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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As previously mentioned, the character of The Flash has one of the best-remembered rogues galleries in comics, and one of the most prominent of those villains is Pied Piper, perhaps best remembered for coming out as gay in issue #53 of The Flash in 1991. It was an ahead-of-its-time move, and one that has made the character stand out even in the crowded field of Flash rogues ever since.
And now that we finally see the first appearance of the character on The Flash TV show, that element is nicely handled, neither glossed over nor allowed to define the character on its own. Rather, this version of the character - civilian name Hartley Rathaway - is given an Asbergers-ish, even Sherlockian quality. True to that idea, he seems to know more about everyone in the room than anyone in the room, and is just as deliberately abrasive as that might imply. Additionally, of course, his smugly-withheld knowledge of various character secrets allows the writers of the show to hint at mysteries yet to be unraveled for the viewers.
Unlike last week, this episode tries to be hyper-cerebral almost to a fault, with the dense jargon about sound waves being more than likely to confuse some viewers, particularly as the climax nears. Also unlike last week, this episode moves the season arc forward considerably, as the great cipher of the series, Dr. Harrison Wells, has a great many of his secrets stripped away with even more hinted to come. Of course, the greatest secret surrounding that character - his identity - remains a very deliberate mystery. I will discuss that briefly in a spoiler section at the end of the review.
Before that, we have just enough time for a few observations. First, the episode opens with Barry foiling a robbery by the Royal Flush Gang from the comics, although the card-face motorcycle helmets they wear are really the only aspect of their outfits that really identify them as such. Second, the subplot with Iris getting a job at a major newspaper may pay off later in the season, but in this episode it feels remarkably vestigial, really only serving to make the life-and-death elements seem markedly less urgent. Third and finally, the alternating cooperation and antagonism between the folks back at Star Labs keeps things interesting throughout the episode, and gives me to hope that their on-off resentment of Dr. Wells will force him to show his hand sooner rather than later.
In summary, this is an excellent episode of The Flash, both as fun and as full of vaguely obtuse intrigue as that would imply.
Spoiler-ish final notes--
The episode actually does some very clever things with Dr. Wells. The writers know that the biggest question with the character is his true identity, and so they drop multiple - and contradictory - hints as to the answer. This is why we have Barry sliding into what is almost a Wells impression during a conversation with Iris, seemingly lending credence to the theory that Wells is actually a future timeline version of Barry himself. Then we have Wells having to replenish his connection to the Speed Force - nice little comics shout-out there, incidentally - which suggests he might be someone else entirely. Then we have him addressing his house computer as Gideon, which some have interpreted as a reference to the DC Comics New Gods. This is all deliberate wrong-footing on varying scales of cleverness, and as such gives us no real hints. But boy is it fun to fruitlessly speculate! Until next week, friends!
Arrow appeared at its mid-season finale to be going in a more interesting direction, having ostensibly killed off its main character. And, to be fair, at the beginning of episode 10 we get a little taste of the sort of show that might have arisen were the series to have stuck to its guns, with the Arrow-family teaming up to fill the void left by their friend and mentor, trying to honor his work while still letting the criminal element of Starling City - and incidentally, the hinted name change to the more source-appropriate Star City cannot come soon enough - know that the Green Arrow never truly left.
What we get instead is a great deal of dreary is-he-dead-or-is-he-not wavering, both from the characters and from the show itself, as it stretches out a disappointing reveal over the full runtime of the episode. Spoilers, I suppose, though anyone who has not figured this out probably does not have much of a future in comics media - Oliver is not dead, and a figure from his past looks set to repay a life-debt to him by nursing him back to life. At the very least, this means that we might have a couple more episodes before Mr. Myfault McHumblebrag makes his inevitable return to the city, allowing us to focus on the more interesting characters in the meantime.
To this end, the oddball work relationship between Ray and Felicity is given a nice wrinkle by the disappearance and presumed death of Oliver, as Felicity tries to work through a grief that Ray has had much longer to adjust to since his own seemingly obligatory personal trauma. That said, Brandon Routh and Emily Bett Rickards have probably the two most compelling characters on the show and remain perhaps its two most engaging screen presences, to the point where if the show was announced to be retooled entirely around them it might have a chance of surpassing The Flash as best DC show on the air right now.
Despite all this negativity, I am interested to see where the show is going with all of this, particularly with the introduction of new supervillain mastermind Brick, played by Vinnie Jones doing his best impression of Vinnie Jones. As with The Flash, Arrow is taking advantage of a lull after a mid-season blowout to pick up its plot threads in preparation for a spirited dash for whatever end-goal it has in mind. That, in my view, is reason enough to keep watching for a spell.
This week on The Flash, we saw the return of Captain Cold and the introduction of new villain Heat Wave. As it has from the beginning, the show continues to highlight the rogues gallery of its comic book source material, which makes a lot of sense. The villains associated with The Flash may not as be as operatic and thematically resonant as those of, say, Batman, but their simple and easy-to-grasp concepts certainly make them eminently memorable.
Case in point, Captain Cold is called Captain Cold because he has a freeze gun. Heat Wave has a heat gun. And there you go, another fruitful day at the office.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that this episode focuses mainly on Barry and his personal struggles both as himself and as the Scarlet Speedster - and incidentally, I was delighted when Captain Cold referred to him by that epithet during their final confrontation of the episode.
In the last episode, Barry confessed his romantic feelings for his lifelong best friend, Iris, dispensing with what had long been a tedious ongoing source of forced tension in the show up to that point. The risk going forward, then, was that the show might merely replace the forced tension of romantic longing with the forced tension of awkward avoidance, but by the end of this episode all of that is resolved and the characters are free to move on with their lives. Well done. Somewhat belated, but well done.
The episode does not ignore the other fallout from the mid-season finale, either. The fear and uncertainty Barry feels concerning the mysterious, newly-christened Reverse Flash is the main emotional thrust of this episode, as he wonders whether those he is sworn to protect are best served by tackling the petty immediate threat of the Cold-Heat coalition or by continuing to train for the next time his new arch-nemesis zips into town.
The subplot concerning Ronnie/Firestorm also gets a look-in, with multiple hints at intrigue that will doubtless carry through the rest of the season.
The regular cast members are very good as usual, with Jesse L. Martin as Detective Joe West proving once again that he is the real secret weapon of the show, making every gesture in his interactions with daughter Iris and surrogate son Barry seem astronomically more meaningful than they might have been in lesser hands.
Wentworth Miller, reprising his role as Captain Cold, occasionally slides uncomfortably into camp territory but largely gets away with it by dint of playing a character who is clearly as in love with the codenames and theatrical affectations of supercrime as imperishable geek Cisco is.
Meanwhile, Dominic Purcell gives an oddly stilted performance as Heat Wave that actually works really well for a character who is not quite right in the head and into fire in a way that implies that he probably has burns on parts other than his arms, so well done there.
Overall, this was hardly the best episode of the show, largely devoted as it was to picking up the pieces left over from the installment immediately prior, and the conclusion was less imaginative than we might reasonably have come to expect from such a consistently smart show. But that is the thing about consistency - the troughs and the peaks remain fairly close, and even a below-average episode of The Flash is better than most of what is on network television at present. In short, The Flash is still a good show and still worth your time. In other news, let us go to our bears-pooping-in-the-woods correspondent...
