JOHN WESLEY SHIPP on the Reasons Why the Flash Failed Early on  

Then back to Barry Allen in the current series

Dude was made for Jay Garrick

Came back in CW's crisis and finished out, his FLASH-90.

He has so many roles he was: Barry, Jay, Henry. He is a legend to everyone

@@14DaveHunter not trying to sound soft, but when he ran out of existence and they showed a clip from the old show, I almost teared up a little.

I was turned into a little kid all over again when he came back as Jay and was giving Barry some lessons on the speedforce and how the multiverse worked.

He got to be Barry Allen's father, Earth-2's Jay Garrick, and his original character -- Earth-90's Flash.

I feel like I missed out on the old flash show I rlly want to watch it but I don’t know where to watch it

​@@Onshore_Turn3dude. LOOK ON THE INTERNET! I was going to look for you to be nice. I changed my mind when I remembered you can just do that yourself. You're likely going to have to rent it. If not, pirate it(not advised). Don't tell me social media made you forget Google is a SEARCH ENGINE.

@@Onshore_Turn3 prime video or apple tv

Yep awesome. Also the Barry's love interest from the original flash as well

Amanda pays was also in both

Mark Hamil was in the CW Flash show? I only started watching the later seasons, which episode was he in?

@@shel0016 they also had Julio in another timeline episode.

@@Deuteromis he played the same character- not sure which episode.

The primary reason why a lot of other interviewers reign in on the conversations is because of time. They only have so much allocated time and most guests are their promote their current projects, so whenever they stray to far off course they get 'adjusted'. Although, some interviewers such as Howard Stern love the sound of their own voice. The 30 or 60 minute format doesn't apply to RU-vid or podcasts in general so you get more conversational style interview.

In all fairness, this was an unusual example of him allowing the guest to talk. I couldn’t help but notice that while watching. Usually he always cuts them off and makes the current topic about himself. I really like the guy but my gosh he really can suck the oxygen out of the room.

It’s funny cuz both Michael and John played the flash😂

@@discover6396 preach. Plus it's important to have a personality during the interview. Otherwise you're not giving anything to bounce off of and it becomes stale or even worse- no one cares who you are enough to watch you again

Michael deserves to play an adult seasoned Wally West Flash in live action.

Didn't know that was him, until reading your post. Looks different with hair and beard stubble.

I didn't know that was him

I disagree. Didn’t give a damn about Wally West in the show but go ahead, keep assuming you know what everyone feels. That’s very American of you

@@AhtoNajeebRashied Well he said people. That doesn't have to mean every person.

Rosenbaum still to the day my favorite flash.. Wally west baby! Him dying is what made their supes lose it back in the justice league show. LOVE IT!

A lot of overrated actors can learn alot of him

Wait...WE Failed this city?! 😲

By far.

I liked the season 4 suit from the tv show a bit better

Totally agree

Yup

Facts!!

I think it is the best live action superhero tv series ever made.

Quality comment. Interesting view and prob right. Cheers.

I still struggle to understand how Smallville last one season let alone 10.

@@pferreira1983 It came out a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. So the national TV audience was looking for an uplifting series. Plus, non-comic book readers knew who Superman was, not The Flash.

It would have survived if had been on a smaller network. But on a bigger network, you had to have a bigger budget and bigger ratings. On the CW you don't have to have blockbuster ratings to survive. Look at Bat Woman.

@@johnnyskinwalker4095 I agree, From what I understand Smallville never did great ratings but never did terrible so it found its safety compared to something like Lois & Clark which had a bigger budget and was on a bigger network.

So true. It didn't fail at all for me, and I have the box set to prove it!

Same thing for me ! I never thought for one second that it was a "failed TV series" or some other nonsensical crap like that ! It just tossed aside by all of the ignorant & close-minded fools at the time ! Things have changed somewhat considerably since then ! A lot more people understand & appreciate comic book superheroes these days !

Found this at a dvd store in the past and got curious and when i watched it i was hooked😁 watched till i got to the end but then i found out it was cancelled😔

@@TheRadioAteMyTV the first 3 seasons were great, after that is just carbage

@@waelliam1179 There is only one season of the original Flash. It was fun beginning to end. Though the one with the homeless people was really preachy.

But Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk worked back in 70/80s although Spider-Man was really naff and they didn't have the rights to the villains I guess but certainly enjoyed them at the time and I have the complete DVDs of Hulk.

Where I lived the show was pre-empted all season long by the Gulf War so we barely ever got any episodes. That could not have been good for the ratings and had nothing to do with the quality of the show it was by far my favourite show and I was heart broken we won the war and lost the Flash.

Also the sub-cinematic tech is cheaper to mass produce, thus giving more leeway for shows to fail while the genre remains.

Amanda Pays is in a really gorey horror flick about genetic experimentation. She's the only good actor aside from a familiar cameo as the mad scientist. This movie is still a creepy special effects gem. The Kindred. It's awesome.

nice observation....never saw it liked that...thanks

I too have the box set from way back and my friends & I would have watch parties when it aired on television. I like the continuity. First only the crooks and one police office knew The Flash was real. Then the neighborhood folks acknowledge him. Then the rags, i.e. tabloids like National Enquirer start reporting on him. Then the respectable news. Then fully acknowledged publicly with the icing on the cake, which I won't spoil, being seen onscreen at the end of the series. That last bit thanks to the network letting them know in time that the show wasn't going to get another season, thus they could write the later scripts with that in mind and come up with the closing shot.

That reboot formula is what made the 2000s Flash such a success. All the new characters, the old characters. The Trickster, and many others. They brought back the entire cast from the original Flash.

Really wana see a justice league series to be honest with all the hero's and not just individual story's an actual JL series then you can do seprate characters spin of mini series of the show in between kinda thing instead. That would be my way of doing it.you can run a season of JL then say batman and sups go in to a little mini series after that links back to the main series and then at the end of the next series do a flash lantern mini one that connects in to the next series and so forth getting them all involved in the main story and then do it again with some diffrent charictors till they all have there liitle seprate solo or duo kinda story s that reconnect back in the main bring in new charictor s through the arcs.

Shipp had no CGI speed double, it was all him. Especially the scene where he ate that big bowl of cereal. 🤢

I grew up a Star Trek fan. I was already a loser for a lifetime by 1990.

32 years ago BATMAN was the biggest movie on the planet.

@@brianinglis3805 Adam West or Michael Keaton lol Because even back then with Adam West, Batman was lame to casual viewers until Tim Burton Directed his film.

@@vincem2320 The Batman TV show starring Adam West & Burt Ward ran for 3 seasons from 1966 to 1968 (53 to 55 years ago) and was hugely popular at the time. The Batman movie starring Michael Keaton & Jack Nicholson was the highest grossing movie of 1989 (32 years ago).

@@brianinglis3805 Yes but that’s bc it’s Batman lol I can say WW, Superman, or Spider-Man was popular 50 years ago too, it’s pretty obvious

OMG I thought I was the only one on liking those! lol After a while I began to wonder if I was cursed. Every shows I liked started to get cancelled everytime. The cancellation of Dark Shadows was so heart breaking to me. It was my favorite show. Every week I would passionaly watch it. It got cancelled just as Barnabas had returned from the past knowing Angelique was responsible for him becoming a vampire. People were far less patient on Networks back in the day. Since then I have seen genre shows on these networks starting with bad ratings but they were patient with them and it got better, they became a success.

@@johnnyskinwalker4095 Cheers was 82 out of 100 and NBC stuck with it and it became a hit.

@@jasonelliott7977 yea I meant Genre shows specifically like horror, fantasy, etc....Seems like back then they were soon as this odd thing.

Haha 😂 I know me too🤣

Failed, how can 8 seasons of show be a failure?

@@computerboy2k bro....it's still making money cuz die hard fans won't let the show go but the show in terms of quality is a total failure.

This.. I clicked to hear how the writing and plots devolved into ridiculous, woke bullshit

@@tauhid9983 yes I still watch it even though I’m rolling my eyes the whole time.

Same 😊

Agreed.

Oh God no. Worst CW show of all God damn time.

Except this isnt that. Its lex interviewing the flash

@@jonathansoko1085 Michael Rosenbaum voiced Wally West/The Flash in the Justice League animated series.

For some reason my VCR usually recorded the Flash in Black and WHITE, but the show was in color when I watched it live over the antenna.

@@jC-kc4si That's weird. Reminds me of a funny story. Back when we were kids, this friend of mine's mother took in an injured squirrel and had it as a pet for a while. At one point it peed in their TV and the TV would only play in black and white until the pee evaporated and the color returned.

And back then, Nielsens didn't rate VCR recordings as streaming services (conveniently) do for themselves now.

@@commandercaptain4664 Its good they changed that.

The Hulk did very well. Any kid that grew up during the 80s will know the Hulk. Wonder Women, though slightly less successful, still held on 3x longer than the Flash.

That and time slot changes, they even tried 830, an oddity for an hour long show, hoping to get around, Cosby and simpsons. It had several time slots and pre-emptions in a 4 network world.

EXACTLY! We got maybe 4 shows that actually aired where I lived. I went bought a VCR just for that show, and I was in college so I needed to study/work, and the money for the VCR was a LOT on my budget, but for the Flash I did it, and what did I get? A bunch of Dan Rather. We won the war but lost the Flash.

@@petewillson205 I don't remember the 8:30 thing, but where I lived it didn't matter since they rarely aired at all.

@@TheRadioAteMyTV yeah they were trying anything to keep get eyeballs, fox had simpsons, whatever they aired at 830 always bombed, Cosby and all of nbc was hit lineup...solid strategy. Aired after top cops. Then they tried Saturdays as a last resort. The show was to expensive for Saturdays. It had to be a hit. Cosby was showing his age, A Different World needed Cosby to prop it up. CBS was probably 2 seasons to soon. But Bat-mania was all over the country every mid had 4 Different batman t-shirts so they launched it as a Batman sequel, even premiering it in movie theaters, it was a huge launch

They should have put it on either Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

...I do not remember Superboy emulating Batman 89 the same way Flash did. At all. Superboy felt like a low budget version of the Reeve movies, emphasis on low, once Lois and Clark came out.

@@willchurch8376 The later episodes of Superboy had kind of a darker tone than the first couple seasons.

I have the same opinion. I loved the show and hoped there would be a season 2. Sadly, there wasn't. But I was glad to see Shipp(and other characters from the original flash show) return in the new Flash series. I also enjoyed seeing him as the Dad in one of the Neverending story movies.

Agreed I was 7 yrs old and it was the best thing I had ever seen!

As a 6th grader in 1990 I loved this show. It was one of my favorites.

Agreed. This show got me collecting the Wally West monthly comic, and I even wrote a letter (Ha! Letters) to CBS asking them to save the show as part of a campaign.

@@BronzeAgeBryon yeah I remeber being so confused as a kid that Wally West was the comic flash, and Barry Allen was tv flash, was young and didn't have the knowledge, that he was the original and had got killed off in crisis, just was at the grocery store picking up latest issues, that bragged on cover to watch his live action tv show, looking inside was a blond guy named wally, that was a practical jocker with the flash suit on. Very strange decision on DCs end, I guess cw flash did same thing, but people are more into comic book history now

Your memory serves you well I recall that too. That was a usual network tactic to bury a show...or it is a clear indication the show is in trouble.

There was also the Gulf War reports that interrupted the show. It found a home on Saturdays at 10pm, but that was the end.

I watched it right up until it stopped airing, although I did miss several episodes when they started moving it around without warning. In those days, it was hard to follow a show, if you didn't know exactly what day and time it was going to air, and they would often move it AFTER the TV Guides went to print, so finding it was a big guessing game (no Internet, as it exists to day, to just look it up).

Yeah. That was a royal pain. I may be wrong but i think the World Series was playing around that time frame.

They were wrong when they put it on Saturday night when it stood no chance.

He did play JSA Jay Garrick during a flashback episode of Stargirl (S2E9).

The fact if it weren't for the 90s flash show mark hamill wouldnt have got the gig for the joker in BTAS since tim curry had to pull out for health reasons

He's also voiced Barry once. For some reason the Flash in the animated movie Justice League Doom is referred to as Barry instead of Wally.

@@maximusprime3459 whoa 😳 really?! Because I think I forgot

@@maximusprime3459 That is weird. Doom was based on a literal Wally West era JL story.

@@willchurch8376 Ok. I thought it was weird too but...

@@maximusprime3459 Yeah, I'm not saying you were off, just that it was a strange decision to make. While DC makes some sweet animated projects, their 'rules' for characters and such based on other projects that aren't operating in the same canon are stupid. Like making Arrow kill off Deadshot and Waller because of the Suicide Squad movie coming out at the time. Or when they told Timm's JL/JLU series that they couldn't use Bat-villains because of The Batman animated series that was out. The executives make really asinine calls.

Grant is better when written better

The death slot for any new show.

I'd fine tune that thought, the 'idea' succeeded BUT most weren't ready for the show, it was too new and inventive at the time and it's time slot kept getting moved around. I remember a few times having to look at a TV guide to see when it was on and oh yeah, wasn't there also a major Earthquake in SF? I loved the show

@@steveeverett1736 Man this brings back very, very vague memories for me -- I never saw it on TV but on later home media? So I don't recall the stuff. BUT I do remember it being splashed around on a lot of comics and pop-culture magazines at the time. I feel like a lot of excellent shows were ahead of their time -- like even something as widely disliked as the 2011 David E. Kelley Wonder Woman pilot starring Adrian Palicki. Rewatching the leaked pilot I can say that it would've been amazing had it gotten a few more episodes and a little more tweak here and there -- almost bordering on a 'war crimes tribunal' show for superheroes and mythical beings, and even had ol' Pedro Pascal in it. But I'll nerd less now lol. With the Flash I loved how utterly grounded those first few episodes were. Not only did it make Barry's constant need for eating such a fun superhero quirk, but his time at Star Labs, with Tina Greer, all those speed-freak villains, and even a blink-and-you'll-miss early appearance from Mark Dacascos (Crying Freeman, Drive, The Crow series, John Wick, Mortal Kombat Legacy so many else) in one of the episodes. (as an aside: the other day my 5yo niece was telling me over the phone what a magazine was, to her it's this groovy new thing that only a few cool people know about lol. I was like "it is child, it is." )

​@Will N Agreed with almost all of this! A few notes -- the Marston Estate never imposed that embargo, it was this extremely weird thing where Wonder Girl (Cassie or Donna) was placed under a 'Teen Titans' brand and even in the comics they wouldn't let WW writers do what they want to with Donna. Which is absurd because we've seen how wonderful (no pun intended) the sidekicks have been with Bats & Supes. I feel like for all of Bruce Timm's work he just doesn't understand what made WW so popular. It just isn't a character or mindset he's good with, and he's constantly just playing it safe and weird. The 2009 film dir. by Lauren Montogmerry is a classic. As for which runs to adapt -- it shouldn't even be a question, look at how popular the first WW movie was and it didn't really need any DKR-like graphic novel source material (something Whedon was crying about back in the day when he was in charge of writing the script. He's another writer who just doesn't seem to grasp the character). But if you ask me, GAIL SIMONE. Just friggin' turn her books into direct-to-video adaptations! The Circle, Ends of the Earth, etc. etc. These are just so well done. Gail was also supposed to do a JLU episode featuring the Queen of Fables, whose own origin is a terrific WW story and movie just waiting to be made. What else? Hmmm... Villainy Inc? The first ever supervillain team up at DC for a solo hero if you don't count Shazam. Honestly, the Marston run is gold. The Denny O'Neil stuff is underrated. People also seem to really love the Greg Rucka stuff. DC in the late 40s was running purely on sales and the only reason WW, Supes, and Bats became a trinity in the Silver Age was because their comics just simply lasted while the others didn't. Aquaman is this weird outlier where he was still making back-up features and lasted through the Golden Age and Silver Age before the JLA came out -- I feel that Bruce Timm's art, as heavily enamored as it is to the art of Frank Frazetta, plus given Timm's own work on He-Man, he was a natural fit for a high-fantasy Aquaman TAS once GL wrapped. But yes, WB ultimately didn't care about WW as much. Even the recent Steve Orlando run is a hit. And heck, if no one else, I'm a screenwriter myself -- I'LL DO IT. I'll adapt those and make it a hit xD and the endless (Vertigo) spinoffs.

@Will N Haha, I hear you! The recent story/Infinite Frontier, ehh. There's a ton of potential out of this, I'm particularly enjoying Yara Flor and how they're using a WW title to explore other parts of mythology (was sad to see that the WG series pilot didn't even get made, I would've undoubtedly loved that, but apparently the adaptation was putting restrictions on what could or could not be done in the comics and the writer for Yara currently seems at peace and quite loving the freedom she got out of NOT having to cross-check everything with the TV show). Was also quite fond of how they reintroduced Nubia, even if the details are a bit... well let's just say that nothing will ever satisfy a die-hard fan here haha. But I loved that they were threading in Nubia with mythical figures like Aunt Nancy (Anansi!) so there was that. Hippolyta, I feel, is one of the best and most underrated characters that DC has with them, but ever since John Byrne's atrocious run they keep wanting to plug her in as a Golden Age WW which I've never liked. Honestly, Phil Jimenez did such a phenomenal work with that status quo it's astounding, but I just think that the Queen of the Amazons has so much potential in her own Marstonian incarnation (yes, even tho she did appear as WW in ONE issue of Marston but that was more of an experiment -- and heck she has better stories as her own self rather than as WW). For animated shows and Donna, I hear you. Donna has so much potential and like the rest of WW fam, is hardly utilised. Which brings me back to Michael's show -- I really want to see a one-on-one with Susan Eisenberg!!! And maybe Adriane Palicki, and of course if you can get Lynda Carter that'd surely be the stuff of headlines. Still love that episode on Smallville where Lynda appeared and with Truth-giving powers to boot!

@Will N Lol! Set my self up good n' proper there!

👍👍

Show should've been brought into the Batman 89 universe. The theme, the scenery and character looked like a Tim Burton production.

@@14DaveHunter yeah deffo..the only thing The Flash was missing was a cameo from Michael Keaton's Batman.

how can you even think that he was closer to comics flash? Like he said, totally different backstories, pre crisis on infinite earth barry was an archetypal silver age characters, flash rebirth completely rebuilt the myth of the flash

@@typeouetco1626 Yes I'm not talking about current comics Flash, I'm talking about Silver Age Barry