only for the flight to be hijacked by the Hood. Whereas the original episode saw Tin-Tin a passive observer, Kayo quickly takes charge, engaging in another hand-to-hand struggle with her uncle before attempting to land the plain with the assistance of her adoptive family.

I really liked parts of this episode, and in particular Kayo's dramatic 'in case I don't make it' was well done and it was good to see the brothers showing a familial concern for Kayo instead of the chest-puffing romantic competition that occasionally crept in to the older series. The use of the elevator cars was a nice nod to the original, but the need for a different solution felt like an important step.

The necessary comparison to the Gerry Anderson series did, however, throw up one of the main problems with Thunderbirds are Go, specifically that with the exception of the two-part opener, the shorter format can not build up the tension that good episodes of Thunderbirds did so well. Of course, it also avoids the dragging sections which dogged not-so-good episodes.

Anyway, if they're going to knock-off old episodes, I vote for The Uninvited, the weird one with the lost pyramid full of fighter jets and the secret civilisation of 'Zombites'.

Atlantis - 'The Gorgon's Gaze'

Atlantis blows a perfect opportunity for a big no.

Ariadne arrested! Pasiphae Queen of Atlantis! Jason accused of murdering the Oracle!

On these and other bombshells we open this week's episode with the inauguration of the new Oracle, Cassandra, who immediately announces that the Gods are pissed as hell with all these shenanigans and the vain-taking of their names and justice. It strikes me that this is a very real problem that a would-be usurper like Pasiphae might have taken into account, living as she does in a land of real and vengeful deities (indeed, that this was the purpose of her various schemes to marry Ariadne to her henchling in Season 1.)

While Ariadne is subjected to the dreaded Colchean stare-eyes torture (in fairness, this is actually done pretty well, with top-notch intensity from Ariadne, Medea and Pasiphae,) Medusa hatches a scheme with Pythagoras. With the aid of his friends, Daedalus and his son Icarus, he breaks into the temple and steals Pandora's Box. In order to atone for the Oracle's murder, she drugs Hercules and transforms herself back into the Gorgon, before allowing Jason to decapitate her and use her as a weapon of mass destruction.

This leads to a confrontation in which Jason nearly kills Pasiphae, before she reveals that she is his mother. This apparently leads Medea to assume that she and Jason are totally going to do it in the impromptu statue garden, but he assures her he just finds her creepy and walks out with the blindfolded Ariadne.

"You only need my head; my body will just slow you down."

Atlantis has always had a dark streak, but this is some heavy shit, from the murder of Ariadne's loyal guard captain to Jason cutting his friend's head off to use as a death ray. Hercules is, understandably, pissed as hell, and Pythagoras guilt-wracked. Fun, fun, fun.

In terms of dramatic punch and performances, this is a career best for the series, sadly coming after the decision to cancel at the end of Series 2. Still, there's always Olympus to keep us going over on Spike.

Person of Interest - 'Mors Praematura'

Kirk Acevedo continues his bid for televisual ubiquity.

Reese and Finch are working a new number, that of Tim Sloan, an estate investigator (the man who tracks down heirs to unclaimed estates) who has run into trouble trying to solve his brother's murder. Meanwhile Shaw has been kidnapped by Root to undertake what at first appears to be a completely separate mission.

It emerges that Sloan's brother once worked with Vigilance, the anti-surveillance group introduced in the episode 'Nothing to Hide', but that he wanted out after they escalated to murder. The CIA offered him amnesty and protection if he turned evidence, then faked his death and moved him to a 'mobile black room', a sort of transient, double-secret domestic GitMo. It is to protect him from Vigilance that Root allows herself to be added to the black site's inventory, with Shaw as her minder.

Root and Shaw play to their strengths.

The dovetailing of the two story strands is nicely managed, with Roots compulsive secrecy and mechanically pragmatic release of information only as and when it is needed serving to maintain the separation for most of the episode. Root and Shaw make a fun double act - although stretching it for more than one episode might have been a step too far, so props for calling it quits - and it gets us away from the Reese*/Shaw snarkfest for a week.

Carter is on mostly detached duty this week, running down HR with the help of her tame rookie, and Fusco off the books. This leaves Sloan to fill in as support investigator, with the omnipresent Kirk Acevedo apparently gunning for another recurring credit.

The episode ends with Root held at the library, promising more philosophical platonic foreplay with Finch in future episodes. The big question, of course, is whether the Machine wanted her to be caught and what that means for its relationships with its various assets.

* Sarah Shahi was Dani Reese in Life; that's why I keep wanting to call Shaw Reese.

Agents of SHIELD - 'One Door Closes'

Seriously; why have we not been watching this series instead?

Events come to a head as the real SHIELD makes its move against Coulson's SHIELD, interlaced with flashbacks to the day SHIELD fell.

We learn that Bobbi and Isabelle Hartley - Lucy Lawless's frankly wasted cameo from 'Shadows' - rescued Mack when HYDRA tried to take over a SHIELD aircraft carrier. They were there to get Gonzales out and sink the ship, but changed their mind and, rather than condemn their fellow agents, led an heroic takeback of the carrier. In the here and now, Coulson's team move against Bobbi and Mack, but are surprised by an all-out attack on the base.

Highlights of this section include Simmons taking down Bobbi ("Here; just hold this...") and Mack risking serious injury to protect Fitz during the breach. Gonzales tries to persuade Coulson to get on board with his more democratically run SHIELD, but Coulson not unreasonably has some trust issues with the organisation that infiltrated and spied on his team in the name of no more secrets. May busts him loose before surrendering herself, telling him as she puts him in a lift 'there is no SHIELD without you'. Honestly, this is the sort of demagoguery that makes me want to root for the other guys, along with the revelation that Agent Weaver basically went mano a mano with a HYDRA 'enhanced' to defend the SHIELD Academy.

Just to keep us from getting too sold on the real SHIELD, Agent Calderon gets all bullet happy when he and Bobbi go to collect Skye, disregarding Bobbi's ICER only ruling. Forced to use her powers to defend herself, Skye then calls on an offer of help from Gordon, who is still kind of awesome.

In the stinger, Coulson sits at a tropical beach bar, obviously about to meet with someone significant who will help him take back SHIELD. Fury, perhaps? Hawkeye? Surely not Widow?

Curb your expectations, folks; it's Lance Hunter. Woo.

'One Door Closes' is a step up from the last couple of weeks; at least something is happening. On the other hand, it is kind of a similar beat to the Winter Soldier events in Season 1, and the Skye issue detracts from the more significant issues between the two sides.

Also, there is as yet no explanation of what those stars on the Real SHIELD logo mean; it's bugging me.

Daredevil - 'The World on Fire' and 'Condemned'

The fact that this episode at no point used the song 'I Don't Want to Set the
World on Fire' is a travesty.

Having rescued Claire from the Russians, Matt brings her back to his place and invites her to move in with him, in a touchingly awkward scene which progresses their relationship to a romantic level.

The rest of the episode is Matt trying to track down the Russians, while the Russians - duped into thinking that the man in the mask killed Anatoly - are looking for him. Informed that Fisk might also have had a hand in it, Vladmir calls for all out war, but Fisk turns the tables, sending suicide bombers to annihilate the Russians at their mustering points.

"You have failed this... no, wait..."

Tipped off to a conspiracy of corrupt cops, Matt is present and almost caught in the blast. Still dazed, he is nearly arrested, but beats up the cops, who turn out to be corrupt and goes on the run with the injured Vladimir, still wanting information on Fisk. This is what leads into 'Condemned', which I felt I had to roll straight on with.

Meanwhile, Foggy and Karen seek justice for an old woman persecuted by a slum landlord. They even help to fix up her apartment a little, before the warehouse next door explodes. It's a little cosy to be playing alongside the big escalation, but gives Foggy a chance to be his own kind of hero and develops the potential relationship between the two.

Ever a man to take a chance, Fisk uses this as a romantic gambit, coming clean about his activities to Marianna over an intimate dinner as buildings explode outside the window like the denouement of Fight Club. Vanessa Marianna is building into an interesting character, not a criminal herself, but apparently very willing to accept Fisk as a criminal, and to buy into his reasoning. It helps that that reasoning seems very sincere; he genuinely believes that tearing down the old is the way to renew Hell's Kitchen.

'The World on Fire' is notable as much for some innovative imagery as for the catastrophic shift in the plot progression. In particular, Matt's perception is depicted for the first time, in golden-red tones - he describes it as the titular 'world on fire'. In another key scene, one of the reptillian Madam Gao's blinded couriers sits alone in a car, singing a haunting song while the camera pans back and forth, revealing Murdock suddenly there and then gone.

"This show is brutal."
"And yet I can't look away."

In 'Condemned', Foggy and Karen continue to sit on the very literal sidelines, with Foggy turning out to have been injured in the blast:

"Oh, that explains it."
"Explains what?"
"The stabbing pain in my side."

The two spending most of the episode in hospital, watching events on television and trying to call Matt, who is too busy taking phone advice on cauterising gunshot wounds from Claire.

Murdock ends up on top of Vladimir so often it's like these
two episodes really want them to kiss.

The meat of the episode has Vladimir and Murdock trapped in a warehouse with a captive cop (alas, poor Officer Sullivan, who proves himself a good and brave cop before being offed by the evil SWAT team to further frame the man in the mask.) Matt wants answers, Vladimir is basically wallowing through a lifetime of piss and vinegar to accept help from someone like Matt, and deeply derisive of his attempts to make a difference. Meanwhile, Fisk shows his true muscle, deploying a force of dirty cops and a sniper to take out several officers in the Masked Man's name.

And then he calls Matt, using a police frequency to talk to him for the obligatory 'we're not so different' conversation. The big realisation for Matt, however, is not that he is like Fisk, but that he is woefully underequipped to take him on. His plan was to gather evidence and take him down, but Vladimir scoff at this: "He owns cops, judges, everyone." At last, he gives Matt the name of the money man before making his last stand. "He has what you think you want, but it won't be enough. You see that now?"

"Card Sharp? Blackjack? No, too ethnic. Ace of Sp... Definitely not!"

'Condemned' has some strengths, but all in all is kind of an obligation; a series of events that have to happen at some point, especially the first contact with Fisk, which could have had a lot more weight to it. The absence of action compared to the previous episode takes away one of the series' strengths, and the tension is not quite enough to match it. The best thing about it is Ben Urich's search for the truth, which he models using notes written on playing cards, as if working up his own card-related superhero identity.

Sleepy Hollow - 'Deliverance'

"Hello? Did somebody order some mildly rapey body horror?"

Season 2 of Sleepy Hollow seems to be settling into a bit of an artefact of the week pattern, with many of these objects then being bounced off Henry/War (possibly through the agency of Hawley the idiot) to kickstart the next story. In this case, the evil spider created from the jincane swapped for Joe Corbin's non-cure has infected Katrina with... something.

One of the most interesting things to come out of this is a clash between the two Horsemen, as Henry brings a bunch of pseudoscience heavies from the Hellfire Club to drag Katrina away, leading to a drag-out fight against Death as Abraham shows once more that while he may be a crazy stalker, his feelings are as sincere as they are creepy. This gives her the chance to escape and be found by Abby and Ichabod at the hospital (after a visit to the polling booths for the weekly outrage.)

It turns out that Katrina is pregnant with the demon Moloch, bringer of the Apocalypse, who is using her as a means to leapfrog any need for the remaining two horsemen (samurai dude and cloak dude.) Ichabod is briefly livid at the thought that headless Abraham might have knocked up his missus, but then he rushes off to ask Henry nicely to take it back. I know that they said he wants to believe in Jeremy, but this is taking fatherly faith to insane lengths.

Unsurprisingly, Henry mocks Ichabod - although a brief psychic contact hints that a) there may still be a frightened little boy inside War's armour, and b) Jeremy may have inherited his sin-eating ability from Ichabod - and then it's ho for the artefact of the week, a tablet possessed by the Hellfire Club that not only holds the rituals for impregnating, but also has an 'aurora lens' hidden within it that can create an artificial aurora capable of banishing demons, because Benjamin fucking Franklin, okay! (In this universe, the Hellfire Club was evil, because British, and Franklin infiltrated it.) I'll buy the powers of the aurora and even the aurora-making stone, but I'm not clear how Franklin got it inside an already extant stone tablet. I guess with science?

And then Henry was bottling lightning, or something.

Sleepy Hollow continues to be basically bonkers, with a side of eww, but I love it in all its barmy glory.

Gotham - 'Red Hood'

"We want people to know we're serious, right?"

A grandstanding bank robber and a desperate escape gambit transform a simple red hood into a powerful icon. Wayne Manor plays host to an old army buddy of Alfred's. Meanwhile, Fish and Penguin struggle to master their new environments.

The story of the week is an origin for the Red Hood, a supervillain alias used by many different people through the years (including the Joker, who appears to have an embarrassment of origins in Gotham.) Aptly enough then, the episode is not the story of the man beneath the hood, but of the hood itself, a gimmick created by one member of an ordinary gang which rapidly becomes a cursed talisman, bringing success and death in equal measure. It seems odd that a mere scrap of cloth has power like unto the Ring of the Nibelungs without more backstory - was it cut from a piece of Superman's cape or something? - and the single-episode resolution kind of detracts from any build-up of a more interesting psychological explanation.

I think I'm basically just watching this show while I wait for
the Pennyworth PI spinoff.

When his army pal Reggie Payne shows up at Wayne Manor to visit Alfred, Bruce insists that he stay a while. Alas, old war stories and tense lessons in dirty fighting son give way to attempted robbery, culminating in Reggie sticking Alfred with a knife and leaving him hospitalised. This strand brought some of the episode's highlights. Reggie's impromptu fighting lesson brought out a lot of Bruce's rage, but more importantly his potential influence showcased both Alfred's protective streak and the good influence that Bruce and his parents had on Alfred, apparently tempering a man who was much more like Reggie. Reggie's betrayal and glimpse of conscience also moved the Wayne Enterprises' story arc forward.

"The Doctor is not here at present. He specifically asked me
to be creepy at you."

Fish Mooney, alas, is kind of back to square one, confronting the manager of the organ bank as if she had the whip hand when she has nothing, ultimately responding to a threat to carve out her eyes by taking one  out herself with a spoon. It's a powerful gesture, but doesn't take away from the fact that by letting herself be taken out of the basement and letting the manager - the wonderfully creepy Jeffrey Combs, getting to namedrop the Dollmaker, or rather 'Dr Dulmacher', for the first time since 'Selina Kyle' - dictate any of the terms of the confrontation - beginning with not being the actual owner - she surrendered her power and any impetus the character had gained. Any advance she made was through the incompetence of her enemies, not her ability, and that's not interesting.

Penguin is also running on fumes. The Machiavellian mastermind who sliced his way through the mob on guile and moxie is now the impresario of a failing club (a guest comedian bombs, because we haven't had enough Joker teases yet, apparently,) and being held to ransom by Maroni's booze monopoly. He plans a dumb as hell heist, but fortunately Butch may have been tortured to the point of total brainwashing, but that hasn't stopped him being a smoother operator than Cobblepot can apparently dream of being.

It's a sobering fact that one of the least bad interpretations of
this whole bit is that the writers have just plain forgotten that
their version of Barbara is bi.

I would say that Barbara is looking played out, but she never really had a hand. Still inexplicably hanging with Ivy and Selina, she tries to give them a makeover, presumably as a last-ditch alternative to buying a quart of rotgut and a dozen cats and just going with it. Ivy is well into this - Ivy basically just rolls with shit as it comes, and I really respect that - but Selina is dubious, throwing Barbara's 'sex is a weapon' speech back in her face and - I really hope - leaving forever, because what could be a weird sort of sisterhood thing is potentially creepy as hell when one of the show's two lesbian characters is drunkenly telling a thirteen year old girl how beautiful she is and trying to dress her in slinky outfits.

Please come back, Renee! Represent!

The Vikings

So, I made it part-way through an episode of the Vikings, not through any specific badness on its part, I think I was just really busy that day and its badass, gritty historypunkness failed to grip me from the gloom of PBS (that is, pre-Bravia screen, the computer monitor that was my viewing medium before the big screen telly entered my life in all its trampy, seductive glory.)

My bad movie buddy and history bro James has made it further, and if you are a fan of snarky, moderately historically stickling reviews, you should check them out at his Gonzo History Blog. Point of fact, you should check out the blog for all - or at least most of - your historically stickling snark requirements.

The Flash - 'All Star Team Up'

"And remember, the port..."
"Yeah, we did that joke in the last post."

The Flash goes up against a perfectly human mad scientist with a swarm of killer robot bees at her disposal. He is ill-equipped to battle a mass of insects, but fortunately help is at hand, in the form of Felicity Smoake and her new beau, Ray Palmer.

"It's like dating Barry Allen in Oliver Queen's body... which is a sentence you will never repeat."

Okay, I am way behind on Arrow, so Ray Palmer was a bit left field for me, even before he turned out to be ex-Superman Brandon Routh and - and this threw me a major loop - not able to alter his size at all. He's actually just a slightly awkward Iron Man. I guess the shrinking will come along later.

Anyway, the superheroics are a little beside the point on this one. Atom uses his bee-proof supersuit to help Flash thwart the Bug-Eyed Bandit (and helps Cisco, who totally becomes his super-science bro, to name her,) Flash arrests her and everyone goes home happy. Except that actually there is no happy. Felicity actually comments that she leaves Starling City to get away from the brooding, but Central City is getting just as bad.

Eddie and Iris's relationship is strained to breaking point by Barry and Joe's request that Eddie keep the Flash's identity a secret from Iris. Major points to Eddie for his insistence that she should know and that keeping her in the dark to protect her is wrong.

"I'm her father."
"And I'm her boyfriend. When does my vote outweigh yours?"
"When you become her husband."

Daaamn, Joe; showing the age there a little. Also, that's never happening, because Iris refuses any explanations or rationales and walks out until such time as Eddie makes full disclosure. Kudos to Barry for trying to help, having created the problem, effectively catching Eddie between a duty of confidence to his mentor and his friend, and his duty of honesty to Iris. It's a bit sucky for him, and you can see why his descendants might bear a grudge against the Flash.

Moreover, taking Felicity's advice over Joe's, Barry brings Cisco and Caitlin in on his suspicions about Dr Wells. Caitlin is skeptical, but it turns out that Cisco has been remembering flashes of the timeline in which he was killed after Thawne revealed his true identity. Team Flash will never be the same, for certain.

The 100 - 'Remember Me' and 'Survival of the Fittest'

"And remember, the port passes to the left."

It's all go in 100-ville. The death of Finn still stings, but the truce with the Grounders is established. 'Remember Me' establishes that the Grounders' own intertribal alliance is rocky, held together by the Commander's will. Lexa has been referred to elsewhere as a visionary, and it is clear that she is assaying a new style of leadership and trying to affect real change in the 'Tree people'. When it seems that Raven has tried to kill her, everything goes to pot therefore, but ultimately her own bodyguard is fingered as the culprit, having put poison in the cup as he tasted it in order to save her from an alliance he believes will kill her. His own execution shows Raven what Finn would have suffered, and she is reconciled to Clarke.

In Mount Weather, Monty manages to splice a signal into the transmitters, but is caught sabotaging the jammer and placed with Harper in a set of forty-seven cages.

The cast await word of whether the show has been renewed or not.

In 'Survival of the Fittest', the alliance continues to be shaky. Clarke is basically putting everything on Bellamy getting into Mount Weather and shutting down the defences; the Grounders are all for having some other plan. The acid fog is a pretty compelling point in Clarke's favour, but her approach is terribly all-or-nothing.

The Grounder warriors are unimpressed with the Sky People, who do not hunt, but Octavia shows her moxy by getting smacked around and not quitting, leading Indra to offer to train her as her second (a big thing in Grounder culture.) In a conversation with Kane about what happens after Mount Weather falls, it becomes clear that Octavia is thniking of herself as more Grounder than Sky Person.

Yet another general tries to murder Clarke, before a run in with a mutant gorilla - no, really - kills off Major Byrne (I totally did not see that coming), the general - Lexa cutting his leg to buy time for the others to run - and another Grounder, and leaves Lexa and Clarke fighting for their lives against Mighty Joe Fuck the Lot of You. Lexa and Clarke have a bit of a heart to heart. Lexa seems to be determined to teach Clarke to be a cold-hearted badass (honestly, as much as the show seems to want us to see her as an emotional character, I think that ship has sailed) and Clarke to prove her strength without going full-Grounder.

Bellamy almost makes it into Mount Weather as planned, but Lincoln has a relapse and that bit goes pear-shaped. Elsewhere, Jaha is pleading a minor exodus to the City of Light. Murphy, once more slapped down for getting into a fight with a Grounder who calls him out for being present at the massacre, goes with him, although he seems aware that the former Chancellor is less of a visionary than a madman. Murphy also gets quote of the week, referring to 'Camp You' when talking to Jaha.

Game of Thrones - 'The Wars to Come' and 'The House of Black and White'

"We'll call the company 'Westerosi Widows'..."

Season 5 of HBO's juggernaut adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire (as a note, I'm not familiar with the books, although I'm told that is an increasing non-issue) kicks off with the aftermath of the assassination of Tywin Lannister by his son. Tyrion has fled the capital with Varys, leaving Cersei to feel pretty damned self-righteous for hating him all these years. She's also turning on Jaime again, since he did kind of let Tyrion go, although the idea that blindly pursuing his death for the sin of being born and encouraging her eldest to be a sociopathic tyrant has any role in what happened is far from her mind. It makes a certain sense; to have come as far as she has, Cersei has basically had to be monumentally resilient to the merest hint of self-analysis.

Petyr Balish is kind of the opposite, in that he knows and accepts exactly what he is, while still being a vicious, self-serving shit. He comes off as a little more magnificent than Cersei precisely because there is no undernote of nobility to him. Of course, his diametric opposite is Jon Snow, who would defy a king to grant a merciful death to his enemies. Snow is of course an aberration in the Seven Kingdoms, relentlessly honourable and principled, and yet not dead; indeed, moderately successful, almost despite himself.

"At least the weather beats the hell out of Dubrovnik."

My, this is more rambly than I had planned.

Yeah, so; Varys wants to take Tyrion to meet Danaerys Targarean, because he believes that he can help the restoration. They're hanging at Ilyrio's house, but their host doesn't show, probably busy recording Sarah & Duck. Danaerys could use a hand, as her domain is crumbling under the weight of her attempts to make everyone happy. In many ways, the increasing defiance of her dragons is as much symbolic of her faltering control over the increasingly disparate and unwieldy mass of her followers as it is of them being thirty foot long engines of destruction. Notably, she has now been faced with the same dilemma which broke Robb Stark's army, and made the same call.

"I'm just dropping in to establish that I am fucking huge now."

My girlfriend, who has read the books, noted that she finds it odd that Danaerys, who gained her dragons by being fearless, is now so paralysed with fear. I speculate that this is because she has found something to lose now that she is a queen. Danaerys is also a bit like Jon (and Robb) in her insistence on sticking to her guns, even when it provokes more trouble that it solves.

Speaking of, Brienne is still around and being all sorts of awkwardly badass - I love the way that she's all stiff and formal and looks like she'd trip over her own feet whenever she's doing social stuff, then turns into a lethal blend of agility and raw power when she's stabbing a dude in the neck, like the Westerosi Sameen Shaw - despite a run in with Baelish and Sansa which has led to the former basically ordering his bodyguards to 'take care of' her. I really want to see her start training Pod to take a few levels in badass to go with his courage and loyalty before they get him killed. The clash between his devotion to her as his 'knight' and hers to her word to Catelyn Stark makes for some lovely scenes between them. I'm really loving their cross-gender bromance and thus fully expect them to die horribly.

"Now hiring: Murder Hobos."

Arya Stark meanwhile has found her way to the House of Black and White, an engimatic fortress in Braavos where 'a man is not Jaqen Hagar' told her to go, and where some further part of her destiny as a creepy-awesome murder-waif will be realised. Most of the characters in Game of Thrones are in their way a deconstruction of the literary genre of heroic fantasy, but Arya feels more like a deconstruction of a heroic fantasy RPG protagonist, with her disconnect from politics and utterly personal approach to.., everything - everyone else has angles, Arya is much more direct; if it fucks with her, she's going to murder it up - as well as the murder hobo lifestyle that the Hound introduced her to.

Finally - I think; Game of Thrones makes keeping track of The 100 seem easy - there's the Dornish question. The very messily late Oberyn Martell's lover Ellaria is pushing his brother, Prince Doran - Alexander Siddig, which is possibly why King Midas bought the farm in Atlantis - to seek vengeance; because that worked so well for Oberyn. In particular, she wants to cut up Myrcella Baratheon and Fed Ex the pieces to Cersei, but like his brother, Doran is pretty insistent that in Dorn they don't torture girls to death, a philosophy I can really get behind. I like Prince Doran already, and I really hope he doesn't get his head squashed.

"I'll stay in the series, but only as part of a Lannister bronnmance. I need to
get at least three epic snarks and five swears for the season, and copyright on
'bronnmance'."

Cersei of course is absolutely convinced that Myrcella is about to be raped to death. This is not helped by Ellaria and 'the Sand Snakes' (Oberyn's coven of illegitimate daughters) sending death threats to King's Landing, but is mostly because that's what she'd do in this situation. Consequently Jaime - who is ever-more sympathetic, if we take that scene to have been poorly-executed, and that seems to be what it was - decides to head off to Dorn to bring Myrcella home, accompanied by Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. I'm really not sure if that's because it's in the books or just because Bron has emerged as the ensemble darkhorse of the series.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (again, more, still no spoilers)

What? I like retro-styled posters.

So, I dashed off my initial thoughts on my phone while I waited for a train, and after a bit of time to ruminate I wanted to put up something a little more substantial, and with a picture. Still no spoilers for anything not in the trailer.

Age of Ultron is a colossal beast of a movie. It's not long like a Peter Jackson movie, but it is absolutely packed with stuff, with barely a chance to breathe. As a consequence, probably its greatest flaw is that it suffers from a shortage of weighty character beats, just because it's so busy fitting in all the plot and action. Given the pace of the film it never really feels its length, so for my money it could have stood to run a bit longer if it made for a more satisfying pay off to the intra-team tensions which make up the emotional core of this movie. As it is, it's not bad, just quick, as the actress said to Tony Stark.

In among all that action, perhaps the most interesting thing to me is that Age of Ultron is a film about change, specifically about exactly the kind of shifting baselines that superheroes should bring about, but rarely do. The technology of the MCU is constantly advancing, such that the Iron Man suit - unbelievably advanced when it was introduced - is now the base level for the Avengers gear, and Pepper Potts is certainly no longer slipping thumb drives into the USB ports of anything so pedestrian as a desktop. Moreover, within a few minutes of the start of the film, the Avengers are noting the presence of enemy 'enhanced' as if that just happens. Truly, this is the Age of Miracles.

Once more, Tony Stark gets the lion's part of the film, although it is less marked than in Assemble* and the ensemble elements are still strong. I think the balance may well have been off in Assemble largely because Robert Downey Jr was the most experienced player, and that the others are just better at working with him here. Everyone gets their moments; for me Hawkeye - very much the also-ran of Assemble - gets some of the stronger character work, and newcomers Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch get a pretty good intro (not incidentally, these three get to work off each other quite a bit.) Thor and Stark both suffer from the absence of their love interests due to budgetary concerns, hinting at romantic troubles that are probably not intended.

The effects are solid, and the film takes to heart the lesson to 'go big or go home', topping the finale of Assemble in terms of threat if not of scale and spectacle. If I'm honest, I'd quite like to see something lower key for the next installment - more Winter Soldier than Dark World, perhaps - but given that it's set to be Civil War and feature everyone without a solo film coming out in the same year, I don't think we're going to get much in the way of restraint. The sound effects are spectacular, but never swamped out the dialogue, and the music - mostly composed by Brian Tyler, with a variation on Alan Silvestri's original Avengers' theme provided by Danny Elfman** - is top drawer superheroic brass.

Script and humour is always important in the MCU, and it's all looking good in this department. There is one moment where the humour jars with a generally sombre scene, and I felt that Whedon could have stood to go a minute without a quip, but overall the humour serves rather than smothers the drama. The players are as solid as ever, with a much-expanded role for Paul Bettany and James Spader turning in a typically excellent performance as the eponymous avuncular psychopath, making a fine meal of the nutritious script.

The film does contain a few head-scratching moments, of which in the name of spoilers I can only really say 'pool', 'lonely', 'nexus' and 'America Fuck Yeah!@ Actually, in regard to the last one, as it comes up within the opening minutes, I will just wonder on what authority the Avengers operate in Eastern Europe and South Africa. They're basically an American (well, Asgardo-American) team. Weirdly, I am much happier with the idea that they do it as loose-cannon private citizens than as part of anything US organised, although hints in the film suggest that Maria Hill's job may be pretty much making sure various world authorities are cool with the Avengers dropping in for a firefight.

Overall however, I think that the film's biggest problem is Avengers Assemble. The first Avengers movie was so successful, the response to it so overwhelmingly positive, and the film itself so significantly different to anything preceding it that doing the whole thing again was always going to labour under the weight of expectation. I don't know if, objectively, Ultron is as good a film as Assemble, but I do know that being just as good would never have been enough.

* Or just Avengers if you're not in the UK, but Assemble and Ultron are convenient shorthands.
** A musical collaboration between Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman and Alan Silvestri; truly we are living in a golden age.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

In the post-SHIELD world, the Avengers remain a going concern, operating with gleeful disregard for sovereignty. On the plus side, the movie does have some qualms about this in the long run. Stark's past and his quixotic drive prove as dangerous as any HYDRA cell, however, pitting the team against a foe who may be a match for them all.

Spoiler free, since spoilers on release day is a dick move however many of my readers but the midnight showings, this is a big ass movie. There is a lot going on, almost too much, and while is already pretty long, I don't think an extended cut would have hurt. As in Avengers Assemble the ensemble is well used, and the film does especially well at selling is a sense of threat in an ongoing franchise.

There were a couple of niggles, especially at the ending, with one resolution in particular feeling more like it was felt to be required than making sense in this incarnation, rather like the death of Gwen Stacey. Overall, however, I heartily enjoyed it.

Person of Interest - 'Pазговоp'

Shaw is still not in her happy place, but looks more comfortable out of a dress

This week's Person of Interest is a pretty big one, especially for Shaw. She gets her own flashbacks, to her father's death in a car accident and the first time she realised that she doesn't feel things like most people do. This becomes something of an issue when she is tasked with protecting the number, ten year old 'spy' Genrika Zhirova, who has been surveilling local drug dealers with home-made bugs to try to force them out of the neighbourhood and now has a price on her head.

When Gen is snatched by her enemies, Shaw gets personal in her quest to retrieve her, even when it puts her at odds with Finch and Reese. It's a different side of Shaw, but doesn't undercut her. She's still the stone badass of the team, making Reese look cuddly by comparison, but as Gen puts it: "It's not that you don't have feelings. It's just like the volume is turned way down, like the sound of an old tape. The voices are there, you just have to listen." Gen herself is kind of wonderful, precocious without being infuriating, wise without being creepy, and her connection with Shaw is lovely.

"This I'm trained for."

The number of the week plot meshes with Carter's ongoing quest to bring down HR, who turn out to be behind the drugs and the kidnapping. Most rewarding for the long term viewer is Carter drawing out and then turning the tables on her HR-planted rookie partner, although HR Underboss Simmons' reaction on failing to get a response from any of the shooters he thought were ready to ambush Reese is also pretty sweet.

And then Root happens, so the gang is all here.

Now, I freely admit that I was not a big fan of Shaw to start with, but she is really growing on me. 'Razgovor' was a tense episode for me, because as a father and ex-teacher I invest more heavily when there is a child on the line, but it was also an excellent development of Shaw's background and character, evolving her into something more than she seemed without betraying that initial impression.

Sleepy Hollow - 'And the Abyss Gazes Back'

"Alas, poor Wendigo..."

It's been a while since I last visited Sleepy Hollow, and this episode revisits a couple of ongoing threads, specifically Henry's machinations against former-Captain Irving and that bone flute he got from Hawley the Idiot in 'Go Where I Send Thee'. In Tarrytown, Henry is trying to push Irving to kill the man who crippled his daughter (allegedly to reclaim his soul, but we the audience have doubts,) while the bone of the flute was ground up and sent as 'magic anthrax' in a letter to the late Sheriff Corbin's son in an attempt to secure one of Corbin's collection of relics.

As a result of the bone powder, Joe Corbin is cursed to transform into the Wendigo, an organ-eating monster, at the scent of blood. He is back in town having been honourably discharged from military service after the rest of his platoon were eaten (oops) and there is a limit to how often he can change before it becomes permanent. Hawley and Ichabod seek a cure from a group of Shawnee (Hawley's incomprehension when showing respect and understanding of their culture cuts more ice than his cash business is priceless and sums up much of why Hawley is an idiot) but Henry does end up with his price, a mystical poison which he uses to infect Katrina.

The episode touches heavily on father/son relationships. Joe's relationship with his father was strained due to his feeling that Corbin senior's need to help all and sundry meant that he wasn't enough, and he gives Ichabod some advice regarding his own bizarre family situation. Also, the actor playing Joe was wicked convincing as Clancy Brown Jr.

The Irving plot seems a little more strained; the Captain's collapse towards doing War's bidding was a little too swift, but perhaps this is a result of having signed away his soul? Either way, is builds on the nature of War, as does Henry's description of Wendigo Joe as 'a creature of War'. The Horseman of Death is basically just a killing machine, but War is a general and he is building his army one soldier at a time.

'And the Abyss Gazes Back' is a little routine, but overall a decent episode, thanks as usual to the leads. I'm still not enamoured of Hawley the Idiot, and I probably never will be, although he seems to be here to stay.

Gotham - 'The Blind Fortune Teller'

Well, here it is. A crowd of circus performers sitting around the GCPD and I
can't think of a single wry caption.

The circus is in town, and that means fun, frolics, feuds and gruesome murder. It barely comes as a surprise that Gordon's date with Thompkins is interrupted, first by a fight between the Flying Graysons and a rival circus family, and then by the discovery that the snake charmer is missing, then found dead. Thompkins, who has just the sort of morbid, gruesome fascination with murder that we like to see in our MEs, persuades Gordon to let her tag along, despite her insistence on pursuing leads dropped by the titular visually-impaired sideshow psychic. Ultimately, Gordon is able to admit that she is tough and that they should be a partnership of equals, notwithstanding that she is wrong about almost everything she says.

I would be less okay with yet another villain appearing if this
guy was less awesome-creepy.

Elsewhere, the Penguin's nightclub is struggling, not least because he puts his mother on the stage and cuts up anyone who heckles her (seriously, he slices into a heckler and there is zero comeback from the authorities; by Zeus the GCPD sucks.) Thus, Don Falcone sends him a helper; it's Fish Mooney's sidekick Butch, now apparently so thoroughly tortured by Victor Zsasz that he'll do whatever he's told. This is a sad sight to see, and I really hope someone hurts for this later.

Elsewhere yet, Mooney herself is making a splash in live organ donor city, and... Okay, I gotta say, for the first time I am buying that Fish Mooney is a power. She thrives in adversity in a way she never did as the successful, contented boss.

Oh, and Barbara hangs out with Ivy and Cat - I'm assuming that she turned up at the apartment very, very high and just sort of stayed that way - before swishing into the precinct to win back Gordon, only to find him clinched with Thompkins. She storms out, probably swearing to move to Arrow or The Flash, where her status as canon missus might be honoured despite a total lack of chemistry.

I almost forgot! Bruce meets with the board of Wayne Enterprises and basically rips them a new one for being corrupt. As with Fish, I am suddenly on board with the Bruce Wayne story in a way that I wasn't before.

Person of Interest - 'Reasonable Doubt'

"We'll proceed by a process of trial and error. First we'll have a trial, then we'll
make an error."

Season 3 of Person of Interest continues to mess with us vis a vis the perp/victim status of its numbers, as the Machine throws up Vanessa Watkins, a woman accused of killing her husband.

Watkins is a brilliant prosecutor with a dizzying array of secondary criminal skills from quick-change disguise to free-running, her husband was a slick defence attorney who died on their yacht in mysterious circumstances. Her actions seem guilty, but she insists that she is innocent. with police custody looking like a dicey prospect for her, Team Machine must decide whether to help or hinder Vanessa, and thus stage a trial themselves.

"What do you mean you haven't read the book?"

Although Root-free, 'Reasonable Doubt' otherwise plays a good ensemble hand, with Fusco as the police insider and Carter flexing her interrogator muscles for the trial. Shaw is on top piranha-out-of-water form infiltrating a snooty book club/gossip circle, and Finch, Reese and Bear are Finch, Reese and Bear. The continuing strand of increasingly borderline cases suggests to me that the Machine is becoming ever more nuanced and capable of handing its assets the tricky cases that might slip though a more conventional apparatus.

The case itself is very twisty, almost to the point of farce, but it eventually comes back to a pleasingly dark conclusion, as Reese comes closer than he ever has before to deciding that someone needs to judge if the Machine's numbers deserve to be protected.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Crosscut'

"Help! My face is stretched across the inside of my visor!"

I joke about the uncanny valley a lot in regard to CGI productions, but it's especially apparent in this week's Thunderbirds are Go, as the visors on the radiation proof masks worn by Scott and guest character Marian van Arkel (voiced by Theresa Gallagher of Alphablocks fame) eerily distort their features across the available surface.

In the absence of the other brothers, Scott and Virgil set out to reseal an old Uranium mine in South Africa, before a storm front blows radioactive dust across Pretoria. The unsealing turns out to be the work of Marian, daughter of the mine's former owners, who were ruined by the death of the nuclear industry in and around the same conflict of 2040 that created last week's stealth satellite. She plans to restore her family's wealth by selling refined Uranium to the Hood, but comes good in the end during a daring escape from the mine in Scott's company.

She also tries to kill him with an aliens-style power loader, which is close enough to a forklift for my money.

Agents of SHIELD - 'Love in the Time of Hydra'

Ahh... nuts.

It's all very spy in Agents of SHIELD this week, as Grant Ward and Agent 33 go on a quest for identity and Bobbi and Mack introduce Hunter to the Real SHIELD, which is presumably a cartoon spin off which will later lead into Extreme SHIELD. Also, Skye is being moved to a bucolic safehouse and given power-controlling gloves, much to Fitz's annoyance, because he's struggling to separate 'non-acceptance of change' from 'uncontrolled and insanely dangerous powers'.

Did I mention, Ward's back? I... so don't care. I was really hoping he was dead, but it turns out 33 saved him and they're doing some crimes together. There are some cringeworthy scenes where she hits on him to try and establish some parity in a relationship where he holds all the power and knowledge. There's a decent payoff where essentially he gets her to reclaim her own identity, which was stripped from her by HYDRA and the malfunctioning nano-mask, but ultimately 33/Kara remains a fairly weak character who is perpetually controlled by someone else, either through brainwashing or emotional manipulation.

Am I the only one wondering why we're not watching this show?

Lance Hunter is introduced to Robert Gonzales, leader of the Real SHIELD and not-incidentally Edward James Olmos. With Mack on board and a senior agent played by Kirk Acevedo, I'm pretty much ready to throw in which this lot at present (they have the great advantage of not having got Trip killed because oh, poor Skye,) so there'd better be either a twist complete change of cast or a nasty secret in the bowels of that aircraft carrier.

I guess in their disfavour, they couldn't contain Lance Hunter once Bobbi took a step back, which is a bit damning of their capabilities. Mind you, I'm not that impressed with Coulson and May's tradecraft, after they got suspicious of Bobbi and Mack and played it cool by immediately asking Mack lots of obviously probing questions in a pointed fashion.

12 Monkeys - 'The Red Forest'

"I recognise you from the cast shot, don't I?"

It's 2043, and Cole is very confused, as apparently West 7 is in charge of the facility under a one-eyed Ramse's command. The absence of Railly's message meant that Cole was killed on arrival, and a vengeful Ramse now runs the place as a shelter for his people. In addition, the virus was released a year early, in 2015, as part of something called Operation Troy (some people think Trojan Horse, but even if this is a TV meaningful op name, I am minded more of Apollo striking the hubristic Greeks with plague.) Persuading Ramse and Jones to risk everything by burning out their core to send him back, Cole returns to 2015 and recruits Railly's ex, the rather hapless Aaron, to help him rescue her from the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

While they are successful - despite Aaron at one point shooting past-Cole in the shoulder, and then leaving the gun in the car - there are a couple of other changes that are not undone. Railly is subjected to a hallucinogenic brainwashing attempt, led by the Pallid Man's female colleague, in which she seemingly meets with 'the Witness', plague-masked leader of the Army. The unnamed woman leads Railly's brainwashing with a repeated mantra:

"You are walking through a red forest and the grass is tall. It’s just rained. Most of the blood has washed away. There’s a house in the distance, cedar and pine. You’ve been there before. You’re not alone. There’s a man. You see him, you go to him. You know him, like a memory of tomorrow."

"Are we remaking Twin Peaks already?"

I'm calling at this stage that the Witness - who 'has plans' for Cassandra Railly - as well as the corpse, is Cole. The woman also refers to a 'Brotherhood' who 'will know what to do', which suggests that the Army is not the extent of the Witness's forces; unless the Witness answers to the Brotherhood.

Perhaps of more immediate import, Jennifer 'Head Full of Codes and Secrets' Goynes is picked up by corporate security. We are told that the corpse Cole destroyed was just the source of the virus, and that the refined version is still in play somewhere. Aaron's senator boss mentions Operation Troy in reference to an overseas crisis. Jennifer could put the virus back in play for the Government as a weapon, and thus back into the reach of the Army.

Oh, and there's a cyberterrorist doing a publicised whistle blow, more Julian Assange than Chelsea Manning. Not sure what he's about yet.

Daredevil - 'Rabbit in a Snowstorm' and 'In the Blood'

After twenty minutes of searching, Wilson still hadn't found the rabbit.

A man brutally slaughters three mobsters in a bowling alley, but due to a weapon malfunction - a point that bizarrely gets its own flashback - is unable to do so swiftly enough to escape the police. Wesley, the smooth-talking associate of Hell's Kitchen's mysterious underworld overlord, hires Nelson & Murdock to defend the man, over Foggy's protests.

There's an interesting reversal here, and Foggy's reluctance to take on the reptilian Healey as a client despite the money deepens him as a character. Murdock's decision to defend the man simply so that he can get to him once he is released and beat information out of him further develops the idea of something very dark indeed inside of him.

In an odd departure, Karen Page swings off into an essentially parallel storyline, investigating the Union Allied scandal on her own time and tapping veteran journalist Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall) for help. Urich is reluctant, not out of fear for himself, but for her, knowing that the idealistic are often the first casualties of corruption. Also detached from the main action is the first introduction of Vincent d'Onofrio as Wilson 'Kingpin' Fisk, seen buying an art from Vanessa Marianna (Aylet Zurer) in a scene that would be quite touching if Fisk were capable of speaking in anything but a sinister growl.

Actually, it's kind of touching because of that. He comes off in this and the next episode as a man who has real trouble actually relating to people, but wants to. We first see him with his back to the camera, examining a white-painted canvas with his fists clenched. He has money, power and should have self-assurance, but like Matt Murdock there is a devil in him that he can't escape.

I hope you like Charlie Cox's pecs, because I get the feeling
we'll be seeing a lot of them.

'In the Blood' develops the hell out of Fisk, as he assays an awkward romance with Marianna which is ultimately interrupted by a bloodied Russian mobster trying to pay his respects in a posh restaurant. The mobster is bloodied because his attempt to get to the man in the mask through Claire Temple has ended in another savage beating, athough neither so savage nor so terminal as Fisk's reaction to being embarrassed in front of his prospective girlfriend.

Claire Temple means another episode's work for Rosario Dawson, and another slow week for Elden Hensen as Foggy Nelson, who is peripherally present, but not actually doing much. Actually, I can't say for sure given the chain viewing nature of the series that he was even present. I think this is the episode where Karen buys a fax machine when Urich tells her she needs cover for being at an auction of Union Allied's shit, and he's there when she brings it back.

The crux of Daredevil's mythology is that he and the Kingpin are two sides of the same coin, and these two episodes work that idea until it's sweating. They are both established as Hell's Kitchen boys, bound to their city, but Fisk grew up away from it, hence he wants to rebuild it, Tobacco Row style, while Murdock wants to save what's there. If I wanted to draw yet more parallels to Arrow, I might point to the similar aims of Malcolm Merlin and Oliver Queen, although Murdock is more about protection than punishment. We also establish not only that they both have their devils, but that they are in some sense in control of them, able to rein them in and unleash them in their own time, Murdock taking an entire trial before confronting Healey, and Fisk calmly excusing himself and attempting to salvage his date before finally and protractedly murdering his underling.

The violence of the series continues to be extreme, and in places the brutal grind is replaced by a more graphic style that is even more off-putting. It's a major selling point of the series, but one that is not to all tastes and is particularly jarring when references to the rest of the MCU drop in.

Outlander

I keep being disappointed that Outlander: the Series...

...isn't based on this...

Daredevil - 'Into the Ring' and 'Cut Man'

This 'victory scene' sums up Daredevil in a nutshell. It's dark, it's raining,
and everyone hurts.

This Marvel/Netflix co-production is a revolutionary concept, a show released all in a oner via a streaming service and thus bypassing the usual television channels altogether. From my perspective, this mostly means that it doesn't vanish past my radar like Agent Carter did, which I am still bitter about.

Daredevil opens with 'Into the Ring', which introduces us to our central cast of characters: Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox*), blind vigilante, and his partner 'Foggy' Nelson (Elden Hensen), newly-minted defence attorneys; Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), an accountant accused of murder who becomes in short order their first client and unpaid secretary/third partner; and an eclectic class of multinational hoodlums working for 'him'. It also swiftly sets a scene; New York has recently undergone 'the incident' (that is, the Chitauri invasion of The Avengers) and Hell's Kitchen is ripe for redevelopment in the wake of that. Murdoch, and to a lesser extent Nelson, are determined to make a difference in a neighborhood that has stopped caring.

Page is accused of murder after stumbling across a pension fraud orchestrated by the mob. Alerted by a contact in the police, our hero lawyers show out to defend her ('You don't have any money; we don't have any clients. Maybe we can help each other.') Within the space of an episode, all three characters show up as delightfully complex, with Page in particular getting to be a victim, a fighter, a suspect and a friend.

"Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid or
something?"
"No, it's just that they're terribly comfortable."

'Cut Man' builds on this, with Nelson and Page bonding as Murdoch bleeds out on the couch of Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) before rallying to save a kidnapped child. It's main purpose seems to be to introduce Temple as the future Daredevil's medical contact, as well as continuing its flashback arc with the death of Battlin' Jack Murdoch for refusing to take a dive.

Daredevil is the MCU's answer to DC's Arrow, inasmuch as The Flash is the Arrowverse's answer to the MCU. Far more than Agents of SHIELD, it's the gritty, dark corners of the MCU, and this shows in every aspect of the design, from the relentless dark of the Hell's Kitchen night, through the homemade costume, to the regular rainfall and the bone-jarring, knock-down, drag-out style of the fight sequences. Daredevil's bit is that he knows how to take a hit ('We're Murdochs; we always get hit.') and they play that hard.

Two down, eleven to go, and I'm completely over the lingering spectre of Ben Affleck.

* That's right, our new Matt Murdoch is English. And was the bumbling swashbuckler in Stardust. Deal with it.