The Extras - The Flash: The Original Series (1990-91) "Trial of the Trickster" Audio Commentary

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Get ready to uncover the magic behind the iconic series finale of the 1990-91 TV show "The Flash" with exclusive insights from creators/executive producers Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo. Recorded as an audio commentary in 2006, our episode promises to transport you back to Central City, offering a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes stories and creative decisions that brought the beloved hero to life. From the unforgettable performance of Mark Hamill as the Trickster to the evolution of the Flash's pilot, you'll gain a newfound appreciation for the work that went into this groundbreaking show. We will reflect on John Wesley Shipp's experience in the titular role, the late-night shoots, and memorable stunts, including the iconic trickster rocket sled. Finally, our commentary wraps up with an emotional goodbye and a glimpse into the creative minds that shaped "The Flash." Enjoy as a podcast episode, or play as an audio commentary while you are watching the "Trial of the Trickster" episode on the new Blu-ray release from the Warner Archive.Purchase your Blu-ray on Amazon: THE FLASH: The Original Series Blu-ray (releases June 25, 2024)The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm Tim Allard, host of the Extras Podcast, and fans of the 1990 The Flash, the original series are in for a real treat. This is an audio commentary of the series finale, Trial of the Trickster, recorded back in 2006 with executive producers Danny Billson and Paul DeMeo to commemorate the release of the DVD that year. Unfortunately, it didn't make it of the DVD that year. Unfortunately it didn't make it on the DVD and it didn't make it on the Blu-ray release of the series coming out in June of 2024 from the Warner Archive. However Danny Billson

and David Gutierrez have made it available to the extras so we're happy to share it with you now. And while it is technically an audio commentary Danny and Paul really reflect back on the whole series 15 years after it ended. So whether you listen to it as a podcast or listen to it while you are watching the episode, it's a great listen that I think you'll really enjoy. And because it was recorded as an audio commentary, Paul and Danny are watching the series at some points, so you'll have some longer pauses. And just so you know, we also have an upcoming podcast with Danny Billson and The Flash series star, John Wesley Shipp.

So look for that in late June. And now here's executive producers, Danny Billson and Paul D'Amio. This is Danny Billson and Paul D'Amio. And this is the last episode ever made of The Flash. We decided we would talk through the last episode and kind of talk about the whole series in this 42 minutes. You can play this podcast along with the trial of the trickster.

And we'll just talk about our experiences and how much fun it was doing The Flash show some 15 years ago. As the show opens up, everybody who made the show was in it. We just passed our editorial department, all those guys in hats who don't look like they really should be there. That Asian guy there is one of our editors, the guy next to him. She was an editor. And then here comes Julio and Barry. But just about everybody in the crowd was the post-production team on the show.

And here's Richard Belzer. I think this was his first TV series role. We had worked with him before in a little movie we made for New World called The Wrong Guys and he was a good friend of ours. And I do believe this was his first recurring role. Of course, since Homicide, he's been on TV for about the last 10 years, I think consistently. Right. And he made several appearances on the show as the bitter and acerbic commentator from

television Joe Klein. Right. Who was named after an old guy from the 50s and early 60s named Joe Pine who was this acerbic talk show guy. Local channel 13 or something? He was just in LA. Here's Mark Hamill as the trickster. The whole story of Mark as a trickster was an interesting one.

It was very strange. Our casting director said to us one day, Mark Hamill's agent just called and if you're ever doing the trickster, he wants to play it. And what was funny is we were just finishing the trickster script and about to cast it. So Mark is a huge, huge comic book fan, a collector and fan, fan of the Flash, fan of this character. So what we're seeing here in the trial of the trickster is the sequel because we had so much fun

doing the first trickster with him. And I've read on some of the blogs where people thought he was overacting or too much for the character for their taste. Well, I directed both of these myself and if anything, it was certainly was my taste, Paul's taste and Mark's taste of what we thought would be a fun trickster for TV, which of course was a psychopath, which excuses why he's behaving that way. I mean, the title sequence is running right now. We'll just talk through it.

And it reminds me that sort of our key value in making this show was that we wanted the show to play with the same reality and believability that we read comics when we were 10 years old. So at, I think in this time we were in our early 30s, when we were making this, we wanted to believe it the same way we believed comics. And I think that's the way we always approach

our comic book material as believably as we can. So we just completed, we were just watching the title sequence. So here we are back at the trial of the trickster. I believe if I remember the story right, this is the first trial of the trickster. But going way back to how Paul and I came to The Flash and doing this show, it was an interesting story.

We actually wrote a pilot the year before for CBS called Unlimited Powers that was very watchman-esque. It was about The Flash and some other characters in a world where superheroes were outlawed. I think, you know, calling it way ahead of its time was an understatement. I think it was... They didn't know what to make of it. It would have been great and some of the younger people at CBS wanted to do it, but it was a little fresh.

I mean, I don't think we... We haven't even seen it in the movies quite yet like that. So here we have, of course, Barry Allen and Julio and Joe Klein at the trial. But it reminds me of back to how we started the show. And we were doing this other show with the flash that they didn't make. And sort of out of that, a new guy took over the network at CBS and he said, what if we just do the flash? And we said, okay. And we got a two-hour pilot and we went from there. Now, in this being that this was the last episode,

the trial of the trickster, we brought a lot of characters that we thought worked back. And one of them was this detective created by Howard Shaken and John Francis Moore called Megan Lockhart. I think this was her third episode. Third one. So she was sort of based on very loosely on some comic book detective ladies

of the period but of course she's her own thing. But we were also I think trying to do a kind of tough talking almost 1940s-esque detective dame that the character worked really well and she had great chemistry with John and we had some nice scenes between the two of them throughout the three episodes. The trickster's costume we should also comment on that you saw at the very beginning. The trickster was the only Flash rogues villain that we kept the original costume to or a variation of and we did that very deliberately because the concept with the trickster was he was completely insane so he'd have a costume like that. The other characters that we did from the Rogues Gallery in previous episodes like

Mirror Master and Captain Cold, we did a much more subdued costume to monitor them. Here we have the trickster. We're in the courtroom now and the trickster is on trial. Now again, this isn't the last episode. There's all kinds of little anecdotes. Like this woman here who was playing his attorney was a good friend of John Shipp's who they had done soap operas in New York with years before. I can't remember what soap it was but I know they were on it together for years. Her name was Marsha Clark.

And Parley Bear is the judge. Yep. But really, these shows, these trickster episodes were completely driven by Mark's energy. Which is his... Well, the fact that he's wearing the costume in court is pretty crazy unto itself. These scenes were also extremely difficult to shoot because I used to say whatever has a lot of elements in it, it's not just people talking. And as you'll see, there's a lot of gags and things that happen in this courtroom because

the trickster has tricks. And on a television schedule, it's very hard to sort of pull all these beats together. Now, when we started the show, it would have been impossible for us to do a villain like this from the comics because the network wouldn't allow a costume villain. As a matter of fact, when we started the show, they didn't want a costume hero either. They thought the Flash should be in some sort of sweatsuit with high-tech tennis shoes with LEDs on them. We actually had Dave Stevens, the artist of the Rocketeer comic, at the time, draw a Flash suit that was a little more...

It's a little more predatory and threatening. A little darker, a little edgier than the comic one. We made the yellow boots red, dark red. It was more of a blood red color and sold it to them with the art. And then of course that suit was built. And I understand that some elements of that suit actually went back and affected some of the comics and how the flash was drawn after that. And we always try to use color in the show which I thought worked really well as far as obviously it comes from comic book color palettes but it wasn't unbelievable color except in

the windows where we put the color lights. But the idea was is that it sort of created its own reality and let everything that happened in the show tonally exist in its own reality. A different place other than here, a place where I think it was more believable. Most things are believable except that waiter's hair who's walking around. He was actually the music coordinator later on the Sentinel, not on the Flash. He was, I think, our assistant on the show. Right. But Brad, who played Brad Sieve, who played the waiter, we also recalled a joke from

the pilot where he played a waiter who came in and asked Barry if he wanted another plate of food and did the same gag for the last episode. Now, this restaurant was on a corner that we must have made five different restaurants, 20 different locations. It was all in the back lot at Warner Brothers. And one of the reasons we were able to produce the show was we had control of the back lot. We could leave it dressed and painted every day of every week. We didn't have to sort of set it back for another show to come in there and then redress it for the Flash because our city, Central City had its own look.

And of course, we chose Central City and Barry Allen from the Silver Age Flash and we adapted Tina McGee from the Wally West Flash. But I think that Barry Allen was the Flash we grew up with and that's why we chose to go with him. I think when we did the show back in 9091, Wally West had only been around for three or four years. And now we have the trickster stressing out in jail doing a cat's cradle trying to talk to his attorney and he's not in costume.

You know, all this stuff was very influenced by the comics of the 80s, the Killing Joke in particular, and then Asylum. Of course, Mark went on to do the voice of the Joker on the Batman TV show, TV cartoon series. Here we have Murphy and Bellows, our local cops. A lot of our characters evolved out of this. We would have them in one episode and we'd like them so we'd bring them back and these two guys actually were in the pilot and became regulars who worked every week because we thought they were kind of funny and unusual. Biff, the

taller one, is an old stand-up comic who had worked with us in the past on a little movie we made called, well, Trancers and the Wrong Guy. Some of the stuff we had done before the flash and the other cop Vito the Ambrosio is his name Vito actually played we met him when we did the pilot for the human target another one of our series that Went about six episodes, but he played the contract killer on that show and we enjoyed working with him And when we were casting for the part of Tony Bellows, we thought of him. This is pretty cool.

We're looking at a scene here where the trickster gets all these love letters and then puts them together to form a message. Because in this episode, the trickster realized that he's got a groupie who's just about as crazy as he is. I have to give a lot of credit to Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore. I believe that they wrote seven episodes. I'll get you out prank. Prank, he says.

And they, you know, coming from comics, they brought a lot of sensibility that normal TV writers would not have brought to this piece. I mean, come on, the trickster now getting all dressed up and looking like a nice guy. I mean, I don't think that a lot of other writers could have even dealt with the material of the trickster. Now, there's Gloria Rubin. Right, Gloria Rubin who played Julio's girlfriend on the show. I think went on to have a big career on ER and beyond. And of course, the great thing about Mark is he really does like to play a lot of characters

and different characters and different attitudes. I mean, he's very theatrical and I think that it's just awesome for the trickster. Again, we did the other rogue villains we did were also a lot of fun. We had David Cassidy as the mirror master and a guy named Michael Champion as Captain Cold. Those guys in particular, we had planned on season two, if we'd gotten picked up, we were going to have the trickster Captain Colton and the Mirror Master team up in a two-hour episode where the Rogues Gallery really would have existed and worked together.

Great missed opportunity. It wasn't to be. So instead, 15 years later, we're talking to this iPod or your iPod. One thing that was fun about this last episode is we were pretty sure it was going to be the last one. I forgot about this gag with the teddy bear. This is what I was talking about, elements and gags and stuff that just makes these scenes take a really long time to shoot. Yes, the trickster's teddy bear appears.

Yes, the trickster's teddy bear appears. Even the gas masks are in trickster colors. It was a small anecdote. Mark at the time had a daughter who was about five or four and she came out of the makeup trailer once with that colored spiked hair because she wanted Twix to how. It was extremely cute and Hal was walking around with his five-year-old daughter with the matching hairdo. Oh yeah, they're releasing laughing gas. I forgot about a lot of these gags.

Right. I mean, I think the good thing is unlike the old Batman TV show, we might have done laughing gas but he's got a gun with bullets and they shoot people. And he's wounded but he's still laughing so. That's right, he died laughing. I forgot about that. Now I have to say the old cliche that this really was a lot of fun to me. Well, one of the things that was particularly fun about this last episode is we were pretty sure it was going to be the last one, so we didn't take any notes.

notes. That's Mike Genovese playing… This is Act 3 after the… Oh, there's Gail Hickman right there. And who's Gail Hickman, Paul? Gail Hickman was our writer-producer on the show and his daughter… I think that was his daughter with him, right? I believe so. That was his daughter, I think that was his daughter with him, right? I believe so. That was his daughter, Kristin, with him.

Gail went on to co-exec produce on the Sentinel with us for the first few seasons. Now this set, Clark's Toys, is actually the same location where they were eating in the previous act where everything was painted blue and it was a restaurant. Stripped all that out, painted it, turned it in the entrance of the department store with an interior you could walk into. Yeah, we reused and reused and reused these sets a million times.

So I thought it was kind of cool that the trickster would fall in love with a woman who inherits a toy company. I'm not taking credit for these ideas, they really were all shaking and more writing this stuff. Of course, we wrote the pilot and a few other episodes but the trickster stuff was Howard and John. And the tricksters love story here. So Paul, you were going to talk about the music when we came back. Right. I was going to talk about the music. We had a wonderful score every week that was composed and conducted by Shirley Walker. And Danny Elfman, of course, wrote the original theme for the show. So we had a great theme.

And I think that was maybe the last theme that Danny wrote for a television series. And Shirley was great because she had a different idiom, musical idiom for every episode that matched kind of the theme and tone of each episode. And sometimes it was a jazz score, sometimes it was more movie classical and sometimes like this one it almost sounded at certain cues almost sounded like Warner Brothers cartoon music like Karl Stallings compositions for the cartoons that Warner's used to put out. We had a 35 piece orchestra for every episode where we had 60 pieces on the pilot that that kind of stuff isn't

done anymore at all. Yeah it was kind of the end of the the end of that era to have a real live orchestra like that for each episode. So we were lucky in that regard and it also added immeasurably to the tone of each episode. And we were, I think, fortunate to find Corrine Baird to play prank because she matched Mark's energy and nuttiness quite well, I thought. Corrine Baurer. I was close.

Yeah. When you get to the last episode and you kind of pretend they're not watching and you do what you want. One does what one wants, I guess. But this stuff was all, there's a lot of production here for TV. I think I'd be surprised how many shows these days have this much production. I'm sure there's a few but this was really a lot of production. Well, this one, this episode in particular, we really pulled out the stops with the props and everything else.

Perfect. And of course, he'll turn this into his trickster scooter of some kind. A little help from the art department. This show, you know, it's hard to look back on something 15 years ago and think it was your high point of creative, but I think that the Flash, the DC Universe, the stuff we were playing with here, and that we didn't really have any sense of what we couldn't do or shouldn't be doing, contributed to us doing something that at least I consider special. It was special for me. Infantino Hotel, of course, named after Carmen Infantino, Carmine

Infantino. My turn on this pronunciation. Now, you know, in any TV show, you repurpose sets. Megan Lockhart's office, I think this set was used about 20 times. Now we see our, Barry enters and we see, you know, she knows who he is so he can do a flash effect without the suit. Those are pretty rare. But even looking at that effect there, I have to say, I mean, I thought it looked pretty neat. Mainly because creatively it looked a lot like the comic. Even in a city view, we have colored lights out the window to sort of set our own rules

of reality. And of course, you know, it's nothing like the Batman TV show or the Crazy American Hero or some of those other shows before it. I think it was just more grounded in the world of DC Comics. Well, it wasn't only that. I think that as Danny mentioned before, it was our approach to the material, which was not looking down condescendingly to comic books as a sort of sub-literature but as a world under its own, with all its own rules and trying to play it straight really. There was always humor in the

show but there was never camp because neither of us is a fan of camp. And to play the danger at times and to play the problems that the Flash encountered both as a superhero and trying to protect his identity. That was all played very straight and very melodramatic, I think too. Of course, in any of these shows, the human story is more important than the crime story. I think we were maybe at 50-50 on this show. Maybe a lot of shows are 20% crime story and 80% of the human story. I think that we spent a lot of time trying to have interesting criminal activities and plot turns. Well, this was also, this episode also included this relationship with the Megan Lockhart

character which had stretched over into this third episode, kind of very carrying a torch for Megan who seemed to leave town at the end of every episode. And the fact that she was one of the few people, if not the only person aside from Tina McGee who knew his secret identity was a certain amount of trust that he had to put in her. Another one of our crazy vehicles there outside one of the Warner sound stages. All right. This is where the trickster is. He is impersonating Joe Klein with prosthetics.

He's doing an impersonation of Belzer. He's of course holding them all hostage. That's Don Kurt, ladies and gentlemen. He was the producer of the show, one of the producers playing the dead ventriloquist. Yeah, I don't know who is doing this stuff on TV. This is really right out of the comics. Well again, we're watching the, we're back, we're still in the third act and Julio and Barry in the lab. And again, every time I see the lab, if you look at the colors, I just think it allows

what's going on here. Now, the lab and the exterior of the Central City Police Station, when we did the pilot, we actually shot those downtown in, or actually in Vernon. And then it had been a candy company, I think. It was a candy factory. Palmer Candy Company. I think they made chocolate Easter bunnies there or something at one time.

And we recreated on the back lot, the facade of the building, which was one of the first major facades they'd put up on the back lot in a long time. And it's still there, which kind of gives us a kick every time we go online. Yeah. Well, actually it's the ER set. It's been the ER set for about 12 years. So, we built it for one year as our police station. And I believe it's the hospital exterior for the ER set. There's an elevated train that runs over it and stuff like that. And I hear the trickster appears in his next costume costume which is his armored trickster outfit. Again, a lot of stuff for a TV.

A lot of thought in this particular episode. The props were great. A lot of stuff. Yeah, a lot of stuff. And here comes the flash. This is the first time we've seen the flash in this episode, I think. Yeah, you're right. Very dense episode. He's had sneezing powder, of course, the trickster is. You know, we spent a lot of time doing non-superhero flash gags.

We thought the audience enjoyed them more or as much. Oh, and the attack of the chattering teeth. Well, I do remember shooting this and having Joyce Heiser, the actress, on her back with all those chattering teeth all over her. I think it was getting really kind of freaking her out a little bit. And they escaped the TV studio yet to another complicated gag. Again, I'm only saying complicated gags for a television show. I mean, in features, this is not such a big deal.

But with the amount of time you have to do a TV show and to have all these props and paint them and shoot them and do the gags and I believe this gum truck is about to lose the mother of all bubble gum or something. Yes. Right. This is actually shot at Warner Brothers between the stages. And I think it is fair to say that nobody was really doing anything this elaborate at the time on television. Because we just didn't know any better. That's right. That actually looks pretty good. The flash is stuck in the bubble. Now, we would do that stuff, you pretty

much kill a $25,000 flash suit when you did that but it was the end of the year so I think you pretty much kill a $25,000 flash suit when you did that but it was the end of the year so I think we were okay with it. Of course, this would have been one of our stunt doubles in the suit at this point but we had John in that suit an awful lot. Right and the suit was made out of foam and he also used to wear what stock car drivers wear underneath, which is a cool suit, which is a vest that water is pumped through to keep him cool because it was just so hot inside of that foam. You have to wear the foam for hours at a time, the whole mask could be glued onto his face.

It was built by Bob Short who built the Batman suit for the first Batman movie. That's the end of the third act. We were talking about the things that John had to endure in the Flash suit. We're back and here we are at the beginning of I believe it's the fourth act where the Flash is chained up at prisoner of the trickster. That suit, John had to endure a lot with that suit. It was made out of latex and it was very hot. Danny mentioned he had to wear the cool suit underneath it.

And I remember on the very last episode, the last shot where John had to wear the suit, he was so relieved to get out of it that he literally tore half of it off. And Mark, who is an inveterate collector of pop culture items, ran over and picked up one of the earpieces off of John's suit, the little wing thing that goes on the cowl. Mark eventually got one of the entire suits as well as he kept his trickster costume, which I guess is on display somewhere in his house. I think it's in his attic with all his stuff. But again, Mark's a huge collector and comic book fan so he's continued to collect through working on this show.

Boy, back in 1991, it was a big deal to put up those nine screens and get all that to work. Now it's nothing. This is his brainwashing sequence. That's right. He's going to turn the flash into his own sidekick through all this 1960s brainwashing propaganda. It's obviously- Manchurian candidate type stuff. Manchurian candidate meets Clockwork Orange meets DC Comics with the trickster.

Again, as far as production goes, all of these things had to be made in these eight days and put together for this. Then he will fall under the spell of the trickster. Back to him, John Wesley Shipp and how he came to the show. We met him for the first time in casting for this. We thought he was terrific. We took him and Richard Berge, who became the Sentinel later on, was another choice of ours for the show. And we really couldn't decide and the network chose John.

Then we brought Richard back in an episode. He played the deadly nightshade in that episode. We went on to do, boy, 65 hours of the Sentinel with Richard later on. The funny story about the Sentinels, when we tried to do the Sentinel, we had cast John Wesley Shipp as the Sentinel. Up until the last minute when the head of the network changed her mind, John was going to be the Sentinel. We would have done another series with him.

But then Richard came in and Richard became the Sentinel. These two actors seem to be like the only guys we could find in town in our career. They're both terrific. John was really, really a good sport. We talked about the suit a lot. That was a lot of work. The other thing about our show that was really, really tough, and Amanda would attest to this, she had a little boy at the time and she was trying to have another with her husband, Corbin Bernsen,

was that we would only work at night because we wanted the suit. We thought the suit looked bad in the daytime and that the tone of the show really called for the environment of the night. So that meant we had to shoot at night. And in television production, if you shoot at night on a Wednesday night, no matter what time you finish, the actors get 12 hours off and you come back. So these scenes in Star Labs, we would usually whenever shooting Friday night at about four in the morning, we'd be inside because we had to do some night exterior earlier. And if you look closely, you can see that the women are really tired.

I mean, Joyce has got bags under her eyes, Amanda's always got bags under her eyes. We would wind up in star labs on Friday nights at five in the morning and it was really, really, really uncomfortable. It's much easier to work outside at night. It's very sleepy when you get indoors and see. Recently I ran into Corbin Bernsen and he was still complaining about working Amanda so late on those Friday nights. Here we have the trickster is appearing in his trickster rocket sled, which was a heck of a lot of fun.

Nice little tour of the Warner's back lot. We only had the same two streets for the whole show. We just kept repainting them. Central City Theater, I know it was using many episodes. Well, even a sequence like this, shooting up the theater. Very elaborate, time consuming, setting the squibs, you know, very difficult. And all these things in one episode is what was kind of wild. But yeah, people are running around and the people would have – one of the gags we did was the people would have in the street would have to walk really slow to compensate for

the flash who was getting sped up. So all the extras would be walking around in slow motion. Now, this is the bad flash. This is the bad flash tearing up the town with the trickster as his buddy. Brainwashed. Brainwashed. Of course, the wrench is smoking. He's a, he smashes the police car. Here comes Bellows and Murphy.

They can't believe that the flash is gone bad. Of course, what you'll find, he's got trickster boots. What you'll find is that if you look closely at these scenes, everybody looks really tired. The Chinese restaurant there, it says Yang Chao in the background. It's actually a restaurant in downtown LA where during the time of the show, we used to eat a lot and we're on location scouts. There's a little tidbit of irrelevant trivia in every bit. And this is a pure like silly vaudeville thing with the trickster is going to throw. Dynam, lights it on the back of his engine, which had to be built, rigged with gas and flame.

The flash is acting really silly. We blew up a lot of cars in this show too. I'm not sure. It was either this episode or the other trickster where there was a radio contest from KLOS in local Los Angeles who blew up a Mark. blew up Mark. That's it. That's it. The one with the flames. So that car right there with the flames was Mark and Brian's car from KLOS, which is a – they're pretty famous DJs in LA. And it was a gag for the radio show to blow up

their car and the show. I bet – you know, that scooter is pretty cool. I forgot how cool it is. It's only cool to me because it looks like something that would have been in a comic in the 60s. Another little bit of trivia, as we mentioned that Dave Stevens who created the Rocketeer comic book designed or redesigned the Flash Suit, Dave also designed the Central City badges and patch, the insignia for the Central City. Yeah.

I forgot that. Yeah. And of course, another funky car. for the central city. Yeah. I forgot that. Yeah. Of course, another funky car and all the features. Again, I'm looking at this scene in the alley where prank is just driven up and I've said it about 20 times but the colored lights in my mind allow for this kind of mania and for it to be believable in its own reality, which is the trick when you do this stuff. Is that, yeah, they're acting silly, but they also have to have a certain amount of danger

in there in what they're doing. Now, back at the police station, we didn't talk about him, but Lieutenant Garfield, played by Mike Genovese, was another character who I believe was written into the second episode and we liked him, we thought he was good, and so we bring him back and bring him back and bring him back and next thing you know he's a regular on the show. Julio was written as a Hispanic character by the name and what happens to us a lot of times is we just wind up with the best actor. Whoever plays the part winds up getting it regardless of color. I think when we did the sentinel later on, the sidekick we thought at one time was

white, then he was black, then he was white again. It really didn't matter to us. It's just about the character. defacing the central city sign. Now the opticals, we always had to do all our opticals on film because they even back in 1990, the head of post-production was saying one day we're going to be on high def and the film is going to translate to high def. So our opticals actually pop a little bit because they're not video and they had to go back to film. And these are very, very early digital effects. Some of the first digital effects ever done in television, I'm pretty sure. I'm actually positive done with the Post Group in Hollywood. Flash running around was a digital effect. But again, it had to be composited back to film.

Okay. I think this is the last act. Right. We're back for the last act. We're in Star Labs and Tina McGee is watching Joe Klein on a TV. Again, as I said before, it's probably five in the morning on a Friday and these poor women are just desperately trying to get it done. We should talk a little bit about Amanda at this point.

She had been on Max Headroom, which was a show that we both really enjoyed and really liked. And when she was put up for consideration for the part of Tina McGee, I remember the first time we met her was in our office at Warner Brothers and we were all kind of, you know, first time we'd all sat down and talked about the show and she'd read the script and we all got along immediately, which was great. And she was really a pleasure to have on the show and had great chemistry with John and was a good sport because like Danny mentioned, we put her through a lot.

Difficult hours while trying to look after her family and she was a good support about it. That's acting. And we also tried to make sure that Tina had things to do on the show other than just sit around Star Labs, you know, to try to get her involved in the action and there were more than one episode that we did that centered around her character is, the situation that she was in is the sort of crime of the week. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Of course the trickster is tied up prank. He's tired of her by now, cause he's insane. He put the cartoon bubble nag, nag, nag. You know, I see these gags and they're very, very comic book in the best sense. Again, I just have to keep crediting Howard and John. This is really their stuff. I directed it. It was their ideas, putting a thought balloon or the dialogue balloon outside of their mouth

and stuff. But the prank character was also a very kind of almost a 1930s character. She was a screwball comedy character, the crazy heiress with nothing to do but run around with a criminal all day. And I think the energy and the humor that Corinne brought to the part was really great with Mark. And we have no idea where all these women are now. Of course, the trickster is that here comes the judge with the trickster wig. For some reason, he's got a blindfolded poker band in there and I don't know why. Blindfolded poker band.

These are not easy to come by, folks. And he's going to put everyone on trial who's done anything to him. Right. He's got the lawyers and he's got the judge on trial. I think we spent, I don't know, three or four days in this courtroom. Now this courtroom was somebody else's set, wasn't it? Yeah, but I don't remember whose. I don't remember if it was a movie or something, but I don't remember what movie it was.

I think I don't remember. It's been a while. We should remark while we're in this set with the incredible murals that we had every week. And these were done by Ernie and Gil, who had come out of the New York graffiti art scene actually were found and brought to us by Don Kurt. Right, these guys were graffiti artists. They did all this stuff with spray cans, all of it. They were brought out here and got them in the union, the scene design union.

They just every day they painted murals that we filled the sets of the show up with. The murals were all based on pictures from books, famous art. Very rarely did they create something from scratch. They were always kind of mocking up famous murals, advertising art. They did billboards, they did posters but in particular the kind of 1930s, 1940s, WPA, Deco, things that they did for the interiors of the central city public buildings were just wonderful and add so much to the atmosphere of the show. And these guys were so fast, it was ridiculous.

Yeah. Very talented. We also talked over one of my favorite gags that we did on this episode, which was the flash serving as all 12 members of the jury. Oh yeah. Running around, running around. The trickster is going to be a hanging judge. Yeah, except I think the brainwashing is wearing off here and

but he's got a backup. Yeah, the flash is coming out of it here. Just in time to end the series. Well, it's a standoff and I think we're headed towards the car carrier sequence, which was again was another incredibly elaborate sequence to stuff into this little eight-day schedule and then in, trickster just did a head off the bench as the judge. And Tina McGee is getting through to the flash. I'm sure this is an emotional plea based on their deep relationship which we never consummated and it was, was it, were they friends? Was it, we touched on romance a couple of times I think back in those days it was Moonlighting was the hottest show around the big rule was don't have them get together. You're gonna ruin the relationship

So and that's probably true and would have been true of this So Tina and Barry except for a few little near misses they were never really romantically involved But I think you might have felt the tension Hopefully a little bit of romantic tension underneath it all and if the series is continued who knows where would have led What's in the bowling bag do we remember No Probably a bowling ball. We'll find out in a second. Oh no, I know what it is. You'll see. I just remembered. It's on a scooter. This show has one of my favorite lines in it of the whole series,

which is, how can I miss you if you won't go away? I think that's coming up soon. So here comes a car carrier for the finale. She brought it for him. She's had the entire thing painted as not just a trickster mobile, a trickster car carrier with circus colored cars on it. I keep saying this, but again, for television this is a lot of work. A lot of work, and we just didn't know any better. We were young, we hadn't made any shows before, this was our first, and we just tried to do everything.

And this particular sequence, which Danny directed of course, is one of the, if not the biggest single bit of business that we did, certainly since the biggest single bit of business that we did certainly since the pilot. It's pretty damn elaborate and it was a good way to go out. It was also the last there. That's how can I miss you if you won't go away.

He throws her out of the car, leaves her on the street and keeps driving. The cops can pick her up just to close a loop on that character. But once we get to the car carrier dropping cars, that was the last thing we shot of the first. Actually, it was the last thing we shot. This sequence here was the last night of the series. Where was it? Somewhere downtown in Caggett. A street we could close off and do something as ridiculous as this sequence of dropping cars. Now I have to say I just saw the hundred million dollar version of this sequence in Michael Bay's movie The Island where they were dropping stuff off a truck and it's quite elaborate. Car release, of course.

Every car rigged with a char explosive charge, ba-boom. Blow the flash through the air. This is kind of big. Kind of big and again, all this was done in one night. The last night. I remember in the last shot, you'll see the sun was coming up so we actually had to paint the sky black. Pull for emergency.

So yeah, you have to get one of these trucks, you have to buy it. Now this is a total Bugs Bunny gag here. Right. Yes, with the bottom fuse. The bottom fuse. Yeah, and then we blow these things up for real. This is pre-seeding. And you can see it was daylight. Now here we painted the sky black. It's a little funky.

And this shot was daylight. We just ran out of time. So by the time we blew it, it was 6 in the morning. But that, those cars are going for real. Those cars are going for real. Those cars are going for real. That's right. That is a real burning, toxic, toxic smoke producing gag. And here we ended the show, or ended the tricksters part of the show.

I really liked this. I felt this was very, this is from a good comic book. Well, it's Arkham Asylum for the DC Universe fans. This is where we left the trickster. Thinking we'd bring him out the following year yet, didn't happen. Is Polyfoam Fortress. I think Mark wrote that line. Mark actually wrote a bunch of this, wrote a lot of this speech himself.

As I recall, he smashes his face against no one trickster. What is it? Nobody tricks the trickster. Nobody tricks the trickster. No one. Nobody. And there's the building we were talking about that was the candy company downtown that we built on the back lot that's now ER.

And I think we ended the series here, didn't we? Yeah, I think so. Looks like it. She's got her hair nicely done. And they both look very relieved. And the whole cast is coming in and if they line up and take a bow, that would be it. I guess I believe this is the last we see of these characters, I think. I forget where we left this relationship. I don't remember if it was-

We left it right here, Paul, in the last episode of this show because we didn't get- No, I don't remember if it was that. I guess the last anecdote I'll tell is this show was actually getting good ratings and in those days, we were something like a 16 share and we traded for a show that thought we'd get a 17 share and they lost their young demographics because it was the only CBS show that was getting anybody under 80 to watch it, I think, back in 1990, 91. Yeah, different world then. So needless to say, it was very disappointing to us that we only did one year of The Flash.

We had a lot of ideas to go. So now 15 years later, we may get another chance in comics. Anything to add here as the flash goes out, Paul? Yeah, I think we need to make a comment on the very last shot when it comes up. Oh, right. The very last shot of this show is us, which is a funny way to go out. I believe we are the crewmen putting the Central City sign back on Central City. Of course, he gets a kiss and he has to go back to work. Just like any good hero. And this is the end of the series right here. And there we are. That's Danny on

the right, me on the left. Yeah, the mullet is you. The mullet is me. And there we are, that's Danny on the right, me on the left. Yeah, and the mullet is you. The mullet is me. And there goes the Flash. And we are, what the hell was that? And that was us. And we're young and that's the end of the show. I think it's a good time to talk about some of the other episodes that we particularly liked I think, just looking back without sort of combing through the list. But off the top of my head, certainly enjoyed the tricksters and Captain Cole and the Mirror Master like we talked about in

the pilot. I think there were some other ones that were particularly good. I think the ghosts in the machine were the best original villains that were created for the show. One was the video ghost and the nightshade who was a hero from the 50s, a black superhero who wore a mask to conceal his identity more because he was African American than because he was a superhero. And that's the end of our commentary on the Flash series encapsulated in the Trial of

the Trickster episode. Anybody who downloaded this, thank you. Goodbye. Special thanks to David Gutierrez and Danny Billson for providing this audio commentary for the fans. And thanks to George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive as well. And be sure to listen to or watch our podcast with the Flash actor John Wesley Shipp and executive producer Danny Billson, available in late June. Be sure and subscribe to The Extras for more podcasts on DC, classic animation and all

physical media releases. Thanks for listening.