I'm glad LoT was mentioned, as I had some major issues with it too. The biggest problem was easily the writing. I accepted some time ago that literally every TV show or movie that focuses on time travel, no matter how good it is, will have plot holes and details that just don't make sense if you think about them long enough, but this show took it to the next level. How many times did they abruptly rewrite the rules of how time travel worked, do things that were said to be impossible just a few episodes ago, or bring up major new elements that logically should have been mentioned a long time ago? And that's not even taking into account the many ways it conflicts with how time travel is portrayed in
The Flash. Do the Time Masters take into account speedsters who can hop through time? And do the Time Wraiths ever try to interfere with what they're up to?
On a more general level, it's hard to make a satisfying seasonal arc over as simple an end goal as "Kill this guy." There's no way the characters can really "progress" towards that goal and yet not achieve it over the course of an episode. All they can do is try, inevitably fail, spend the rest of the episode cleaning up their own mess, and they're back to square one. Heroes who do nothing but constantly fuck up make for very unsatisfying viewing. And they don't even fail for
good reasons - say, that they've misjudged and underestimated Vandal Savage, who turns out to be the world's greatest badass and manages to outsmart and overpower them at every turn. That could help build up our villain and sell him as a major threat to the audience. But no, instead their failures always seem to come down to carelessness, basic ineptitude, and the deus ex machina of "Time wants to happen/this event can't be changed, blah blah blah."
Speaking of Vandal Savage, he was terrible. It's not necessarily the actor's fault, although his goofy accent was a bit distracting at times, but he was nerfed to a huge degree here. Merging him with the (far more obscure) villain Hath-Set was a big mistake. Not only did it did it make Savage that much less awesome by reducing his lifespan so drastically, it turned him into a weird parasite who's dependent on the Hawks to survive and pathetically mopes and pines after Hawkgirl. And in person, he really wasn't all that powerful or impressive. That last point is an odd one, because in his introduction in the
Flash-
Arrow crossover, they were definitely playing up the angle that he had some vaguely-defined magical abilities beyond his immortality, but LoT apparently just forgot about that and reduced him to being a decent martial artist who likes knives.
On the notion of other characters. I never liked Rip Hunter; he always came across as selfish, hypocritical, and shockingly incompetent at his job to me, and I highly doubt that was intentional. The Hawks didn't amount to anything positive (blah blah love triangle bullshit) between them, and I have absolutely no idea what message the writers were trying to send with them. They seemed to realize that the idea of telling someone that they're destined to fall in love with some creepy person they don't know and that they'll never find happiness with anyone else is all kinds of fucked up - but at the exact same time, they were committed to reinforcing the truth of it! What the actual fuck?
I did like the other characters, though, and there were some great moments mixed in with all the nonsense. The prison break with Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell practically smirking at the camera because of the obvious parallel to their roles on
Prison Break, hanging out in the Old West with Jonah Hex, the goofy kaiju homage with Ray turning himself gigantic so he could fight that huge robot, and a few others. I don't regret watching the show, for all my issues with it. I will probably watch the second season, if only because now the CW plans to do
a ridiculous four-way crossover with all its capeshit shows.
Arrow's latest season can probably be summed up with this gif:
Back on the subject of BvS,
lol.