I used to really like The CW's DC Comics TV Universe, better known as the 'Arrowverse', as the first couple seasons of Arrow as well as the first(and most of) the second season of The Flash were fantastic; the first seasons of Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow being solid; and everything after in at either 'alright' to 'meh' to 'pretty poor'. The yearly crossover events are still kind of fun though...I'd be lying to say that I am not at all interested in what Crisis on Infinite Earths is going to present. However, the longer the keep growing it the less the creative higher ups appear to care about good storytelling and trying to work best with their restrictive budgets and instead focus on just pandering to certain political ideologies and try hard to be 'hip' and 'trendy'...What were once very solid superhero programming have become bland, flat, and generally uninteresting. I am of the opinion they should probably stop with this year's big crossover event and Arrow's finale but it looks like they want to milk the cow more...Sadly, Batwoman, the newest entry in the universe, does not reignite interest.
I will start off with the good(which is very few); both Dougray Scott and Rachel Skarsten are great as Kate Kane's father Jacob and Alice. The color grading is effective and definitely gives the series its own identity(accompanied with a tighter, more cinematic aspect ratio and use of wide angle lenses). The music is fine too, though fairly generic. That's pretty much it though. Now the bad:
1. The character of Kate Kane is written as very cold and uninteresting and Ruby Rose plays her as such on screen. She was fine in Elseworlds, but it seems that that presentation was the beginning and the end of her personality, or lack thereof as a character. Rose also struggles a lot trying to fake an American accent, and sounds pretty much the same in tone no matter what is needed for a scene.
2. The action is fairly poor. I understand this is TV and you only have a short period to choreograph and record on camera but come on anything here can be easily done by the average person with much less of the budget. Nothing is uniquely staged or reveals anything about the characters and how they handle such dramatic situations.
3. The flashbacks. My goodness whoever made the decision to edited it that way should probably be let go from their job, you can barely make out what is going on because of how jittery and overblown the image quality is. It adds nothing to the story and is just an annoyance.
4. Politics over story. Okay we get it she's a tough female who is highly skilled and her romantic interests are for those of her own gender, that's all great but when you keep hammering that in every couple of minutes it just gets tiresome and shows that the producers probably do not understand the character of Kate Kane beyond a surface level description. Batwoman is a very complex character with a rich history, but this does not appear to be made by actual fans but those who would rather like to use them to pander to a few people on Twitter.
5. Disrespecting one hero to make the heroine better. It seems that the producers of this show really want to make it seem like Batman isn't such a good hero to begin with and want to make Batwoman out to be the real hero Gotham always needed, this totally disrespects the source material and Bruce and Kate's relationship.
Unless the rest of the season is a major improvement I see this as being another nail in the coffin of the once fine Arrowverse, and it might also bring the hammer along with it too.
