Television

The Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens will stage the Super Bowl LIV. Photo: AJ Lipp

The countdown is on for the Super Bowl LIV, the 54^th Super Bowl and the 50^th championship game in the modern-day era of the National Football League (NFL). The location has already been set for Super Bowl LIV, with Florida’s Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens set to celebrate the seventh decade of Super Bowl action. It will be the sixth Super Bowl staged in Miami Gardens, with Super Bowl XLIV the last time it was staged in this region of South Florida.

Oh, BATWOMAN writers at the CW, why have you betrayed me? After weeks of supporting your show in the face of criticism, after numerous declarations that, "No, the show is not like that awful preview trailer, you should really try it," you go and stab me in the back by churning out an episode that is exactly what the critics excoriate the series for.

The episode, "Tell Me The Truth," finds Kate (RUBY ROSE) struggling with what to do about her former lover, Sophie (MEAGAN TANDY), who has revealed she knows Batwoman's secret identity and threatens to go to Kate's daddy and tell on her. What should Kate do? Continue to deny it? Bring Sophie into the circle of trust and hope that she can keep a secret?

If I'm asked to summarize CATCH-22, the HBO miniseries adapted from the Joseph Heller novel, I would say, "It's M*A*S*H, but earlier and far more tragic."

The setting is World War II, the European theater, where John Yossarian (CHRISTOPHER ABBOT) is a bombardier who goes on missions into enemy territory over northern Italy during the end of the war when the Germans are on the defensive. His goal is to fly the number of missions he's assigned so that he can fulfill his duty and go back home.

I know this show is only an hour long -- technically less than that when you subtract the advertisements -- but it feels like the writers squeezed half-a-season's worth of content into "Hereditary," with each character's arc deserving of at least a couple of episodes.

At the end of the previous episode, the AIMS Team had done something they had never done before: caught something in one of their elaborate traps. Granted, it wasn't a Bigfoot. In fact, it was just some guy in a black cloak, carrying a torch through the woods.

But the guy must have been David Copperfield, because by the time they got to the trap, all that was there was the torch. The cloaked figure had apparently tossed out some Floo Powder and apparated on them. They open the trap and test the floor, which crumbles at the slightest pressure, which tells them this cloaked figure doesn't touch the ground when he walks.

Confused, bewildered, and bumfuzzled, the team decides to get some advice from Merlin.. or rather, what we get is...

As the Crisis looms, Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) has been preparing the members of Team Flash for life without him. And key to doing that is...

...taking a beach vacation with Iris (CANDICE PATTON). Which means it's time for another episode of Everybody But Flash.

Realizing he will have to make difficult decisions as future team leader, Cisco (CARLOS VALDES) had developed the B.A.R.I. -- an AI system that thinks like Barry Allen to help him know the right thing to do. (Because a computer system that knows what The Flash would do in any given situation could never be used for ill intent in the wrong hands.) 

With the focus on Vibe and his new girlfriend, Kamilla (VICTORIA PARK), we learn something new about Cisco: that he hasn't told her he loves her, even though he's sleeping with her. Oh, that, and he's been sleepwalking lately.

If you haven't been giving BATWOMAN a fair shake, then you've missed out on what is a bone-chilling and disturbing episode, as we get the origin behind the death of Beth Kane -- and her rebirth as Alice. RACHEL SKARSTEN gets a chance to really shine as her character has a clandestine meeting with her sister, Kate Kane (RUBY ROSE), and we are taken back to how Beth survived the car accident -- fished out of the river but then kept captive by a sociopath and his young son with a preternatural gift for vocal mimicry.

The young boy is now a man, of course, and he is the "Mouse" (SAM LITTLEFIELD) that Alice has been looking for, freeing him from Arkham to participate in whatever plan it is she has concocted. They're friends, even though he's partly responsible for her captivity as a child, forced to use his gifts under duress in order to throw Beth's father (DOUGRAY SCOTT) off her trail.

There have been a few moments in the Batman mythos that have been truly memorable, have truly changed the landscape for the fans. (If you ask Robert Greenberger, there are at least 100 of these, but that's a review for later this week.) 

One such moment came in 1999, when a new animated series took Batman into the near-future; where Bruce Wayne (KEVIN CONROY) is a retired octogenarian, and Terry McGinnis (WILL FRIEDLE) as the latest heir to the mantle, in a New Gotham that has a whole new set of problems.

When we are introduced to the series, Bruce is wearing the jet-black, tricked-out costume. But his age is catching up with him, and his heart isn't holding up. When he finds himself grabbing a dropped gun to defend himself against a common thug, he's horrified at what he's doing, and seals up the Batcave for good.

"Halloween" is perhaps the spookiest episode of RIVERDALE to come down the pike, hitting on just about every urban legend trope and pulling off a number of shot recreations. But before we get into all that, can I just say that it was worth the past three years to finally get a live-action Pureheart the Powerful and The Shield? Who wants to see these characters make a split-second cameo appearance in CW's upcoming CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS? Show of hands?

When we last saw the team, they were chasing the Cherokee Death Cat, and had come upon a barn with a giant grapevine wreath, that must have cost at least $200 at Hobby Lobby, framing the entrance to a door stenciled with the visage of the Death Cat. The door is free standing -- like it just grew up out of the ground, they note. As they investigate this structure, off in the weeds, they spot a little girl. And so the team does what they seem to repeatedly do best: they chase a little girl through the woods in the dark. Honestly, people are going to start to talk.

She runs off as Buck and Jeff give chase, while Huck goes around the back of the barn to investigate a noise. Much growling is heard, and when they get close to the girl, she stops -- back to them -- and points off into the distance with a bloody arm. Then, another growl, and while they're distracted, she disappears.

In tonight's Halloween episode, the title is "There Will Be Blood" and there's a bio-restorative formula at play. What an opportunity to get an cameo from Swamp Thing that we... don't get. But, moving onward.

Flash (GRANT GUSTIN) is still resigned to the fact that he is fated to die in the upcoming Crisis in order for the universe to survive. In the previous episode, Flash tried to prepare the team for his inevitable passing by taking Killer Frost (DANIELLE PANABAKER) under his wing to teach her to be a better hero. This week, he decides to spend some one-on-one time with Cisco Ramon (CARLOS VALDES), the former Vibe, because he's picked him to be the team leader when he's gone. Which, I suppose, will be Team Frozen Stretch, without the speedster around.

The story of Alice (RACHEL SKARSTEN) deepens as Kate (RUBY ROSE) learns just what it means personally to take on the mantle of the bat.

Gotham City has a new supervillain problem -- a catburglar who likes to steal shiny objects. No, it's not Selina Kyle. It's Magpie (RACHEL MATTHEWS), a thief with a bird-motif, who steals expensive baubles and uses small grenades as her getaway weapon. In the comics, Magpie was a bit deeper than that -- her psychosis caused her to leave something in trade for the objects she stole, which would explode when moved. After a string of robberies -- one in which she escapes Batwoman, whose miss of a returning batarang causes expensive collateral damage -- Magpie sets her sights on a special piece of jewelry: the pearls worn by Martha Wayne the night she was murdered. Visually, they're not much of a display, but historically they carry a provenance special to Gothamites.

Things take a turn for the seriously weird in this episode of RIVERDALE. But there are enough mundane troubles to maintain a balance of sorts. For instance, there's the issue of Archie (KJ APA) wanting to turn the boxing gym into a community center. A crime-ridden town like Riverdale desperately needs something like that to keep any Artful Dodger from conscripting urchins into a becoming a gang of thieves. (This actually happens in the show -- and the guy's name is actually Dodger.) Veronica (CAMILA MENDES) offers to help raise the money, suggesting the buff boys hold a car wash. It makes cash, but not nearly enough to get the building up to code for being what it needs to be.

With the Crisis bearing down on them in less than ten weeks, Team Flash has moved from grief to acceptance -- particularly Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) who has yet to tell the team what he knows of the future -- that he has to die in the Crisis.

And the Crisis has taken on its own identity as well, losing the "the" in front of it, and simply being called "Crisis" -- which sounds a bit odd and all proper-nouny when heard spoken about prior to its occurrence by those who are going to experience it.

To prepare the team to work without him, Flash decides he has to train them better, starting with Killer Frost (DANIELLE PANABAKER). But her anger gets in the way as the pair hunt down an angry zombie named Romero (thought we wouldn't notice that naming convenience, didn't you, @FlashTVWriters?), and Flash realizes he's going to have to find a way to cool down the ice queen's hot temper before she can be an effective hero.

The more Kate (RUBY ROSE) operates in the Bat-suit, the more Gotham City wants to see Batman fully reappear -- and that includes those who would like to see the Dark Knight dead.

Among those in that latter category are Tommy Elliott (GABRIEL MANN), who has the added advantage of knowing that Batman is actually Bruce Wayne. Kate catches him in the Wayne executive board room, looking for Bruce, fully believing that Bruce has returned because Batman has returned. Later, when Luke Fox (CAMRUS JOHNSON) informs Kate that there's been a break-in of the Bat-arsenal, we learn that Bruce developed a weapon capable of penetrating the bulletproof Bat-suit -- a contingency plan in case someone ever got their hands on it. And, Bruce being Bruce, he had contingency plans for the contingency plan.

I had, of course, heard of the VERONICA MARS television series. And when Rob Thomas made history with his record-setting Kickstarter to make a VERONICA MARS movie, we were all over it, and reviewed the film upon its release. But the movie is, admittedly, my only exposure to the world of VERONICA MARS and her mystery-solving entourage. So we came into what is being touted as the First Season (it's chronologically the fourth) with an unmuddied opinion, free from canon and shipping.

What we got was, we thought, a pretty entertaining mystery series featuring a quick-witted private investigator (played by KRISTEN BELL) and her equally on-the-ball father, Keith Mars (ENRICO COLANTONI). She's in love with Logan Echolls (JASON DOHRING), who returns in this first episode from some top-secret trouble spot on the globe, and in possession of a set of skills that come in handy when Veronica has to crack a case.

It's the first day of school -- the first day of the senior year for Archie (KJ APA), Betty (LILI REINHART), Jughead (COLE SPROUSE), Veronica (CARMEN MENDES) and Cheryl (MADELAINE PETSCH), and there's so much to do. The first day is always the most hectic one, what with all the planning about transferring to a totally different school, working with the FBI, avoiding the paparazzi, and convincing your former juvie roommate to join the football team.

What? Isn't that how the first day of school goes in your town? No? Then it must be RIVERDALE.

With all the news coming out about who was going to be appearing in this December's CW crossover event, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, I've been persistently saying that to cram it all into four episodes would require them to start building hard during these leadup chapters. And so far, at least with THE FLASH and ARROW, it appears that is exactly what the CW showrunners are doing.

In "A Flash of the Lightning," Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) finds himself despondent over the knowledge of his impending death. But IRIS (CANDICE PATTON) isn't one to let him give up so easily. The future has been changed before, and she's not going to quit believing it can't change again just because of some ominous message from The Monitor: "For billions to live, The Flash must die."

When the pilot episode completed, Kate Kane (RUBY ROSE) had a strong suspicion that the terrorist Alice (RACHEL SKARSTEN) was actually her long-thought-dead twin sister, Beth, based on the evidence of a dagger Alice left behind that has a gemstone in the handle that matches the one in Kate's necklace -- the twin of the one her sister owned.

Convincing her father, Jacob Kane (DOUGRAY SCOTT) of that proves to be another matter entirely. He is convinced -- or seems to be convinced -- that Beth died, citing the evidence of skull fragments being found that matched Beth's DNA.  But if Kate can get some DNA off that knife, she may just prove herself to be correct.

Alice wants her lost knife. Someone is wanting to get the knife away from Kate.

The two events are not necessarily related, which puts Kate into the suspicion that there's a third side to this game, hidden from view and playing by their own rules.

Many of us were shocked at SyFy's decision to forgo the third season of KRYPTON but you'll be able to relive all the greatest moments of the second and final season on Blu-Ray this January. Hailed as the best Sci-Fi show on television during it's short, but impressive, run, KRYPTON features Seg-El (Superman's grandfather, played by Cameron Cuffe) as he joins Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) on a quest to keep history on-course.

Season 2 introduces the space mercenary, Lobo (Emmett J. Scanlon), as our heroes deal with a multitude of threats including Brainiac, General Zod, and DOOMSDAY! If you didn't have the opportunity to watch this epic space drama during it's run, I highly suggest snatching up the Blu-Ray when it's available to dive into a history that's never been told before.

Here is the official press release: