The DC shows in general

[Captain Smith]

Just my thoughts as I lost my enthusiasm for them:

1. The one year to two year villain arcs. Boring and some of the villains aren't even interesting. Arrow and Flash excel at coming up with boring villains lately.

2. The shows are more soap opera than superhero. Too much focus on the protagonists' love life, coupling and announcing their sexuality. Frankly, I don't care. I don't need speeches on these issues, I live in the real world, deal with them and understand them. More power to anyone's choices but I don't care here anymore than if Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives half the episode was about the chef's love life.

This focus killed the Anita Blake books. An interesting vampire world was spoiled by 100s of pages of Anita's numerous and convoluted love life.

3. Stupid PIS fighting and use powers. They are so mindless incompetent. Only Ollie shows flashes of fighting skill. Kara - knocked on her butt every episode. Fastest man stands there like a dunce. The Atom has become an idiot.

Okay, got that off my chest. Please make the shows better.

[Immortal Weapon]

Just my thoughts as I lost my enthusiasm for them:

1. The one year to two year villain arcs. Boring and some of the villains aren't even interesting. Arrow and Flash excel at coming up with boring villains lately.

2. The shows are more soap opera than superhero. Too much focus on the protagonists' love life, coupling and announcing their sexuality. Frankly, I don't care. I don't need speeches on these issues, I live in the real world, deal with them and understand them. More power to anyone's choices but I don't care here anymore than if Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives half the episode was about the chef's love life.

This focus killed the Anita Blake books. An interesting vampire world was spoiled by 100s of pages of Anita's numerous and convoluted love life.

3. Stupid PIS fighting and use powers. They are so mindless incompetent. Only Ollie shows flashes of fighting skill. Kara - knocked on her butt every episode. Fastest man stands there like a dunce. The Atom has become an idiot.

Okay, got that off my chest. Please make the shows better.

#2 has a lot to do with those shows being on the CW. Gotta to appeal to the network core demo. The DC shows that ain't on the CW like Gotham don't have those issues.

[Cyke]

Just my thoughts as I lost my enthusiasm for them:

1. The one year to two year villain arcs. Boring and some of the villains aren't even interesting. Arrow and Flash excel at coming up with boring villains lately.

2. The shows are more soap opera than superhero. Too much focus on the protagonists' love life, coupling and announcing their sexuality. Frankly, I don't care. I don't need speeches on these issues, I live in the real world, deal with them and understand them. More power to anyone's choices but I don't care here anymore than if Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives half the episode was about the chef's love life.

This focus killed the Anita Blake books. An interesting vampire world was spoiled by 100s of pages of Anita's numerous and convoluted love life.

3. Stupid PIS fighting and use powers. They are so mindless incompetent. Only Ollie shows flashes of fighting skill. Kara - knocked on her butt every episode. Fastest man stands there like a dunce. The Atom has become an idiot.

Okay, got that off my chest. Please make the shows better.

I can't say much about most of your other points (nor do I really care to defend the DC shows all that much), but romance aside, fantasy's always been a way to interpret the real world. Lord of the Rings was conceived and written during the two World Wars, for example, hence the epic scope and all the talk about allyship. The X-Men have been talked to death about being a metaphor for minority issues, but their origin is very much a product of their time as well. Back to the Future came during the wave of 50s nostalgia but it was an indictment of how being stuck in the past prevents personal improvement. It's only natural that any (and arguably, almost all) fantasy will have some sort of social or political commentary because authors write and create from what they know from the lives they lead -- even if the writers aren't gay, they'll likely have family members or friends or colleagues who are and then write with them in mind. (also that Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives isn't fictional for the most part. That's a big difference between that and a superhero show)

Now, how it's handled is a separate topic altogether. The MCU Netflix shows (not looking for competition here) are also topical and have a good chunk of romance, but for the most part it tends to be handled with less melodrama and is less manufactured than the CW. Foggy and Marci are pretty cute without broadcasting it everywhere, and Luke Cage's womanizing tends to be played more for jokes at his expense.

[Captain Smith]

I agree with most of what you are saying. Minority issues are crucial to the X-Files world. Magneto's angst is a product of the Holocaust (although they waffled on that, curse them).

The social issues on the DC shows seem forced to the forefront of many episodes and not organic to the story as they are for the X-men. Supergirl's changing population of aliens to force the issues is an example of their problem.

[LifeIsILL]

I don't know why the CW shows always feel the need to introduce a new villain all the time for the filler episodes. Why can't they just recycle Arrow or Flash's rogues gallery again and again actually give those characters some development?

[Osiris-Rex]

Barry and Kara are so overpowered that if they used there full range of power they would just show up and the fight would be over. This is actually how they would handle it on Adventures of Superman.
Most the episode would be some crime boss planning some nefarious deed with Lois and Clark investigating. Lois and Jimmy would inevitably be kidnapped and in the final act Superman would bust through the
wall to save them. Even the Lois and Clark TV show tended to follow this pattern. And once the villain was defeated in that episode that was the last we heard from them. But people want a little more action
from their heroes these days and the producers are fixated on having a season long bad guy so they have to find a way to drag out the fight scenes and let the villain keep getting away until the season finale.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I don't know why the CW shows always feel the need to introduce a new villain all the time for the filler episodes. Why can't they just recycle Arrow or Flash's rogues gallery again and again actually give those characters some development?

Mostly a scheduling issue. They would have to lock that down in advance and work out the contracts etc.

Same thing with the marvel tv shows crossing over into the movies etc. Thats more of a production schedule issue and risk versus reward.

[bat39]

I'm not a fan of how CW has handled some of the relationship drama, but its not like relationship angst is completely absent in the source material. Far from it!

A major criticism of Arrow, particularly in its early seasons, was how 'toxic' the Oliver and Laurel relationship was, and the comic-book pairing was held up as this idyllic relationship.

Except...it wasn't.

Comic-book Oliver cheated on Dinah as well. They've broken up and gotten together too many times to count.

A lot of fans of The Flash don't care for how important Iris has become to the show. But Iris is an integral part of the source material.

The same really applies for a lot of other criticism of the CW shows, and other adaptations as well. Character killed off over stupid, petty reasons? Happened all the time in the comics. Time-travel fucks up continuity? Comics practically invented that. Characters are 'replaced' by newer versions? Again...a totally comic-book thing.

Of course, because TV shows are a different medium from comics, a lot of these elements manifest in different ways.

[Immortal Weapon]

Comic-book Oliver cheated on Dinah as well. They've broken up and gotten together too many times to count.

What the comics thinks is cheating is often wrong. During Winnick's run Ollie being date raped was considered cheating.

[Osiris-Rex]

I'm not a fan of how CW has handled some of the relationship drama, but its not like relationship angst is completely absent in the source material. Far from it!

A major criticism of Arrow, particularly in its early seasons, was how 'toxic' the Oliver and Laurel relationship was, and the comic-book pairing was held up as this idyllic relationship.

Except...it wasn't.

Comic-book Oliver cheated on Dinah as well. They've broken up and gotten together too many times to count.

A lot of fans of The Flash don't care for how important Iris has become to the show. But Iris is an integral part of the source material.

The same really applies for a lot of other criticism of the CW shows, and other adaptations as well. Character killed off over stupid, petty reasons? Happened all the time in the comics. Time-travel fucks up continuity? Comics practically invented that. Characters are 'replaced' by newer versions? Again...a totally comic-book thing.

Of course, because TV shows are a different medium from comics, a lot of these elements manifest in different ways.

Just from the criticisms the DC shows get it seems a lot of people either don't even read the comic books, just started reading them recently, only read a certain run, or just have selective memory.
Sometimes when I get too frustrated with them, I tell them read the comic books. Or even point out the comic book issue where this is canon. Plus these aren't word for word interpretations of
the comic books anyway. They are just based on the comic book characters so it really doesn't even matter what happened in the comic books. Supergirl even lives on an entirely different Earth.
No one complains that Power Girl isn't exactly like Supergirl because in the comic books Power Girl lives on Earth-2. Well on TV Supergirl lives on Earth-38. And who knows what Earth that Black Lightning
lives on.

[Vakanai]

I'd have the cartoon writers handle much of the script writing for these shows. The DCAU writers, the YJ guys, even the DTV guys to an extent. Would see a marked improvement I think. But for some reason the CW guys are like, no, we won't do that.

[AJBopp]

I'd have the cartoon writers handle much of the script writing for these shows. The DCAU writers, the YJ guys, even the DTV guys to an extent. Would see a marked improvement I think. But for some reason the CW guys are like, no, we won't do that.

Putting the cartoon writers on the shows would be the quickest route to cancellation. 42 minutes of fighting with just enough plot to string the fight sequences together is not a recipe for success.

[Immortal Weapon]

Putting the cartoon writers on the shows would be the quickest route to cancellation. 42 minutes of fighting with just enough plot to string the fight sequences together is not a recipe for success.

We won't know unless they try.

[AJBopp]

We won't know unless they try.

No, but the assumption is pretty reasonable. CW doesn't appear to have a bad business model from what we can tell, regardless of what we personally may think about it (I personally have stopped watching all the CW shows because I find them intolerable - that doesn't mean they should be changed, just that I should watch something different). Modeling prime time shows on animated shows that get a fraction of even CW's viewership is pretty silly.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I think Greg weisman tried to get on the writing staff of Arrow at one point. It would have been interesting to see what he would've contributed. He should definitely do a Green Arrow comic.

Iris isn't a bad character to me, I just don't think they knew what to do with her till Nora came in.