Delay of Game Penalty
In the case of Flash Gordon, the attention to the long-term story-line took the form of waiting until later to introduce the story threads that would feed into the season's climax. The last six episodes or so of Flash have been interesting because they started folding in the various elements that feed directly into the two-part season finale: the rise of Terek (Craig Stanghetta, an engaging actor despite his huge, blinding white Ben Affleck teeth), the Deviant king and lost son of Ming; the development of the circle of monks, and the revelation that Rankol is one of them; the progression of Aura (Anna Van Hooft) from malcontent to rebel; and, most importantly, the increasing seriousness with which Flash himself (Eric Johnson) has shouldered the responsibility of helping to defeat Ming (John Ralston) in order to save both his world and Mongo as well.
With all of the interesting stuff left to slowly germinate and come to fruition in the spring, the early episodes were left with sketchy, ill-defined motivations and ridiculous plotlines. The fourth episode, "Infestation," nearly put me off the show: the B-plot involved Dale having to keep making Flash's friend Nick miserable at Flash's brother's wedding, because he'd been by a "joy bug" from Mongo that kills you with excess euphoria. There were serious flaws with this story, starting with making you hate Dale for what she's doing to Nick; the show never developed Nick (eventually discarding him altogether), so we don’t care about his plight; the brother and his wedding are completely irrelevant; and Flash's mission to find the cure, while developing his later-to-be-important relationship with the Omadrians, is strung through with fear-of-emasculation jokes and other frat-level humor. This jock-itch jokiness, mixed with a smarminess about whether Flash would end up with Dale or Baylin or both, was a big turn-off, especially as it trivialized the characters and the magnitude of the threat to Earth.
In the last suite of episodes, starting more or less with "Sorrow," Flash has shown clear signs of maturity. In particular the crass humor has been abandoned in favor of Flash's development of a series of relationships with allies on Mongo and an awareness that he must step up to the plate -- not only on behalf of Earth, to which Ming is now an immediate threat, but on behalf of his friends on Mongo as well. This improvement in the characterization of the title character has been agreeably matched by John Ralston's increasingly frantic Ming. At the start of the season Ming was cartoon villain, played straight by John Ralston; but in these last episodes Ralston has upped his game, communicating Ming's accelerating desperation while keeping him grounded in a plan and a goal, rather than flying off into raving grotesqueries of meaningless evil. His obvious pain at first being betrayed by Rankol and then being forced to question his own daughter's loyalty, his fury at being confronted with his own deviant taint, is light-years from the cardboard ruler we first met last year.
Make no mistake: Flash Gordon is not great television by any stretch. Even these last episodes, while more absorbing, were at times cumbersomely paced and indifferently directed. Battlestar is still your best bet for brilliant writing, directing, and acting, with other shows like Supernatural, Journeyman, and Reaper forming a very solid second tier. But for most improved show of the 2007-2008 season, Flash wins the prize hands down. Let's hope its second season doesn't wait three months before starting to mix in any good stuff.
