Limerick Review: The Flash S1E23, Fast Enough

Thawne, interrogated, is calm,
But drops an offer like a bomb:
If he won't be harried,
Then he'll permit Barry
To go back and rescue his Mom.

The choice here is hard to assess,
And Barry takes a brief recess
To ask for advice
Whether to pay the price,
And, at great length, decides to say yes.

He's shot back in time like a spring,
And when the time comes for a swing,
He comforts and cries
With his mom while she dies,
But chooses not to change anything.

Returned before Wells could get gone,
Barry fights his escape with fists drawn.
And to turn the tide,
Eddie commits suicide
To erase his descendant, Thawne.

A resultant black hole starts its clanging,
And without a moment's haranguing,
Barry runs 'round,
Trying to shut it down,
And 'til next season, we're left hanging.

The series has really progressed,
And during the time of its rest,
It will be missed.
But aside from one twist,
This wasn't the show at its best.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E22, Rogue Air

So our heroes find Wells' track,
But he runs when they come to attack.
Wells remains un-caught,
But it wasn't for naught,
'Cause they manage to get Eddie back.

But Wells' plans aren't saved for later,
And he might turn the lab to a crater,
And "meta"s under key
Will be doomed if he
Re-starts the accelerator.

Although Barry never forgave them,
He still won't let Wells autoclave them.
And though it's not smart,
He even hires Snart
In one last-ditch effort to save them.

So he gets them all out, perforce,
But it turns into a Trojan Horse.
They all get in a scrape,
The rogues make their escape,
And it all goes to crap, 'cause of course.

And there's time for one more mad dash,
With a massive blowout, team-up clash
As Firestorm and Arrow
Both jump on the barrow
To beat up Wells, the Reverse-Flash.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E21, Grodd Lives

Iris finds she's the newcomer
To knowing 'bout Flash. That's a bummer,
So she doesn't tarry
In tracking down Barry.
She confronts him for keeping it from her.

A new rogue, who's dour and unsmiling,
Runs about in milit'ry styling.
Flash takes him to task,
But when they unmask,
It turns out to be General Eiling.

But the Eiling facade is for show,
And the real puppeteer dwells below.
The team goes in madly,
But that goes quite badly,
Wells has Eddie, and Grodd now has Joe.

Barry finds that it's quite a strain
To fight one with a psychic brain.
Though it's not well played,
With Iris' aid,
He defeats Grodd by way of a train.

It's easy enough to be snide,
And the CGI's fun to deride,
But really, whether Grodd
Made you jeer or applaud,
I just love the fact they even tried.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E20, The Trap

Our heroes found Wells' little shrine,
And a plan they soon start to design.
And through science intel,
They find out that Wells
Killed Cisco in another timeline.

From these memories Cisco repressed,
They plan for Barry's dad's egress.
They set traps and wait,
Using Cisco as bait,
And try to get Wells to confess.

Things go south, and Joe shoots Wells dead,
But turns out they've all been misled.
The newly-dead laddie's
The shapeshifting baddy,
And Wells is still one step ahead.

And now that he's set them unsteady,
Wells begins to get himself ready.
He's already displaced
To his underground base,
And made a prisoner of Eddie.

The show is swiftly making tracks,
And gives us no time to relax.
After weeks of cases,
We're off to the races,
Looking forward to the climax.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E19, Who Is Harrison Wells?

With the prof betraying no tells,
And the info here ringing no bells,
Cisco and Joe
Hit the road and go
To Starling City to get dirt on Wells.

They find a body, and are wary.
They must bring this info back to Barry.
But not quite before
Cisco works to restore
And improve a sonic for Canary.

Back home, Flash must be even swifter.
There's a well-disguised, superpowered drifter.
And before they're ready,
Both Barry and Eddie
Must battle a skillful shapeshifter.

This baddie's got serious chops,
And Barry's first plan rather flops.
And while they're in a tizzy,
The shapeshifter's busy
Framing Eddie for shooting two cops.

But the shapeshifter's cover gets blown,
And the real truth about Wells gets shown,
But it's just so much grinding,
Because they're just finding
Out things viewers'd already known.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E18, All Star Team Up

Central City suddenly sees
Lots of bee-sting deaths causing unease,
Which opens the door
For hijinks galore,
And SO MANY jokes about bees.

Felicity drops by en route,
Bringing Ray and his super suit.
And I'm perfectly hip
That it's not everyone's ship,
But Raylicity is so cute.

No matter how dire the threat,
Our heroes don't just mope and fret.
In fact, I'd agree
That this might just "bee"
The funniest episode yet.

Once the goods and bads have their clash,
And the robot bees got soundly thrashed,
Iris throws a fit,
And threatens to split
If Eddie won't talk 'bout The Flash.

Barry conquers his inhibitions,
And makes his most dreaded admissions.
He calls up his friends,
And fin'lly contends
With his Harrison Wells suspicions.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E17, Tricksters

From some antique creative figment
Comes a new Trickster, just as malignant.
He acts without pity
And holds hostage the city,
But the O.G. Trickster seems indignant.

He says the kid stole his swan song,
But turns out he was steering us wrong.
The new one, though lesser,
Frees his predecessor.
Seems they were in league all along.

A fight with The Flash is soon blazing
Whose cleverness merits some praising,
But mostly of note
For the part they devote
To Barry's first real shot at phasing.

Afterwards, Barry finally tells
Eddie his ID and compels
Him to help out
To make it come about
That Iris stays away from Wells.

With this ep, the show neatly doffs
Its stumbling blocks, shudders, and coughs,
And I can't help but feel
This is the ideal
Of balancing arcs with one-offs.

SPOILERS

The episode's biggest surprise
Is the story the flashbacks comprise.
Despite what's been said,
The real Wells is dead,
And this one is just Thawne in disguise.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E16, Rogue Time

To keep a tidal wave at bay,
Barry ran 'til his legs gave way,
Running so fast
That he went to the past,
Albeit by only one day.

Though he's warned the tiniest ping
Can alter the pendulum's swing,
We all know he'll stave
Off the huge tidal wave,
And, in doing so, change everything.

And with this new temporal dawn,
Iris' love is now gone,
Captain Singh survived
Cisco's still alive
And Captain Cold's a mafia Don.

As always, the show simply pantses
Itself when it tries at romances.
Barry's in a daze,
Acts in stupid ways,
And nearly dashes all his chances.

The baddies have Cisco in hold,
Making guns that shoot heat, fire, and gold.
But through pain and doubt,
He soon gets himself out,
Though Flash has to bargain with Cold.

The romantic strife tends to smother
Its vastly superior other.
But though it lacks style,
The ep's still worthwhile
For the scenes with Cisco and his brother.

SPOILERS

Mason Bridge is about to arrive
At the truth about how Wells connives,
But before that gets out,
Reverse-Flash comes about,
Kills him and destroys his hard drive.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E15, Out Of Time

A lot happens in this episode, so I am actually going to lay down a mild SPOILER WARNING for this whole recap, with extra-spoilery stuff marked off at the end.

Weather Wizard enters the show,
Avenging the death of his bro,
And finds out a name:
Det. West is to blame,
So he really has it out for Joe.

Barry and Iris have their tells
That set off their partners' alarm bells.
Meanwhile there's fretting,
And everyone's getting
Suspicious of Harrison Wells.

Even as the truth starts to dawn,
The end seems already foregone.
So get out your feels
As Harris reveals
He really is Eobard Thawne.

He reveals he's not from where he's at,
And he's free of the wheelchair he sat.
Cisco gets wise
And sees through the disguise,
But Harris swiftly takes care of that.

Weather Wizard so alters the clime
That a tidal wave's all set and primed.
And to make it re-route,
Good old Barry runs out
Running so fast, he travels through time.

EXTRA SPOILERY SECTION

So Cisco was picked as the one
To die in a twist meant to stun.
So before we dismiss:
I have issues with this,
But the scene was certainly well done.

One more thing: I was a fan
That when the Chief's hurt for a span,
During his E.R. stay,
His worried fiancee
Just happened to be a man.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E8, Valediction

With theatre-goers en masse

Killed off before much time can pass,

The truth will soon out,

But Sousa the scout

Gets dosed with the angry gas.

Howard shows up, fashion'bly late,

To set the record vaguely straight,

And to prove he's an ace,

He helps out with the case,

And offers himself up as bait

But he falls into the baddies' snare,

And gets hypnotized at their lair.

Things start getting grim

As they hypnotize him

Into almost gassing Times Square.

But Peggy to action is spurred,

And the evil plot is deterred.

And she beats the toughs,

Not through fisticuffs,

But simply through well-applied words.

Throughout the tale we see conclude,

It kept us consistently glued.

And that had better please,

'Cause from the ending tease,

It looks like it's getting renewed.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E7, Snafu

Now, Peggy's got reason to frown,
As her own friends take her downtown,
They press and they press
To get her to confess.
But she ends up dressing them down.

Jarvis comes, a story to tell,
And to get Carter out of her cell,
He goes off-book
To get her off the hook,
But it only lasts for a spell.

They quickly find the real mole,
And try to suss out what he stole,
But that's blown asunder
When the chief falls under
The doctor's hypnotic control.

But the enemy's very precise,
And give our heroes the slip twice,
There's happy delusion,
And widespread confusion,
And one heroic sacrifice.

The villains have one last hurrah,
That Kingsman has made a bit blah,
And their final jest
Turns out to be to test
A gas bomb in a cinema.

As we start to wrap up every thread,
And the villains turn out to be Red,
To solve all our queries,
It seems that the series
At last is coming to a head.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E14, Fallout

Now the nuclear man has blown,
The atomic gauntlet has been thrown.
And explosive events
Get the constituents
Back to bodies of their very own.

But this event proves too beguiling
For one man with milit'ry styling.
And this great dissension
Has drawn the attention
Of the villainous General Eiling.

Meanwhile, something has Barry graveled,
As one case starts to be unraveled,
And though it seems queer,
It quickly becomes clear
That Barry's already time-traveled.

Stein soon gets caught in the snare,
Though Wells betrayed him, to be fair.
But it's all for nought,
As the Flash takes his shot,
Beats Eiling, and rescues the pair.

The emotional beats get due deference,
Though action is this ep's clear preference.
We get the side case,
And somehow there's still space
For a slightly odd Game of Thrones reference.

SPOILERS

Comic book fans will be awed
At this episode's final nod,
As Wells in long johns
Tells Eiling to come on, And basically feeds him to Grodd.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E6, A Sin To Err

Carter and Jarvis get the names
Of several suspected dames
Who might have stolen the spec
To a bunch of Starktech,
So they have to find Howard's old flames.

While Carter takes her time to think,
The S.S.R. search for a link.
And none of them knows
He's right under their nose
And it's the creepy Russian shrink.

Then, after a witness confessed,
And they match a birthmark she possessed,
They think Carter's the spy,
So it all goes awry,
And they place Peggy under arrest.

While the roommate B-plot is fun,
Peg spends most of her time on the run,
But, since at end-of-day
She's captured anyway,
There's not much achieved when it's done.

And yet, let it be understood,
The ep does no less than it should.
What it's really about
Is to leave us no doubt
That Carter is just that damn good.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E13, The Nuclear Man

While Barry and co. look around
For where Firestorm's gone to ground,
Cisco and Joe
Review what they know
About where the Reverse-Flash is bound.

Now, Barry is set to begin
Dating Linda, to Iris' chagrin.
And though by no means
Are these the best scenes,
They're not as painful as they could have been.

But romance is placed under strain
As duty pulls back on the rein.
Firestorm comes to light,
And then he and Flash fight
For reasons the show won't explain.

The team find a fix to deter
Firestorm from going nuclear.
And we'll find out next week
If that small techno-tweak
Stops more damage than it might incur.

Overall, the ep deftly eludes
Soap-operaesque tantrums or moods.
People don't hurl insults,
They just act like adults,
And we'll see how that story concludes.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E5, The Iron Ceiling

Though by no means was this show flopping,

It needed one more tasty topping:

For what's a spy show,

I'd like dearly to know,

Without any proper globe-hopping?

Russia thinks that its chance of winning

Is improved by kids fighting and spinning,

So they built a camp

To train each deadly scamp,

And we see the Black Widow's beginning.

Our heroes to Russia embark

To get some tech stolen from Stark.

They run into trouble,

'midst rubles and rubble,

But ultimately find their mark.

Dear earnest Sousa, meanwhile,

Has been sifting through Peggy's file,

Her work on the sly

Makes him think she's a spy,

And he starts acting strangely hostile.

But the real Russian agent's at home,

In the building from which Peggy roamed,

She invades Carter's room

While our girl's in gloom

And picks through it with a fine-toothed comb.

Reprising roles from World War II,

The Howling Commandos come through,

And those who might wanna

See Neal McDonough

With mustache again will thank you.

There are clever touches, alright,

Like some backstory given in flight,

Or that the kid slaves

Are taught how to behave

By reciting out lines from Snow White.

With little enough to regret,

This might be the best episode yet.

And each devotee

Will return next to see

How she deals with a domestic threat.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E12, Crazy For You

A woman gets teleport skills,
And pulls off heists to pay her bills.
But in quite a short time,
She gets organized crime
Looking to make bank from those tills.

The Flash is tasked to bring her in,
Though her boyfriend's the source of her sin.
So the show's running theme
Is love getting extreme,
For her woes and Barry's are twin.

So Barry and Caitlin bemoan
How they're each still hung up on their own
Former paramour,
Though it's so immature
That they both must know that bird has flown.

But while Barry just seeks safer harbor,
Caitlin must tend to her own arbor.
It's so hard to go on
When your boyfriend has gone
And combined bodies with Victor Garber.

They head out for vodka and ice
At a dive the bads hit once or twice.
And though I shouldn't gloat,
One just can't help but note
That the "dive" looks suspiciously nice.

While we follow the city's protector,
Cisco is off playing inspector.
And Hartley's quite willing
To go about filling
The role of a Hannibal Lecter.

Cisco lets him out of his cell
In hopes he'll surrender intel.
And though he gets a tip,
Hartley gives him the slip,
So the whole thing does not pass off well.

Now, Linda Park's our latest guest.
But I'm left somewhat under-impressed
That the show ushered in
Not one, but two women,
And yet barely passed the Bechdel Test.

It's a decent enough episode,
But it seems reluctant to unload.
It should move us ahead,
But it stands still instead,
And we're no further down that road.

I should also note, 'ere we go,
That just at the end of the show,
We get our first glimpse
At the king of the chimps,
Grodd, Flash's simian foe.