#warehousewatch: Giant-Size Superhero Special

Where better to set your musical episode than a series of warehouses?

Welcome to #warehousewatch, in which we track the most integral thing on the CW Network: the warehouses! This giant-size super-special installment takes us from the start of March through to the season finale of the CW’s three biggest superhero shows: THE FLASH, SUPERGIRL, and ARROW. A second mega post will cover JANE THE VIRGIN, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, and THE VAMPIRE DIARIES through to their finales, with a look at the first few episodes of iZOMBIE. And since I’m waaaaaaaay behind on both THE 100 and THE ORIGINALS (those pesky The series), they’ll each receive a separate, full-season report at an unspecified point in the future.

If you missed the previous posts in this series, you can find them under my CW Scholarship tag.

As always, I’ve organized this vitally important scientific data by show and by episode, and I’ve counted warehouse appearances rather than individual warehouses. There are also lots of spoilers in the mix. You may wish to skip the episodes you haven’t seen yet and/or go straight to the stats section at the bottom of this massive, unwieldy post.

#warehousewatch: January and February 2017

Supergirl, like so many CW characters, lives in a converted warehouse.

I’m forever amused by how very many of the CW Network's shows feature warehouses, abandoned or otherwise, so I’ve set out to track every warehouse on every CW show I watch throughout the 2016/2017 season.

For science.

We're now nearing the end of the project, so if you missed the first two instalments I’ll direct you to the October report (which also contains more information about the genesis of #warehousewatch) and the November/early December report.

And now, without further ado, here’s a complete¹ list of warehouses that appeared on the CW in late December, January, and February:

#warehousewatch: November and December 2016

Abandoned warehouse: best place for a superhero team-up or what??

The CW Network loves no setting so much as a warehouse, so I've set out to track every warehouse on every CW show I watch throughout the 2016/2017 TV season. For science.

If you're new to the #warehousewatch project, you can catch up on the October stats here. Remember, for our purposes a warehouse is a large space with a concrete or packed dirt floor, suitable for storage and/or industry. That said, when you watch TV through a warehousey lens, there comes a point where everything looks like a warehouse. It's possible I've mislabelled a few spaces, but I ain't too bothered about it.

Television: #warehousewatch, October 2016

The Ultimate Setting

The CW Network is big on tropes. The various writers’ rooms adore Secret Babies, DARK PASTS, Random Half-Siblings, elaborate faked deaths, and Crime Lord Mothers to a degree that loops past the absurd and right around to the sublime, in every sense of the word.

But even more than their signature DARK PAST-ed Secret Half-Siblings (who're liable to fake their own deaths with or without the assistance of their villainous mothers), the CW loves warehouses. Loves them. Which makes sense, really, because where else are you supposed to manage your criminal empire, hold your greatest enemy captive, or fight a ninja/assassin? And what's the point of a show in which none of those scenarios every crops up?

I’ve long wondered whether warehouses are as integral to the CW's brand as they seem at a casual glance, so throughout the 2016/2017 season I'll be conducting my most important piece of CW scholarship to date: a comprehensive list of every warehouse appearance on every CW show I watch¹.

This began as an impromptu Twitter project and will continue there as #warehousewatch, with monthly blog updates as per Amber's suggestion.

What Counts As A Warehouse?

For our purposes, a warehouse is any large space with a concrete or packed dirt floor, suitable for storage and/or industry. High ceilings and metal shelves are common, but not an absolute requirement.

I strongly suspect many of the CW’s “warehouses” are actually parking garages the set designers have dressed up to look like warehouses. Others may be after-hours factories. I'll be counting them same as the rest.

A Comprehensive List of Warehouse Appearances: October 2016

The reason I called you here today. Let's break this down, by show and by episode.

Signs You May Be A CW Character

The CW Network, my favouritest of favourite televised entertainment providers, starts airing all-new shows again in October. In advance of this important day, I want to provide y’all with a checklist you can use to determine if you--yes, you!--are a CW character.

Regarding Recent Events on The 100

This post contains spoilers for The 100 S3E7, “Thirteen”.

Yes, friends. Spoilers. Big ones.

Go read something else if necessary.

Okay? You’re prepared?

Right. The spoilers start now.

Television: Gossip Girl

I used to think I was one of those people who craves Deep, Meaningful Television in which everyone makes Very Serious Choices and faces Dramatic Yet Realistic Problems. Caps necessary on all fronts.

A few years back, I realized I was lying to myself. Yeah, I watch the occasional piece of DMT, but for the most part I’m a trashmonger. I want improbable and exciting plot twists, vile schemes, and characters who behave in horribly unrealistic horrible ways, possibly involving monsters and/or Secret Babies.

Bonus points if these characters are well-dressed and rich, making them eye candy with few limits on their schemes. Bonus bonus points if they harbour the sort of secrets that’re bound to blow up in everyone’s face. The more soap operatic my TV is, the more I love it.

Basically, GOSSIP GIRL is everything I've ever wanted and I’m mad at myself for letting it languish unwatched for so very, very long.

The premise: no teenager on New York’s Upper East Side is safe from Gossip Girl, a society blogger with a nose for scandal. Her particular targets are the friends (and frenemies) of one Serena van der Woodsen, a notorious party girl who fled Manhattan a year ago for unknown reasons. When Serena returns from her self-imposed exile and starts dating a Brooklynite (ugh), Gossip Girl steps up her game and chronicles the misdeeds of her favourite muse with ever-greater fervour over the next six years.

And I’m trying not to all-caps at you about it, because damn does this show ever know my wishlist. IT HAS ALL MY FAVOURITE THINGS, FRIENDS! ALL OF THEM!

(Well, all of them except space battles, killer robots, and people who can shoot fiery bolts out of their fingers, but I can forgive it for that.)

The CW Character's Guide To Handling Secret Baby Crises

In my journey through the CW, I've noticed there’s no plot element the network's various writers’ rooms love more, or use more often, than the Secret Baby.

All but two¹ of the CW shows to which I have given my devotion contain at least one male character² with at least one kid he’s only just learned about. This season alone, there are three newly-introduced Secret Babies on my TV screen and I’ll be less than surprised if more emerge after the holiday hiatus.

You can guess how well the characters are dealing with this.

There’s a reason the writers love Secret Babies so much, and the reason is DRAMA.

Since it’s safe to assume Secret Babies aren’t gonna drop out of the CW’s list of priority plot devices any time soon, I figured I’d write up some guidelines to help these fictional dudes handle such situations going forward. I’m confident that every last one of them will listen to me, because it’s not like they live inside TV shows committed to delivering maximum drama through minimal common sense.

Super-Important Life Lessons From the CW

The CW is my very most favouritest TV network. It feeds me a steady diet of contemporary, high stakes dramas populated with attractive, well-dressed people faced with realistic situations we can all relate to.

This commitment to realism ensures the CW isn't just entertainment. Its many shows have taught me pretty well everything I need to know about American society. It’d be rude to keep this knowledge to myself, so without further ado, here are the most important things I’ve learned from the CW.

Everybody graduates, always.

You don’t actually have to attend school.

Yeah, you oughta enroll, but you don't really have to go. Feel free to skip class to deal with a super-dramatic event that might destroy the world, kill your one true love, and/or cost you your social standing. And if you wanna fall off the grid for a month or three so you can find yourself in the wilds of Appalachia, you go right ahead.

Maybe you’re worried about how this will affect your college prospects. While you’re likely to experience a massive and tragic setback (unrelated to your attendance record) when you apply to your first choice school, you’ll always have a place at the prestigious local college no one ever mentioned in the first two to three seasons.

And hey, the attendance rule transfers to college! You should make a show of registering for classes and joining extracurricular activities in your first year, but all bets are off after that. Start a newspaper or take over your mother’s fashion empire instead of finishing school. Get shipwrecked on a hell-island or cursed to sleep for seventy-plus years, even. It’s all good. Nobody’s ever gonna call you on your lack of post secondary education.

In the unlikely event that you do graduate college, you’re probably never gonna make it to that law school interview. Sorry.

Television in 2013, Part II - Supernatural

Every once in a while, a TV show affects me so deeply that it becomes an integral part of my life. Hell, it takes over my life until I’ve finished it. All my spare time goes to watching it, thinking about the characters, gnashing my teeth over recent plot developments, and wondering where the story might go from here.

While I love TV an awful lot, this sort of all-out immersion doesn’t happen too often. I live in keen anticipation of the next show that’ll sweep me off my feet.

At the start of 2013, it’d been a couple of years since I found one. I’d watched some great stuff, yeah, but nothing I loved anything like as much as I love VERONICA MARS, the last series that totally floored me. Two particular shows called to me, though. A few friends had recommended them, and they sounded totally up my alley.

So of course, neither one was readily available, given my resources. Bummer.

Then, last spring, the stars fell into place. Both shows came within my grasp. And grasp them I did, with the expected results.

I intended to cover them both in a single post, but things got, um, lengthy. Let’s talk about SUPERNATURAL this week, with my thoughts on AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER coming your computer screen next Thursday.

I’ll warn you: this is gonna be long and tangential and gushy. There’s liable to be gifs, too, starting with a flashing one right after the cut.