Jon Cryer has unexpectedly become my favorite live action Lex Luthor. He’s not a bemused sitcom character like Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor, and he’s not complex and three-dimensional like Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor. He’s just very, very smart and very, very evil.

Definitely true in Kingdom Come comics.

But while Earth-96 Superman borrows the look of Kingdom Come Superman, and has the same catastrophic event in his backstory, that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Earth-96 is pretty clearly the Superman Returns Earth, where most of the events from the Christopher Reeve…

Superman Returns used the John Williams themes, so it makes sense that the Routh Superman would be scored with John Williams’s themes. It does give his Superman an unfair advantage, though.

It’s a ballsy move to make the Superman in the crossover who is most important to saving the multiverse a different Superman than…

One thing that both this and the quasi-Crisis episode of “Black Lightning” did really well is to use the multiverse as a framework to explore different choices. On “Black Lightning”, Jen/Gen/Jinn responded to the same set of problems with three completely different strategies and completely different results.

Imagine you’re lying in a pool of your own blood, dying. Think of all the regrets you’d have, all of the things you’d wished you said and things you’d wished you’d say.

I love the relentless pacing of the crossovers. There were so many conversations in this episode that started with the usual “Supergirl” BS, but then after about 15 seconds or so shifted gears and got down to the business at hand. We’re reminded of Lena’s preoccupation with feeling betrayed, and then we get down to…

I can’t believe that this was the original planned ending. I think the choices made reflected the shift in the writers’ understanding of Silicon Valley, from something ridiculous to be mocked to something terrifying to be feared.

I’ve never cared for Dinah Drake as a character on this show. I think a big part of that is that her introduction coincided with the show’s worst seasons — the “Let’s pile on Oliver and have all of his allies blame him for everything to create drama” years. The show so poisoned the well with New Team Arrow that my…

I still think the decision not to save the introduction of our world for the end of the finale was a huge mistake.

Agreed. Russ is, by any objective measure, a horrible human being. It’s only the childlike enthusiasm and tweenlike insecurity that Chris Diamantopoulos brings to the role that makes him at all palatable.

Caroline Dries’s tenure as showrunner of “The Vampire Diaries” coincided with my least favorite seasons of that once-beloved show, so I didn’t hold out high hopes for this.

But honestly, this is right up there with the final season of “Arrow” at the top of the pack for me this year. Partly it’s because this feels new…

I loved the simple but beautiful answer to why the Monitor sent Oliver’s adult children back in time to aid him on his final quest before Crisis: “Time is a gift.”

It also robs what will presumably be the season’s final scene of its impact. The reveal that the story was going to cross into our world should have been a major climactic “holy shit” moment, not something that’s dropped casually a couple episodes in.

Jack Thorne’s writing continues to be underwhelming for me. He doesn’t trust the audience, so things that should be hinted at or communicated obliquely are stated plainly.

And he’s addicted to Big Important Speeches, Delivered With Sober Gravity.

The two exceptions being the revelations about Lyra’s parentage. And that…

Monica, going back to the Peter Gregory days, has always been more comfortable being one of the guys than being one of the girls. It helped her survive in an extremely male-dominated industry, but now it’s biting her in the ass.

Amanda Crew really sold the hell out of that. Monica and Richard both have a look when they…

“Jason Mendoza didn’t have an easy life. He once told me the closest he’d ever gotten to having a piñata on his birthday was when a seagull ate too many condoms on the beach and exploded.”

Except Bian is pretty clearly biracial, while Lady Trieu is not. So if she is a genetic creation, there’s got to be other stuff in the mix.

I would not be surprised if Lady Trieu is passing along her memories as nightmare fuel though that IV, though. 

According to IMDB she contributed to “Anatomy Park”, “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!”, “Meeseeks and Destroy”, “Rick Potion #9", “Raising Gazorpazorp”, “Rixty Minutes”, “Something Ricked This Way Comes”, “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind”, “Ricksy Business”, “A Rickle in Time”, “Mortynight Run”, “Auto Erotic…

It also made a mess of the show’s timeline. Kara arrived on Earth in 2003. Superman was already established as a superhero by that point. So Lex should have already been a homicidal maniac in 2004 when Lena and Andrea were at boarding school together.

For some reason, the flashback to “Five Years Ago” made it seem like…

This was the first episode directed by Erica Hayes. (Also the first episode directed by a woman.) She storyboarded many of the best episodes of the prior three seasons.