The Flash [Season 1]




The Flash is an American television series developed by writer/producers Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Geoff Johns, airing on The CW. It is based on the DC Comics character Barry Allen / Flash, a costumed superhero crime-fighter with the power to move at superhuman speeds. It is a spin-off from Arrow, existing in the same fictional universe. The series follows Allen, portrayed by Grant Gustin, a crime scene investigator who gains super-human speed, which he uses to fight criminals, including others who have also gained superhuman abilities.
Initially envisioned as a backdoor pilot, the positive reception Gustin received during two appearances as Barry on Arrow led to executives choosing to develop a full pilot to make use of a larger budget and help flesh out Barry's world in more detail. Colleen Atwood, costume designer for Arrow, was brought in to design the Flash's suit, which was modeled after the comic books. The creative team wanted to make sure that the Flash would resemble his comic book counterpart, and not simply be a poor imitation. The series is primarily filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The Flash premiered in North America on October 7, 2014, where the pilot became the second-most watched premiere in the history of The CW, after The Vampire Diaries in 2009. It has received generally positive reviews from critics, and won the People's Choice Award for "Favorite New TV Drama" in 2014. On January 11, 2015, The CW renewed The Flash for a second season.

SEASON#1
Episode#1

City of Heroes

The Flash has been around since 1940, but over the course of the character's nearly 75-year existence, four different men have carried the mantle. And while I'm not completely clueless with regard to his legacy, I'm by no means an expert, either. However, I do know that, regardless of who's behind the mask, the Flash is a lighthearted, well-meaning guy who just happens to have superpowers. And just because The CW's version has a tragic past—with a mysteriously murdered mom and a father who's wrongly imprisoned for the crime—that doesn't make him a downer. Sure, he's fixated on figuring out what happened that fateful night, but he still gets excited about particle accelerators, investigating odd scientific phenomena, and helping to solve crimes as an assistant forensic lab tech. Heck, he even kept a S.T.A.R. Labs sweatshirt! He's a nerdy and funny guy who sees his powers as a responsibility, but not one that weighs him down. Indeed, he takes his mother's words to heart: "It's better to have a good heart than fast legs." (Even if the fast legs do come in handy now.)
And so The Flash's opening episode—which was directed by pilot whisperer David Nutter, with a story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg (who's shifting from Arrow to this show), and Geoff Johns and a screenplay by Kreisberg and Johns—had an equally lighthearted feel to it. After all, any TV show that puts its lead (Grant Gustin, picking up from his charming appearances in Arrow's second season without missing a beat) in that form-fitting one-piece running suit, helmet, protective pads, and goggles is guaranteed to have a decent sense of humor, as well as a game-for-anything actor at the top of the cast. It's not that The Flash doesn't take itself seriously; it's that it takes itself just seriously enough. That way, when Central City is threatened by a guy who can summon a tornado at will, the solution—Barry running really fast in the opposite direction—comes off as both sensible in this story world and charmingly silly, without veering too far into cheese.
With that said, the showdown between Barry and Clyde Mardon (Chad Rook)—the show's version of the Weather Wizard—was probably the weakest moment of "City of Heroes." Running around something seems to be one of the Flash's go-to moves—I swear it happened at least two or three times on Young Justice—and it just doesn't translate that well on-screen, especially since the episode sort of gave up on trying to make it interesting as it cut between Gustin running in place and Rook just looking really confused. It was neat the first time, before Mardon struck Barry with a lightning bolt, but after that, as Barry tried it again, the sequence just sort of existed, killing time until the plan worked out in the end.
This will be The Flash's biggest hurdle going forward, and honestly, that's also where it needs the most work. Not only will the show face a major challenge in maintaining the special effects quality of the pilot while following a normal production schedule, it will also need to figure out how to make its hero's powers—as well as those of his adversaries—compelling to watch. How do you ensure that your bad guys pose a legitimate threat to a guy who can outmaneuver them before they can even blink? Barry's brain will certainly play a role, but it'll be a tricky balancing act for the show to get right.
Thankfully, while The Flash's action element is a lingering question mark, the non-superhero stuff already feels solid, which I'm happy to see, since Arrow suffered the opposite problem in its first season. The Flash's cast and characters gelled really well in the pilot, despite a lot of exposition speak as characters sketched out their backstories for the audience and, sometimes appropriately, for the other characters. Jesse L. Martin as Joe West and Tom Cavanagh as Harrison Wells are both big gets for the show's regular cast, and they're both very good here. Martin is used to playing a cop—he portrayed Detective Ed Green on Law & Order for nearly 200 episodes—and with the mysterious Harrison, Cavanagh now has the chance to stretch beyond the lovable goofball roles he's associated with on Ed, Love Monkey, and Trust Me.
The younger supporting players are more of a mixed bag, though I'm blaming the episode's nature as a pilot for some of that. I'm already a fan of Danielle Panabaker thanks to a number of guest appearances she's made on other shows—most recently, she was the the only bright spot of Justified's dull-as-dishwater prison storyline—so I'm eager to see what she can do with Caitlin Snow when she's not just delivering info dumps. I'm less familiar with Candice Patton, who plays Iris, but so far, she's nailing that girl-next-door feeling here. Meanwhile, Carlos Valdes is a total newcomer; his guest appearance as Cisco Ramon on Arrow last season marked his first on-screen credit, but he's clearly enjoying himself. 
More important than their individual performances in "City of Heroes," however, is that there's plenty of chemistry within the cast. There'll be time to flesh out the characters and deepen the performances as the show progresses, but for now, everyone seems very comfortable with one another; this pilot made it seem as if they'd already been working together for several episodes when it was filmed, instead of just the one. And the group at S.T.A.R Labs—Harrison, Caitlin, and Cisco—is particularly strong, since their respective energies, with Harrison as the (supposedly) sorrowful scientist, Caitlin as the sad professional, and Cisco as the happy-go-lucky gadget geek have the potential to create some really interesting dynamics as a unit.
The pilot set up a couple of big storylines as well. First there's the issue of Nora's (Michelle Harrison) murder, exactly what (or who) that yellow-and-red blur was, and why it was there. And on that note, if you're familiar with this aspect of the Flash's mythology, please keep the particulars out of the comments so as not to spoil those who aren't—or, even better, start a (clearly marked!) spoiler-laden discussion post in TV.com's The Flash community. 
However, I'm far more interested in whatever future timelines craziness Harrison Wells has cooking. He doesn't need the wheelchair or the glasses. He's got a secret room in S.T.A.R. Labs that has Braille-like bumps on the wall, and a holographic display of a newspapers from 10 years in the future declaring that the Flash has disappeared in a crisis, that red skies have vanished, and that the Wayne/Queen Industries merger is about to go through. That last one is just a fun little Easter egg, but the other two seem pretty damn ominous, and while I doubt that The Flash and Arrow will do their own riff on one of DC's patented Crisis events, I've got a number of questions about Harrison's identity and his agenda for Barry. That sense of uncertainty is very exciting.
With its lighthearted tone and "sci-fi lite" feel thanks to its mumbo-jumbo justification of powers—dark matter! Antimatter! Time travel!—The Flash is poised to fill a gap in the TV comic book superhero landscape. It's a landscape that's getting increasingly cluttered this fall, between the returns of Arrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the debuts ofGotham and Constantine (and that's not even counting iZombie, which is on deck for the midseason). Arrow sorted itself out nicely in its sophomore run, S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently staking out a sort of darker vibe, and Gotham still doesn't know what it really wants to be, but no matter what The Flash has in store for us, it seems primed to be the most fun show in its class, so I'm eager to see what's next.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Oh, the show's already teasing me with Gorilla Grodd. I really doubt The Flash will ever do a take on Gorilla Grodd (I mean, HOW?), but I do like the idea that somewhere out there, there's a super intelligent gorilla who's bent on world domination.
– That's John Wesley Shipp as Barry's dad; Ship played the Barry Allen character in CBS's 1990 take on The Flash. 
– "Lightning gave me abs?" IS THAT WHAT IT TAKES?!
– The Flash's decision to clue Joe in on Barry's costumed persona is a real relief, since it means that only a couple of characters on the show are clueless as to Barry's secret identity, and that'll cut down on Barry making ridiculous excuses.
– Sadie Gennis spoke with Andrew Kreisberg about The Flash's intentions as a show, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.




Seaso#1
Episode#2

Fastest Man Alive

The second episode of any new TV show can be pretty rough. More often than not, Episode 2 simply reestablishes the show's premise and character relationships, even though all that stuff was laid out in the pilot. Indeed, sometimes it's little more than a carbon copy of the pilot with a few tweaks. Toss in the fact that the show might still be trying to figure itself out, and I tend to cut second episodes some slack. 
While I don't think The Flash is still trying to figure itself out (though there is one aspect of the show that I think it needs to drop ASAP), "Fastest Man Alive" nonetheless fell victim to Second Episode-itis—and as such, I'm cutting it the aforementioned slack. While it was identical to the series premiere in a lot of ways, it took care of enough business that I generally enjoyed it in spite of its repetitive nature. 
The Flash sort of cheekily acknowledged the second-episode thing with Barry's opening voiceover; he said he was going to skip the retelling of the origin story in order to "get to the good stuff," but then the episode went ahead and gave it to us anyway. First there was the internal review: Did you know that Caitlin's fiancé died in the same particle accelerator explosion that gave Barry his powers? Did you know that Iris and Barry grew up together, and that Joe raised them both? Did you know Eddie and Iris were secretly a couple? Did you know that Barry heals extremely rapidly? Did you know that S.T.A.R. Labs is looking for other metahumans? Even if you didn't know any of that stuff, "Fastest Man Alive" went out of its way to ensure that you did, and sometimes in overly redundant ways—especially regarding Iris and Barry knowing each other as kids, since they kept talking about and it was depicted in the FLASHbacks (I am too clever by half).
I can usually handle this sort of exposition speak. In fact, shows on The CW tend to resort to it so often—regardless of whether they're on Episode 2 or Episode 128—that I suspect there's a network mandate in place that requires all programming to regularly recap its recent events. However, I did find it irksome that "Fastest Man Alive" lifted the pilot's beat of Barry hearing an inspirational speech from a father/mentor figure with a microphone and feeling like he was actually capable of saving the day. The fact that it was a different father/mentor figure this week barely registered. 
What was nice about "Fastest Man Alive" was that it at least made an effort to justify its copy-and-paste moment by focusing on the tension between Barry and Joe. It was a good way to follow through on Joe finding out about Barry's powers, and it demonstrated Joe's fatherly devotion to the kid he took in years ago. The "You're not my dad!" stuff was a little overwrought for me, if only because Barry's frustrations with Joe doesn't feel totally earned just yet, and it was really just a riff on the Barry-and-Joe scene from the pilot after Joe told Barry to get over his silly ideas about the man in the lightning and Henry's innocence. At least it resolved itself with Joe agreeing to help Barry track down the man in the lightning, so now the show has a new dynamic for the two characters.
What was less nice about the episode were the FLASHbacks. Yes, they were redundant even within the episode's already redundant structure, but they were also just bad. Young Barry is not the world's best actor, and John Wesley Shipp and Jesse L. Martin can't be expected to carry the weight of those scenes by themselves, though Martin and his hat certainly gave it their all. Hopefully these FLASHbacks will be scuttled, but I have a feeling they'll pop up anytime Young Barry needs to learn a lesson from Younger Joe that's relevant to the episode in some way.
As I said above, though, "Fastest Man Alive" did enough good stuff that it didn't feel completely unnecessary. I enjoyed the special effects work more this week than I did last week, and the action wasn't painfully flat, as Danton Black's (Mike Christopher) army of selves ended up looking pretty cool. I even liked the blurriness we saw as Black split himself apart, and I was especially impressed that The Flash dropped Black's mask at the end of the episode so that Barry wasn't just dealing with a bunch of extras in masks.
At this point, I'm no fan of bullet time-esque effects (damn you, The Matrix) but I also can't think of a better way to represent some of Barry's abilities. Relatedly, I think my favorite scene in "Fastest Man Alive" was when Barry told Iris everything as she poured sugar into her coffee. The resulting freeze frame was a nice way to show Barry's speed—which applies to both moving and speaking, apparently—without having to be really showy about it; it also tied the spectacle to an emotional moment, something I can always get behind.
The tag with Harrison stabbing Simon Stagg (William Sadler) was also lifted in tone from the pilot—"Zounds! Harrison is doing something unexpected!"—but it was also far less annoying, since it continued to play up the mysterious future-based agenda that Harrison went back in time to enact. I might even be okay with the idea of The Flash returning to Harrison weekly, provided it's got a bit of shock up its sleeve—or, better still, legitimate revelations to share.
While "Fastest Man Alive" was guilty of employing the "Hey, let's recap the pilot!" approach, I think the real test of The Flash, as is the case with any new series, will be how it can step up its narrative game in the next few episodes. In short: The curve goes away next week.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Plenty of PhD programs require candidates to complete coursework outside their primary field of study, though I don't often see it called a "minor." I have no idea what Iris's field is at this time. Anyone?
– Regarding Iris, I'm sort of holding off on dicussing her for a few more episodes. She's in the unfortunate position of being a very reactive character, since she's the one of only two people who are in the dark about Barry's secret. Eddie at least gets to look active as a cop, but Iris just seems to have lots of free time in between working at the coffee shop and receiving news alerts about the red streak.
– Cisco, for all we know, Danton Black is actually dead (I really doubt it; someone analyze that corpse's cells!), so it's sort of callous to give him a supervillain name, even if it is better than Captain Clone. Of course, the Flash already has two captains (Cold, Boomerang) in his rogues gallery, so the title will be getting some play.
– I was very happy to see the treadmill and to discover that The Flash is keeping Barry's need for a high-calorie diet—850 TACOS A DAY!—intact. 
– I really hope that tomorrow's episode of Arrow mentions the death of Simon Stagg, and that there's talk of a hostile takeover of Stagg Industries.
– Yes, I'm going to keep saying "FLASHbacks" until Jen makes me stop.

Season#1
Episode#3

Things You Can't Outrun

Now that we've moved past the pilot and the re-hashing of the pilot, I'm eager to see how The Flash will begin to find its legs. We've already seen two proof-of-concept episodes, so it's time to find out what the show's goals are, and how it will set about accomplishing them. I'm hopeful that "Things You Can't Outrun" will turn out to be representative of The Flash's template as it starts to develop both itself and its characters, because the episode was pretty sound for me. I don't think the show shouldalways stick to the approach it used here—and it's likely that it won't—but I suspect that it will rely on it for a little while.
So, let's just address the elephant in the comments that has so many of you feeling anxious/nervous/annoyed/cautious and me feeling perfectly fine: Freaks of the Week, or superpowered baddies who are dealt with in one episode. As some of you have noted over the past couple of weeks, in that sense, The Flash is Smallville all over again, but instead of meteorite radiation, it's the dark matter, antimatter, and other soft-science jargon released by the particle accelerator that's giving deranged folks their powers. The resulting baddies pop up like gray hairs, one each week, for Barry and the team at S.T.A.R. Labs to pluck—or, as of "Things You Can't Outrun," to keep contained in the very thing that made them into what they are.
I say I'm feeling "perfectly fine" because I don't mind the Freak of the Week format one bit. I mind dull Freaks of the Week, but that's different from finding the format dull. I'm also someone who remembers—forget about Smallville for a second—that Buffy the Vampire Slayer cut its teeth on Freaks of the Week, and that show did just fine overall, I'm pretty sure.
Of course, television has changed a bit since Buffy premiered in 1997, and even sinceSmallville arrived in 2001. Shows have become increasingly serialized (in no small part because of Buffy), and our expectations and tastes have changed. So it's understandable that many viewers will be wary of the Freak of the Week approach, but that doesn't mean it's without merit.
In short, I'll never find fault with Barry and the team having to figure out how to stop their Freak of the Week. Where I will find fault is in whether the Freak is interesting, whether his or her powers are well-represented by special effects, and whether the Freak as a threat is resolved in a compelling manner. This week, the individual in question was Kyle Nimbus (Anthony Carrigan), named the Mist by Cisco, a death row prisoner who'd just been executed when the particle accelerator exploded and was subsequently transformed into the very thing that killed him: hydrogen cyanide gas. It was a neat origin concept, if a bit dated, as I don't think anyone in the U.S. has been executed by that method since the early 1990s. Plus, I enjoyed the special effects of Nimbus transitioning to and from his gaseous state, and Carrigan had a nice creepy quality to him that made everything click into place.
However, the "keep running from him until his particles get tired" solution was a little boring, especially because I was hoping that Barry would just spin his arms around to form little tornadoes and disperse Nimbus. And way more importantly, I do like variety in my Freaks of the week. We've had three so far; all three of them have been a bit lacking in the personality department, and two of them have been motivated by revenge. 
The revenge thing I can sort of deal with, since it's a common-enough motivation for characters of any type, dating all the way back to before the Elizabethans popularized revenge plays, but I'd rather the revenge-seeking types not appear back-to-back like this. As such, I'm more concerned with the personality problem. Nimbus at least had Carrigan's creepiness, but Weather Wizard Clyde Mardon and Multiplex Danton Black were one-note ate best. Part of the issue is that these guys haven't had anyone else to talk to, so their "temperaments" can't emerge until they're about to kill someone or until Barry shows up to stop them. It's an issue of putting spectacle over character, and while that's generally okay given that The Flash is an action show, I like a little savory with my sweet every now and then, so I'm hoping for more complex villains as the show progresses.
Another reason I'm fine with the Freak of the Week format—and the likely explanation for why The Flash has has so far favored villains with flat personalities and motivations—is that it provides the show with some extra time to further introduce its characters. The pilot was about Barry, last week's "Fastest Man Alive" focused on Joe and Barry, and the FLASHbacks in "Things You Can't Outrun" centered on Caitlin and her fiancé, Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell, looking a lot more like his cousin Stephen here than he did on last season's The Tomorrow People). Essentially, while characters wait for some science to happen or for the bad guy to strike again, they can talk... and talk they do.
Caitlin described Ronnie and herself as "fire and ice," a description that surely pleasedlooped-in comic fans while still offering an idea of how she and Ronnie operated as a couple. He made her laugh; he also died so that a number of other people could live by ensuring that the energy releases from the particle accelerator didn't travel in a completely bad direction. Hearing Caitlin talk about Ronnie added some warmth to her sad and cold personality, and while I would've preferred to see more evidence of tensions between her and Cisco given that Cisco trapped Ronnie inside the accelerator, we at least got to see the two lab rats out getting ice cream. It wasn't a huge moment of growth for Caitlin, but at least she's come to grips with Ronnie's death and can be thawed out a bit. Yes, shows can do this sort of character work with a more serialized approach, but it's a little bit trickier to make room for it, especially in the early going, when the plot gobbles up so much real estate that it's difficult to make the character stuff work at all. Looking back, that's what tripped up all those Lost clones in the mid-'00s.
None of this should suggest that all the character stuff is entirely working, though. I'm thrilled that we won't have to sit through another episode of Iris and Eddie worrying about Joe finding out they're together, but I also legitimately will not care if Joe shoots Eddie at some point. The romantic triangle that The Flash has half-heartedly created with Iris, Eddie, and Barry isn't interesting, and I don't see why any of those three would be interested in each other for reasons beyond A) the show wants them to be, and B) Eddie and Iris are the only ones who aren't in on Barry's secret identity and thus needsomething to do, so why not each other?
Some of these complaints are fairly common "early in the show" qualms, as the characters and their personalities aren't fleshed-out enough for us to really understand why they do things. Iris and Eddie being a couple falls into this category, as does Barry's tendency to act like a bit of a mopey jerk whenever he and Joe talk about Henry (though I'm chalking up some of the latter to Grant Gustin, who hasn't yet found a way to fully express that side of Barry). Of course, The Flash still has plenty of time to sort itself out, especially now that it's earned a full-season order of 23 episodes, so I'm by no means writing it off. In fact, I'm actually looking forward to seeing it grow.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– In this week's Harrison Wells episode tag, Harrison enjoyed his own sliver of a FLASHback to the night of the particle accelerator explosion, in which he watched Barry receive his powers from the lightning bolt... while smiling and saying, "See you soon, Barry." I mean, it wasn't a surprise stabbing like we saw last week, so it wasn't very exciting, but I do enjoy these little moments that close out each episode.
– Jesse L. Martin continues to bring it every week, from his delivery of Joe's advice on handling the tough choices that Barry will be forced to make to that now-patented "my character is about to cry, but I'm going to hold it back just enough" teary-eyed apology.
– "It's not like I want a museum built in my name!"
– "I didn't want him to be a hero. I wanted him to be my husband."
– I failed to mention this in my reviews of The Flash's first two episodes, so I'm mentioning it now: The Flash has a tie-in digital comic that comes out every other week, alternating with Arrow's digital comic. Just like with Arrow's digital comic, there's no a pressing reason to read it, but if you're interested in the transmedia aspects of various TV shows, know that it's an option.
– I know some folks don't watch episode promos, and I normally don't go out of my way to mention them, but I'm very excited about next week's episode. There's lots of stuff coming up to be pumped about.

Season#1
Episode#4

Going Rogue

As many of you know, around these parts, we always try to give new shows the TV.com 4-Episode Test. Sometimes four episodes is enough; sometimes it isn't. Sometimes all you need is one. In the case of The Flash, I've been pretty on-board since the start. I dig the show's tone and aesthetics, it features a remarkably solid cast of actors (even if some of their characters aren't totally up to snuff yet), and the writers are doing a fine job of balancing the superhero action against the personal drama. However, I've known for awhile that the strength of my "yes, you should keep watching" recommendation would hinge on the merits of "Going Rogue," an episode that I've been looking forward to, and an episode that I was hoping would address one of my big complaints about The Flash's first three episodes: The villains were all dullards.
So, thank goodness for The Flash's version of Leonard Snart, a.k.a. Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller). Thank goodness for a script from Geoff Johns (an unabashed Captain Cold fanboy) and Kai Yu Wu and the direction of Glen Winter, who's turned in some of Arrow's best-looking episodes and has now helmed the best-looking episode of The Flash thus far. 
Yeah, I really loved this episode.
Let's start with Snart, a name I will never ever tire of. Even though I've championed The Flash's Freak of the Week format, I've been wanting more interesting freaks—freaks with personalities. Apparently, when the particle accelerator gives bad guys their powers, it somehow strips them of intrigue. Snart doesn't have any powers; he doesn't even have a high school diploma. But he's meticulous, he's observant, and he's ruthless. And those are actual adjectives I can apply to Snart because The Flash let him do stuff other than embark on thunderstorm sprees or want revenge. He plans his heists with care and tries to avoid racking up a body count. He scrutinized the way Barry operated and didn't allow for unnecessary loose ends. In short, Snart is a professional.
Professionals are dangerous, especially when you're just a kid in a friction-resistant red suit; a professional who happens to have a cold gun that dramatically slows down a kid in a friction-resistant red suit is doubly dangerous. Until now, Barry has benefited from dealing with bad guys driven by singular goals, and he's had the support of a team that's helped him isolate those bad guys' weaknesses. But Snart isn't single-mindedly obsessed, and even when Barry's allies showed up to save him in "Going Rogue," the outcome was more of a draw than an outright victory since Snart still got away with the diamond he wanted. Snart's just smart enough to know when to make a strategic retreat if he doesn't have all the facts, and Snart is clearly someone who likes having all the facts.
In any case, The Flash has finally offered up a villain who's genuinely worthy of the term, and a nemesis, even. It's great that Snart sees Barry not as an obstacle, per se, but as a reason to get better at his "craft": being a professional criminal. Perhaps he's grown bored with outwitting Central City's police department and is eager for a new challenge? While Snart may exhibit some pride, he doesn't have that normal villain ego, either. Some villains would want to get back at the Streak for foiling their plans, but not Snart. In a sure sign of his menace, he took over for Harrison as the subject of this week's end tag, in which he handed over the heat gun to Mick, an old friend who likes to play with fire.
I never really watched Prison Break, so I'm no expert on Wentworth Miller's acting chops, but his restrained performance as Snart worked pretty well for me. For a character who we just met, it seems like there's a remarkably solid throughline between the script and the show's intentions and Miller's performance. Small touches, like the line about Barry's age, or the way he half-smirked and glanced up at the sky when Cisco called Snart Captain Cold, gave the character a little extra something beyond criminal cunning, and I appreciated the extra effort.
As for the episode's S.T.A.R. Labs story, it was Cisco's turn to take center stage... kind of. Generally, the excuse of, "Oh, yeah, I built this cold gun because I didn't know if I could trust you, Barry" coupled with an off-screen robbery of the lab would qualify as the sort of plot contrivance I'm never happy to see. Plus, when it comes to character moments, Cisco certainly got the short end of the stick compared to Caitlin in last week's episode and Joe in the one before that. But the overall quality of the Snart plot made me forgive the back-bending that "Going Rogue" did in order to justify the origin and existence of the cold gun, even if it was the sort of thing The Flash shouldn't make a habit of. While narratively withholding information that later ends up in a FLASHback (which were thankfully absent this week) is sort of excusable, here it was just kind of clunky. Perhaps reversing the order of the scenes where Snart acquired the gun and Cisco and the team realized it was missing might've smoothed things out a little? Of course, it did help that Harrison was very angry about the cold gun's creation and theft. Like, angry enough that I thought he was going to remove his glasses, get up from his wheelchair, and stab Cisco in the gut right there in that room. Scary.
The tensions surrounding the cold gun were sort of too wishy-washily wrapped up for me, so I hope they'll resurface as the S.T.A.R. group and Barry sort of work out their team dynamics. In that regard, Felicity visiting from Starling City and Arrow served a valuable purpose: to help guide Barry in such matters. Indeed, much of The Flash has concentrated on, "Barry learns an important fact about being a superhero!"—which makes sense, since he's still figuring everything out—and Felicity teaching this week's lesson instead of Joe was a nice change of pace.
Now, if you don't watch Arrow, this next bit may be meaningless for you, but since Felicity exists on both Arrow and The Flash, you'll have to pardon me getting a little frustrated with how both shows are making use of the character. It doesn't really matter if you're a 'shipper; Barry and Felicity's smooch in "Going Rogue" constituted some pretty ridiculous emotional manipulation. Is she attracted to Oliver or Barry? How serious can she be about Ray Palmer if/when Arrow gets around to that arc? I understand that Felicity's in a weird emotional state given Oliver's behavior, and goodness knows Barry's in a similar boat with the whole Iris thing, so the complicated nature of Felicity's feelings for the men in her life may lead to all sorts of flirty and kissy moments as she sorts herself out. But the events of this episode also kind of felt like 'shipper pot-stirring for the sake of 'shipper pot-stirring, especially because I was sort of thrilled with the idea of Felicity and Barry being friends. I guess she can only be friends with Diggle and Roy?
Okay, Felicity-related stuff over, back to just The Flash. Though all we have left are Eddie, Iris, and Joe.
This may've been the first episode where that trio wasn't absolutely terrible. Part of that is due to the humor of Eddie turning on the radio to hear "When A Man Loves A Woman" and "Let's Get It On" coupled with his lack of knowing the name of Han Solo's ship that kept it afloat, and it was the first time I think I actually had an opinion on Rick Cosnett; he's really good at awkward reaction shots. Mostly, though, it was that heart-to-heart between Joe and Iris that made it work for me. It yielded the sort of mature conversation that I was worried might not happen, and that's what allowed it to click. It also helps that Joe is probably the best TV dad in this vein since Keith Mars on Veronica Mars.
That The Flash managed to make that scene work well enough is a sign of its growing confidence, narratively. The Iris and Eddie plot continues to be its weakest part, but it's not intolerably weak, either. Yes, they'll need to sort out how to avoid making it feel ridiculously repetitive any time Iris and Barry interact because Felicity won't be around to mix things up every week. Leonard Snart is a great step forward in the villain department. The show's humor and tone are both great. The radio stuff was pretty funny, but the shot of the trivia team decked out in Star Wars outfits? It was very funny, and it was a gag that the scene didn't need, but the show tossed it in anyway because why the hell not? That kind of an attitude may be the show's biggest strength.
Well, that and its visuals. I mentioned Glen Winter at the start of this review, so I'm going to close with him, too. Winter was Arrow's director of photography; unlike directors, which change from episode to episode, directors of photography remain somewhat constant in order to help maintain a consistent sense of style. Winter has gone on to become one of Arrow's best directors, and with "Going Rogue," he became The Flash's best director, too (sorry, David Nutter!). It's not just that Winter gets big sequences, like Barry racing the cold gun beam or the entirety of the train sequence;  both  were very impressive. But the fact that he adds texture to scenes that would be fine without any is hard to resist, because why the hell not?

Season#1
Episode#5

Plastique

I know I'm spending a lot of time on The Flash's guest characters and villains in these reviews, but they do end up having a sizable influence on my enjoyment of any given episode, considering the show's structure and the fact that its more serialized elements—the love triangle, Iris's interest in the Streak, and Harrison's ultimate agenda—tend to move at their own pace. As such, the serialized stuff ends up feeling either super important or not all that important, let alone interesting. Basically, The Flash needs good Freaks of the Week, or at least regular joes with cool toys, to keep itself moving right now.
And after finally giving us a a villain with a personality in Leonard Snart, "Plastique" changed things up again by presenting a Freak of the Week who wasn't evil. Sure, Bette Sans Souci (Kelly Frye) was motivated by revenge just like Multiplex (who wasn't totally evil, but was definitely way less of a nice person than Sans Souci) and Mist, but her motivation for that revenge was a bit more shaded than those of her metahuman predecessors. She didn't want her powers—the ability to make anything explosive by touching it, except for clothing she's wearing, because comic book logic—and thought her powers were the results of experiments conducted on her without her consent by General Wade Eiling (Clancy Brown), even though they were, of course, caused by the particle accelerator explosion.
Sans Souci's dilemma created a number of threads that, while never felt fully tied together by the end, were still interesting enough. The core of Sans Souci's problem was one of victimhood. She's not a bad person, and she didn't ask for these powers that made her ability to touch things and people nearly impossible. She just wants those powers removed, and while she'd get it done by blowing up things and people, she was also happy to take a less explosive route, provided S.T.A.R. Labs could supply one. The powers may make the goal easier, but they also have their limits. As Caitlin notes, Barry's ability allows him to help people, but Sans Souci's "makes things explode." While making things explode can provide some assistance, it's ultimately far more dangerous and devastating than being able to run really fast, especially when that power isn't as controllable as splitting yourself into duplicates or manipulating the weather.
Such powers also made Sans Souci an obvious weapon for other people, someone to be used to achieve ends other than her own. That was where the real villainy in the episode came out. The episode did quick work to establish Eiling as a guy who did bad things—and to gorillas no less!—in the name of national security. He no longer saw Sans Souci as a human being, but as a weapon that could save other lives. This is pretty standard bad guy military stuff, but I do appreciate that The Flash made sure Eiling wasn't just military might and violence. He figured out that the particle accelerator was responsible for Sans Souci and the Streak, and is thus a step ahead of everyone else in Central City and makes him a recurring villain figure for the show.
More chilling, but not surprising, is that Harrison used and manipulated Sans Souci to achieve his own goals: the death of Eiling. It's a great moment for the episode, and Tom Cavanagh continues to excel at this shady mastermind version of Harrison. It was a clever pivot to re-focus Sans Souci onto Eiling by saying the general would hunt others like her to get her to do what he wanted. If she had survived, she might've made a useful agent for Harrison to use to deal with people who would threaten Barry, but as it stands, he'll just have to keep getting his own hands dirty.
It would've been nice if Sans Souci had managed to break free of this cycle of men using and wanting to use her without having to (apparently) die in a spectacular watery explosion, and for her to achieve some sense of peace with her new self. As it stood, though, her death ends up being on both men's hands, and that feels like a much more damning takeaway, especially as her dying words may eventually come back to haunt Barry.
Speaking of men trying to tell a lady what to do, Joe and Barry did their best to keep Iris from blogging about the Streak, and because it wouldn't be safe for her to continue to do it because some metahumans may end up coming after her and because it may end up resulting in Iris discovering Barry's secret identity. And that would also be bad...because...yeah, no one gives a great reason for this. Thus, after five episodes, The Flash has officially hit a wall on this plot. Iris is a character that exists to be lied to, and supposedly for her own good, but I fail to see how Barry revealing his identity to Iris doesn't solve this problem.
I liked that Iris was blogging about the Streak to help Barry, to help convince the rest of the world in "the impossible." It is exactly the reason why Joe came to believe Barry regarding the events of Nora's death, and why he agreed to help find the real killer, but because Iris doesn't have powers or a badge and thus cannot protect herself, it's less acceptable of a reason? It's pretty much nonsense, and just another reason to tell her about Barry's abilities. While Caitlin and Cisco aren't drawing attention to themselves by blogging, they're also perfectly incapable of defending themselves in the event that someone comes after them, and yet no one seems all that worried about this possibility. All this makes even less sense since Snart knows they're associated with the Streak. Iris doesn't know and would be danger if she knew, but the S.T.A.R. Lab scientists do know, and thus they aren't in as much, if any, danger? 
It's why her shift from doing the blog to help Barry to wanting the rest of the world to know seemed so flimsy and kneejerk: Because it is. It's manufactured drama to keep this plotline going, to create some trouble in unrequited love paradise—Barry's suggestion that they not see each other for a while likewise puzzles me; don't they live in the same house?—and to keep Iris locked in a seemingly dead-end plot where everyone around her just keeps lying and lying. I know and understand that the secret identity and the attempts to uncover the secret identity are part and parcel of many a superhero narrative, but in this case, there feels like there's no reason for doing it the way The Flashis going about it.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– I love that Barry can't get drunk because his body metabolizes alcohol too quickly. I also love seeing Caitlin and Cisco outside of S.T.A.R. Labs, as I was worried they were becoming The Flash's version of Gotham's Barbara Gordon: confined to one location and not allowed to leave unless kidnapped.
– "Yeah. He's so hot. I mean, genetically speaking of course. Because I’m a geneticist. Do I sound like Felicity?"
– "What if I get a bunch of mattresses and stack them? "Barry, this isn't a Road Runnercartoon." It's awesome that Barry is always asking for help from his team, though I really need to know how he knows whether he's running at the correct speed once they tell him what speed he needs to run at. And by "really need to know" I mean that I'm picking at a nit that I really don't care about, just like the matter of whether or not the Army can really just show up and assume control of an investigation.
– "Didn't really think this one through, did you?" Haaaaha.
– You know what I loved more than seeing the team drinking at the bar? Barry tickling Joe by vibrating Joe's vocal cords. If there's one thing I really enjoy about The Flash, it's that it has fun with Barry's powers and allows its characters to respond to those powers in ways that feel organic and fun. I mean, if you heard Barry AutoTune his voice, wouldn't you laugh?
– Have fun theorizing what it means that Harrison "has a whole different future" planned for Grodd. I know I was doubtful about the show's ability to depict Grodd in a convincing manner, but now that the Easter Egg from the pilot has become an actual plot point, I need the show to deliver on a talking, psychically powered gorilla that's hellbent on world domination. I. NEED. IT.

Season#1
Episode#6

The Flash Is Born

After getting all stressed out last week over the danger that Iris might be in because of her blog about the Streak the Flash, the show made that danger a reality as she was kidnapped by the Freak of the Week in "The Flash Is Born." Thankfully, the results weren't horribly traumatic or awful, and Iris did get to punch the sleeze who grabbed her, delivering the knockout blow herself. That was pretty much worth the hour, and perhaps even more so than the really cool-looking supersonic punch. 
It certainly helped that Iris was kidnapped by Tony Woodward (Greg Finley), a bully from the elementary school that Iris and Barry attended, making Tony something of known quantity. Well, apart from his new ability to turn his skin into steel at will. It also helped that Tony's big plan and goal was to get Iris to write about him so he could once again be the "big man on campus." Forget the idea of Tony peaking in high school, Barry; it's clear that Tony peaked in elementary school. And even though Iris was indeed in danger, it wasn't a standard damsel-in-distress situation where she'd end up dangling over a vat of acid or locked in some sort of death trap or strapped to a bomb. In short, her plight was a lot less life-threatening—and clichéd—than it could've been.
Tony may've been willing to hurt Iris, and he was decidedly skeezy toward her, but given that his big plan amounted to dragging her to their old elementary school and demanding that she blog about him, well, he just doesn't seem like one to think things through. The episode made Tony a threat though his strength and general invulnerability, but it never made him seem dangerous enough for me, at least so far as Iris was concerned. Why even go to the elementary school, apart from the character resonance of Barry having the opportunity to take down the bully who tormented him decades ago in their old stomping grounds?
In the end, however, the episode proved that the whole "We can't tell Iris that you're the speedy guy in the suit because it'll put her in danger!" is a bunch of story-mandated nonsense. Barry revealed his identity to a locked up Tony and was not chastised for this, even by Caitlin, who wasn't happy that a costumed Barry was meeting Iris but was totally cool with the fact that Barry took off his mask to deliver a speech? It's unlikely Tony's will escape any time soon, but since supervillains always eventually escape, Barry just put everyone he knows in danger, including himself and his identity as the Flash. Tony knowing is totally okay because he's locked up in S.T.A.R. Labs, and Iris knowing is bad for her. Yep. That makes sense to me. It's arrogance, of course, yes, and that need for satisfaction letting the bully know he got beaten by the guy he used to beat up, but it's an unnecessary risk, and Barry and Joe have been all about avoiding unnecessary risks in regards to Iris. 
While the Freak of the Week plot was, ultimately, a bit of a wash, I enjoyed other aspects of the episode, including Eddie trying to bond with his girlfriend's best friend. Rick Cosnett hasn't had a whole lot to do as Eddie, as he's mainly been stuck looking afraid of Joe or looking lovingly at Iris. This hasn't served the character or Cosnett particularly well, with Eddie mostly coming off as a nondescript obstacle for Barry to overcome for Iris's affections and as a semi-competent cop partnered with Joe. Both of these are very thankless roles to play in a show, and Cosnett has done what he can.
As a result, I was glad to see Eddie get some one-on-one time with Barry. Away from the Wests, Eddie was allowed to stretch his legs a bit. His attempts to give Barry advice on mending fences with Iris and then give Barry some boxing lessons—lessons that ended up nicely complementing Joe's lessons in the FLASHback for the sonicboom punch—were awkwardly sweet, and they demonstrated an ease in Eddie's manner that we really hadn't seen before. He wants to be friends with Barry, so he's going to treat Barry as if they've been friends for a while, even if they're still just getting to know one another.
Eddie was also able to do some fieldwork without Joe along. None of it made him greatly competent or anything as their visit to the microbrewery was based on Barry's idea, and was one that, frankly, Eddie would've, should've, come up with on his own, but it was, again, the collaborative nature of his interactions with Barry that gave Eddie a bit more personality. While the deflected bullets aspect was dropped fairly quickly, at least Eddie's got a toe into that world, and hopefully Iris will fill him in on the whole "skin turning to steel" thing. 
Cosnett did good work with all of this, particularly the tentative advice-giving near the abandoned humvee and his general disbelief in armored protection around the face swatting away bullets. More of it all, please.
While Eddie was trying to solve the Tony Woodward case, Joe was doing some stealth detective work on Harrison. Joe piecing together that the person who killed Nora Allen may have gotten their abilities from another particle accelerator explosion was a smart connection, and gave Joe some much-needed chops as a detective. He's eliminating Harrison as a suspect, which is exactly what a detective would do given everything that's been going on as the impossible has becomes increasingly possible.
Through it, we learned a little bit about Harrison's apparent past, as he was living in Maryland until his wife died and then he moved to Central City a month before Nora's murder. Nothing suspicious in that, at least not for Joe. For us, though, all kinds of possible red and yellow flags probably went up in our minds. Jesse L. Martin and Tom Cavanagh continue to do really good work each week, and they excel at working together. Cavanagh, in particular, is calibrating Harrison a bit, having made him a little harsher and quicker to anger since "Going Rogue." It's a generally been an edgier Harrison than I was expecting based on the first couple of episodes, but Cavanagh and the writers are making sure those edges are justified, like stolen cold guns or being accused of being involved in a murder over a decade ago that he couldn't have reasonably been involved with.
Except, you know, Joe got the episode tag this week. It was a visit from the same yellow and red person who killed Nora. Said speedster gathered up all of Joe's notes and case files and left a not-so-subtle message of "STOP OR ELSE" carved into the wall, complete with a picture of Iris tacked up with a very large knife. Doesn't seem shady at all that this coincided with Joe's chats with Harrison. Nope. Not. At. All. 

LEFT IN THE DUST
– "Interesting. A man of steel." Oh ho ho, The Flash. 
– Iris, don't say "iron fist." That's a whole other comic book company.
– Small but nice Easter Egg to note: As Eddie gave chase to Tony's former coworker, you could see "Garrick's Wharf" stenciled on some corrugated metal siding. Jay Garrick was the first person to become the Flash, first appearing in 1940. Barry Allen became the second Flash in 1956.
– "Dude, don't run angry."
– "Evolutionary leaps follow the creation of new technologies. It's that simple." "Like the Roomba." "Yes, like the Roomba."
– Okay, that's two metahumans locked up at S.T.A.R. Labs. While I doubt that Mist needs to eat, Tony will require tending to, and I really want to know how that's going to work.

Season#1
Episode#7

Power Outage

So. Harrison Wells.
Harrison is an original creation of The Flash as a CW television show, a mystery to Flashcomic book aficionados and lovers of bowling alley lawyers alike. He appears to be a time-traveler from the future, and he has a very intense and dangerous interest in making sure that Barry not only became the Flash but also, as we saw in "Power Outage,"remained the Flash. Is he the man in the yellow suit who killed Nora years ago and threatened Joe last week? I don't think he is—though I've arrived at a slightly silly theory regarding the identity of the flaxen felon. However, the point is that he couldbe. He's putting on a show with regard to needing a wheelchair, and you can't really trust a guy who pretends to need to a wheelchair.
We already knew that Harrison was ruthless based on his surprise stabbing of Simon Stagg and his manipulation of Bette Sans Souci in an effort to kill General Eiling, but now Barry has gotten a sense of the lengths to which Harrison will go to make sure his future remains in place, and Barry's not particularly thrilled with that.
Harrison's decision to free the imprisoned Tony Woodward in exchange for Tony killing Farooq (Michael Reventar) was one of those supervillain-esque plans that results in something of a no-lose situation. Either Tony killed Farooq, thus eliminating a threat to S.T.A.R Labs and Barry, or Tony would buy the team enough time to get Barry's power back. If the former had worked out, it's easy enough to imagine that Harrison would've had some trick up his sleeve for containing or killing Tony himself. Instead, the latter was the result, and Tony ended up dead.
So began Barry Allen's education in the sacrifices that must be made for him to do what he does. One of the perks of Barry's superspeed is that he doesn't typically have to choose between who to sacrifice and who to save, because it's very likely he can save both. This has made him a little arrogant, as Harrison noted, but it also means that Barry thinks he can fix everything without anyone ever getting hurt. Sans speed, Barry believed he could talk Farooq off his particular ledge through the power of empathy. 
But empathy isn't always enough, and sacrifices will have to be made at some point, sacrifices that Harrison made without a second thought. Harrison values his future more than he values human life (his memory of the names of the dead aside), and he wasn't lying to Barry when he said he cared about Barry, so whatever Harrison has to do to save any given day is what he'll do. Barry and Harrison's confrontation over Tony's death was EXACTLY what The Flash needed: a situation where Barry's optimism could be pierced by Harrison's increasingly sharper edges. It's an ideological conflict that I don't think will surface all the time—and nor should it!—but one that will likely continue to simmer all the same.
I'm rather glad that "Power Outage" aired just before The Flash and Arrow's big two-part crossover. The Flash has differentiated itself from its parent show by being brighter and lighter in terms of tone, aesthetics, and characters' attitudes toward the world and their crime-fighting, but "Power Outage" was its darkest episode to date, and not just because Farooq caused a city-wide blackout. Make no mistake, though: The Flash's darker lighting this week matched its darker tone, giving it an Arrow-esque quality, complete with the latter's concern over lines that cannot be crossed. I can't wait to see Barry out in the field with Oliver Queen, where he'll inevitably get another taste of a mentor figure going further than Barry is willing to go.
While the Harrison aspect of "Power Outage" worked very well for me, the rest of the story surrounding it wasn't anywhere near as interesting. I'm not familiar with Farooq from the comics—I didn't read the Flashpoint storyline where he was featured—so he fell into the show's habit of presenting generally personality-free villains looking for a bit of revenge. Reventar managed to inject a bit of sadness into Farooq's existence as an energy vampire, and I liked the detail about his friends dying as a result of attempting to save him, but on the whole, there wasn't much to him beyond the splashy electricity special effects and the low-key but effective make-up and prosthetics.
With Farooq falling through that particular Freak of the Week crack, Barry getting the yips after the team managed to restore his powers worked... just okay. It was a nice episode-based arc to illustrate that Barry has come to rely on and define himself by his powers, and to show us how he struggled to define himself without them. This was especially nice after he suggested to Tony last week that the powers they gained from the particle accelerator not only gave them abilities, but also that those abilities ended up enhancing their core personalities. Muddying this particular plot, however, was the oh-so-very-shoehorned-in bit about Barry trying to convince Caitlin to believe in him. I'm not sure where that character cul-de-sac came from or why it was there, except to remind us that Caitlin still isn't completely sold on this whole metahuman crime-fighting endeavor. 
I might've been cooler with the Caitlin aspect of Barry's yips if it'd been given more time, but instead we got a hostage situation at the police precinct instigated by Arrow's Clock King (Robert Knepper, still having as much as fun with the role as he did when he appeared on Arrow last season: "One helicopter, one vegetarian takeout meal, and one laptop with eight gigabytes of RAM"), who was taking advantage of the blackout in Central City. It was pretty much a throwaway plot that existed for the sake of that scene in the hospital where Barry, in costume, apologized to Iris for not saving her and then said, "You're worth being on time for." And Iris got so flustered by this that she forgot her coffee.
At this point, the whole "woman falls in love with superhero she's reporting on/blogging about" is pretty passé, and the way that Barry is going about this by flirting with her as the Flash since he can't do it as Barry Allen... well, it's not really creepy, but it's certainly a little manipulative in that it can feel like he's trying to encourage her to fall for the Flash so he can be with her at least in some fashion. It's just another instance of how I'm not crazy about how The Flash is writing and using Iris. On the upside, she got to free herself from Tockman's clutches, so points for that.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– I'm totally not clear on why the Clock King was in Central City. Is his sister hospitalized there? Why was the Central City DA the one to reject his furlough request instead of the Starling City DA? I really dug his new spectacles, though.
– Joe West is a well-read know-it-all, and I love him for it.
– "I got held up. You had to be there." I thoroughly enjoyed that mugging sequence. It was a nice example of the levity The Flash already excels at showcasing.
– Barry really loved that mug.
– Way to undermine all my handwringing about Tony Woodward knowing Barry's secret identity and my concerns about how S.T.A.R. Labs was going to care for him, show.
– Those names of dead people Harrison rattled off were the names of various DC superheroes: Ralph Dibny (Elongated Man), Al Rothstein (Atom Smasher), Grant Emerson (Damage), Will Everett (Amazing Man), and Bea De Costa (Fire). I admit to having to look up Emerson and Everett. 
– Eddie on painkillers was pretty funny, and Cosnett was having a ball with that scene.
– As I mentioned, next week is the crossover event between The Flash and Arrow. If you don't normally tune into Arrow, you may want to consider watching it on December 3. Or just skip next week's Flash altogether. Either or.

Season#1
Episode#8

Flash vs. Arrow

The superhero crossover is a tried-and-true way to build narrative universes and allow the characters that readers know and love (or are at least aware of) to interact, so that everyone can watch the sparks fly. As kid, I remember reading a collected volume of early Spider-Man comics, and in the very first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Spidey tries to join the Fantastic Four. That results in Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four fighting for a couple of pages—it's a superhero comic book rule that upon meeting for the first time, superheroes have to fight each other—before Spidey sets off to deal with the Chameleon because the FF aren't interested in letting him onto the team. Superheroes teamed up and appeared in one another's stories before 1963, of course, but that particular instance always been one of the highlights of the genre.
Crossovers on TV aren't anything new, either. Sure, there scads of the more common guest-star cameos—in which when actors from one show pop up on another, particularly on sitcoms—but multi-episode events like this one between The Flashand Arrow have also happened before, and not just on shows that share an obvious narrative universe, like The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman or Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. After all, Dr. Kildare and The Eleventh Hour staged a crossover in 1963. Just a few weeks ago, Dick Wolf's trio of NBC crime procedurals (SVU, Chicago Fire, and Chicago P.D.) carried out a three-way swap. And I remember when The Practiceoverlapped with every David E. Kelley show on the air at the same time, including Ally McBeal and Gideon's Crossing.
The crossover between The Practice and Ally McBeal actually makes for a good comparison to the mixing of Arrow and The Flash, as both pairings are comprised of tonally different series. Ally McBeal was a show about gender politics, wacky lawyers, and CGI dancing babies, while The Practice was a serious and generally grim look at upstart defense attorneys who employed unethical tactics in the courtroom. Similarly, The Flash is a bright, funny, and optimistic series that embraces the sillier aspects of its source material, to really solid effect, and Arrow is part of the trend of making superheroes darker and grittier, with an emphasis on the morality involved in putting on a mask and fighting crime.
Whereas the Ally McBeal and The Practice cocktail didn't really jive—Bobby Donnell in the offices of Cage and Fish just didn't work—The Flash and Arrow managed to synthesize their respective tones into a very delightful and fun hour of television that showcased why superhero crossovers tend to be worth the effort. Even better, it didn't slow the momentum of The Flash's pre-existing storylines. Indeed, the presence of Oliver, Diggle, and Felicity in Central City actually gave the A-story a little more dramatic weight than it might have otherwise had. 
A quick organizational note: Since we may have some folks reading who don't watch The Flash regularly (or at all), I'm going to divide this review of "Flash vs. Arrow" into 1) an overall take on the episode and that showdown between Barry and Oliver, 2) a discussion of the big developments for The Flash, and 3) a breakdown of that little Arrowbit at the end of the episode, and in that order. It may be a little unwieldy, but it seems like the best approach for different audiences, since I know some Flash readers don't watch Arrow and vice versa.
Regarding the episode overall, what really made "Flash vs. Arrow" work for me was the aforementioned synthesis of tones. Like last week's "Power Outage," which saw The Flash drift into darker-ish territory, "Flash vs. Arrow" kept the show moving in that direction with a cloudier hour that had Central City feeling a bit like an extension of Starling City. And given Barry's actions while under the influence of Roy G. Bivolo, a.k.a. Rainbow Raider's rage eyes, it was another dark installment by The Flash's standards. Indeed, the rage issue was probably handled a bit better on The Flash than it was when it cropped up on Arrow last season, albeit not caused by a guy with glowy red eyes.
Despite its darkness, "Flash vs. Arrow" made plenty of room for gags and humor. Stealing the show was David Ramsey's pitch-perfect performance of Diggle's response to Barry's superspeed. Diggle just couldn't wrap his brain around it, and Ramsey really sold Diggle's befuddlement with that unblinking stare. His delivery of, "I had a cousin get hit by lightning once. He just developed a stutter," left me in stitches. Pile on Oliver's casual willingness to shoot Barry in the back with two arrows just to make a point, and The Flashpresented a way for the normally-not-funny Arrow folks to showcase their more comedic skills without breaking character. 
If "Flash vs. Arrow" hadn't so nicely blended the two shows' different approaches, I'm not sure it would've been as successful. Instead, it would've ended up feeling like a crossover for the sake of as crossover, and an affront to each series' storytelling style. It also helped that the episode took care to make sure that the big showdown between Barry and Oliver wasn't the sole reason to tune in, even if it was the highlight of the hour. The Flashcontinued to impress with its special-effects work, using both slo-mo shots and streaks of red and yellow to depict Barry's powers. And just like the merging of tone and humor, the fight nicely showcased our two heroes' respective fighting techniques... even if Oliver's was clearly the better one. Sorry, Cisco.
Okay, onto The Flash stuff. Arrow folks, head to the next section—after the photo of Oliver—for your fix.
As I mentioned above, I was glad that "Flash vs. Arrow" didn't pause The Flash's ongoing storylines just because Oliver was in town, and that Oliver's visit actually helped move some of them along. Barry's rage infection likewise provided a nice parallel to the rage issues Oliver experienced in Arrow's first season; even if the episode didn't do much to draw out and make those parallels apparent, it did highlight how Barry is still trying to sort out what it means to be a hero. The Flash has been light on super-inspirational speeches from Harrison and Joe recently, but their resistance toward Barry's idolization of Oliver/Arrow brought their various speeches full circle because they finally a bad example to point to.
Of course, what both of Barry's mentors are unaware of is that Oliver wants the same thing for Barry as they do. While some of Oliver's advice in this episode came from where he's at in his life right now—particularly when it comes to women—it was still rooted in helping Barry improve at his heroic activities without sacrificing his optimism or his ability to bring about real good in Central City. You know, as opposed to the sort of city-disrupting good that Oliver has stirred up in Starling City. Basically, Oliver doesn't want Barry to be the Arrow; as he told Barry back in The Flash's series premiere, he wants Barry to be something better, which is what Joe and Harrison want as well.
The Rainbow Raider rage also helped to ensure that Eddie and Iris stay relevant. Eddie's desire to establish a task force to stop the Flash didn't really work as a first move for me, but in the aftermath of Barry pulling him out of the car, there are going to be some real repercussions sooner or later. The task force will also give Eddie something to do that doesn't involve being cute with Iris or following Joe everywhere, which is good. As I've said repeatedly over the past few weeks, I sort of like Eddie, and I'm glad to see The Flash developing its story enough that the character can be a bit more driven.
As for Iris... part of me is prepared to stop trying to anticipate where the show is going with her, in light of her understandable turn against the Flash. However, I'm not sure how long her being against the Flash will last. Will he save her and then everything will be hunky dory again? I do know that I'm glad that Caitlin gets to speak for me whenever she tells Barry to stop interacting with Iris in costume, because, really, Barry's getting a little pathetic now. I know it's probably supposed to come off as "Aww, but he's socially awkward and so deeply into her" but no, his rage-induced attack on Eddie wasn't about the task force. It was about being jealous, and those are emotions Barry needs to deal with, and stat.
Now, if you don't watch or care about Arrow, or you intend to catch up on the show, you may want to skip this next section as it deals with that last little scene that took place at Jitters, and could potentially spoil a few things. Just scroll down to right below the next photo and you'll be all set!
In Season 2's "Seeing Red," we learned that Oliver and a woman WHO STILL DOES NOT HAVE A NAME conceived a child sometime before Oliver ended up stranded on Lian Yu. Oliver's mother paid the woman off, commanding her to disappear and never tell Oliver about the baby. And ever since then, we haven't seen Unnamed Woman Who Gave Birth to Oliver's Child (UWWGBTOC for short), in any capacity... until that super-awkward run-in at the coffee shop in Central City, complete with confirmation that UWWGBTOC kept the child and is raising him or her the Flash's hometown.
The unknown child born out of wedlock is a storyline from the Green Arrow comic book mythology, so it's not a soapy twist that Arrow came up with on its own—it's a soapy twist the show took from the comics. That means the UWWGBTOC's name is probably Sandra, but the show wants to hedge. I was genuinely hoping that Arrow was going to drop this arc, as I'm not really a fan of secret-kid storylines, but no such luck. "Flash vs. Arrow" started the timer on this particular narrative bomb; now the writers just have to decide when it'll explode. Arrow's has come to excel at choosing the right moments to pay off these sorts of teases, and given the general thrust of Season 3 so far, it's difficult to predict whether the show will circle back to the UWWGBTOC and the kid anytime soon.
Either way, dropping this "reveal" into Arrow's crossover with The Flash was pretty clever. Having the UWWGBTOC up in Starling City would've been a bit odd, given Moira's influence, so an appearance in Central City feels like the most organic way to bring her and the kid back into the narrative fold, as it were. I'm still not even remotely interested in their return, but it wasn't poorly executed—for Arrow fans, at least. I'm sure there were a few Flash-only viewers who were like, "Um. Okay. Oliver Queen's got a secret kid. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand.....?"
One last big takeaway from "Flash vs. Arrow": It's interesting to see how the producers are conceiving of both shows, and the comic-book traditions they fit into. When Arrowdebuted, there was no shortage of talk of how it was borrowing very heavily from the Christopher Nolan Batman films, and "Flash vs. Arrow" re-emphasized that Batman connection with Joe and Harrison's displeasure over Barry viewing Oliver as a role model. Hell, Harrison's contention that Oliver's work in Starling City is "a brutal, violent vision of justice" and a "dark reckoning" for the city could just as easily be applied to Bruce Wayne and Gotham.
If Oliver is Batman, than Barry is being positioned as a Superman stand-in, hence the title of this review, which is a reference to the comic book that initially featured Batman and Superman in separate stories and then the same story later on. Barry can inspire people and give them hope, and he makes the impossible possible, in the same way that Superman's existence has often been shown to do. Indeed, if we stick with the "previous adaptation" parallel, then The Flash is in the vein of the Richard Donner-directed Superman films: mostly fun, with a few elements of seriousness mixed in and great special effects. As far as comparisons and influences go, The Flash could do a lot worse.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– The hunt for Roy G. Bivolo (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, hence Rainbow Raider) was decidedly a backburner issue, as Bivolo was really only present to give Barry and Oliver an excuse to fight one another, and so he's easily the lamest Freak of the Week The Flash has trotted out so far. However, since the rest of the episode was very good, I didn't care too much.
– Now even more people know that Oliver is the Arrow. Oliver, your secret identity is the worst-kept secret in the world. Just tell Thea already and get it over with.
– Did Iris finish her dissertation? When was the last time she even mentioned school?
– So glad they're keeping Singh gay. Now, can he actually do something? Like, I don't know, maybe fire Barry? Would anyone else still have a job after reacting to their boss like that?
– Oliver Queen is on Iris's list of people she's allowed to sleep with and Eddie can't get mad at her. Felicity needs to sell footage of the salmon laddering. She'd make a bundle.
– Joe continues to be the best, as he, like me, is very much in the "It's nice that the Arrow's no longer killing people, but what about all those people he did kill? We're just okay with that?"
– "Did you just say 'whammied'?"
– "Okay. We'll help you catch your bad guy." "Great. Metahuman." "I am not calling him that, Barry."
– "It is so nice to have another woman to talk to." "I know!" At least the writers are aware that they're isolating their female characters.
– "There is something off about that guy." Oliver is onto Harrison, and I love it.
– Hi there, Ronnie! Can I get you some water?

Season#1
Episode#9

The Man in the Yellow Suit

I'm just going to start with that episode tag.
I was pretty much bouncing on the couch when Harrison pulled out a Flash ring. Yes, it was a lovely bit of fanservice—the comic iteration of Barry Allen kept his costumes in spring-loaded rings just like Harrison's—but it was also a way to connect Harrison to a larger Flash mythos. Was he a certain speedster from the future (aged up, though) who'd been sent back to the past to keep Barry safe? That was my first thought when I saw the ring, and it sort of made sense in the way that convoluted time-travel stories can make sense. And then there was the costume. And then the costume turned yellow. And then Harrison plugged in what I guess was the superluminal/tachyon prototype device, attaching it to the yellow suit. And then Harrison said, "Merry Christmas" with a vibrating voice. I just about lost it.
And then my mother called me. (My mom watches The Flash. And Arrow.) I was still working through the tag and trying pay attention to the promo for next new episode—CAPTAIN COLD WITH HIS FIERY FRIEND!—and her first words, before I could even say hello, were, "That's too easy!" And I'm inclined to agree with her, to an extent.
One of the pleasures/annoyances of narratives that rely on big reveals and twists is that you feel that rush of, "OH NO THEY DIDN'T!" and you're all psyched about what it could mean... but then a little part of your brain says, "But did they really?" It's a little cynical, yes, but it's also something that comes with the territory of building twist upon twist upon reveal upon reveal. Because we all know there's another layer to this Harrison stuff. There has to be an explanation for how and why he had the yellow suit, vibrated his voice, appeared in multiple places at once, and didn't harm Eddie—and that reason has to be something other than, "He's the Reverse Flash." 
Or maybe The Flash's writers just want us to overthink it! Damn you, twisty narratives! In any case, I'm excited about this reveal, if only because I suspect it means that Tom Cavanagh will start upping his level of villainy when delivering innocuous-seeming lines, which is going to be great. Totally worth it, even if this arc turns out to be a bait-and-switch of some sort.
Either way, the Reverse Flash was out in force, and it was pretty grand. Meanwhile, the special effects were fine. I experienced what was probably some unintentional blurriness during some sequences, but that was more an issue with my TV cables than anything else; I'm not watching in standard definition, but I can't imagine The Flash looks all that good in SD. What stood out for me wasn't so much the effects in the Reverse Flash's scenes, but the character's raw brutality. The Reverse Flash is vicious and violent in a way that none of The Flash's other villains have been. It makes a difference that he's the first one who seems to have a full understanding of his powers, but his willingness to beat the crap out of Barry and Harrison makes him feel more like an Arrow villain than a Flashone.
This is a good thing, though, a nice continuation of The Flash's development over the past two episodes as it edges closer to the darker side of crime-fighting. Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco experienced a bit of a reality check when they visited Starling City last week, Harrison's manipulations have been pushing that envelope, and now Reverse Flash is a fan of doling out beatdowns. It's not just the sci-fi-infused superhero fantasy world they've been living in. There are dangers in those dark places—and, apparently, sitting in a wheelchair.
Outside of Barry's efforts to figure out what to do about the Reverse Flash, it was do-or-die time with regard to his feelings for Iris. I'm on record as viewing Barry's costumed flirting with Iris as borderline creepy, so I was glad to see her turn against the Flash a bit last week. And I'm glader still that Iris is now in the loop about Barry's feelings, because she was apparently super out of the loop. Hell, even Henry Allen knew Barry had feelings for Iris, AND HE'S IN PRISON. Both scenes concerning their relationship worked very well, and they were nice showcases for Grant Gustin and Candice Patton, respectively. 
While I think Gustin has yet to find the right "level" for Barry when the character is feeling shouty-angry, the actor is killing everything else. Take his squirmy physicality at his desk as Iris laughed off the idea of Barry being into her. It was all awkward shoulder and neck rolls with twitchy eye contact as he buried what he really wanted to say. Pile on the emotional breakdown when he talked to John Wesley Shipp—Gustin does a great Sad Barry—and it was a very good night for him.
Patton hasn't been asked to do a whole lot but be chipper and oblivious, so I was happy to see The Flash finally give Iris some meatier material. Yes, Patton got to play a disappointed angry last week, but I really liked her silent tearfulness as Barry confessed his feelings. It was a good scene for Gustin, to be sure, but it was one of those sequences where the actor opposite the person making the big speech needs to be listening andreacting, and Patton really hit that mark. I may still not entirely buy the "Barry's in love with Iris" idea, but I continue to accept the "Barry and Iris are best friends" idea, and Patton's work in that scene brought that aspect to the forefront at just the right time. 
In what was probably the weakest part of the episode, Caitlin and Cisco went out looking for Ronnie after Caitlin spotted him in a mall parking deck. I say it was the weakest part because it was obvious place-setting for the Firestorm—he got to name himself, that's nice!—arc that will be part of the back half of the season, so it felt a little removed from the episode's bigger storylines. Obviously Ronnie's coming back into the fold, and I'm interested to see how The Flash will get to that point, and how the writers will dramatize the entire notion of Firestorm as well.
I liked everything that surrounded the set-up, however. I like Caitlin and Cisco being out of the lab, in the world, and doing stuff. I like Caitlin and Cisco talking to one another without Harrison or Barry around. I want more of each of these things, particularly the second one. The effects of the S.T.A.R. Labs shutdown are clear enough with regard to Caitlin, but I want more with regard to Cisco, and I want more of them as a team. They stuck around because Harrison knew Barry would be struck by lightning and snapped into action immediately, but why did that stay to even do that? They appear to be one another's primary support systems, so I want to see more of how they rely on each other. The scene in the lab where Caitlin explained that she saw Ronnie was a great first step, and it showcased the different dynamic they have when they're not tossing out theories about how to stop a cold gun or deliver a sonic punch to a guy who can transform his skin into steel. 
These are good, exciting developments for the characters and the actors, and considering how often Caitlin and Cisco are trapped in the lab, I'm love it when they get to interact with others. Heck, Iris and Caitlin's scene at Jitters was just delightfully awkward because, really, how could it not be? And Cisco talking to Joe at the holiday party, suggesting that there was a second speedster on the night of Nora's murder? Completely adorable. Cisco is so eager to be liked, plus their conversation offered a new character pairing we hadn't seen before.
The Flash's fall finale didn't deliver a lot of answers. If anything, we only got apparent confirmation of something many folks had been suspecting from the start—which, of course, only led to more questions—and the aforementioned notion that there was another speedster in that swirling vortex of speed and color that Barry saw 14 years ago. All fun, interesting bits of information, but nothing truly earth-shattering. And that's okay. These are big, season-long mysteries, and we're only nine episodes into a 22-episode run. Reveals like Harrison having a Reverse Flash costume in his... Bumpy... Future Room (I need a better name for that) are enough to get us excited for more, which is what the show wants, and what we should want, too.
Over these nine episodes, The Flash has proven itself a very confident, steady freshman series, one that I have more faith in than I had in Arrow at this point in the latter's first season. The series boasts a really strong cast, a fact that was evident in the pilot and that the show has continued to take excellent advantage of. The Freaks of the Week could stand to improve, still, when it comes to their personalities and motivations, and the writers could find a way to settle on things for Iris, though I'm hoping that the events of this episode will put us on that path.
It's an admittedly low bar to clear, but with all these variables factored in, The Flash has turned out to be one of the strongest new shows of this season, so I'm very eager to see what it has planned for its second half.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Cisco was wearing a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock tee. Between that and a character named Cooper Seldon on Arrow a few weeks back, I think it's pretty clear that The Flash and Arrow are really into The Big Bang Theory. That, and/or it's a bit of corporate synergy, as all three shows are produced by Warner Bros. Television and air on the CBS/CW family of networks.
– Another good acting choice: Rick Cosnett adding trace amounts of threatening condescension to his voice whenever he said "Bar" to Barry was just great.
– I'm glad Eddie's in the loop on the metahuman thing. I can't help but feel that Joe is being a touch irresponsible not telling Singh after all this time, though.
– Playing Dr. Tina McGee of Mercury Labs was Amanda Pays, reprising her role from the earlier Flash series of the 1990s. This iteration is obviously a little different, but I appreciate how the show has worked in—and will continue to work in—actors from the previous show.
– Have a good winter hiatus, everyone! We'll meet back here on January 20 for The Flash's mini-Prison Break reunion when Wenworth Miller and Dominic Purcell join forces as Captain Cold (yay!) and he who will be known as Heatwave.
Season#1
Episode#10

Revenge of the Rogues

The CW's lengthy hiatuses are always the pits, so I'm glad The Flash came back with a very strong episode in "Revenge of the Rogues." Indeed, I think it was so strong that it may've been the best one yet. You could accuse me just being happy to see Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) again, since he's easily the best villain to threaten Central City thus far, but the show wisely didn't just reheat Leonard Snart's first appearance. Instead, Captain Cold brought along a new friend: Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell), a hotheaded pyromaniac now called Heat Wave, to add a new dynamic.
When Cold first arrived, I praised The Flash for giving him a personality, something its villains had largely lacked up until that point (sadly, that continued to be the case as as the show progressed). Happily, Heat Wave also had an interesting temperament. Mick Rory's not the brightest-burning match in the box, but he's not a complete dolt, either. He's good with his heat gun, and he knows that Cold has trouble keeping partners who will listen to his little speeches. He's unstable and impulsive, concerned with the present; like his flames, he just wants to burn and burn, even if it's not in a particular direction. He can't see the angles Cold is working, but that's because Cold is playing a longer, more calculated game than Heat Wave can grasp. And that's why Cold only revealed dribs and drabs of the plan, first telling him it was about killing the Flash so they could steal whatever they want and then explaining that his goal was actually to out the Flash to the world. Cold would still want to kill the Flash eventually, of course, but one step at a time.
Heat Wave's little scene with Caitlin was the silliest and corniest bit of villain jibber jabber—especially when he floated the idea of that maybe Caitlin and everybody else are the nutty ones, and he's the sane one—but I sort of liked it anyway? It was at least consistent, since Heat Wave had questioned Cold's psychological well-being earlier in an episode. Hedoes seem to believe that everyone else is slightly off-kilter, and that he's just fine. I can deal with that so long as it's an established, recurring part of his character and not just "threatening" nonsense he utters to women tied to chairs that are rigged to explode. Heat Wave even made sense of his burns and his love of fire in a way that, again, was comic-book-villain ridiculous, but The Flash pretty actively embraces comic-book ridiculousness, so it worked.
While the episode featured the obvious juxtaposition of their respective personalities as represented by their respective guns, "Revenge of the Rogue" wasn't content to just rest on the interplay of Captain Cold and Heat Wave. Instead, it added a nice wrinkle to Cold's personality. Both Snart and Miller are playing things as if he's putting on a show. There's Leonard Snart, the professional criminal and master planner who's calm and collected, but also pretty ruthless (can you imagine what would happen if he Clock King ever joined forces? Hmmmmm...). And then there's Captain Cold, a guy who says things like "Any preference on how you'd like to die? The flame or the frost?" Snart embraced his costumed persona when he instructed people to call him Cold while telecasting his demands to fight the Flash. He may not have a secret identity like Barry, but he's crafting an alter ego to do battle in public with the Flash, and that little layer will prevent the character from becoming too one-note. Whether he'd ever admit it or not, I think Snart really likes being Captain Cold.
Like I said above, Miller seems to be embracing this duality in Snart, calmly chewing the scenery when he explains things to Heat Wave and then going whole-hog as Captain Cold. Purcell found a decent groove as Heat Wave, not getting too crazy in his line delivery, and I liked the apparent decision he made to not blink a whole lot and keep his eyes wide open as much as possible. Just like Miller seems to be relishing Cold's more subdued nature, Purcell was clearly having a ball playing things very big and broad. Alongside the contrast in the characters' personalities and writing, the contrast in Miller and Purcell's performances kept things between them lively. I can't wait to see what Sister Snart brings to table whenever these rogues reappear.
So, yes, the villains were great, but the rest of the hour furthered a number of other plots as well, and fairly productively. One big annoyance that's common on TV dramas these days, and that's common on The Flash, is that characters just don't talk to one another as human beings sometimes. They hide things, or they don't address issues that are rightly bothering them. Sometimes it makes sense, but at other times, it's just bad writing and bad plotting (looking at you, Arrow, and your refusal to clue in Quentin regarding, well, anything). The Flash had this issue with the Barry/Iris thing. Thankfully, that's no longer happening after Barry's confession of love, and it freed up Barry and Iris to not be too horribly boring around each other. Or, well, at least it gave Candice Patton something to play other than "cheerfully oblivious to everything around her.
Still, those two are nowhere near where they should be, and I think their relationship is one of The Flash's weakest elements along with Eddie and Iris. Part of it is just that, unless there's some comedy to the situation, like lots of mixed signals and awkward dinner parties, unrequited loves on TV get boring very quickly. Consequently, the idea that we may finally get to see Barry and Iris interact somewhat normally, if not exciting, is at least a step in the right direction. If the show could figure out how to make us care about Eddie and Iris as a couple we'd be all set, but even I have my doubts that that's possible.
I can almost excuse all of it because of this week's good scenes between Barry and Joe. Every moment between them has generally been a real knockout, and Grant Gustin and Jesse L. Martin clearly have a lot chemistry as actors. As a result, the ease with which they handled that last scene as both of them grappled with Iris moving out was both touching and very funny. Joe and Barry's relationship actually feels lived-in in a way that Barry and Iris's relationship simply doesn't, and thank goodness for that.
The Wests and Barry as a family unit weren't the only ones speaking truth to one another, however. Joe's little chat with Harrison about Barry's words and actions was likewise filled with the kind of directness that wouldn't be uncommon on other shows for Joe to sort of stew about for a bit before confronting Harrison at a more pivotal moment in the overall arc of the season. It kept Joe consistent as a character who isn't interested in people hiding things from him, but it also reinforced the idea that while Joe and Harrison both want the best thing for Barry (or, in Harrison's case, appear to want the best thing for Barry), their ideas of how to achieve that goal don't necessarily align.
Joe's side-eying of Harrison also emphasized the show's desire to make sure we understand that Harrison is simply up to no good. As the show's moral compass, Joe is someone the audience can trust, and if he's not trusting Harrison, we clearly shouldn't either, regardless of whether we have more facts than Joe does and may or may not be worried about his well-being if he keeps picking at the edges of Harrison's seemingly well-intended plans. "Revenge of the Rogues" also really pushed Harrison as a bad guy. Harrison and Barry's scene near the treadmill employed some more mixed lighting around Harrison and filmed him from a lower angle to give the guy a more imposing vibe, especially in a moment when Barry called him a friend. It wasn't just scripted irony, but visual irony as well.
The Flash has returned solid from its winter break, so I'm hopeful the show can keep it up for the rest of the season.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Just in case you missed the news, The Flash has been renewed for Season 2. It's been a big hit for The CW with critics and, more importantly, audiences, so its survival shouldn't come as a surprise.
– As someone who was a little disappointed that The Flash didn't choose a version of the Jason Rusch Firestorm, I'm glad that Jason does exist in this universe. Also: Hi, Victor Garber's photograph! Can't wait to properly see you in a future episode!
– The Rathaways and their apparently disowned son Hartley. Guess who we meet next week?
– If there's one really stupid and pointless thing this episode did, it was to have Iris show up at the fight for no damn reason whatsoever. The Flash's writers seem determined to make her an idiot, and I do not understand that.
– I legit thought that Barry still lived with the Wests. We've never seen his apartment, right?
– The special effects work was good this week. I could've done with a longer fight between the villains and Barry, but I'll take it all the same.
– I'm very impressed that The Flash waited six episodes to put Iris in danger and 10 episodes to put Caitlin in danger. That's a remarkable amount of restraint when you only have two female characters on the show.
– "You mean like Ghostbusters?" "That film is surprisingly scientifically accurate." "And really quite funny." Even supervillain time travelers from the future love Ghostbusters.

Season#1
Episode#11

The Sound and the Fury

I'd make a joke about The Flash coming back on a HIGH NOTE last week only for "The Sound and the Fury" to sink to a LOW NOTE, but 1) I like low notes as sounds, so that seems unfair to low notes, and 2) sound puns aren't appropriate for an episode weighed down by pointless chess metaphors. Throw in the fact that by using the title "The Sound and the Fury," you're just asking people who didn't like the episode to go for the easy "Signifying nothing!" comment, and, well... this one just wasn't very good, okay?
There was plenty to dislike, and it mostly resulted in a cliché pile-up that wasn't even an interesting cliché pile-up. I can deal with an episode combining threadbare narrative devices so long as those devices are stitched together in such a way that the outcome is at least entertaining and spruced up a bit. There was no sprucing up in "The Sound and the Fury"; instead, there were creaky and dull plot movements intended to get us to Hartley saying that he knows how to find and help Ronnie, whether it's true or not.
As I have been whenever The Flash has introduced a mainstay from the Flash's villain catalog, I was excited to meet Hartley Rathaway, a.k.a. the Pied Piper (Andrew Mientus, giving good arrogant jerk 'tude). Ditching the mind-control flute was a good idea—plus the show was never going to top Martin Mull doing that in the Wonder Woman series from the 1970s—and while I liked the green lights on the sonic gauntlets, if you give Captain Cold his blue parka, you can at least give the Pied Piper some green in his actual outfit, even if it's just as an accent!
Mostly, though, I was excited that The Flash brought in a villain who had connections to the team at S.T.A.R. Labs, and that he could push their buttons. It was a nice deviation from the "bad guy appears to exact revenge against some person we don't know or care about" model that the show has followed for most of its run so far. No, it wasn't a significant deviation in that Hartley was motivated by revenge against Harrison for a multitude of sins, but at least it was enough of one that we got to see someone get under the skins of Harrison, Caitlin, and, especially, Cisco. Hartley mucked with the dynamics, and his forcing of Harrison to come clean about knowing the particle accelerator could explode is something that will hopefully play out in S.T.A.R. Labs over the next few episodes.
That's about as much as the episode did to make Hartley interesting, though. "The Sound and the Fury" relied on a few narrative shortcuts to illustrate how smart he is—CHESS IS FOR REALLY SMART PEOPLE ON TV, YES, THANK YOU, I GET IT—and instead of exploring his sense of abandonment, it portrayed Hartley as mostly plotting for the sake of plotting. Is he angry at Harrison? Yes, clearly, but he doesn't seem angry enough to just go to S.T.A.R. and take what he wants. Instead, he did that trope-y villain thing where hewanted to get caught so he can show his former colleagues—and more importantly, the audience—just how brilliant he is. It was arrogance, but it was dull arrogance, without a fleshed-out psychology behind it. It'd be one thing if Hartley just wanted to be someone like the Riddler and use his intelligence to rob banks or something, but he's got an axe to grind... or he would have an axe to grind if "The Sound and the Fury" had him given more than just the handle.
Without a worthy motivation to keep the story moving and the clichés coming, the action was forced to pick up the slack... and that didn't happen, either. I'm sure many of you were just downright giddy when Barry simply yanked the gauntlets off of Hartley's arms after not grabbing Captain Cold and Heat Wave's guns last week, but it was so very boring to watch. While Hartley's answer to this easy out—booby-trapping the gauntlets—was kinda fun, it still didn't make for riveting action. So yeah, it was just dullsville all around this week. Apart from Harrison actually using his super speed, of course; that was cool.
Whether or not The Flash can remedy Hartley's character psychology remains to be seen, but I'm doubtful. He's slated to return next week, and while I imagine that Cisco will take him up—however unwillingly—on his offer to aid in the search for Ronnie, I worry that his assistance will mostly amount to warmed-over Hannibal Lecter schtick and not much else.
Elsewhere, Iris was hired to work for the Central City Picture News. Excuse me while I just sit here and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh at this development. The entire thing was just silly, and not in a good way. Yes, Iris West is a reporter in the comics, but on the TV show, Iris West doesn't even register as a budding journalist, save for a brief mention of the college newspaper early in the season. Mason Bridge is a complete and total jerk, but he's not entirely wrong about Iris's nonsense hire. If the editor of the Picture Newswants to bring on Iris as a blogger who covers the Flash—and that's clearly what heactually wants—then I say fine. That way, Mason could be antagonistic about bloggers ruining journalism, which is what he's already doing to an extent, and the show would be more honest about the situation at hand. After all, the writers have to give Iris somethingto do, and since she seems to have abandoned her dissertation, it appears she's going to do this now.
I have no doubt that Iris is going to prove herself the go-getter she sees herself as and break some stories, even if they're about the Flash, though hopefully they'll be about women's shelters because that story sounded good. Hey, maybe she ends up writing the newspaper article Harrison is obsessed with, as Ryan McGee fears, even if it was a headline from a different newspaper. We have no way knowing what the state of local newspapers will be in 2024, really.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Joe has enlisted Eddie to help him investigate Harrison. I'm really worried that The Flashis going to make me hate it and kill Joe by the end of the season. Please, do not kill Joe. I will cry. A lot.
– "Being scooped up by a guy clad in head-to-toe leather is a long-time fantasy of mine, so thanks." I'm glad the writers kept Hartley gay.
– Some new group of criminals has taken up the Royal Flush Gang mantle! HURRAH! But The Flash probably only used that name to establish the chess stuff right off the bat, with talk of kings and queens! BOO!
– "He could be a jerk, but every now and then, he could be a dick." Sounds like what Hartley really needs is his own TV show where he solves crimes while his squad tolerates his abrasive personality.
– How did the show inform us that Hartley is TV's idea of super-smart? He spoke Spanish to Cisco, French to Caitlin, AND LATIN TO HARRISON.
– "One day this man will turn on you, in a flash, and even you won't see it coming." Bitter pun, or does Hartley suspect something else? I'm leaning toward bitter pun.
– Recognized here mostly because of the delivery: "Yes, I know how satellite radio works!"
– "It must've been hard for you…" "What, to be this handsome?"
Season#1
Episode#12

Crazy for You

For me, the biggest takeaway from "Crazy for You" was Caitlin and Barry hanging out, drinking, singing "Summer Nights" from Grease, and then Barry taking a very drunk Caitlin back to her place and making sure she got to bed okay. I mean, yes, of course, I'll talk about Shawna a.k.a. Peek-a-boo, Cisco and Hartley, and Henry, but the entire episode could've just been that night at the bar, and I think it probably would've been the most enjoyable bit of television I've watched all week.
One of the things I've come to really love about The Flash is that it allows its characters to exist outside of the superhero derring-do and actually talk to one another. Of course, that's built into the nature of the show, given that it's a lighter, more fun take on the genre. Every once in a while, people can take a break from saving the world to sing karaoke or order pizza and watch sports on TV. It doesn't happen every week, but it happens often enough that the characters' relationships with one another—both old and new—can regularly depart from their "How do we stop this week's metahuman?" routines.
This helps to establish different layers of connections between characters. If Barry were to die, Caitlin and Cisco wouldn't be like, "Well, how do we fight all these super villains in Central City now?"; they'd be like, "We lost a friend." Yes, sure, some of the personal ties develop throughout the course of the actual superhero activities, but seeing one another in different lights deepens their relationships and gives their interactions more weight. In short, they're more interesting when they actually talk to one another about themselves and what's happening around them.
That's why the karaoke and the stuff in Caitlin's apartment was so enjoyable—they were bonding over their messy love lives and discussing something other than Barry running real fast. Both the audience and Barry got to see Caitlin not "dress like a high school principal" even though it was clear that she's still someone who prefers matching pajamas instead of just an old shirt and sweatpants. (And she apparently likes Grease, which is really the biggest surprise here, because Caitlin did not strike me as a Greasefan.) In turn, Caitlin got to learn something that probably only Joe and Iris know: Barry can sing. They have a bond now, and it makes them stronger as individual characters and as a duo.
I don't mean to suggest that I've become a SnowBarry 'shipper, though I'm sure this episode was just the best for that particular cohort of Flash fans. However, I do respond very positively to the idea of Caitlin and Barry as friends, and "Crazy for You" really drove home those feelings for me. It certainly helped that Danielle Panabaker just knocked it out of the park as Drunk Caitlin, Really Drunk Caitlin, and Hungover Caitlin (that scarf! Those sunglasses!). Since she and Grant Gustin have really solid chemistry, he didn't fade into the background; instead, he reacted to Panabaker's performance in a way that felt recognizable to anyone who's tried to herd a drunk friend anywhere. It was, really, exactly what I needed after last week's half-hearted attempt to create a relationship between Hartley and the team at S.T.A.R. Labs and never really convincing me that they were people who worked together.
Speaking of Hartley, Cisco ended up trapped in the Hannibal Lecter–Clarice Starling dynamic I was worried about as Hartley attempted to lead Cisco to an answer about Ronnie and Martin Stein (Victor Garber, who will hopefully have more to do very soon). Cisco just wasn't putting it together, and Hartley got to be all smugly superior about it. It really became clear that, despite "The Sound and the Fury"'s attempt to tell a compelling story about S.T.A.R. Labs before the particle accelerator explosion, Hartley's presence was mostly a vehicle to get the team the information it needed to figure out what happened to Ronnie. I'm not entirely clear on how Hartley figured everything out, but here we are, all set up for next week's episode.
While I didn't love that this whole plot made Cisco look a little stupid, I did like that it afforded him some time to do something other than perform science-y tasks and come up with a nickname for the villain of the week. Aside from Iris and Eddie, Cisco's probably been the least well-served by The Flash so far, and while he's had his moments (like the cold gun being built to stop Barry if he ever went rogue), the writers haven't given him anything really meaty. "Crazy for You" didn't change that too much, but his motivations for springing Hartley from his cell (guilt over what happened to Ronnie) at least continued to hint at Cisco's inner world. That he even got to relieve himself of this guilt, and to have Caitlin accept it, was a big deal for Cisco, and if that's the only big emotional result to come out of Hartley's presence, I'll take it. I still want to see Cisco hang out with Barry and Caitlin at the karaoke bar, but maybe next time.
Sadly, all this great stuff happening outside of the costume left our freak of the week a little underdeveloped. I did sort of forget that Shawna and Clay were even part of "Crazy for You" after their armored-car robbery, since between that and their appearance at the crime boss's hideout, we were focused on Hartley escaping from Cisco and Barry dealing with a drunk Caitlin. However, the episode did what it could to provide a handy shorthand for us by referring to them as Bonnie and Clyde and giving us that brief scene where their story was handily mapped out for us, including Shawna's motivations in breaking Clay out; it just felt like the bare minimum in that regard.
And, yet, I didn't mind as much as I usually do. Part of the reason for that is I'm a fan ofBritne Oldford, who played Shawna, and so I'm likely extending some goodwill to the episode and her character. I'm glad Shawna didn't die and that Oldford has the chance to return as Peek-a-boo at some point, should The Flash decide it wants her back. She was clever and funny in how she used her powers to put Barry in little predicaments, and I liked how the show had her turn her telescope into a weapon with which to beat up on Barry. I wasn't particularly devastated that Clay left her, but I can sure as hell bet I know who she'll go for first if/when she gets out of S.T.A.R., even if she does still love him.
Even with all these other plots, "Crazy for You" still found time to work in some Henry Allen stuff, and that's saying something. It would've been very easy for the Henry stuff to come off as superfluous to the episode, but the writers wisely made sure to link the police raid on Clay's former criminal employer to information Henry had gathered in prison and passed along to Joe. Sure, it was a rushed, off-screen link, but at least it was there.
However, in a sure sign of my narrative and character biases, I'm again happy to let that slide because the Henry and Barry stuff was really good. For a relationship that doesn't get too much screentime, the one between the Henry and Barry still manages to feel as potent as the one between Joe and Barry, and a lot of the credit for that belongs to Gustin and John Wesley Shipp for really zeroing in certain elements of that dynamic. It was especially evident this week with Henry's desire to help not only to his son, but the man who raised his son. That stuttered, "I-I-I-I-I don't get to feel very useful in here" hit pretty hard, and it may've done more to define Henry Allen for me than anything else so far.
Until, you know, he figured out that Barry was the Flash and was able to say that he was proud of his son, even if he had to do it indirectly. It was such a great moment, and one I didn't realize was missing until we witnessed it. It says a lot about The Flash that it can make the Barry and Joe relationship work like gangbusters and then just drop this in and have it click perfectly into place. That's good writing and acting right there.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– I didn't get to talk about Linda Park (Malese Jow)! How about we save that for next week, when she'll hopefully have more to do than flirt with Barry using a near-field communication app? That will also give some comic book fans (not me) time to recover from the indignity of Linda being a love interest for Barry Allen instead of the currently non-existent Wally West.
– Instead of being annoyed by the incoming Iris/Barry/Linda triangle, I'm annoyed that Peek-a-boo didn't have her rollerblades from the comics! Man, what a waste!
– I do love how The Flash is steadily building up to Gorilla Grodd. I don't know that the show will have enough time to introduce him in Season 1, but I also won't mind this particular villain not showing up until Season 2.
– "Oh, Hartley Rathaway, who is currently locked up in our supervillain jail for going psycho with soundwaves?"
– "It's like we were playing a game of—" "Peek-a-boo? Oh, come on. Can't I name one?"
– "You're fast and you can sing? What can't you do?" "Stop you from drinking, apparently?”
– "Vodka and super speed: not a good combination."
– "There you go again. Saving me from that evil dress."
– "Did you sneak a peek? At my goods?"
– "I'd like to yell and wave my arms, but I'm afraid I'd throw up."
– Most important question related to this episode: What's your go-to karaoke jam? I don't sing very often, but my rendition of "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" was once described as "Meatloaf by way of Kermit the Frog."

Season#1
Episode#13

The Nuclear Man

"The Nuclear Man" was a rather low-key episode of The Flash, if the term "low-key" can be applied to an episode that ended with two men trapped in one super-ripped body and causing a nuclear explosion. Personally I think it most certainly can, and that it's not a bad thing for The Flash to adjust its Freak of the Week formula from "Let's stop the scary metahuman from doing bad things" to "Let's save the metahuman we sort of know." It's a tweak the show's been building toward since it introduced us to the fiery and unstable Ronnie Raymond, and it came at just the right time.
It's not just that waiting any longer to deal with Martin and Ronnie would've seemed odd given the effort The Flash has put into their storyline—including Hartley putting the team on Martin's trail before escaping last week. As an audience, we've come to understand how an episode of The Flash works, and the result is that we can see and appreciate the variation on the show's typical Freak of the Week A-plot; here, it was employed to pay off one of the show's serialized elements. There was no other bad guy distracting us or the characters from solving the riddle of Martin and Ronnie.
The long build-up to get to this point may explain why I felt like this version of the personal superhero A-plot generally worked better than when The Flash attempted it two weeks ago with Hartley's arrival as the Pied Piper. That episode relied a lot on flashbacks and character exposition directed at Barry (and the audience) to explain the team at S.T.A.R.'s relationships with Hartley, and it never really sold me on those relationships, never minding Hartley's motivations. The episode wanted to have that emotional heft because of that connection, but considering Hartley wasn't even mentioned until that episode, it was too little time and too much clunky writing to really sell the personal stakes.
The saga of Martin and Ronnie hasn't had that problem. The show doled out little bits of plot progression for it, from Caitlin finding a very confused Ronnie—actually a very confused Martin, and from here on out, since Martin's the one in control, I'm going to refer to Martin/Ronnie as just Martin—that led to the investigation about what could've happened to both men after the accelerator exploded, including Project F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. and learning about Martin Stein. So there's the narrative development angle that's been handled generally pretty well, apart from Hartley's role in it. 
Just as, if not more, important, however, has been the character angle. The show has been very dedicated about making sure that Caitlin, Cisco and Harrison all have some particular stake in Ronnie's fate. Caitlin's is the the most obvious since she was engaged to Ronnie, but Cisco had the guilt of locking Ronnie in the accelerator tunnel and Harrison carried the weight of letting down one of his favored employees (not to mention getting another employee seemingly killed). So finding Ronnie became not only a mission of love for Caitlin, but a way to assuage feelings of guilt in Harrison and Cisco. The show even went so far as to make sure we saw them coping with these feelings, from Harrison positioning it as part of his crusade to right a personal wrong in the very big wrong to Caitlin getting drunk at karaoke to Cisco trusting Hartley to get the information about Ronnie.
All of it led up to this, led up to them finding Martin and doing what they could to save him, and by extension, they hoped to save Ronnie. For all the really good work the show did to make all of this click into place, "The Nuclear Man" was quick to short circuit some of that by establishing the Martin side of the equation for us. We got a glimpse into Martin's marriage, a meetcute flashback with him and Barry as the latter returned from Starling City and that Martin was a bit of a humanitarian on top of being a scientist. It's necessary, especially since we had Robbie Amell attempting a quasi-impression of Victor Garber (and it not quite landing; Amell was much better doing unstable Martin than stable Martin) so we have some sense of who is talking through Ronnie's mouth, but it also kept the emotional payoffs for all of this at arm's length. 
Certainly the episode found a nice level once it was clear that Martin was going to go nuclear if he wasn't killed, and Caitlin not being at all keen on the idea of essentially losing Ronnie twice, not when she was so close to maybe getting him back. Had there been a scene or two more of the team at S.T.A.R. spending more time with Martin, and trying to draw Ronnie out, it might've had a little more oomph to it. Since this was really the first part of a two-parter, though, and Eiling is on his way to claim F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M., I suspect that the quantum splicer did its job, and we'll see to see that emotional pay off I was expecting.
Since I punted on Linda (Malese Jow) and Barry last week, time to discuss them this week. And I can actually do this since they, you know, did stuff this week. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the lightheartedness this plot brought to an otherwise serious episode. Caitlin and Cisco being concerned about Barry's possible tendency toward premature ejaculation because of his powers was pretty funny, and the first date between Barry and Linda sold the idea of them as comfortable with one another. Comfortable enough for Linda's decision for the second date to be making out on the couch in front of a fire.
On the other hand, the backbending needed to give this plot some conflict kind of undermined a lot of the fun. I like Linda—and Jow's performance—given her assertiveness makes for a nice counter to Barry's befuddled, absent-minded lab tech, but it was a little undone with her being not totally understanding about Barry needing to leave, even if under false pretenses, and then calling his place of work to confirm his excuse. I appreciate that the episode provided a rationale for Linda's actions in thats she doesn't want to waste her time, but it's only been a date and a half. I feel like some flexibility (and privacy?) should be expected. Pile on Barry's ghost pepper eating as a way to win her back—again, after only a date and half—and it feels like a lot of bending over backwards to find things wrong and remedy them.
Of course, there was also Iris role in all of this, cutting Barry out at the knees to Linda. My issue here is that this is just very well-trodden dramatic ground as one side of an unrequited love starts to get jealous and questioning his or her decisions by sabotaging the person whose affections they did not return. There's nothing to be done to put a fresh spin on this, and it just makes Iris look pretty frigging awful. I'm glad that Barry calls her out on it this week as opposed to somewhere on down the line, but I can do without Iris quietly and passive-aggressively hemming and hawing about if she made the right choice.
And this leaves us with the unlikely pairing of Cisco and Joe as they returned to Barry's childhood home to re-examine the scene of Nora Allen's murder. The re-launch of this particular thread—and Harrison willing to push back his timetable to save Martin and Ronnie—hopefully comes at a good time for some. While I haven't seen it expressed in the comments here, elsewhere on the Web there's an opinion that The Flash's pacing has been flagging a little bit since it came back from "The Man in the Yellow Suit," at least in terms of Harrison, the Reverse-Flash and the season's endgame.
I don't know if there was an expectation that after the fall finale that the show would really begin to start hitting all that stuff a lot harder, or if it was just feelings of disgruntlement over the lousiness of everything involving Hartley, but I'm not sure where this frustration came from. I suspect that part of this is just that I didn't expect The Flashto address a lot of it until the last run of episodes in the season, given not only the other things it has on the burners—Martin and Ronnie, Captain Cold's long-term plans—but since Flash comes from the folks behind Arrow, that show's pattern has been to really ratchet up big season arc in the last four or five episodes for some really intense and exciting episodes. I figured Flash would exactly the same starting around Episode 19 or 20.
Joe and Cisco working together likely jump starts this. The reveal that older Barry was at the scene the night of Nora's murder confirms the two speedster hypothesis, and sets up some more intriguing questions for the show to explore. The more interesting aspect, for me anyway, was Joe planting that seed of doubt in Cisco's scientifically-minded brain. Whether or not Cisco believes Joe right now won't matter much because Cisco will, eventually, want to disprove Joe's suspicion, and that drive may be all that's needed to bring Harrison's true identity to light.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Barry trying on outfits for his date? Sort of funny. Joe offering his opinion and then threatening Barry over choosing something to wear? Way funnier.
– "Are you gonna let me go back up there?" The building of the would-be jumper was at the corner of 52 and Waid, a reference to the soon-to-be-defunct New 52 comic book line and Mark Waid, a top-notch comic book writer.
– Man, Eddie, where the heck have you been since "Revenge of the Rogues"?
– "Trust Harrison Wells to build a particle accelerator with a bit of style." I really want to peruse that Wells memoir Barry was reading.
– Barry vibrating while making out with Linda was amusing, and perhaps gave weight to Cisco and Caitlin's fears.
– Well hello there, Chase Masterson as Sherry. It's been a while since Deep Space Nine. I'm not exactly sure why The Flash decided to cast you as a woman who apparently just waits for attractive men to knock on her door and then ply them with daiquiris, but oooookaaaaay.
– "I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else so if you could just not... flame on." Heh.
– Joe hand-waved it away, but I'm still flummoxed that the Central City PD didn't test that blood back when Nora was killed.
– "Perhaps I'm now a light beer man." "There are worse things to be." "You mean like a living nuclear bomb?"

Season#1
Episode#14

Fallout

For many TV shows, determining when to dole out certain bits of information and how to structure certain plot developments can be challenge. The Flash has struggled on that front as of late, with Hartley's appearance a few weeks ago reading very much as a way to connect some dots and pay off the mystery of why Ronnie Raymond was on fire and wanted nothing to do with with Caitlin, which is why Hartley didn't have an interesting agenda in his own right. I swear, I'll stop beating up on how The Flash used Hartley sooner or later, but it's become such an instructive misstep of what not to do on a show that generally avoids missteps (aside from how it writes Iris, of course) that I can't help but bring it up when it's useful to do so.
And it's useful to do so with regard to "Fallout," an episode that was as low-key as the hour that preceded it, and sometimes felt divided in the same way that Ronnie and Martin often were throughout its runtime. That division served to wrap up the Firestorm story—for now, of course!—and also to lay more of a foundation for what's to come: time travel and the ongoing preparation for the eventual return of the Reverse Flash.
Hartley nudged things along on the Firestorm track, a font of knowledge that saved The Flash's regular characters (and the show's writers) from having to do a too much work themselves. There's nothing wrong with that, but given that he just showed up one day and appeared to know more than seemed likely, it was difficult not to see him as a delivery system for information about Ronnie first, and that week's villain second.
"Fallout" mixed things up a little bit with Martin Stein. We heard about Stein in a few different episodes before we finally met the man in the flesh. We learned about his scientific reputation and started to get a sense of his personality, and some of it was even filtered through Robbie Amell doing a sort-of-kind-of Victor Garber-as-Martin-Stein impression. By the time "Fallout" arrived, Stein was at least something of a known quantity to us. So when Barry dropped by to talk about the feasibility of time travel with him, it wasn't as if Stein existed solely for the purpose of that conversation. Yes, that was part of it, but it was mostly organic—I don't think anyone had mentioned Stein doing any work on time travel prior to "Fallout," but I loved the effort The Flash put into it by mentioning a paper for Oxford University Press and revealing Stein's room full of time-travel chalkboards to sell us on the idea, and it was nice that those details were incorporated into the larger story of Firestorm.
This type of difference makes all the difference when it comes setting up and/or making progress on larger plot points in a way that doesn't feel like a show is bending over backwards to do so. Of course, it certainly helped that Garber killed it as Stein, nailing everything from "massive jerk" to "physicist giddy at the notion of traveling back in time just to argue with Tesla." If it hadn't been for Garber, the whole thing might've just been a bit of a wash.
And yet... I still felt like the time travel and Barry's-old-house stuff brought the episode to a grinding halt in some ways. It was all entertaining—I loved watching Cisco break down various time travel theories for Joe with help from some time travel movies—and it was nicely done as any scene with Barry and Joe is going to be at this point, but it wasn't the episode's most interesting story thread, or even potential story thread. Yes, it was better than Mason (Roger Howarth) and Iris deciding to investigate S.T.A.R. Labs (I guess Iris is ready to stir up trouble for Barry and his friends because... she's Iris?), but that's a low bar to clear. I appreciate that Joe brought Barry into the loop immediately as opposed to waiting and building more of a case before presenting it, and it was narratively necessary as the show approaches the homestretch of the season; I just didn't think it really fit into this episode.
Maybe that's because I was expecting/hoping too see a lot more of Caitlin and Ronnie working things out. We spent a good deal of time on the search for Ronnie, so to have their reunion reduced to Caitlin catching him up on the events of the past year at Jitters and an understanding farewell at S.T.A.R. and the Stein house just felt like a real letdown after all that build-up. I wanted more of the two of them being reunited lovers and less, "Okay, moving on to time travel!"
It was doubly frustrating because there were good threads dangling into those scenes that deserved more attention than they received. Of course Caitlin was never going to leave Central City, but her realization and statement of her newfound purpose through the work she does with Barry, Cisco, and Harrison was a pretty big deal for the character.That was the moment where Caitlin truly began to move on from Ronnie, more so than her drunk karaoke session with Barry, and it was decidedly underdeveloped for something that's been at the core of her character since the start of the series.
Another thread that could've been tugged, and one that connects to Ronnie's desire to leave and his uncertainty over the whole metahuman hunting thing, was the new mission of S.T.A.R. Labs itself. The Flash could've played up the fact that Ronnie was startled to learn that there's a guy in the basement who can transform himself into a poisonous mist, and that the trio at S.T.A.R. are holding him there, and have held others, without any sort of due process. It would've given the show an opportunity to interrogate the logistical and ethical elephant that's been in the room all season yet hasn't been addressed.
Exploring either or both of those threads would've cut into the show's time-travel set-up efforts, but doing so would've given Ronnie leaving Caitlin a bit more resonance than it otherwise had, proving that some real shift had occurred in the character rather than Caitlin just telling us that it'd happened after the fact. "Fallout" was just serving one too many functions as a conclusion to one storyline and a bridge to larger future storylines, when the episode might've been better served if it'd focused solely on the former.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– I know it would be weird, but who wouldn't want Victor Garber's voice in their head?
– "My destiny is to fail." Yes, Barry, it is. Because if you don't fail, how will you become the Flash to save yourself in the past and put yourself on the path of getting struck by lightning when the particle accelerator explodes? If Nora is saved, all sorts of bad things could happen.
– "'Doc Brown!' Tremendous film."
– "You guys are like 10 seasons of Ross and Rachel but smooshed into one year."
– "Not God. Grodd." Poor Eiling.
– Very cool to see Harrison in the Reverse-Flash outfit.
– I am shocked and appalled that Sherry wasn't there to chat up Barry and Joe and offer them cocktails.
– The Flash is taking the next few weeks off, so I'll see you all on March 17!

Season#1
Episode#15

Out of Time

When The Flash airs an episode like "Out of Time" as Episode 15 instead of as a season finale, it says a good bit where television is as a medium. Because 15 or 20 years ago, the episode absolutely would've been a finale, what with its wild, show-changing cliffhanger that would've left us dying in anticipation as we sat through a summer full of reruns (remember when TV networks only aired reruns during the summer?) while waiting for the next season to start so we could find out what would happen next. Now? We only have to wait a week. One long, horrible, slow-moving week.
I love that it wasn't a season finale, though. Sure, there's the lack of having to wait, but there's also the fact that in the old days, the season premieres that tended to follow such cliffhangers were often driven to return to the status quo. That isn't always a bad thing—hey there, Star Trek: TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds" Part 1 and Part 2—but it's so easy to undermine a cliffhanger that your audience fretted over for months by saying, "That was wild, right? Back to business as usual!" However, since only seven days will have passed between now and next week's "Rogue Time," the fact that Barry could undo everything big that happened in "Out of Time"—Joe getting kidnapped, a metahuman storming police headquarters, Cisco learning the truth about Harrison and then being killed by Harrison, Iris and Barry confirming their feelings for one another and Iris learning that Barry is the Flash—likely won't feel like some sort of anticlimax. Instead, it will serve as an extension of the narrative this episode established. In short, I'd much prefer to see all these developments undone next week rather than see them undone after waiting for three months.
Of course, that's assuming any of them can be undone, which says something else about where television is as medium. Barry may not be able to change any of what went down in "Out of Time," and The Flash may be willing to allow all of it to stand. After all, in today's TV landscape, its somewhat common for a character to die when viewers least expect him to, or for some startling secret to be revealed long before viewers thought it would be. Network television's inherent narrative conservativeness has eroded enough that we've reached the point where a show like The Flash could go either way in next week's episode, and it probably won't surprise us, even while it may leave us to thrilled and/or angry, depending on our desired outcomes.
No matter what, "Out of Time" and next week's "Rogue Time" are important milestones for the show. Time travel has been an important aspect of Flash storylines in the comics for decades, and now The Flash is wading into those waters and will be establishing its own rules in that regard. This is a big deal for a number of the show's plots—namely Nora Allen's murder and Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne being trapped in the present day—and setting up so many potential game-changers gives The Flash lots of room to play without necessarily focusing on Nora and Harrison. It's smart and very exciting.
The time travel aspect certainly enhanced a lot of "Out of Time" after the fact as well as the potential for next week's episode, but remove it from the episode and just end with Barry running super fast to stop a giant wave from destroying the city, and it was still a very exciting hour of The Flash. Sure, our Villain of the Week was still a guy bent on revenge, but at least Mark Mardon/Weather Wizard (Liam McIntyre of Spartacus fame) was very aggressive about getting that revenge, and it was centered on a character we cared about. Given how much I've been worried about Joe biting the dust for the past few episodes, you can imagine that I was sort of worried about Mardon's vigorous pursuit of Joe and how it might all end.
The nice thing about Mardon compared to the other metahumans is that his powers—which often define these characters far more than actual personalities, and did in Mardon's case—created a more opportunities for varied uses of those powers. Controlling the weather gave Mardon more options than just turning into a cloud of poisonous gas or teleporting here, there, and everywhere. Forming giant hailstones to pummel a guy to death? Cool. Creating a tiny thunderstorm over a car so as to blow it up with a bolt of lightning? Very cool. Summoning a tsunami to kill two people...well, it seem liked the maximum amount of overkill for a guy who had previously focused on finesse over showmanship, but the show needed Barry to run real fast again so he could travel back in time. I guess Maron was just very excited he was finally getting his revenge and let himself lose control a little bit. It happens?
It was also a little odd that Joe became as reckless as he did after Mardon's assault on police headquarters. I get that Joe understands the danger that Mardon poses far more than his colleagues given that they are still sort unaware of metahumans aside from the Flash and doesn't want to endanger them, but Joe's also not an idiot, so not saying, "Okay, people, that guy did some weird shit to the building and severely injured our boss; we need to be prepared to get this done." felt more like the plot bending Joe to fit its demands. It's something the show has generally avoided with Joe's motivations, so I'm willing to not dwell on it, but it still stood out a bit.
At this point, you're probably like, "Dammit, just talk about Cisco, already!" Given that I suspect that the show will ultimately undo large chunks, if not all, of the events in this episode, I'm not really freaking out of over Cisco's death. I still gasped at it, of course, unaware of the time travel that was to come at the end, because it was a damn good sequence that was very well-acted by Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavanagh. Upon seeing Wells, Valdes made sure that Cisco behaved as if he knew was going to die. The crying and the "I can help you" last ditch effort were really gut-wrenching stuff that, provided Cisco was going to stay dead, would've been a really intense, emotional way for that character to go out. As it will likely stand, it was just a really intense and emotional scene. Either way, I wasn't fully aware how attached I had become to Cisco. I like Cisco, a lot, but compared to Caitlin, the show hasn't developed him as much, so I didn't think I was very invested in him. Proved that I don't myself as well as I sometimes think, Flash.
Even if it had just been Valdes nailing it, the scene would've been great, but Cavanagh was bringing it, too, and so was the writing for Wells/Thawne. I really love that the show has gone to great lengths to make Wells/Thawne not your standard secretive supervillain with an evil plan. He is, and he has an evil plan, but he's also been stuck in the current timeline for 15 years. He's had to acclimate to a degree to survive, and I really believe that he loves Ghostbusters and Back to the Future. I do think that despite the fact that to him Cisco is already dead, that Wells/Thawne has come to care about the people at S.T.A.R. Labs and that he meant it when he said Cisco was like a son to him. He may still want to kill Barry Allen, but he doesn't want to (and can't, obviously) kill this Barry Allen, and that if he didn't have to kill Cisco just then, he wouldn't have. 
I thought Cavanagh really got at that tension between doing what he needed to do survive while acknowledging that, on some level, the mask of Harrison Wells often stopped being a mask sometimes. There's resignation and regret in Cavanagh's delivery that got to me almost as much Valdes barely keeping back Cisco's fear.
Meanwhile, in the worst part of the show, Barry and Iris were all over one another in front of their significant others, and it was painful to watch. I admit it's painful because I so very deeply do not care about this, and of the stuff for the show to undo, everything that happened regarding these love birds should not be undone. Watching Iris be all, "Oh, Linda's not right for you, Barry." is really already really tiring. Yes, we've all sometimes realize we wanted to be with people once they're not available to us, even while we're involved with someone else, but The Flash isn't writing this well at all since it never really done much to establish Eddie and Iris as a couple, or why they would want to be a couple. Without even emotional connections between the characters—I don't even need to actually feel invested in the relationship if there's at least that—it just comes off as romantic plotting for the sake of romantic plotting. At least Eddie called Iris out on hers and Barry's behaviors. 
The only interesting stuff to come out of it was Mason zeroing in on Harrison as a shady character. I do feel like the episode just sprang the whole "Where's Simon Stagg?" thing on us without any groundwork, and considering the show's appreciation of TV news reports and newspapers, it would've been easy to sneak in at least a mention of somewhere. As reasons to investigate Harrison go, however, it's as good as any. Of course, given the potential for time traveling shenanigans, your guess is as good as mine if we ever actually to get see what Mason has in store for the big Sunday edition. Also: They're waiting for the Sunday edition? Guess they're not worried about being scooped!

LEFT IN THE DUST
– In the comics, the Weather Wizard often has a wand, and that's what controls the weather around him. On The Flash, I just love the the fact that it looks like Cisco welded together a lightsaber and a sonic screwdriver as a means of counteracting Mardon's abilities.
– I liked how "Out of Time" was not at all subtle about when Mardon was about to strike. Rain out of nowhere over Joe's car and loud wind sounds in the apartment before Joe got sucked out a window were nice tip-offs for the audience, but not distracting in a way that a score might've been.
– Caitlin is a horrible double agent.
– "Being his fiancé makes him family, doctor." You tell it, The Flash.
– I'm taking a vacation next week so I will not be reviewing "Rogue Time." I am very sad about this because I've been looking forward to the episode all month, and after "Out of Time," I'm really looking forward to it. Stupid vacation! Anyway, TV.com's own MaryAnn Sleasman has kindly agreed to fill in for me, so you'll get her take on what will likely be a fun episode.

Season#1
Episode#16

Rogue Time

It was kind of inevitable. Last week's "Out of Time" was so insane and awesome that, even though we all knew the Barry-can-travel-through-time thing was coming, the revelation that his little trip to yesterday essentially undid all that delicious crazy with Wells and Cisco and Iris and Spartacus was a definite mood-killer. "Rogue Time" was like the second round of a game you started playing with a kid who threw a tantrum during the first round and demanded a redo.
Thankfully, the redo was a pretty sweet ride in itself.
But still, redo.
"Out of Time" left Cisco dead and Wells' alter ego essentially out in the open, and while I was initially bummed to see the game he's been playing with Barry and the others come to its inevitable end, once Barry literally turned back the clock, I found myself more annoyed with the backtracking. However, The Flash needed a way to bring Cisco back—without him, who would bestow all the meta-humans with names literally ripped from comic books?
And on that note, is this universe going to acknowledge Lisa Snart's "Golden Glider" past? I don't believe the name was uttered, but the gold-shooting gun was a nice nod and certainly less embarrassing than evil ice-skates and bedazzled bombs (IDK, it was the '70s; cocaine's a helluva drug?).
Either way, hello there, Jane Sterling errr I mean Peyton List.
So what exactly is the state of reality on The Flash following the double whammy of "Out of Time" and "Rogue Time?" Well, Iris and Barry get to go back to being the worst—although that's not to say they wouldn't have remained the worst even if the first timeline had stuck, because being borderline unwatchable in a painfully uninteresting storyline is just kind of their thing, you know? With no mortal peril and no big reveal that her dorky bestie is actually the superhero boyfriend of her dreams, Iris can return to blissfully batting her eyelashes at Eddie. No thanks to Barry, who completely missed the point about her choosing him the first time around and got all desperate-to-escape-the-friend-zone on us in a move that seemed uncharacteristically thoughtless for him. Clearly, The Flash reeeeeeally wants us to accept those two as an endgame couple.
As far as storylines we actually care about: CISCO LIVES! I was certainly getting a bit nervous when Wells lured him to the original scene of the crime and basically gave the exact same speech about seeing Cisco as a son that delivered back when he shanked the guy. After all, Cisco revealed Barry's identity to Captain Cold, and Barry is Wells' precious. So I started panicking, envisioning a big move on Wells' part that'd be justified by a need to "protect" Barry or whatever... which also would've been fine, aside from all the panicking and weeping that would've ensued. I love me some Cisco, I really do, but you can't just drop a prophecy like Harrison Wells promising that Barry's timeline-tampering would only lead to a bigger clusterf*ck than the original and then not do anything with it. I was waiting for the hot mess express to roll in right on time, but it appears to be running late. That means we get to spend the rest of the season on pins and needles waiting for it. Aren't you excited?
(Say yes.)
The impending disaster was visible on the horizon by the end of "Rogue Time." Snart knowing Barry's identity forced Barry to make a deal with that particular devil and his rogue entourage. Their begrudging understanding of one another opens up an interesting new story avenue—either for a truly dangerous successor once the Reverse Flash stuff is wrapped up, or for reluctant allies once the Reverse Flash stuff spirals out of control in the best possible way. After all, the Rogues have assisted the Flash in the comics, and usually for their own reasons or own distorted version of respect. Captain Cold might have a silly name, but his character is a complex foil to the Flash.
Meanwhile, Cisco gets to live and act all warm and fuzzy with Papa Wells in this timeline, but Barry has seen evidence that Wells isn't the benevolent genius he appears to be, which results in all sorts of possibilities for future Flash/Reverse Flash conflict. I want it. I want it now.
Once I got over my early disappointment in response toe The Flash's decision to wipe the slate clean following "Out of Time," "Rogue Time" revealed itself to be a worthy sequel. Even though it wasn't quite as bombastically packed with the stunning moments, the episode still managed to alter Barry's reality in a big way and, for now, a permanent way. Barry can't figure out how or why he managed to travel back in time, which means we aren't really any closer to the inevitable showdown in Baby Barry's living room that costs his mother her life. Time travel has long played a big role in the Flash mythology, but it's clear that the show isn't going to abuse the loophole. There aren't any take-backsies here just yet.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Womp womp, Mason. Womp womp.
– Lightning amnesia? Really?
– Last time I checked, having an engineer in the family was still pretty freaking impressive. What up, Cisco's family?
– Next week: MARK HAMILL. MY KING.
– Also next week: Your fearless regular reviewer returns! Noel was on vaycay this week, so I filled in for him. Thanks for playing with me!

Season#1
Episode#17

Tricksters

And here I thought I would just get to talk about how awesome it was to have Mark Hamill back as the Trickster and then call it a night!
"Tricksters" was a busy episode, but still a pretty fun one. At times, the episode's impulses of hamming it up and paying homage to the 1990 The Flash series clashed with Barry's concerns about Harrison being involved with Nora's murder and the FLASHbacks regarding the...origins, I guess, of "Harrison Wells," which ended up giving us a lot of tricksters in an episode with two already bearing the moniker. It made for an occasionally discordant episode, but it also had really solid pacing thanks to Andrew Kreisberg's script and Ralph Hemecker's direction (he also directed "The Man in the Yellow Suit") that the episode moved at a nice enough clip that I didn't mind the tonal mishmash too much.
The first half of "Tricksters" worked as really nice love letter (or extended fanservice, if you're feeling ungenerous) to this series's predecessor, right down to the Trickster's warehouse's shutter door having a similar painting on it from the episode "The Trickster."  However, it was a love letter if you only knew "Tricksters" was doing it. I loved all the sly nods to the earlier Flash series, fitting as Hamill originated the TV version of James Jesse on that series. Even Joe's line "Like Jesse James but twisted" is a paraphrased line from the '90s series! 
So I grooved on those little references, but they're also things that worked even if you didn't know that they were in-jokes, which is really how I like these sorts of bits to go. Too many overt references to the earlier series might've isolated viewers unaware of the history "Tricksters" was playing with, lessening everyone's fun. So the homages also functioned as nice bits of set design that told us what kind of psycho James Jesse was 20 years ago and gave gentle mocking of Hamill in a really embarrassing unitard that he wore with gusto back in the day.
If the nods to the old Flash weren't registering, then it's likely you only picked up on the Star Wars gag to explain why Jesse selected Axel (Devon Graye) to be his heir and the fun little The Silence of the Lambs riffs during Barry and Joe's first meeting with Jesse. Again, good in-jokes for those who will pick up on it—though I found the "I am your father" line a little too on the nose, personally, and I say that as a Star Wars fan—but still worked to give the episode both some real fun and some stylistic pleasures. When these sorts choices get made, it avoids a piling up of references for the sake of references and instead serves the episode.
Sad truth is that I've never really cared for Hamill's work in Star Wars, and the less said about Corvette Summer the better. After he put Star Wars behind him, however, he loosened up a lot. He's great as James Jesse in the 1991—it's an unself-consciously bonkers performance that laid the foundation for his voicing of the Joker in various animated projects for the next 20 years—and he's great as James Jesse in 2015. 
I think it's best to compare it to what Wentworth Miller is doing as Captain Cold. Miller loves to chew that scenery, and I've discussed how it feels like Snart is performing Cold as a villain in a way that ends up making Miller's performance seem like a performance. It's great and interesting to me, so that's not a dig at all. Hamill veers the other direction here, playing up the crazy and the venom over the "schtick stealer" in a way that is totally convincing for Jesse to be feeling that way—Hemecker's staging of Jesse in his cell really helped this along, too, between Hamill's blocking and the lighting choices—except that it was all just sound and fury to get everyone off his trail. It's a performance that you don't know is a performance, and that's very sly work from Hamill.
The ultimate plot of the two Tricksters—robbing a bunch of rich folks at a campaign gala—was a little underwhelming, but it also generally keeps The Flash's pattern that its villains don't have really huge ambitions. I guess it was just more underwhelming in the sense that it wasn't, well, flashier. Poisoning folks with champagne isn't visually interesting, so while the kinetic bracelet bomb was a nifty idea, I wanted something nuttier with two Tricksters at the helm there.
That leaves us with the episode's other tricksters, namely Eobard Thawne and, well, "Harrison Wells," I guess. Given the episode's emphasis on bait-and-switches, I understand why the show opted to have this reveal occur in this episode, but it still ended up feeling out of place and giving the episode perhaps a little too much to do.
As I skimmed the comments that you all left regarding "Rogue Time," I noticed that a few of you felt like Barry turned a too quickly on Harrison, and I couldn't agree more. This episode doubled down on it in ways that really demonstrated that giving Barry's suspicions one more week to develop would've benefitted everyone, including the FLASHbacks we got here. Don't get me wrong: I love a Barry and Joe Talk as much as anyone and I like the idea of Barry lying to Harrison, but I wasn't buying it just yet. And, like I've alluded to, the comparative heaviness of it just didn't gel with the rest of the episode's emphasis on chaotic but silly violence.
I acknowledge it's a delicate balancing act as we're about to enter the final run of episodes of the season, and the The Flash is a show that loves giving its audience lots more information than its characters have to ratchet up the tension, so they want to get us all amped up about what's to come. This is just a bit of corner-cutting, albeit an understandable one given the reveal/confirmation we got in "Out of Time."
All that being said, I can and did still enjoy the sheer WTF-ery of the early parts of the FLASHback—loved the slo-mo fight sequence a ton—as Reverse-Flashed revealed himself to be...Matt Letscher?! The dad from The Carrie Diaries?! Billy Chambers from Scandal?! It was a very fun wrinkle in how the show has presented Harrison/Eobard, and the whole body-snatching/Lost Ark body-melting thing was cool and gross AND explained the difference in the blood at the crime scene! I guess the question now is...do I call him Harrison, "Harrison," Eobard, or some amalgamation? Harobard? Eobarrison? I sort of like Eobarrison.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Oh, right, Mason! So, after THE TV NEWS made a big deal about Mason being missing last week, Iris tried to get Eddie to look into it, and Eddie's all, "Eh. He's a reporter, he's cool on his own." It was all very weird, but made up for by the fact that Eddie does not appear totally on board with the whole "We're lying to Iris to protect her" stuff. That alone gets him some props from me. Also: Eddie knows Barry's the Flash and I wish that scene ran a bit longer so Eddie could ask, "Lightning psychosis, huh?"
– "I can smell them in your pocket."
– "My Mona Lisa. My Breaking Bad Season 5. They gave me cable in prison so I would stop killing the guards." Really, Jesse? Season 5? C'mon. Season 3 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.
– That speech from Eobarrison about Barry channeling the speed-force was great, and nicely edited together. I wish that speech has been what sent Barry over the edge on suspecting Harrison because that would've made a lot more sense.
– Nope, don't like Eobarrison. Never mind.
– Many, many thanks to MaryAnn for filling in for me last week! Given her undying love for Mark Hamill, she's probably a little annoyed I didn't take this week off instead! For this reason, I offered MaryAnn some space to share her thoughts on this episode: 
Oh. My. Glob. 
Mark Hamill was fabulous, of course, and we rewatched the "I am your father" scene at least three times tonight because it was just so cheeky and silly and despite the gravitas that dominated the rest of the episode, at no point did "Tricksters" feel particularly "dark."
You know, except for the part where Eobard Thawne totally murdered the real Harrison Wells and his wife, stole his body or DNA or something crazy and comic-booky, and got to work launching STAR labs a few years early in order to get home or kill Barry or probably both and probably Cisco too. 
It was such an intense episode that I momentarily forgot to be sad because I would have liked to see more of Mark Hamill playing a lunatic and less of "phasing" being a thing because that particular speedster power has always been kind of dumb to me. I loved almost everything about this episode though, and I'm sad that we're going on hiatus AGAIN and I'm sad that my CW channel isn't HD because...I don't know why. It's 2015 and I live in a moderately sized city. Gimme freaking CW in HD, dammit.
– As MaryAnn mentioned, The Flash is taking a quick breather next week, but after that it should run uninterrupted to the finale! I'll see you all back here on April 14 for the homestretch of Season 1!

Season#1
Episode#18

All Star Team Up

There wasn't anything particularly bad about "All Star Team Up," but apart from Cisco's memories of the timeline where he died, there wasn't anything particularly noteworthy about it, either. It was an episode whose central conflict—grappling with feelings of betrayal—appeared in each of its plots, but only one of them had any real resonance, and it required the help of two guest stars from Arrow to achieve that resonance. Without them, who was Barry going to talk about his S.T.A.R. Labs troubles?
So the feeling of betrayal was the plot engine; however, it wasn't really the point of the episode. Instead, it was merely a thematic peg, while the point of the episode was to get us to the end tag so that Caitlin and Cisco could board the Harrison Wells is the Reverse-Flash Express. Now, The Flash can begin properly chugging along as it heads into the last five episodes of the season. And if its cousin Arrow has been any indication, things are about to get pretty intense, so the show needed to make sure to move everyone into their right place.
Putting aside the "Barry turned on Harrison a touch too quickly" aspect of "All Star Team Up," it made sense to bring Felicity around to give Barry a sounding board for his anxiety about Harrison and whether or not to share his suspicions with Caitlin and Cisco. Joe was against it. Eddie was already unhappy happy about the whole not telling Iris thing (oh, I'll get to that). Iris is in the dark, so she was out as an option. And that left Barry with no one to sort out his feelings with. Felicity was a good choice, though. And I'm glad The Flash neatly sidestepped any real Barry/Felicity hemming and hawing because, much like Cisco and bees, ain't nobody got time for that. Instead, the show focused on Felicity just being there for Barry, a nice sign that their friendship has reached a point where she can that without Barry reading into it. Plus, you know, Ray's really tall.
Despite Joe's insistence and concerns—which were valid but also apparently pretty easy to refute after a self-sacrificing bee sting—his back-and-forth with Barry about bringing Cisco and Caitlin into the loop was a discussion worth having. Cisco and Caitlin could certainly help Barry and Joe with their investigation, and it's not like Cisco wasn't aware that Joe once suspected Harrison anyway. That thorny issue of how the two S.T.A.R. employees would feel about it, however, and who they would ultimately be loyal to, was the sticking point. Could they betray their mentor, their boss, the man who's done a great deal for each one of them as individuals? It's an interesting tension that I wish The Flash had developed a bit more, particularly between Joe and Barry, but the show is currently more set on moving things along.
The ramifications of Barry and Joe coming clean will likely play out next week, as will Cisco's memories of the previous timeline. I know some of you were wondering about what, if any, timeline-related problems The Flash intended to address after Harrison got all paternalistic about not mucking with the timeline, but I figured the show was just going to address that at some point down the road, with the effects only becoming apparent as the season progressed. Cisco's memories of it are one example, but might the incorrect building schematics be another? It's probably just bad record-keeping since that building existed before the timeline alteration, but it made me wonder all the same. On the upside, we're not going to have to deal with Cisco staying mum and being weird about his splintered memories, and I'm thankful for that.
What I'm less thankful for is how The Flash is handling Eddie and Iris. Yes, they've been poorly handled all season, but "All Star Team Up" pretty much took the cake in that regard. I've never disliked either of them as much as many of you do, and I think the show was very smart to have Eddie not be thrilled with the "We're lying to Iris to protect her!" thing; it gave Iris an advocate in this secretive malarkey, albeit one who clearly sucks at being an advocate and keeping secrets. However, I appreciated that Eddie got to stand up to Joe about when his voice would start to matter.
Eddie's not comfortable betraying Iris's trust, and that's something the show should've explored a bit. Sadly, in its drive to move the plot along very quickly, The Flash sacrificed any sort of emotional arc for Iris and Eddie and went directly to, "Let's have Iris be superpassive-aggressive about Eddie hiding something while dining at a fancy restaurant with her best friend and a goofy billionaire." It'd be one thing if this was something that had built up over at least an additional episode, but it wasn't. The writers elected to have some time pass between episodes so Iris could skip to the ultimatum option without passing Go and collecting $200.
It's not great for Iris as a character, since she's the only one who's not in the know at this point—something the show decided to have a little joke about this week—and as such, she gets to come off as useless to the show, as little more than a point in a romantic triangle, or, in this case, just the absolute worst and least understanding person in the world. "All Star Team Up" conducted a very limited discussion of what Iris expects from a relationship and what she needs from a partner, but it also didn't convey that Iris cares about what Eddie expects and needs, either personally and professionally, and regardless of whether his expectations and needs are being founded on a great big lie right.
This makes Iris look ridiculously immature—although I have no idea whether that's slightly better or slightly worse than the patronizing approach Joe and Barry have taken to her safety. When the truth comes out, I'm not sure if it'll make sense for Iris to trust anyone. If she doesn't pack up her things and move to another city sinc everyone in her life is lying to her, I'll only be more convinced that The Flash's writers never really settled on a baseline for Iris as a character beyond the love triangle/being the worst stuff. But then again, Joe and Barry might want that. You know, for her safety.
Oh, right, Brie Larvin (Emily Kinney), the Bug-Eyed Bandit. She was... yeah, a waste of time. Non-metahuman, so that was a change of pace, but she still wanted revenge for having her life's work shut down by folks at Mercury Labs, so she built a big swarm of robotic honeybees, or DRONES (see, there are layers to this) to kill a bunch of people. Not so much a character as a gimmick and some bee puns ("You going to open the window, or should I buzz myself in?"; "You think you understand the sting of betrayal?"), Larvin wasn't as bad as the Rainbow Raider from the big crossover episode, but she was pretty darn close in that she was a real afterthought to "All Star Team Up." There was one cool bit with bees coming out of a guy's mouth—it was all very The Wicker Man or Candyman, take your pick (I'd go with Candyman, but I love that movie so much)—but that was about it. I mean, a hacking duel to control robotic bees was the kind of kooky fun The Flashenjoys, but it was also really boring.
Like Felicity stopping by so Barry could bring in Caitlin and Cisco, Brie Larvin's revenge plot allowed Christina McGee (Amanda Pays) to show up again and mention that she and Harrison were once very close in Starling City, but then after Tess Morgan died, he became a totally different person. I wonder where Team Flash will be headed next week to further their investigation of Harrison. They're certainly not going to question what they should do about Brie probably/most likely knowing Barry's secret identity.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– The opening bit with Barry, Joe, and Eddie was easily my favorite part of the whole episode. It was just so fun.
– I didn't really discuss Felicity and Ray as their appearance in this episode related more to Arrow, but since this a crossover wasn't a big "event" like the one from earlier in the season, I feel okay with that. However, I did like that Barry's mind is so consumed with Harrison stuff that "Oliver's thinking about joining the League of Assassins" didn't even make him blink. I will say this was probably the most I've enjoyed Felicity in a long while, and it's pretty clear that she belongs on The Flash far more than she belongs on Arrow at this point.
– "So, I'm just curious, have you guys not heard of me, or what?"
– "God, there's two of them."
– "That was weird." "Why didn't we get invited to dinner?" Awwwwww.
– "Or are you here to blackmail me for another tachyon prototype?" "Do you have one?" HA. Barry's quick glance at Harrison made it even funnier.

Season#1
Episode#19

Who Is Harrison Wells?

Last week's episode was mostly about getting Caitlin and Cisco on the same page as Barry and Joe, as well as setting up this week's little visit to Starling City. There was a thematic unity to "All Star Team Up," but it was still just an all-around dull episode since it never really figured out how to turn that thematic unity into something that was dramatically interesting or that granted any energy to the villain-of-the-week plot. Brie Larvin ended up feeling like an afterthought, Iris was written into a ridiculous and horrible corner, and Barry's anxiety about Cisco and Caitlin worked as well as it could have given the circumstances.
This week, The Flash managed to put out an episode that more or less mirrored last week's episode but actually delivered a little fun. Each of the plots in "Who Is Harrison Wells?" dealt with lies and the identities we craft around those lies, and we got a villain of the week who, while still lacking much of a personality, created enough problems and hijinks for that recurring complaint of mine to not weigh down the episode. Yes, it was still about getting this quintet—well, a quartet that occasionally features Eddie—all on the same page, except this time around, the characters were catching up to the audience, instead of to each other.
I know that villains of the week aren't always well-received, but so much of their value really hinges on how they're used, not to mention the guest performers and the special effects. The fun of Hannibal Bates a.k.a. Everyman was in the special effects work—even though it was fine and perfectly Mystique-y from the X-Men films—or even in that he seemed very into robbing banks. He was fun because he shape-shifted and took the form of our regular characters, meaning the actors got to perform as Hannibal Bates playing their usual characters. It didn't get as weird and bizarre as I would've personally liked, but I thoroughly enjoyed Grant Gustin playing Hannibal Bates barely pretending to be Barry Allen. Gustin went for a slower delivery and added a rasp to his voice that should've really tipped off anyone around that it wasn't actually Barry. And if that wasn't enough, putting the moves on Caitlin should have made it easy. Even the "Yes. Her" was pretty hilarious since it allowed Gustin to play confused and annoyed since Iris's arrival interfered with Hannibal's kissing of Caitlin, and it also probably gave SnowBarry 'shippers a subtextual voice on screen for once. (The SnowBarry 'shippers also probably appreciated Caitlin leaning into that second kiss as well.)
Hannibal's abilities allowed for other good bits, too—I loved his transformation into a little girl in the backseat of Iris's car and the fight at the airport where "Iris" got to punch Barry—but his shapeshifting and his attempts to pass as other people created a nice glue that held the episode together. It dealt with some characters literally unearthing the body of a person whose identity had been stolen while other characters grappled with the lies they tell others, thus assuming an identity of deception, as it were. Hannibal can't even remember what he looks like now, so he's even been deceiving himself. When villains of the week can be used in this way, and in a way that adds to the episode as opposed to just being an adornment like Brie Larvin was last week, the episodic formula does its job of creating a self-contained and internally satisfying hour that doesn't rely on the serialized elements for a sense of payoff. If the formulaic part of the episode is chugging along, then it's a fair bet the rest of the episode is as well.
This identity-of-deception concept is a nice one for both The Flash and the Arrowcharacters—Quentin and Laurel—who swung by Central City this week. As the characters close in on Eobarrison (I'm trying the name again after I decided to ditch it after two uses in "Tricksters"), not only do they have to pretend that Eobarrison is actually Harrison Wells, they have to face what that means for them. Barry already experienced that when Joe tried to explain his suspicions about Eobarrison and Barry went through the, "But Harrison Wells is a mentor! He's helped me so much! He's a brilliant scientist! And now I have to lie to him?" spiel. Even Cisco sort of did this after he and Joe found the blood in Barry's old house.
It was Caitlin's turn this week, and I found her concerns that everything she's done professionally since joining S.T.A.R. to be the most resonant of the three's reactions to the situation. Caitlin's life, even when Ronnie wasn't a man who could shoot fireballs from his hands, seemed pretty defined by her work. Finding out that everything she did after the particle accelerator exploded was not only in service of a time-traveling supervillain, but also that everything she did before it was too, would be enough to make someone with Caitlin's sense of self go a little haywire. Like Barry, Caitlin also had to reconcile the fact that Eobarrison had helped her, even in times when, in hindsight, it didn't necessarily make sense for him to do so. Unlike Dr. McGee at Mercury Labs, this Harrison Wells is the only one she knows. He's a Harrison Wells who enjoys Ghostbustersand swore to do whatever he could to help Ronnie... and then did it! You can hardly blame her for wanting some hard evidence before she really got on board with this "Harrison Wells is the Reverse-Flash" deal.
Eddie, meanwhile, was being way too good of a sport about everything. I really appreciated his faith in Barry's ability to clear his name in the shooting of those officers. He's calm, he's collected, and he sees the angles that must played to keep him from looking less guilty than a really damning video already made him look. It made him a nice foil for the much more emotional Barry, and I liked how that brief scene with them outside the police station made sure to tie Eddie's predicament back to Barry's guilt over his dad's imprisonment. While The Flash is quick to always remind us that Barry is looking for his mother's murderer so as to clear his dad's name, seeing that manifest in character moments is always better than a quick bit of exposition delivered just in case, for some reason, some new viewer is wandering in at Episode 19.
More important was that Eddie decided to come partially clean to Iris about why he's been so distant lately. Yeah, he got in a passive-aggressive jab of his own this week, but also quickly apologized for it, too. Iris... not so much with the apologizing for anything. Anyway, Eddie told her that he's been working with the Flash, and that is the truth. It was not all of the truth, but it was enough of the truth to ease Eddie's conscience and to get Iris to stop being really horrible. Either way, it's going to come back and bite him and everyone else in the ass, but at least it's something. Now, maybe, Iris can go back to work?
Quentin Lance is always the last man on Arrow to know anything, and he's been really ticked off about that for a few weeks now. He's been an unwilling recipient of the whole, "We can't tell him because it might put him danger... albeit just medical danger because of his bum ticker, but danger nonetheless" mentality that serves as nice enough a parallel for the whole "We can't tell Iris anything because she'll be in danger!" thread that's been part of The Flash since the start of the show. Quentin's anger has been entirely justified, and Iris's will be, too, once she learns the truth about everything that everyone has been keeping from her.
What's fascinating about the pairing of Joe and Quentin is that Joe got to see the effects of lie-telling and secret-keeping, and he didn't really seem to give a damn. Here was a man in front of him who had suffered through the same thing that Joe was putting his own daughter through; Joe saw the strained relationship between Quentin and Laurel, and then doubled down on the approach to keep Quentin quiet about the body they found. And he did it without blinking. The man is in for a harsh reality check once Iris learns the truth.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– In other Arrow-related stuff, Cisco made Laurel her own canary cry collar! Very nice of him. Cisco's whole response to meeting Laurel was pretty precious, though, and I appreciated that all he wanted in return was a picture of Laurel in costume, posing next to him like it was a cosplay photo op.
– Yes, Hannibal Bates is a reference to Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates. See, the Everyman in the comics can only change his appearance after he eats a part of someone's body. While this would've made for an excellent bit of programming synergy with Liv Moore's ability to assume the skills and personalities of the people whose brains she consumes on iZombie, it was for the best that The Flash nixed that particular aspect of the character for its take.
– Best part of the episode? Eddie and Barry on the teeny-tiny couch.
– "Ha! I knew it! Never mind."
– I really think Harrison wanted to tase Iris.
– "For real? Why did you slap me?!"
– They found Eobarrison's future room! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! 

Season#1
Episode#20

The Trap

Poor Everyman. Dude just wanted to rob some banks and have fun pretending to be other people. A few days after getting beaten up by a guy who runs really fast, he gets shot and killed after agreeing to pose as a time-traveling supervillain to foil a trap that had been set by the guy who just beat the snot out of him. Really, it kind of sucks to be Everyman.
Then again, who doesn't it suck to be right now? Cisco and Caitlin are probably officially out of jobs. Barry didn't get the confession he wanted. Eddie got kidnapped just as he was proposing marriage to Iris. Joe had to be high-and-mighty about not wanting Iris to marry Eddie because he knew what's best for her. Iris still had no clue what's going on, and her boyfriend got captured by a supervillain. Even Captain Singh was cranky because of wedding planning, but at least his fiancé was okay!
So, I guess the only person who it currently does not suck to be right now is Eobard Thawne.
Eobard got to fool everyone one last time with his Everyman switcheroo, and he didn't have to pretend to be Harrison Wells any longer, or at least the version of Harrison Wells he was pretending to be. He can fully embrace his identity again, and there's something freeing about it. Certainly there was something freeing about it for Tom Cavanagh. The actor worked a delicate balancing act for much of the season, playing mentor to our protagonists while adding enough double-meaning in his delivery to give the audience something to respond to. Cavanagh and the writers have ramped up menace factor a bit for "Harrison" as the audience and Barry's comrades have learned more about him, and that's been a good bit of fun. It's wise that everything is pretty much out in the open now, though. Any longer and Cavanagh would've just started turning to the camera and winking whenever he said something. 
Every time that Cavanagh has gotten to drop the Harrison act and just be Eobard Thawne—especially after the audience was let in on the secret—he's made sure there's just enough of a difference between Harrison Wells as played by Eobard Thawne and Eobard Thawne as himself. There's a bit of a vocal shift, a slight change of cadence in the delivery, and it's always been very nice. "The Trap" gave Cavanagh a chance to stretch himself further, however. You can see and hear Harrison Wells falling away, and Eobard Thawne coming forward, stretching his legs and cracking his neck. There's a sudden looseness to Cavangah's performance, a chance to really dig in and be the villain. So his "Here's how I tricked you!" explanation was really terrific, his casualness with Eddie in his new hideout gave a sense just how confident Eobard was, and his FLASHback monologue was pretty much distilled supervillain speechifying. It was all very good.
What I think I liked best about all of this, however, was confirmation of the notion that Eobard has truly come to care about the people he's worked with, including Barry. The show has played with this idea over the course of the season, from him discussing movies with the team (I knew he liked Ghostbusters!) to referring to Cisco as the closest thing he's known to having a son. Of course, he's also a murderer and has been steering these people to his own ends for a while now, so he's not actually a good guy. He's holding up his "Nothing is forgiven" line that he said to a comatose Barry almost a year ago, even if he's come to feel somewhat attached to those around him. There's a humanity to Eobard Thawne, one that I don't think is a ruse, but not enough to make him give up his quest to kill the Flash and get back to his own time.
While I really grooved on all the Eobard stuff, the rest of "The Trap" was mostly the episode building itself up to get to the last 10 minutes or so. The past few episodes have understandably focused on making sure almost all of the show's characters are looped in on knowledge that the audience already had, and "The Trap" was the final step in that journey. We got stuff in the time vault that was fun, with little bits to file away for later exploration, like Iris's name in 2024, that Barry built Gideon in the future, and that the Flash was the founding member of something (it's the Justice League). Cisco pointed out all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that they will now have to grapple with, and I'm sure chunks of all of this will come into play as the show progresses.
Mostly, though, it was lucid memory diving into Cisco's alternate timeline recollections. It was still all about relaying information the audience already knew to the characters, though the episode did what it could to keep all this interesting. I appreciated the stylistic choices they made for Cisco's memories to set it apart from an actual physical space, particularly the use of first person perspective. I even wish they had just stuck with that perspective the entire time instead of allowing us to see Cisco to really make it as dream-like as possible. 
None of this made the majority of "The Trap" all that exciting—the burning building felt very much like an "Oops! The audience may be bored! Quick! A generic action sequence with 'stakes' by having Singh's fiancé involved!" moment—but it was all necessary for the season to move into its endgame and to plant whatever seeds it wanted to plant for its future. That the episode managed to wrap itself up with dessert of a final act made all the narrative vegetables we had to get through relatively worth it.
I do want to talk about Eddie and Joe for a moment, though. If you didn't get to see the "Let's Talk" post for this episode, I made a comment about Eddie having horrible timing considering everything else that was going on, and that he just needed to slow down and let his friends catch the Reverse-Flash before doing anything drastic regarding Iris. I got a small kick out of the show acknowledging that Eddie was aware he really needed better timing on all this, but that he was going to do it anyway. Because, really, why not? He's been told what to do by everyone all season, so a little "I'm going to do it now!" attitude, frankly, felt deserved. That he asked Eobard if this was all about him really cracked me up, though, and sort of fit with his attitude in this episode.
Oddly, as my appreciation for Eddie as a character has increased, my appreciation for Joe has decreased. As the leader of the "Iris mustn't know anything!" brigade, Joe's become a little bit intolerable. This week, Joe became more than a little bit intolerable due to his reasons for refusing to give his blessing to Eddie's marriage proposal. I totally got where he's coming from regarding not wanting Iris to be in an unhappy relationship, but he made her sound like she wouldn't have the force of will to get herself out of said relationship. Just let her make her own decisions and mistakes, okay, Joe? You're really killing me with all this super-protective fathering. If the show had done anything to tie Joe's mentality to the gone Mother West, there'd at least be a layer of complexity to all this, but it hasn't so there's not. Of course, Joe did things in this episode like call Barry his son in the FLASHback and giggled at Cisco's comment about his missing shirt—"I thought the dryer ate it!"—and I remember why I liked Joe in the first place. It doesn't balance out my frustrations, but it helped a little bit.

LEFT IN THE DUST
– Liked the Everyman switch. Hated the "he has surveillance cameras" everywhere thing. 
– I really wish Arrow and The Flash (and iZombie for that matter) weren't all filmed in the same city. The Flash's hospital is the exact same one they use for Arrow, down to the friggin' hallway.
– I've never had any problems with how Candice Patton played Iris. It's always been the writing that's really been the problem, and I feel like that was really demonstrated during the FLASHback where Iris talks to a comatose Barry. Patton nailed that scene for me, and I liked the writing for it, too. Imagine what Patton could do if the writing for her character was actually good.
– "'Iris Thawne.' Sounds pretty good, huh?" "I have a feeling she’ll want to hyphenate."
– Kaitlin has done a ranking of the superhero shows that are airing right now/that haven't been cancelled. It's a solid list, though I would probably switch around her no. 3 and her no. 1, and nos. 5 and 6 might as well be ties at this point because, yeesh, both are currently pretty crummy.