Television

I can't recall the last time two seasons of an ongoing television show have been released back-to-back, but that's what Warner Brothers is doing with their CW superhero show, BLACK LIGHTNING, a series that began outside of the Arrowverse of their other DC Comics-inspired series that later became incorporated, loosely, through the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover event -- an event that, while it didn't have an official crossover episode with BLACK LIGHTNING in the proper sense, still made its presence felt.

HBO's six-part series THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA is an adaption of the Philip Roth novel of the same name, chronicling an alternate history of World War II in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt lost his third bid for the presidency to Republican candidate and aviation hero, Charles Lindbergh. In this reshuffling of events, the election of Lindbergh gave way to a populist upheaval in America, which led to a rise of antisemitism and fascism, particularly against Jewish citizens.

Superhero movies are mostly seen as overly expensive special effects flicks that carry a fraction of artistic value. Nevertheless, even through their simplified narrative, superhero movies and tv shows point out the value of friendship, positive attitude, and persistence towards achieving a goal. All these messages are vital for college students because they can provide a guideline for overcoming the challenges of academic life.

We asked students for their opinion, and here is a list of 10 favorite superhero flix among college students.

It's Saturday morning all over again with this collection of the classic SPACE GHOST animated series. Featuring all twenty of the 1966-1968 SPACE GHOST episodes, these cartoon shorts have lost none of their appeal, due in large part to the timeless designs of Alex Toth.

The premise behind PRODIGAL SON is intriguing: an professional profiler, Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), is released from the FBI for taking dangerous risks. Upon his release, he's offered a position as a consultant for the NYPD Major Crimes division, under Gil Arroyo (Lou Diamond Phillips), a man whose been a father figure to him since Malcolm was ten years old. Gil took on that role after Gil arrested Malcolm's father -- Dr. Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), also known as the notorious serial killer, The Surgeon.

A serial killer hunter raised by a serial killer is just the kind of twisted base that could support a constant fount of intrigue and suspense. And to a large degree, it does. On top of the weekly serial killer of the week structure, PRODIGAL SON provides an ongoing mystery, a repressed memory of Malcolm's that could lead to the discovery of a yet-to-be-discovered victim of The Surgeon.

The best thing to happen to CW superhero shows was obtaining the license to rebroadcast episodes of STARGIRL the day after premiering on the DC Universe streaming services. The show, shepherded by character creator Geoff Johns, became immediately recognized as one of the best translations of comic-to-tube in decades.

While the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS crossover event was a mid-season interruption for most of the CW superhero shows, it was the season opening episode for LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, the action sitcom of the Arrowverse. LEGENDS began as a team of superheroes assembled to go on a time-travel mission to stop Vandal Savage, and selected because they would not be missed by history if they were killed. Since then, it has evolved into a sort of "anything goes" time-travel fix-it series, with very little super-heroing happening -- with John Constantine (Matt Ryan) thrown into the mix.

In the fifth season of the Maid of Might's adventures, Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) and her super friends find themselves going up against Leviathin, an organization bent on putting Earth through its next extinction event, ushered in at the hands of seemingly immortal gods like Rama Khan (Mitch Pileggi) and Gamemnae (Cara Buono).

But it's not as simple as that, as Supergirl's civilian life as Kara Danvers is complicated by new relationships. A new fellow reporter at CATCO, William Dey (Staz Nair), gets nosy about Kara's personal life, and has some pretty shady interactions that arouse Kara's suspicions. But his true motives become revealed later on, when Kara learns he's been undercover investigating a very bad person.

Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear move beyond the cartoon short form that has been their norm to headline their first Cartoon Network movie.

The bears' rush to the grand opening of food truck selling poutine leaves a trail of chaos in their wake -- and a slew of angry townspeople. Determined to make amends, the bears attempt to become popular by making the greatest viral video ever, by combining elements of every popular meme of the last twenty years. But when this ends in disastrous results, it grabs the attention of the no-nonsense Agent Trout from Fish and Wildlife. He's determined to bring the bears in and relocate them to a bear sanctuary.

And so begins the greatest road trip of all time, as the bears go on the lam in a police van, intent on crossing the border into Canada for freedom, love, and universal health care.

Fans of the soaps GUIDING LIGHT and ONE LIFE TO LIVE are well acquainted with actress Crystal Hunt, who played Lizzie Spaulding and Stacy Morasco on each show, respectively.

But the actress has kept consistenly busy since her time on the daytime dramas, putting in work in films as well as other serial entertainment, suc as HILTON HEAD ISLAND for Pure Flix.

With MOOD SWINGS, Hunt gets to bring the full range of her experience to bear; not only is she acting in the Pure Flix situation comedy, she's also the creator, serving as writer and producer. With an ensemble cast featuring Robin Riker, Cristina DeRosa, Sophia Gasca, and Donna Mills, MOOD SWINGS draws its inspiration from THE GOLDEN GIRLS, and it's not hard to begin to draw the parallels between the characters once you see them.

Jeff Daniels narrates WASHINGTON, a three-part miniseries for The History Channel that mixes re-enactment with seated interview segments that do a deep-dive into the events in the life of George Washington, the first President of the United States.

Nicholas Rowe (YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES) plays the titular founding father in program that strips away the folk history to reveal the man beneath, complete with flaws and failures. From his first military command -- which resulted in an embarrassing attack on a French diplomatic party with Washington signing a confession branding him as an assassin -- to his tactical decisions as the Commander in Chief of his own army in the American Revolution, WASHINGTON is a story of growth and maturiing, of making mistakes and learning from them. Rowe presents a stoic Washington throughout, even when forced to make hard decisions such as hanging deserters or having mutineers execute their leaders in a firing squad.

2020 was meant to be the biggest year ever for CW's THE FLASH. From the very first episode when viewers got teased with that headline from the future, we knew the series was building toward the legendary "Crisis on Infinite Earths" story -- a story which, in comics, rebuilt the entire DC Universe from scratch at the cost of the lives of The Flash and Supergirl. And while it seemed unlikely that the showrunners were going to sacrifice two of their titular characters for the sake of telling the story, expectations among fans were nonetheless high.

From its very preconception, BATWOMAN seemed to be a project destined for failure on the CW. From the inflammatory pre-show trailers to the shoe-horned identity-driven approach to storytelling, the series was determined to trip over itself to be something rather than letting an organically told story do the work for them, ultimately resulting in the lead actress, Ruby Rose, opting to leave the role of Kate Kane -- the titular hero -- after the freshman year.

DC's STARGIRL has been nothing short of stellar throughout its 13-episode freshman season. The latest entry into the Arrowverse (the show was teased at the end of the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover, so we're counting it), the show has been one of the most consistently fun, fresh, optimistic, adventuresome, straight-up superhero shows to have graced the CW network. There's a respect and an adherence to the source material -- not just to the STARGIRL comic book heroine herself but to much of the DC Universe in general. The costumes, the props (there's a green lantern seen more than once that I'm still waiting to see get fired up!) and the name-drops have all been enough to make a comic book fan giddy to his core.

The premise of Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS is one with a lot of promise. It's theological at its core, positing an alternate world much like our own, with an identical creation story of Adam, Eve, and Serpent. But beyond that, things diverge. The world is one of dirigible and balloon transport, and the architecture seems older and more industrial revolution era. But beyodn the trappings of technology, there is more: humans are born with a "daemon" -- a spirit animal that can change its form until the human host reaches puberty, at which point it settles on one specific animal. The connection between human and daemon is considered sacred, and indeed what effects one is felt on the other. When humans die, their daemons disintegrate.

I've greatly enjoyed the movies adapting Tom Clancy's novels. There was plenty of action and suspense, and you felt the character was always in a (wait for it) clear and present danger.

Now, I admittedly missed the first season of the JACK RYAN streaming series, and honestly I wasn't lost entering the second season without it. The storyline here was clearly a new beginning bringing back the titular character (played by John Krasinski) with James Greer (Wendell Pierce), and introducing Mike November (Michael Kelly). The setting is Venezuela, where the current corrupt leader, Nicolas Reyes (Jordi Mollà), is having his position challenged in the upcoming election by Gloria Bonalde (Cristina Umaña).

If you haven't watched any STARGIRL by now, you are lucky. Because you're only one week away from getting to binge the entire first season.

It's been a shortened first season -- only thirteen episodes in total -- but it's been a fun and enjoyable ride. DC and CW have given viewers the family-friendly super-hero show that its lineup had been sorely missing, and fans have responded positively to it. Brec Bassinger's portrayal of Courtney Whitmore, the teenager who becomes Stargirl, is fresh and optimistic, always appealing to the good in people. It's with this determined outlook that Stargirl recruits a new Justice Society from the unlikely group of social outcasts at Blue Valley High: Doctor Mid-nite (Anjelika Washington), Hourman (Cameron Gellman), and Wildcat (Yvette Monreal).

In the first season of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY, the quirky sibling superhero group failed to prevent the world-shattering apocalypse that they themselves caused, leaping through time at the last moment through the powers of their brother, Five (Aidan Gallagher), to wind up scattered across the early 1960s in Dallas, Texas, with the last of them arriving in 1963, days before the Kennedy assassination. Diego (David Castañeda) sees this as an opportunity to prevent the assassination, but somehow -- a mystery for the season -- this leads to yet another world-ending apocalypse of global nuclear war. Diego ends up committed to an insane asylum. Luther (Tom Hopper) is forced to become a bare-knuckle brawler for Jack Ruby. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) settles into a marriage to a local civil rights activist, Ray Chestnut (Yusuf Gatewood), Klaus (Robert Sheehan) starts a cult, and Vanya ends up without her memories living on a farm with a family raising a disabled child.

While HBO's THE OUTSIDER was based on a singular novel, and while the series wrapped up an entire story arc within its confines, I find it comforting to see that the home video release of the series is listed on Amazon as "The First Season." This doesn't appear anywhere on the box art, so whether or not this cast -- or parts of this cast -- will return for another mystery is anyone's guess, but it's a ray of hope nonetheless.

The show kicks off with the gruesome murder of a child, where video, eyewitness, and even DNA evidence point to the killer as being the upstanding citizen and Little League coach, Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman). Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), who knows what it's like to lose a child, wants to make an exampe of Maitland and arranges his arrest to be made very publicly.

There's a lot happening in this episode of STARGIRL, and the title -- "Brainwave Jr." -- is a promising one. I've been hoping that Henry King Jr. (Jake Austin Walker) was going to come out a hero instead of following in the villainous footsteps of his father, the Injustice Society's resident telepath, Brainwave (Christopher James Baker), and I was right. Sort of.

But before we can deal with that, we are thrown into the family chaos that has erupted in the Whitmore-Dugan household. Barbara Whitmore (Amy Smart) has seen the cosmic staff in action, and now it's up to Pat (Luke Wilson) and Courtney (Brec Basinger) to tell her the truth about what Stargirl, and Barb does not take the news well at all. In fact, she's so angry she makes Pat leave for the night. Mike (Trae Romano) overhears, and decides to go with his dad to spend the night at the repair shop.