Fury Rogue ties up the loose end created by the lack of Fallout’s involvement in The Thinker’s grand scheme. Kinda. Ultimately, I think this was just an excuse to bring Wentworth Miller back and I will never complain about that!

The crux of the episode is Barry not really grieving since Ralph’s death and while I joke that Barry is an emotionless robot who doesn’t care about anyone other than himself, Grant Gustin can be incredible at conveying emotion and he gets to show that towards the end of the episode.

Nice to see Katie Cassidy take a break from her stint on Arrow as an evil Black Canary to… play the same thing but from the Nazi Earth… Okay, sure, seems like they didn’t really need her but cool, Katie Cassidy soon becoming the new Tom Cavanagh.

Speaking of, the fallout of Harry’s dark matter experiment is laid bare as he’s told he will lose his intelligence and soon have to relearn everything he knows. While we don’t really see that in effect, we see Harry try his best to stop Cisco repeating the mistake while trying to keep it secret. It’s not his best performance, really.

Wentworth Miller gets the lion’s share of the jokes, puns and emotional chats because we’ve got him, it’d be a shame to waste him and he performs spectacularly. The Leo Snart character allows Miller to be both playful and deadly serious in a way the original Snart wasn’t. Great to have him back, shame to see him leave again.

Marlize’s slow face turn continues as she realises that while her husband has returned to his old face, the problems with his new personality persist and no amount of her seduction can change that. The man she loved has gone and we’ll probably see her team up with Team Flash in the last couple episodes of the season.

Caitlin is investigating Killer Frost’s disappearance and her feelings about losing her other half. Not much time is spent with her but what is makes clear that while Killer Frost is gone, she’s still part of Caitlin, who vows to find a way to unlock her abilities once more.

Over all, an average-but-good episode that advances the characters more-so than the plot. Next week, we see the return of Gypsy and another speedster in Therefore She Is.

Runaways, the much beloved Marvel comic book series from 2003, was created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. It was a wonderful series that gained a ravenous following through trade sales which saved the series from cancellation in 2005.

The comic series followed the exploits of six kids who find out their parents are a cabal of super villains who commit  ritualistic murder in the name of a trio of elder gods. As you can imagine, much hilarity ensued. Well, a lot of coming-of-age stories, character development, heel turns, deaths and comedic shenanigans ensued and I thoroughly loved it.

When I heard Hulu would be adapting the show; I was intrigued because the base story is pretty simple and the team of Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are no strangers to teen dramas (both having involvement in both The O.C. and Gossip Girl) so how did this ten-episode first season fair?

I really enjoyed it. It was engaging, well presented, and a unique Marvel TV outing that wasn’t mired in the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s eccentricities and missteps so what worked and what didn’t?

Well, first up, I have to applaud the cast. Mixing well established actors with fresh faces, the show does a great job of letting both the parents and the kids breath and they all give good-to-great performances and the dynamics between them are both complex and believable.

But while spending time with the kids is part and parcel of Runaways, we spend almost as much time exploring the parents and this gets into one of my biggest gripes about the show; making the bad guys relatable. While I did enjoy this predatory PTA group and their plot lines, the series makes them too likeable. The show spends a lot of time almost walking back all of their bad deeds and that’s just not the right move as it messes with the pacing something chronic.

The kids need to run away. They’re Runaways. You can’t do that when the parents are just so… nice. Barring the habitual homicide, naturally. You feel bad for them, you care about what they have going on and what they stand to lose but they’re the bad guys and why-oh-why does this show make me love the Yorkes so much?

Most of this comes for my love of the comics and the fact that The Pride was a ruthlessly efficient criminal group, consolidating every disparate criminal element of the Marvel universe. The Wilders were both gangsters, the Yorkes were time-travellers (not hippy bio-engineers), the Steins were mad scientists (half right, I suppose), the Minorus were wizards (again, half-right), the Deans were aliens (close enough) and the Hayes family (renamed to Hernandez in the show) were mutants.

It was a clever idea to completely bypass the mutant issue by killing off Molly’s parents before the show started and leave it ambiguous as to where Molly’s powers come from. Not a bad idea, at all! But then the other PRIDE members are only partly related to their origins or worse – not at all. You could say that they’re trying to keep the show grounded but that idea goes out the window when the dinosaur shows up. That said, the changes aren’t too obtrusive and, for the uninitiated, I can appreciate this will give you more if you don’t care for the kids too much.
Which is pretty easy to do because the early episodes can turn you off some characters. I mean, the kids do act like kids and that means they can be irrational and shitty to each other for almost no reason but this does feed into the overall arc they all go through; as a distant group of friends reunited under stressful circumstances.

But it can be grating, especially when Gert is being a cow or Alex is doing nothing. Because that’s all he does. I feel sorry for Rhenzy Feliz because Alex is the one non-powered/non-equipped character in the group and is mostly defined by two things; being in a relationship with Nico and a plot development that will probably come about in the second season but it’s good to see there is some subtle building to that in this one.

Shame about the Nico/Karolina relationship though. While there are instances in the comic of a shared attraction between the two, Nico ultimately doesn’t get off the pot and Karolina ends up with two of the best queer characters in comics. I dunno if we’ll ever see them given the rabid reaction to this pairing though…

The Chase/Gert pairing is pretty solid though and their dynamic matches the comic pretty closely. Almost as closely as the connection between Gert and Old Lace, the genetically-engineered Deinonychus.

This was the hardest sell to me as the Marvel TV productions have some pretty bad CGI but Old Lace is rendered brilliantly in a combination of practical puppetry and computer generated effects. I was surprised at how emotive she was and the mix of effects served the show well.

Molly was another point of contention to me since she’s noticeably older to the pre-teen powerhouse of the books but ageing her up to being only 1-2 years younger than the rest was a good move and Allegra Acosta does a fantastic job of portraying one of my favourite Marvel mutants. To paraphrase Chase: She’s genuinely nice, I can’t think of a bad thing to say about her.

So yeah, I enjoyed Runaways. It was certainly nice to see something a little different from Marvel and it gives me hope for the likes of Cloak & Dagger and New Warriors but what does that mean for Runaways? Well the series has been warmly received and been greenlit for a second season and with the kids now on the run for a crime they didn’t commit, this could lead to the introduction of some of the other comic book characters though how they’d adapt a 100 year-old vampire, the son of Ultron, a gender-fluid Skrull love interest for Karolina, and a chlorokinetic child bride from 1907. Those are all real, I promise.

I think the immediate questions that need to be answered are how are the kids going to clear their names, what-or-who is buried under Los Angeles and who is Jonah? I can’t wait to find out! If you have any thoughts on Runaways, please be sure to post them in the comments!

California Dreams ran for only 5 seasons but in a number of ways, it’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did with concept changes, cast changes, and competition with the biggest show of that era.

The show was based around a teen band called, unsurprisingly, California Dreams. It was produced by Peter Engel, the same genius behind Saved By The Bell. The shows overlapped as SBTB‘s last two seasons aired at the same time as California Dreams‘ first two. And those first two seasons of California Dreams were rocky.

The first season was based around a brother and sister Matt and Jenny Garrison in the band but by season two the line-up started to change, the sister left, new members came in, and eventually the Garrisons left the show entirely. As a result the show evolved quite a bit but luckily, in my opinion, it got better as it went along.

Here is a full episode from season three when they had settled in to their new dynamic. It’s one of those “very special” episodes where the small sweet kid gets into steroids.

Check that smooth pop song though, right? Well, the original was even schmaltzier. The band played some of the cheesiest pop music you’ll ever hear (and not Mormon Death Metal as their wikipedia page claims).

Here you’ll see the band from the first season play the full theme song, when they were a 4 piece instead of 5. Noticeably the two surviving members, on bass and drums, having the least to do.

None of the original cast members have gone on to much, Kelly Packard was probably the most successful as she had a decent run in Baywatch afterwards… as much as you can call being in Baywatch “decent”. Despite this, the show managed to stay relatively strong in pop culture consciousness, even inspiring this song by Fight Like Apes titled after the show’s “Fonzie”, Jake Summers.

The Marvel Super Heroes line debuted in 2012 and much like the Batman/DC line before it, it proved to be a smash hit with kids and adults alike, spawning dozens of sets and even a video game, which is where today’s review comes in.

76016 Spider-Helicopter Rescue is inspired by the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes video game, or to be more accurate, one of the many vehicles within the game. There are two sets in the current Marvel line up that feature Spider-Man with vehicles from the game, the other being 76014 Spider-Trike vs. Electro. Both of these sets also fall under the “Ultimate Spider-Man” subline so it’s drawing inspiration from both the video game and the TV show of the same name.

The box includes three bags of parts, two instruction booklets, a decal sheet and a comic, detailing the adventure and features of the three Ultimate Spider-Man LEGO sets. It’s a fun little extra that I really liked! But on to the minifigures!

This set features Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson, Power Man and Ultimate Green Goblin. The latter three are exclusive to this set and ol’ Goblin is our very first Big ‘Fig! I initially wanted to review either this set or the Hulk Lab Smash set just so I had an excuse to cover this kind of minifigure. He’s almost twice the size of standard minifigs and can even hold minifigures in their hands! Mary Jane has a pretty sweet Spidey-Heart torso piece, as well as a double-sided face, and I’m always happy to see Luke Cage (Power Man) get more publicity. If there’s one weakness, it’s Spider-Man. There’s nothing inherently wrong with his design, it’s a problem that LEGO has in general with tampographing white over red plastic. It’s comes off as a rather faint pink and is a problem I’ve encountered before in the Minifigure Collection (looking at you, Series 8 Santa). A nice little quartet, despite a minor flaw.

The first bag of parts is used to build up the Goblin Glider and since we’re dealing with with a Big ‘Fig, this is much more robust and heavy duty than you’d expect. They do a great job of making the glider look aerodynamic, despite it having to fly a pretty heavy dude around. It’s even labelled as Oscorp tech so I guess Norma Osborn isn’t being subtle as this Goblin! It’s surprisingly heavy once complete and Goblin is riding on top. My tamashii stand was buckling under it’s weight until I tightened up the joints! It also includes flick missiles on the wing arms.

The second bag consists of constructing the cockpits and the weapon pods. This is the bulk of the helicopter build but uses smaller parts instead of the larger pieces we’ll see later on. I was surprised to see that Spider-Man’s cockpit has no real floor, just two studs to stand on to allow for the web swinging delpoyment gimmick. The weapons pods are almost identical apart from the interior mechanisms.

The third, and final, bag consist of the largest pieces and the main components for the rotors and tail fins. These are pretty big parts, much larger than anything I’ve handled before (Careful now) but really give the vehicle it’s shape. The rotor spins especially well once completed and added to the top of the build. The cockpit’s windshields are also added in this section and their curves really help this bird look it was built for speed. The Spider-Copter was definitely too large and heavy for my stand so I had to resort to posing it on a box.

Overall, the set is brilliant. It’s an engaging, fun to build set that can be done in around an hour-hour and a half and has a lot of built-in play features. The Spider-Copter’s weapons work pretty well and the webbing net launches much further than even the flick missiles. The web swing delployment isn’t really necessary but I can see why they added it. This is the first LEGO Super Heroes set I’ve reviewed and I had a lot of fun doing it. I hope to do more in the future. 76016 Spider-Helicopter Rescue retails for around £44.99 and is worth every penny in my eyes.