Why So Blu?

The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season (Blu-ray Review)

CW’s The Flash continues to be the top show of the Arrowverse as well as on the network itself in both popularity and ratings. The show returns to Blu-ray boasting a “complete” sixth season, however as anyone knows that it isn’t quite as whole as it was supposed to be. Another one taken down early by COVID-19 precautions, the show was halted in the middle of production of its 20th episode and decided to finish the season on an underwhelming closure with the 19th installment. Its a shame, but they do what they have to do. In its latest Blu-ray, it features the normal deleted scenes, gag reel and San Diego Comic Con hub bub that gets spread across all the Arrowverse Blu-rays. And its original release, like the others, it comes with a disc featuring the complete Crisis On Infinite Earths cross over event. To boot, there is a noir version of an episode done in black and white as well. The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season is available now, available by order below on the paid Amazon Associates link.

Season

Last season, Team Flash spent the last year dealing with not one, but two Cicadas, the return of Eobard Thawne, aka Reverse Flash, and the surprise arrival from the future of Barry and Iris’ daughter, Nora West-Allen, aka XS. The stakes were higher than ever during the season five finale. In season six, Team Flash contends with not one, but two all-new villains – Bloodwork and Mirror Master!

Through its history, The Flash found a formula of fighting an evil speedster stall out and has been searching for a new method of villainy in subsequent seasons for better of for worse. Its casts’ chemistry and harmony remains the driving force of the show through and through, of course. In its sixth season, they opted to try out another new method in having a villain for each half of the season. Or moreover, for each side of Crisis On Infinite Earths.

Our first villain tackled was Bloodwork and this one actually came off pretty well. He never got to the super grotesque heights of the comics in terms of appearance (Though, maybe he will, the season didn’t finish), but nonetheless the effect was there and Sendhill Ramamurthy came to play ball. This villain came with some instant depth and found new ways in which to torment and fend off the speedster and Star Labs gang. Wrapped up before Crisis, he did return in a moment and appeared to be teaming together with the second half villain before things halted.

Mirror Master was the second half villain and the trickery added a bit of out there material and mystery for the show. It also allowed for Candice Patton to showcase some more of her acting chops with a devious doppleganger. And to the show’s credit it pulled off some really tough to take in scenes of Iris and Barry and hats off to Patton and Gustin for getting us to buy them as we did. Unfortunately this arc hasn’t been resolved yet as we were stopped a couple episodes short of the season’s end.

While I still enjoy tuning in every week with my kids to see the latest exploits of Barry Allen and gang, the sixth season (regardless of how it was going to finish) was one of the weaker seasons. Its not unique to The Flash though, every one of the CW shows seemed to have a down year. Perhaps efforts were too focused on the Crisis crossover. There were some terrific highlights, however. Danielle Panaker’s directorial effort License to Elongate was a blast and an adorable James Bond riff. Also, Natalie Dreyfuss and her Sue Dearborn character I could watch an entire series on. She’s marvelous in her scene stealing recurring role. Overall, its still fun to tune into The Flash even if its not 100% or possibly slowing down.

Episodes

Into The Void

A Flash of The Lightning

Dead Man Running

 There Will Be Blood

Kiss Kiss Breach Breach

License To Elongate

The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part 1

The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part 2

Crisis on Infinite Earths: Hour Three

Marathon

Love is a Battlefield

A Girl Named Sue

Grodd Friended Me

Death of the Speed Force

The Exorcism of Nash Wells

So Long and Goodnight

Liberation

Pay the Piper

Success Is Assured

Video

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1

Layers: BD-50

Clarity/Detail: Over the years with these DC shows, the presentation of them comes around like clockwork and they all pretty much line up to their previous seasons’ audio and visual standards. The Flash’s sixth season continues to feature a top of the line picture, complete with being sharp and plenty detailed.  The texture of all the power suits and villain attire are visible by every little stitch almost.  It looks great.  Also impressive, is that the effects hold up and look every good considering the jump from HD television broadcast to Blu-ray.

Depth:  Movements appear as a cross between natural and cinematic.  No blur, unless you count the quickness of the Flash.  A lot of the slowed down action/speed sequences look very 3D as there is good spacing and looseness between characters, objects, effects and environments

Black Levels: Blacks are inky and good.  They help with furthering the definition of characters, objects and environments.  No detail that wasn’t intended to be was hidden and there was no crushing witnessed.

Color Reproduction: Colors are bold, and a bit more vivid and poppy at times compared to the Arrow and Batwoman series and more on par with Legends than it would be Supergirl.  Reds look very nice in this transfer, as well as yellows.

Flesh Tones: Skin tones primarily take on a natural look.  Some episodes can vary on that (some dark alleyways take yellow tinge), but for the most part that’s what we have.  Facial detail is very high, making clear well rounded visions of cuts, scrapes, freckles, dimples, make-up pores and stubble.

Noise/Artifacts: Clean

Audio

Audio Format(s): English 5.1 DTS-HD MA

Subtitles: English SDH

Dynamics: Over the years with these DC shows, the presentation of them comes around like clockwork and they all pretty much line up to their previous seasons’ audio and visual standards. The Flash is an action oriented show, and as such, this 5.1 mix knows how to perfectly present it.  The speed scenes, car crashes and explosions all burst into your room with a crisp clarity and well rounded sense of uncompressed fun. Its very similar and formulaic to the previous season and the other DC shows.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: Engine hums, Flash’s bursting speed, guns, magical beams and blast and action crashes get a nice thump from your sub woofer in a very good presentation.

Surround Sound Presentation: The front three channels gloriously present the action and onscreen movements back and forth with great accuracy.  Rear speakers tend be used for ambiance, but don’t count them out to surprise you during some action sequences and environments that are a bit more lively.

Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue is crisp, clear and at the ideal placement in terms of volume.

Extras

The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season is a 5-Disc set that comes with an episode guide insert sheet and a digital copy of every episode in the season. Disc 5, featuring all episodes of the Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover event, is only available on the Blu-ray edition and is a “limited edition” exclusive. Pretty much all the bonus features, or ones with any weight to them, are on the Crisis disc.

Disc 1

Audio Commentary

• “Kiss Kiss Breach Breach – Noir” Commentary by showrunner/executive producer Eric Wallace

“Kiss Kiss Breach Breach: Noir” (HD, 42:29) – Black and white color timed version of the episode.

Deleted Scenes (HD, 4:29)

Disc 2 

Deleted Scenes (HD, 5:14)

Disc 3

Deleted Scene (HD, 1:02)

Disc 4

Deleted Scenes (HD, 3:54)

Gag Reel (HD, 7:11)

The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2019 (HD, 51:05) – This is a hodge podge of all the CW DC shows’ panels at San Diego Comic Con 2019. This allows them to use this 1 bonus feature across all releases.

Disc 5

Crisis On Infinite Earths (HD) – All 5 episodes of the major crossover event are here on the bonus disc.

Crisis On Infinite Earths: The Architects Return (HD, 11:55) – Various credible talking heads discuss the original ambitious comic book run that is the source for the crossover. They also go into how they crafted it to fit their universe while also keeping in line with what the comic was.

Crisis Management (HD, 13:08) – “It was not a burden, it was a gift.” The writers and showrunners discuss the collaboration of talents in front of and behind the camera to bring this to life. They talk about how they geeked out and would walk over to other shows’ sets just to enjoy the whole experience come to life.

Crisis Past and Present: Kevin Conroy Bat Legend (HD, 3:17) – This focuses on the decision to bring animated Batman icon Kevin Conroy to be the live action elder Bruce Wayne in Crisis. Conroy discusses how his voice is much more difficult to maintain for a 12 hour live action shoot than a 2 hour voice recording booth session.

Crisis Past and Present: Superman vs. Superman (HD, 4:37) – On this one we look at Brandon Routh’s continuation of his Superman Returns man of steel.

Characters in Crisis: Pariah (HD, 4:20) – This piece talks about Pariah in the comic book arc and how they utilized it in this televised version of the story.

Characters in Crisis: The Anti-Monitor (HD, 4:55) – Subject says it all, as the show story editors/producers talk about how the villain works in the Arrowverse.

Summary

The Flash comes to an unceremonious inconclusion in its pandemic shortened sixth season. Even in its weakest, it still remains a pretty solid, fun family viewing. This Blu-ray release for it presents itself with the usual standards for the Arrowverse and unfortunately follows the new said standards when it comes to being lighter and repetitive (Across releases) on the bonus features, menus and packaging. Nonetheless, in this time of a strong push to streaming (and weak DVD only releases for some shows), its nice to still be able to collect these shows on Blu-ray.