The Flash

The Scarlet Runner.

Continuing with TV series that made my day, today we have a spectacular 1990 series that was nomimated for 2 prime time Emmys. Unfortunately, like all good things, the show ran for only one season of 22 marvelous episodes. Yes, I'm talking about DC Comics fastest man on earth: The Flash. Many people have already given many of the reasons for the series only lasting the one season. To summarize (info taken from several sources): 1. Too expensive to produce (more on this later, as this could very easily have been fixed, even at the time before affordable CGI, and indeed this is the point of my Comment). I seem to recall that it was one of the most expensive series (on a per-episode basis) ever on TV up to that time, rivaled only by the original "Battlestar: Galactica," and much of that (in both cases) was the SFX budget. 

Tina McGee, the Flash's n°1 guy.

2. Bounced around the schedule, often unannounced, sometimes at the last minute. Of COURSE people can't watch it if they can't FIND it! There were no TiVos or auto-updating Internet versions of the TV Guide back then, either.

3. Lousy timing and luck, historically speaking. Pre-empted several times by yet another useless war known as Gulf War I and its many pointless news reports. Not quite as bad as the news-related bad luck that afflicted the earlier superhero series "The Greatest American Hero," whose main protagonist had the same last name as the man who, while the series was still airing, became notorious for shooting then-President Ronald Reagan.

Barry Allen & Co.

4. Inconsistent use of comic book elements. It seemed that the network executives couldn't make up their minds over whether the Flash should battle ordinary criminals or bring in some of his Rogues' Gallery from the comics (The Silver-Age "Barry Allen" Flash has arguably THE single richest Rogues' Gallery of ANY hero in the history of comics!). We did see Captain Cold, The Trickster (who was portrayed more like The Joker, and in fact Mark Hamill's portrayal of The Trickster is very likely what convinced WB animation to use him as the voice of The Joker in the outstanding animated Batman series and spin-offs from the mid 1990s up to and including the "Justice League" animated series of the early 2000s), and Mirror Master. We also saw a kinda-sorta "Reverse-Flash" (a clone of Barry on the TV series).

The amazing Flash suit.

But other excellent Rogues' Gallery members were ignored entirely. One in particular, one of the greatest, Gorilla Grodd, was mentioned off-handedly by the stoolie whom we often saw, in the episode "Deadly Nightshade" (in which the Golden Age Central City hero "The Nightshade", came out of retirement and worked with The Flash to help hunt down a new, murderous vigilante who was using the Nightshade's name and costume to kill criminals), as a HUMAN gang-lord "up in Helltown." Presumably, he was big and tough, perhaps built somewhat like a gorilla, so "Gorilla Grodd" was just his mobster nickname.

I'm the Flash!

That angered me to no end. I realized that doing a real GORILLA Grodd would be difficult and expensive for the special effects of the time, and that a TV audience wouldn't likely accept the concept of a hidden city of sapient apes in Africa. Let's face it, the TV series goal was to make their executive producers richer, so having to deal with big budgets investments most certainly scared them away, and some of the most wonderful ideas with The Flash were just that, ideas. However, the 22 episodes did display a wide variety of adventures where our fastest man on earth had to face different difficulties on each chapter (even losing his powers and time travelling) The whole show had this Tim Burton's Batman dark environment all over Central City and the 22 episodes happened at night in all sorts of  urban landscapes, giving the Flash the darker vibes that made Tim Burton's Batman so believable and likeable for both kid & adult audiences.

 

Finally, Luke Skywalker turned to the dark side and became The Trickster!

Barry Allen.

Anyway, back to #1: I said that the effects budget could easily have been fixed, and it could have, right from the git-go. You see, back when the series was announced, the producers received an offer from Mike Jittlov (http://www.wizworld.com), a special effects wizard of the time who had earlier produced a music video (later expanded into a feature film of the same name, about the making of the video) called "The Wizard of Speed and Time" which had special effects way better than were on "The Flash" TV series, and which were way cheaper to do! Indeed, he did most of them in the camera He never used a computer or other such gear! But, the idiot producers turned down his offer to do the SFX for the series! He was even willing to do it for scale! Perhaps, producers wanted to make the character so huge that they could actually release their own big screen adaptation. Unfortunately that didn't happen and that was it for the fastest man alive.

Amanda Pays.

Amanda Pays nude talent.

The Flash is definitely a must watch show for any connoisseur around the globe. Besides, you don't need to be a comic bookworm to understand most of what's going on in each chapter. The first home video of The Flash had the pilot episode presented as if it was The Flash movie. 15 years later Warner  Bros, decided to release the entire show on DVD and it's still available at many online stores. I own and the digital transfer sounds and looks great. Besides, the digipack boxset is simply amazing. What's not to like about the Flash? I don't know, maybe The Flash was one of the last decent TV series made in a long long time.

Here's the cool opening sequence featuring the great Danny Elfmann tune: