Arrowverse General Best/Worst DC-CW Pilot

[Primal Slayer]

With Superman and Lois premiering tonight, we are now on our 8th Super show, what is the best pilot? Worst pilot?

Counting Stargirl since it still aired on CW and Supergirl since she spent majority of her time on CW and had the same creative team.

You get 2 votes - 1 for best, 1 for worst.

 

[flickchick85]

Best: Superman & Lois easily.

Worst: Legends of Tomorrow. But Batwoman came pretty damn close. SG ain't far behind, either, but at least Melissa & Chyler showed promise there.

 

[Web-Head]

Best was between Flash, Stargirl and Superman and Lois for me. Went with Flash because it was my favorite of the bunch. I was most impressed by Superman and Lois in regards to quality and production wise though. Stargirl was up there as well.

Worst: went with Batwoman. Didn't watch Legends or Black Lightning so can't comment on those and the Supergirl pilot is fun enough.

 

[Ray of Hope]

Superman and Lois is the best for me hands down. Tyler was pitch perfect as Clark/Superman.

The flash was really good as well.

 

[Snow Queen]

Best: Superman & Lois

Worst: Batwoman

In both cases, by a considerable margin.

 

[Dr.]

Granted, it’s fresh in mind; but I’ll go with Superman & Lois as having the best pilot. Dunno about worst. Maybe LoT or Supergirl? But generally, the problem with the CW/DC shows isn’t the pilots — which are serviceable enough. (Pilots often encompass the origin story. In turn, origin stories tend to be solid/archetypal.) The problem is padding these shows out to 22 episodes per season x multiple seasons. And the flaws are familiar: the drift towards convoluted (if not goofy) narratives; lazy, deus ex machina story solutions; contradiction of established continuity; repetitive/derivative plots; etc.

IMO, Black Lightning has been best at maintaining quality over the seasons. So it remains to be seen whether S&L will follow this path… or some other.

 

[Primal Slayer]

Granted, it’s fresh in mind; but I’ll go with Superman & Lois as having the best pilot. Dunno about worst. Maybe LoT or Supergirl? But generally, the problem with the CW/DC shows isn’t the pilots — which are serviceable enough. (Pilots often encompass the origin story. In turn, origin stories tend to be solid/archetypal.) The problem is padding these shows out to 22 episodes per season x multiple seasons. And the flaws are familiar: the drift towards convoluted (if not goofy) narratives; lazy, deus ex machina story solutions; contradiction of established continuity; repetitive/derivative plots; etc.

IMO, Black Lightning has been best at maintaining quality over the seasons. So it remains to be seen whether S&L will follow this path… or some other.

To me, I feel like these shows are perfectly set up for 22 episodes a season. Take Arrow for example, they had at least 7 series regulars on the show in any given season but rarely let any of them shine outside of Oliver/Felicity/Diggle. They could've used plenty of villains in smaller arcs within the show but once again failed to do so.

 

[flickchick85]

I’ve never found ANY show benefitting from that high an episode count. Even my faves that had that many episodes per season like Buffy and X-Files had a good number of unremarkable filler eps each season because of it.

 

[KaijuDude1992]

Superman & Lois, Stargirl, The Flash and Black Lightning all had good to great pilots IMO, but if you were to ask me what were my favorties its probably a tie between Superman & Lois and Stargirl.

As far as the worst pilots go Batwoman and Supergirl didn't impress me much at all and Legends of Tomorrow isn't too far behind either, but in Supergril's case it got so much worse afterwards.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I’ve never found ANY show benefitting from that high an episode count. Even my faves that had that many episodes per season like Buffy and X-Files had a good number of unremarkable filler eps each season because of it.

Of course lesser episodes and tighter seasons are more desirable but when you have that high episode count, you can definitely use it to your advantage to flesh out the rest of your cast and then you have showrunners say "we wanted to do x,y,z storyline but didnt have enough time" which is funny since they have plenty of time.

 

[Sithborg]

I’ve never found ANY show benefitting from that high an episode count. Even my faves that had that many episodes per season like Buffy and X-Files had a good number of unremarkable filler eps each season because of it.

The biggest detriment to the writing of so many episodes is the demand for serialized storytelling. One shot episodes not connected to the over arching plot are written off as "filler". The reason Flash season 1 was so successful was that we didn't get an overarching villain till the midseason.

I had to give the nod to Black Lightning. Supeman and Lois kind of cheats with their 2 hour premiere, but Black Lightning was able to sell me on a character I am unfamiliar with in their 1.

 

[flickchick85]

The biggest detriment to the writing of so many episodes is the demand for serialized storytelling. One shot episodes not connected to the over arching plot are written off as "filler". The reason Flash season 1 was so successful was that we didn't get an overarching villain till the midseason.

Those episodes aren't what I'm talking about. If you've seen my TV posts before, you know I'm 100% in favor of standalone episodes. I love them. Literally all my favorite episodes of TV ever, except for 1, are basically standalones. That's not what I'm calling "filler." No, I'm talking about episodes where clearly no one gave a s***. Episodes that seem to only exist to fill a quota. Buffy and X-Files are both shows with GREAT standalone episodes, but every season they also have those episodes that make you go, "yep, this script would've been scrapped if they could've afforded to." Because that's what happens when you have episode counts that high. Things are rushed, people are put under pressure to produce a lot of content in a relatively small amount of time, quality is sacrificed. That's been my observation in 30+ years of TV watching, anyway.

 

[Sithborg]

I mean, even with 8 episodes, you can still get lackluster episodes. I guess I just view bad episodes like that as a failed attempt.

 

[flickchick85]

I mean, even with 8 episodes, you can still get lackluster episodes. I guess I just view bad episodes like that as a failed attempt.

And longer seasons have a higher ratio of them vs. quality eps, imo. It's just the natural result of people having to produce far more content in the same amount of time. Ron Moore of BSG basically admitted as much with his show, which is why he fought their "extended episode orders" with the network (and lost).