TV Review: the CW Crossover Event: Invasion!

TV Review: The CW Crossover Event: Invasion!

It’s a risk that happens whenever big events loom, like Christmas, birthdays, family reunions with that cute second cousin you hit it off with last year: the letdown.  The higher the anticipation, the bigger the disappointment when things don’t quite work out as expected.

It must have seemed inevitable that The CW would orchestrate a “crossover” event once Supergirl migrated from CBS to The CW.  After all, the Flash/Supergirl crossover on CBS was a hoot, with the meta-analysis of the Glee reunion of stars Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist adding to the, well, glee.  It also helped that Benoist’s sunny interpretation of the Girl of Steel nicely meshed with Gustin’s amicable interpretation as the Scarlet Speedster (although this season The Flash has been getting pretty angst-y; but that’s a topic for another time).

So the week after Thanksgiving was the week of the “4 night crossover event” on The CW where all four DC properties produced by Greg Berlanti would cross pollenate.  My first complaint is that it was a “3-night crossover event” as 99% of Supergirl was about a different plot and The Flash and Cisco Ramon only showed up in the last 30 seconds.  Classic bait and switch.

The event picked up on The Flash, where the team was “assembled” like so many parts to a child’s toy on Christmas morning.  The Arrow and his team showed up, then the “Waverider” from Legends of Tomorrow.  The reason for the assemblage was an invasion of Earth by Aliens who looked and acted nothing like ET.  So The Flash recruited his pal Supergirl to visit our Earth from Earth 38 (I think) to help in the resistance to the aliens, whom Supergirl recognizes as a race called The Dominators.

And what brilliant plan do all these superheroes come up with to fight the alien menace?  They will try attacking Supergirl and see what works and doesn’t work.  Really?  That’s the best plan a team of SUPER heroes can come up with?  There is no reason to think Supergirl’s powers are comparable to The Dominators; there is no attempt at reconnaissance to find out what The Dominator’s powers are; there is no attempt at staging an attack to look for weaknesses.  Who knows, maybe The Dominators are like the aliens in the movie Signs are can be driven away by a garden hose?

No, instead of attacking the evil aliens, Team Flash, Team Arrow, and Team Legends spend their precious time immediately after an invasion of Earth by attacking a friendly alien and getting their asses handed to them.  Again, really?  That’s the best use of your time, risking injury by practicing against a friend instead of attacking the real enemy?  Makes.  No. sense.

The Flash installment ended with the members of Team Arrow being captured, leading to the continuation on Wednesday night.  This was the episode I was most at sea with, as I gave up on arrow mid-way through its first season (they dropped the backstory of him on the Island, and Steven Amell’s wooden acting gave me splinters).  As pointed out in the AV Club coverage of the episode, this set up a familiar but effect trope of giving a hero everything he wants to be happy, robbing him of his urge to be a hero. 

The episode may have been effective for fans of Arrow, but those of us tuning in only because of the crossover event were at a loss.  The emotional impact of dead characters being alive again was lost on those of us who didn’t know they were dead, and meanwhile the Big Bad from The Flash were nowhere to be seen for most of the episode.  So now we were three nights in to the “four-night event” and in two of them the alien threat was pretty much on the sidelines.

The episode ended with a “humans being able to operate advanced alien spacecraft” ending that is nothing but extreme hand-waving that’s even more egregious than Will Smith’s “I’ve seen the enemy aircraft perform and I think I can operate one” from Independence Day; it’s like someone who’s never driven a car saying, “After watching the Indianapolis 500 I’m ready to get behind the wheel and drive in traffic.”

The final segment of the crossover event was on Legends of Tomorrow.  We finally had the aliens front and center again, but it turned out that their only demand was for Earth to turn of The Flash to them.  This . . . made no sense.  They were worried about humans becoming a threat because of enhanced powers due to meta-humans, and they had a weapon that would destroy all meta-humans, but instead of using it they ask Earth to hand over one meta-human?  Then why the “invasion?”  Why not just start off by asking Earth for Barry Allen, or just detonating the anti-meta-human bomb?  Once again, the task of creating a plot device worthy of spanning four programs seems to have exceeded Greg Berlanti’s reach.

This is not to say the “event” was without entertainment value.  Combining the sunny aspect of Supergirl with the light but increasingly somber Flash with the downright depressing Arrow and the contained chaos of Legends of Tomorrow created some interesting interactions (none more than when Mick Rory said to Kara Danvers, “Hey skirt, call me!”).  I also enjoyed Iris’s comment that finding out that Oliver Queen was Arrow made him even hotter (followed by Barry’s reaction).  The comic book world is all about these mega-events, and if the result isn’t that spectacular than the fun is in the process.

I sort of hope The CW tries it again, but maybe with Supergirl visiting Arrow, or Barry interacting with the Legends of Tomorrow.  If The CW wants to go through what must be a logistical nightmare, with actor on four series having to be available in the production cycle of other series, then I wish they would come up with a plot more worthy than aliens invading earth, but largely being ignored.