Posts tagged: The Flash Season 2

The Flash S02E07 “Gorilla Warfare” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm
Writers: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing
Director: Dermott Downs

Essential Plot Points:

• Physically Barry is recovering well from having had his back broken by Zoom, but mentally he’s back in the mope zone, worried that he’s not the hero Central City needs. Amazingly Joe fails to buck him up so Iris calls in the cavalry: his dad, Henry. That does the trick.
• Grodd’s back and he wants to make babies with Caitlin. No, hang on, this isn’t an HBO show: no bestiality is involved. He wants her to science up some more apes likes him. He kills a few scientists to get the chemical needs to make this possible.
• Harry pretends to be Reverse Flash (using Wells Mark I’s old yellow costume) to confuse Grodd (who thinks of Wells Mark I as dad) and get close enough to Caitlin to rescue her.
• Harry reveals that not all the breaches on  Earth 2 are in Central City, like they are on Earth Prime; instead they are scattered across the planet. One, handily, leads to a sanctuary for intelligent gorillas on Earth 2.
• With Barry back in action, Team Flash lures Grodd to the relevant breach then forces him through it. Grodd arrives on Earth 2 and sees Gorilla City for the first time. If he’s ever seen Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes this can only end badly.
• Harry comes up with a new plan: close all the breaches except the one at STAR Labs, thus forcing Zoom to use that one, then have a trap waiting for him. One problem: he doesn’t know how to close the breaches yet.
• Cisco goes on a date with Kendra and vibes on her. He see a vision of a woman with wings. And we’re not talking Lil-Lets.

Review:

Two returning guests stars this week and one blasts the other off the screen. Not to be mean to John Wesley Shipp, but the CG ape was just about the only real reason to tune in for this episode. Henry Allen’s reappearance – and, indeed the whole “Barry wallows in self-pity” stuff – felt like a particularly trite rehash of a storyline we’ve seen many, many times before. This season the writers seem to be hoping that if they regularly swap around who’s giving Barry his “pep-talk of the week” we won’t notice they keep covering the same ground.

So in some ways this is an unusual episode of The Flash. The weekly action/adventure plotlines are usually among the flimsiest elements designed mainly to push forward arc plot revelations and character development. This week, though, the Grodd storyline eclipses everything; the perfunctory father/son chats, Barry’s moping, Cisco’s slightly unbelievable date dramas, Harry’ new plan. Only the redemption of Harrison Wells (which isn’t really redemption but be still needs to gain their trust) provides some good meaty character drama and Tom Cavanagh rises to the occasioneven if his increasingly truculent hair seems to be having a parallel drama all its own.

Thankfully, the action plot provides plenty of fine set-pieces to enjoy, backed up by some excellent effects. Caitlin and Grodd continue their King Kong/Fay Wray vibe with Ms Snow the most sympathetic to the gorilla’s softer side. (Although, considering the very ’70s-looking white trouser suit Caitlin’s wearing, maybe that should be a King Kong/Jessica Lange vibe.) Having Harry pretend to be Reverse Flash is a clever conceit, as it unnerves both Barry and Cisco and adds some tension as you wonder how comfortable he feels in the suit. Not very, it seems; but is he double bluffing?

To be honest, we hope not. It would be too obvious to have Wells turn out to be a villain again. Grumpy, reluctant hero Wells is far more interesting.

Fun and lightweight, “Gorilla Warfare” is enjoyable but worryingly flimsy in areas in which the show is usually strong. Barry’s return to full (physical and mental) health feels far too quick and easy but maybe that was a scheduling necessity; you’d hardly want him in a wheelchair for the big crossover event, would you?

The Good:

• Grodd! Occasionally he’s a little bit “bendy CGI” but mostly he’s a very impressive creation for a TV show. The brief chase at the end as he follows Barry through Central City is especially good.
• Gorilla City looks great too.
• In fact, the action and effects are what lift this otherwise fairly standard episode. The pretty colours distract from the lack of real meat.

• Harry is huge fun to watch again, even though he’s softening. The scene with him mimicking Wells, saying the lines he said right before he killed Cisco, is disproportionately disturbing. It’d good to see Harry getting a decent amount of screen time, and his growing friendship with Cisco feels unforced and natural.
• Our first glimpse of Hawkgirl as Hawkgirl, sort of flying.

The Bad:

• The problem with bringing Henry in to give Barry a pep talk is that John Wesley Shipp is nowhere near as convincing in this type of scene as Jesse L Martin is. Plus, Henry’s argument is based on a spurious premise that mopey Barry would have pointed out immediately; Henry always knew he was innocent, whereas Barry doesn’t know that he’s not a failure. Instead of Henry just acting like pale imitation of Joe, the writers needed to find another way he could shake Barry out of his navel-gazing – tough love? By example? By nicking his wheelchair?
• Barry’s physical recovery seems far too easy too. Okay, he has superfast healing, but after last week’s cliffhanger (“I can’t feel my legs!”) having him on his feet in the very first scene here is a bit of an anticlimax.
• Okay, we can just about accept that, in a weak moment, Joe may have been insensitive enough to regret not having a “real” son in front of his daughter, but we can’t accept that Iris wouldn’t have made some sarcastic comment about, “So I’m not good enough?” to pull him back into the 21st century.
• The Cisco/Kendra romance is about as convincing as Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent.
• A breach that leads to a gorilla sanctuary? How convenient.
• Why is Grodd collecting the chemicals he needs to create little Grodds before he asks Caitlin how to make mini-Grodds?
• The attempt to humanise Grodd is a laudable one but the script doesn’t develop the idea beyond lip service.

And The Random:

• Gorilla City first appeared in the DC universe in The Flash #106  (1959). It was originally located on the planet Calor but was unknowingly brought to Earth by Green Lantern. You may be wondering how anyone could relocate a city without knowing; just accept it makes sense in comic logic. Its new home was in Africa. In the comics, this is where Grodd came from.

• Cisco’s geek credentials have been seriously dented by his failure to use the phrase “rodents of unusual size” when listing why The Princess Bride is so great.

• “I know what I vibed,” says Cisco after his his first vibe of the episode, but we’re not sure he did know. “There was a man with these big…” We think the word you’re looking for is “breasts”. Good grief, lad, that is quite clearly NOT A MAN!

• That tower that Grodd’s using as a base look remarkably similar to the one where Chloe lived in the later seasons of Smallville.

• A lot of the locations seen on the map that Harry’s consulting have been established as locales in Central City in the DC comics universe over the years: Brookfield Heights, Chubbuck, Petersburg, Lawrence Hill, the Van Geld Opera House. But the Miliken Standard Corporation has us stumped. An in-joke, maybe?

• Cisco’s date with Kendra at the end of the episode seems to be a subtle nod to the John Cusack comedy romance movie Say Anything (1989) in which he use used a boombox held aloft to try to serenade Ione Skye. The song he uses is Peter Gabriel’s sublime “In Your Eyes”, which is also used on the soundtrack of this scene in the episode.

Review by Dave Golder

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The Flash S02E06 “Enter Zoom” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm
Writers: Gabrielle Stanton, Brooke Eikmeier
Director: JJ Makaro

Essential Plot Points:

• Doctor Light tells the Flash that if she had killed him, Zoom wanted her to take his chest emblem and throw it into a breach to prove she’s succeeded. This would summon Zoom so he could send her home.
• Doctor Light agrees to pretend to kill the Flash to draw Zoom out.
• Wells has developed a slowing-down formula which they intend to shoot Zoom with.
• Doctor Light escapes from the pipeline. She’s naked, but invisible…
• …Which means she’s left her costume behind.
• Barry has an idea: Linda – Doctor Light’s Earth Prime doppelgänger – can pretend to be Doctor Light by dressing up in her discarded costume. Cisco instantly whips up some light ray gizmos to strap to her hands.
• Unfortunately she makes a rubbish supervillain.
• So Barry gives her a pep talk in which he reveals to her that he is the Flash. It works.
• Sadly the plan to lure out Zoom with a fake fight between Barry and Linda as Doctor Light doesn’t work (we’re not surprised – Barry keeps squirming when he’s supposed to be dead and Linda keeps putting her hand up to her ear piece).
• Patty becomes suspicious that Barry and Joe are keeping something from her, but doesn’t hold too much of a grudge after Barry passionately and impulsively kisses her. He’s just had another pep talk from Joe, y’see.
• But later on, when no one’s expecting him, Zoom goes all Spanish Inquisition and executes Barry. Well, nearly executes him. Team Flash manage to hit Zoom with one “slow dart” before he finishes the task and he zooms off.
• But he has left Barry paralysed from the waist down.
• Cisco vibes on Wells and learns that Zoom has his daughter held captive back on Instagram Filter Earth.

Review:

Barry should have listened to Jay. But he didn’t, and now Zoom has utterly humiliated him and left him paralysed. The final 1o minutes of the episode are simply magnificent; a tour de force of eye-popping action, shock twists, gut-wrenching drama and beautiful FX work that would have assured a five star review even if the rest of the episode had been a pile of steaming bat guano.

In fact, the rest of the episode is an absolute delight too, featuring some of the funniest moments so far this year. The scenes with our Earth’s Linda Park trying to become Doctor Light are huge fun, as is Linda’s goofy reaction to finding out that Barry is the Flash (“Holy crap! I’ve made out with the Flash!”). Malese Jow is such an asset to this show let’s hope that she’s in this for the long haul. Though it would be good to have a regular, young, female character on the show who hasn’t snogged Barry (although Caitlin only snogged a fake Barry, to be fair, and didn’t have much choice in the matter).

Wells-the-jerk is also great once again, though his motives are a bit confusing. He seems relieved that Cisco has found out about Jesse being captured… so why be so touchy about being touched by Vibe earlier on? There seems no reason why he would hide this from Team Flash so does he have something else to hide that Cisco hasn’t discovered yet. And since Zoom has kidnapped Jesse, why is Wells working to bring about his downfall? You’d think, as Joe does, that Zoom would be blackmailing Wells into working for him. There’s something complex going on here and Wells could yet prove either the major villain or redemptive hero of the season. Whatever the case, please, Wells 2, don’t lose your snark; it’s your best feature.

Amidst all this Patty has little to do except revert to traditional girlfriend-of-a-masked-hero mode (“he’s hiding something and keeps blowing me out on dates…!) and Caitlin is reduced to being a straightwoman, providing feed lines for the men’s punchlines. But in such a packed episode there have to be some casualties. Iris doesn’t have much to do either, but scores points for her sarcastic asides when Linda goes into super-cooking mode.

For the most part, though, this is a consummately constructed episode. It joyously breaks the formula established by the season so far then rips it apart in the final moments with shocking developments that scream “gamechanger”. It moves seamlessly from frivolous fun to gripping drama in the space of a breath. It cements Zoom as one hell of a scary foe – every moment he’s on screen he totally dominates it. And the slick direction moves through the many moods with a deft touch, letting actors act when they need to and giving the big action sequences an emotional sweep.

Bane broke Batman’s back and the Dark Knight returned. Since there are at least 16 episodes of this season left we assume the Flash will be back on his feet before long too. But for the moment, we’re still reeling.

The Good:

• Zoom’s grand tour, dragging the limp body of Barry Allen around Central City to show-off who’s boss, is massively effective. It’s real gut-wrenching stuff, featuring  special FX shots that are loaded with emotion; a rare thing on TV where FX are often just a utilitarian means to an end.
• Linda’s training session as Doctor Light is hilarious, especially the exploding gloves and the misjudged high-five.
• This image:

• Linda’s reaction to discovering Barry’s secret – “I’ve shagged a famous person!” basically.
• The fake fight between Doctor Light and the Flash with its whispered asides and Barry regretting falling to the ground in such an awkward position.
• Hell, Linda in general. She’s just great!
• Caitlin: “Oh great, that could be this year’s Cold Gun. Maybe another criminal can get it and then we have Sergeant Slow!” Cisco: “I would never let that happen. Sergeant Slow is a terrible name.”
• Caitlin: “No offence to Linda, but there is no way she can pull this off.” Wells: “Well, maybe if she didn’t scream every time she fired.”

The Bad:

• Given that the real Doctor Light is still at large, it’s bizarre that Linda – who’s spent half the episode terrified – would suddenly decide to walk home at night on her own (not that if Iris had gone with her she would have been much help against Zoom).

• Why would Doctor Light need to take her clothes off to become invisible? Whatever power she’s using to make herself invisible would presumably work on her clothes too. This is one clumsy piece of plotting to negate Cisco having to get out his sewing machine later in the episode to whip Linda up a costume.
• Whereas the Barry/Joe scenes are always exquisitely acted it would be nice to get through a week without them having a heart-to-heart; they’re in danger of losing their value through overuse.
• We still don’t understand why Zoom used so many crap henchmen first before deciding to kill Barry himself when he proves so much better at it. Okay, he still fails, but he gets a lot closer.

And The Random:

• Incredibly, for such a slick, assured-looking episode that balances great performances with pacy storytelling and big effects sequence, this is the debut TV directing effort by JJ Makaro. It is not, however, his first association with the Arrowverse; he’s been stunt co-ordinator on Arrow since the beginning and has worked on 10 episodes of The Flash in the same capacity. He stunt career began in the ’80s on shows such as Airwolf and films such as Iron Eagle 2. We reckon he should get more directing gigs on the strength of his work here.

• We’ve been pretty rubbish at 52-spotting this year (it’s mostly been appearances of Channel 52, of which there was another in this episode). But we spotted this really obscure one to balance things out: when Cisco vibes there are three extremely brief shots of a clock with one hand… that’s pointing at 52 minutes.

• For the record here’s that Channel 52 appearance. This week it’s actually the version of of the channel from Instagram Filter World, where Oliver Queen died and his dad Robert Queen became ‘The Hood”. This is similar to the comic book storyline “Flashpoint’, in which Barry’s time travelling causes an alternate reality in which Bruce Wayne’s dad became Batman after Bruce is killed.

• We will get away from Channel 52 in a moment but we just had to point out: what kind of unethical reporting is this? Showing a victim’s phone so close-up you can see who her dad is?
• “But you were fine with killing Linda Park?” “It was the best bad idea I could come up with. Leave her body for Zoom to find. He’d think I was dead and I’d be free.” Last week we were wondering why there had been no explanation why the Earth 2 assassins were killing their doppelgängers. Well, Linda 2 gives an explanation here, which is all fine and dandy, but it seems very unlikely Al Rothstein/Atom Smasher would come up with exactly the same plan.

• This week Wells 2’s daughter is named: Jesse. Then Wells uses his pet nickname for her: Jesse Quick. That’s right; she’s the show’s version of yet another speedster from the comics. Jesse Quick. She was first introduced in Justice Society Of America Vol 2 #1 (1992) and was the daughter of daughter of Golden Age heroes Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle. She went on to become the partner of the Wally West version of the Flash.
• Patty mentions hard light, which could be a reference to the Green Lantern but we couldn’t get Rimmer out of our heads.
• If Doctor Light can hack into STAR Labs’ fibre optics systems, how come she can’t spring herself from her cell? Maybe those doors are on a separate system for security?
• Scarily, there are a whole bunch of “babies going through tunnels” videos on YouTube like the ones Patty and her mates are giggling at.
• The music during Linda’s training session as Doctor Light is “Rock And Roll Rave” by The Preatures.

Review by Dave Golder

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The Flash S02E05 “The Darkness And The Light” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm
Writers: Ben Sokolowski & Grainne Godfree
Director: Steve Shill

Essential Plot Points:

• Zoom’s rubbish assassin of the week is Dr Light, Earth 2’s Linda Park doppelgänger with super powers. She does kill someone, but it’s not Barry and it’s by accident (RIP Picture News editor Eric Larkin).
• Earth 2’s Wells – let’s call him Harry, like Cisco – is a general dick to everyone but has a special contempt for Jay whom he regards as a loser. Barry is faster and better and more likely to take down Zoom, he thinks.
• Jay retaliates by pointing out Harry had months to admit he created the meta-human problem on Earth 2; instead he made money out of the situation by selling meta-human-detecting technology.
• But something has changed Harry, who now admits his guilt and vows to take down Zoom (we learn in the final scene that Zoom has kidnapped Harry’s daughter).
• Harry outs Cisco as a meta-human because his powers can help locate Dr Light.
• Wells’s advice helps Barry defeat Dr Light. Buoyed with confidence, Barry announces he’s ready to take on Zoom. Jay flounces off in a strop because no one believes him that Zoom is too powerful to take on.
• Barry and Patty have a date, complicated by the fact that Barry has been blinded by Dr Light. They end up snogging.
• Surprisingly, Iris doesn’t discover any new relatives hiding down the back of the sofa.

Review:

Dr Wells is dead. Long live Doctor Wells! Okay we’ve known for a few weeks now that the Earth 2 version of Central City’s answer to Steve Jobs was skulking in the shadowy edges of the storyline. But this is his first proper full-on appearance, where we finally get the measure of the man. And the decision the writers have taken is a clever one.

Because he couldn’t just be evil again. That’s been done. And besides, it wasn’t actually Wells who was evil, but Eobard Thawne in his stolen body (a fact that’s given lip service here but most of the characters seem to have difficultly accepting). On the other hand, while making this new Wells a good guy would have been a fun contrast, it’s also the really obvious move; spend a few episode making it look like he’s a villain then reveal him ro the avenging, high-tech hero.

So what we get instead is a dick, as Cisco so precisely points out. He may turn out to be a villain; he may turn out to be a hero. It doesn’t matter. For the moment, we have a self-satisfied, big headed bully who you’d loathe in real life but is fantastic to watch on screen. There’s even a little hint and quite how much of a Jeremy Clarkson he is really early on in his very first speech when he says, “Meta-humans: men –and women! –with extraordinary abilities…” You can actually hear the exclamation mark after “women” as if that’s somehow even more extraordinary.

Dick. But what a fantastic addition to the chemistry of the series.

The other highlight of the episode is Barry’s hilarious blind date with Patty. Grant Gustin proves once again that he’s a great comedy performer and the whole scene is both silly and charming. To be fair, Patty is being written as a little bit too perfect at the moment and is in danger of coming across a little shallow; Iris may not have had such a great screen chemistry with Barry but she’s by far the more multi-layered character. If the show’s playing the long game as far as getting this famous comic couple together this is probably the right way to go about it; Barry and Iris weren’t ready for each other in season one but as they both mature maybe they can come together in the future. On the other hand, giving Patty a few flaws could add a lot more depth to her portrayal. In the meantime Patarry… or Bazatty… or whatever… are a fun couple to watch.

Dr Light is slightly better than the usual villain-with-a-gimmick-of-the-week, primarily thanks to the fact she’s the doppelgänger of an existing character so she’s slightly easier to identify with. She’s still remarkably skimpy in the backstory department, though.

Poor old Jay is a bit of a whipping boy at the moment and the arrival of Wells Mk 2 makes him come across as even more wet and useless (falling into a relationship with the increasingly vapid Caitlin doesn’t do him any favours, either). Wells’s arguments all seem far more convincing at the moment, but maybe he has the easier sell; arguing for caution and restraint, as Jay does, is always going to inherently sound like the weaker position. As much as Jay has been a bit of a disappointment so far, let’s hope there’s some retribution and re-assessment for him soon. He needs it, because your main memory of him this episode may well be his hopeless, “I don’t know!” when Barry asks what he should do to defeat Dr Light.

A strong episode despite a few creaky moments, “The Darkness And The Light” also benefits from a last-minute appearance from Zoom, who in a few seconds comes across as far more formidable than Reverse-Flash ever did.

The Good:

• For some reason, the business with then chairs in the bank really amused us.
• Barry’s “blind” date is hilarious, made better by the fact that Patty isn’t fooled in the slightest.
• Zoom is blimmin’ scary, isn’t he? Hiring Tony Todd to do the voice was a good move.
• The death of Eric Larkin is a bit of a shocker.
• The new snarky Wells – an internet forum in human form – is a clever twist. Not evil; not nice; just a git. He’s great fun to watch and has some great lines (Joe: “How are you still alive?” Wells: “I don’t know. Because you missed?”)
• “You know, our Dr Wells may have been evil but you’re just a dick.” Cisco is not impressed, clearly.

• This moment, which so horrifically mirrors that shocking moment in season one when evil Wells thrust his hand into Cisco’s chest and stopped his heart. This Wells has even been told about that story; is he being deliberately cruel? Whatever the truth, it is an uncomfortable moment to witness.

The Bad:

• Earth II looks like it’s been shot using the sepia filter on Instagram.

• The shot where Iris shoots off Dr Light’s helmet is very unconvincing (as was the whole “Chekov’s gun” set-up with Joe giving Iris a weapon that was clearly going to come into play later in the episode).
• Why do the Earth 2 duplicates need to kill their Earth 1 counterparts. Will this ever be explained?
• There’s a really awkward moment late in the episode when Iris thanks Wells which feels really false and comes from nowhere. It’s not like Wells needs his ego stroked.
• Joe: “I just want one week where we’re not surprised by somebody from out past.” It’s never a good sign when a line brings attention to a cliché you hadn’t noticed.

And The Random:

• Anybody else think that Zoom’s mask looked a little bit like the Black Panther’s, but with go-faster flashes?
• Dunno whether it’s relevant but Dr Light is defeated in a train station while Zoom’s hideout seems to be a train shed. Maybe Dr Light wasn’t trying to leave on a train; maybe she was looking for a breach.

• Did you spot the remote control training dummy that Cisco built for Barry way back in the sixth episode of the first season, “The Flash Is Born”?

• Hang on. Is this some kind of dating service? Or a personality test? Imagine if your meta-match was Grodd.

• There have been two main Dr Lights in the DC comics universe. The first was a supervillain called Arthur Light first introduced in Justice League of America #12 (1962). He was never a major villain though he was a member of the Fearsome Five, Injustice Gang, Injustice League, Secret Society of Super-Villains and Suicide Squad at various times. He was eventually outed as a serial rapist and killed by The Spectre in Final Crisis: Revelations #1 (2008). Meanwhile, an entirely different Dr Light, a female scientist called Kimiyo Hoshi, was created in Crisis On Infinite Earths #4 (1985) and became a superhero. In a cruel twist, Arthur Light drained her of her powers during the Infinite Crisis crossover event in 2005. She’s barely been heard of since.

• Kendra Saunders (played by Ciara Renee) is a character from the DC universe (introduced in Earth 2 #2, 2102) but just in case you don’t want spoilers, we’ll tell you more about her when the truth comes out on the show.

• Likewise Wells’s daughter (played by Violett Beane) is destined to become The Flash’s version of another famous character from the DC comics universe (a very different version as she’s not Wells’s daughter in the comics) but we’ll deal with that when more is revealed. She’s not even named in this episode. However, did you notice her expression when Jay is outing Wells for creating the meta-humans? It’s almost like she’s recalling something at the back of her mind.
• Presumably the friend from Atlantis that Jay refers to is Aquaman.
• Foreshadowing alert: “Cisco, I don’t think any of us would become evil if we all of a sudden got powers,” says Caitlin Snow, who becomes the supervillain Killer Frost in the comics (and presumably will in the series if Barry’s glimpses of the future in the season one finale come true).
• Interestingly, however, when Wells uses his meta-human detector on Caitlin it doesn’t register her, so presumably when (or if?) she becomes Killer Frost, it won’t be because she was affected by the STARLabs blast.
• The show has referred to speed mirages before (evil Wells used them in season one) but this is the first time Barry has used this power.
• Cisco Ramon is now officially Vibe, just like in the comics.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other reviews of The Flash

The Flash S02E03 “Family Of Rogues” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm

Writers: Julian Meiojas & Katherine Walczak
Director: John F Showalter

Essential Plot Points:

• Lisa and Leonard Snart’s abusive dad Lewis (it’s an “L” of a family) places a bomb in Lisa’s head to force his son to use his Captain Cold powers to help him with his criminal plans.
• Lisa turns to Team Flash for help, so Barry goes undercover as a criminal geek to stay close to the male Snarts while Cisco tries to prise Caitlin away from Jay Garrick long enough so that they can find a way to get the bomb out of Lisa’s head.
• Team Flash triumphs. Leonard kills his dad then goes to prison. Barry has a sneaking admiration for him. Joe thinks Barry is barmy (Joe clearly hasn’t heard about the upcoming spin-off).
• Iris is now Lois Lane Mark II: action reporter with a superhero on speed dial.
• Iris’s mum isn’t dead! She’s back in town and so Joe comes clean to his daughter – he lied about her mum’s death because he was ashamed to tell Iris that her druggie mum had run out on them. Iris seems remarkable okay with this. We like Iris. Not being okay would have been tediously predictable.
• Jay Garrick creates the speed cannon allowing travel between different realities, and strangely a queue doesn’t form to test it out.
• But (a) Harrison Wells does use the cannon to slip into our world when nobody’s looking.
• Professor Stein goes all Firestormy… except with blue flame.

Review:

The frantic multi-world arc plot takes a little bit of a back seat this week as the show delivers parallel plots about parent/child relationships. This could have been a cue for an overdose of sentimentality, but actually while the episode is less earth-shattering in scope than the past couple of weeks, it’s still fast-paced, funny, action-packed and all kinds of entertaining.

It helps that Captain Cold and the Golden Glider are the villains of the week. Not that they’re the real villains; that dubious honour goes to their odious dad, played with such casual contempt by the legendary Michael Ironside (Scanners, Total Recall, Starship Troopers) he merely needs to flare his nostrils to make you loathe him. After two weeks of bland, tritely-written villains it’s refreshing to have a set of baddies who actually possess things like personalities, motivation and depth. Admittedly Wentworth Miller’s performance is becoming more and more mannered with each appearance. He’s at the point now where he’s not so much phoning in his performance as texting it in (with emoticons). But there are lovely little nuances every now and then that prove there’s more going on under his facade; especially in the final prison scene, but also even in simple little moments such as when he thanks Barry for his meal as he walks off without paying.

There’s little groundbreaking here. Lisa’s tales of abuse as a child are so much grist to the mill in US TV drama, less of a real-life issue to be explored, than a handy way to define characters. But as ever with this show, it manages expose a nerve of raw emotion without becoming mawkish, dealing in simple, broad strokes that make you sympathise for Lisa and Leonard without feeling you’re being emotionally manipulated. It’s hardly going to win anybody any Emmys for hard-hitting drama but in its own way, it’s very clever, intelligent scripting that lets The Flash deal with emotional storylines in a highly stylised, comic book setting.

Similarly, the plot about Iris’s mum looked worryingly like it was going to a schmaltz-fest, but the show avoids that too. Good grief, Iris actually understands why her dad did what he did and forgives him. Have the writers not read The Big Book Of America Drama Scripting? All the rules dictate that Iris should spend at least three episodes sulking and not talking to him. To be honest, Iris’s reaction is just a teensy bit too good to be true but honestly, if it avoids all the usual clichés , we can live with it. Happily.

Other than that, Jay continues to be oddly dull. His second full episode and he spends all the time in the basement tinkering? Boy, he knows how to have fun. Cisco, however, is having a lot of fun, willingly letting Lisa flirt with him (well, why not) and doing a great impression of Stein. He seems to have forgotten he’s supposed to be scared about his developing powers… that would have been useful at various points this week, but never mind.

It’s also great to see Barry smiling again after two weeks of self-flagellation. From the brilliant teaser with Iris throwing herself out a window to be rescued, to his prison chat with Snart, through his brief career as a high-tech crim, this is the old, optimistic, life-embracing Barry again. Welcome back.

The Good:

• Cisco’s impersonation of Stein is as hilarious as it is accurate.
• Iris doesn’t go into a strop about Joe lying about her mum, which is a very pleasant surprise.
• Great dialogue from Joe and Francine: “You thought you could pay me to walk away from my ow daughter?” “Last time you walked away for free.”
• Lisa’s tales of her abusive father (“that’s when I learnt a bottle hurts more than a fist”) are moving in their restraint.
• At least we don’t get another week with a Zoom henchman trying to kill Barry. Zoom is clearly reconsidering his approach.
• Barry is very amusing as a pretend criminal techy geek.
• The action finale is brilliantly tense – even though you know Cisco will extract the bomb just in time it’s still edge-of-seat stuff.
• Although it’s obviously just setting the pieces in place for the Legends Of Tomorrow spin-off, the final Barry/Snart scene in Iron Heights is a lot of fun.
• The speed cannon is impressive, and the director loves his “through the blobby breach” shots.

The Bad:

• What’s the point in writing in a concept – exploding heads – that you know the censors will never let you show? Was is just supposed to make those in know smirk because guest star Michael Ironside was in Scanners (1981)?
• Leonard Snart doesn’t have any decent “cold” puns (though he does say to Barry, “Live fast, die young” so we may forgive him).
• Mick Rory/Heatwave is a little too conspicuous by his absence.
• Erm, how does Captain Cold freeze lasers, exactly?
• We don’t get nearly enough of Barry going undercover as a criminal.

And The Random:

• We’re thinking all this emphasis on “blue” energy may be misdirection. We’ve seen that Zoom trails blue lightning when he runs but it would be too obvious to have Wells as the villain yet again, surely? As for Stein, in the comics Ronnie Raymond retirned from the dead in 2010 “Blackest Night” crossover event as a character called Deathstorm… who had black/blue flames. Could this be a reference to that?

• Hang on – Linda Park’s back? We weren’t expecting that, though we’re not complaining. She’s great. Linda’s also Wally West’s “love interest” in the comics, and guess who’s going to be making his debut on the show pretty soon? Has the show been playing the long game with Linda?

• Danville, Ohio is the hometown of DC character Lisa Jennings, a kind of ersatz Superwoman (a small-town schoolteachers who inherits Kryptonian powers and becomes part of the Superman Squad) who was introduced in Superman #703 (2010).

• Nice paint job on the bike there, Ms Golden Glider.
• Stein uses Marvel mastermind Stan Lee’s catchphrase – “Excelsior” – for the second time on the show (the first use was in the first season finale, “Fast Enough”). Has the man no sense of loyalty?
• Leonard gets uppity when his dad calls his superweapon a “freeze gun”, presumably becomes he’s been been getting cease and desist letter from Mr Freeze’s lawyers.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other reviews of The Flash season two

The Flash S02E02 “Flash Of Two Worlds” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm

Writers: Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing
Director: Jesse Warn

Essential Plot Points:

• Barry isn’t convinced about Jay’s story that he’s The Flash on an alternate Earth.
• The Zoom-enlisted Barry assassin of the week is Sand Demon, who is clearly The Sandman in an alternate comic company.
• Jay finally convinces Barry and they defeat Sand Demon together. Jay becomes Barry’s new mentor.
• Jays tells everyone about how Zoom is his arch enemy back on his world.
• Patty Spivot joins Joe’s Metahuman taskforce and flirts with Barry via the medium of Monty Python.
• Cisco reveals to Stein that he’s been having “vibes” but asks him to keep it secret.
• Stein collapses.
• Harrison Wells is alive and well and like a rock’n’roll Steve Jobs on some alternate Earth.

Review:

Back in 1961, The Flash #123 boasted on its cover, “A spectacular story that is sure to become a classic.” At the time, that kind of hyperbole wasn’t exactly unusual. Editors would boast that a comic featuring Batman battling a nasty bout of flu was “sure to become a classic.” But 54 year later, that particular claim on The Flash #123’s cover – in its not-particularly-large font, not-particularly-hyperbolic language and not-particularly-lurid colours – actually feels like it’s underselling the issue. Because this is the comic that spawned DC’s multiverse, and which, over a quarter of a century later, has inspired an episode of a TV show that has got fanboys worldwide excited. That episode has the self-same title as the story inside that comic: “Flash Of Two Worlds”.

The Flash has a lot to pull off here, and mostly it manages to do so with its usual cheery charm. It’s not just introducing the multiverse, but also the season’s big bad and another version of the Flash too. If you want to be pernickety all three were actually introduced in episode one, but this is the first episode that has to really get to grips with them. It’s no surprise, then, some elements of the episode get short shrift. The result is a good episode, then, but not a “classic”. There’s plenty of “Ooohhh” but not much, “Wow!”

The main creative choice that prevents the potential “wow” factor in a Flash-meets-Flash episode is having Jay Flash* lose his powers on entering our universe. It’s also an understandable choice because it gives the episode some dramatic meat to chew on, with Barry mistrusting this new potential mentor after his Harrison Wells experience. Gustin turns in yet another brilliant performance in a role that could have made him come across as merely a sulky git. His perfectly sells Barry’s doubts about this “speedster” who can’t actually prove his powers.

(*Okay, we won’t call him that again – it makes him sound like a cleaning product.)

The writers may also be playing a game of delayed gratification, hoping we’ll appreciate the spectacle of Jay and Barry in superspeed action together even more when it does eventually happen. But the fact remains that it’s a little bit disappointing it doesn’t happen here: it’s more of a “A Flash-And-Half Of Two Worlds”.

It doesn’t help that Teddy Sears is a little stiff as Jay. Perhaps the intention is to make him feel more like a Golden Age superhero (which is what the Jay Garrick Flash was) by having him act like the square-jawed star of a 1930 cinema serial. Well, fair enough, but even on that level he’s not swashbuckling enough. He just a teensy bit dull. Hell, he doesn’t even flirt with Caitlin and she gives him every opportunity. Sears is doing a decent job, but on a show that has brought so many other Flash characters so vividly to life he’s not quite so full of va-va-voom. Maybe that’ll come back with his speed force.

There’s also the usual Flash problem of an underwhelming villain. The fact that the show rarely considers its villains-of-the-week more than cannon fodder is shown in the way they’re usually killed off or captured ten minutes before the end of the episode. Smallville used to do this too. Luckily, The Flash puts that extra time for good use; all we used to get on Smallville was Clark and Lana (or later Lois) either snogging or arguing, but The Flash usually delivers some of its best moments in those final scenes, whether it’s advancing the arc plot, giving us a massive surprise or having a character development no one expected.

That’s what we get here, with Stein collapsing, Cisco worrying about his news powers, Barry and Jay bonding and, of course, Harrison Wells popping up in an alternate universe, clearly with a stake in the new season, though at the moment we have no idea if he’s good or evil. Great stuff.

As usual, it’s a solidly entertaining, pacy, great-looking episode laced with wit and wonderful lines (“I’ve been poked, prodded, I even subjected myself to a full body scan,” grumbles Jay. “I was being thorough,” shrugs Caitlin.) There’s not an awful lot wrong with the episode, it just feels a little bit of a missed opportunity to create a real TV landmark. Season one was a massive success because it delivered more than just polished comic book action. It’d be a shame if season two doesn’t continue to push the boundaries. 

The Good:

• Caitlin’s unsubtle attempts to get to see as much of Jay’s body as possible.
• The introduction of the multiverse is enticingly full of potential.
• Lots of really pretty effects courtesy of three different lightning energy producers in one episode…

• Great performance from Grant Gustin again.
• The final scene with Harrison Wells is a pleasant surprise.
• Barry and Patty bonding over Monty Python: “Or like the Bridge keeper protecting the Holy Grail!”
• Cisco calling Stein “beautiful mind”.

The Bad:

• He’s not bad, exactly, that’s a bit mean, but Teddy Sears is a little stiff as Jay.
• Week two of the new season and already Zoom’s MO seems like a cliché: why try to kill off a rival yourself when you can get some schmuck to bungle the attempt for you?
• While Cisco gives an explanation for why he’s scared of his powers and wants to keep them secret it still seems an unlikely character choice after he told everybody about his “dreams” last seasons. Cisco seems like the kind of guy who’d want all the help he could get understanding what’s happening to him, especially if he might get a cool code name out of it by the end.
• Is Iris going to have a role other than chief motivator this season?
• Patty is sweet and sparky but it’s a shame her main plot function in her debut is to get captured.
• Barry’s spinny-arm thing still looks very silly.

And The Random:

• 52-Spotting: Aside from the team watching Oliver Queen’s TV announcement from last week’s Arrow on Channel 52 (lovely little crossover there) there’s also a more intriguing use of 52 this week. When Stein and Cisco discover multiple breaches, Cisco says, “Of course there’s not just one breach, there’s 52 of them scattered throughout the city.” Well, yeah, of course there’s 52. Stein may have suggested earlier in the episode that there could be infinite universes, but in the DC multiverse – after a mini series event called “52” in 2007 – there were only 52 universes. So is the fact that there are 52 breaches just another nod to DC’s favourite number? Or could each breach lead to one of those 52 alternate universes? Which is a great theory, except the mathematically-minded of you might be thinking, “But our universe is one of those 52, so there would only need to be 51 breaches.”
• Patty Spivot was introduced to the DC comics universe in DC Special Series #1: “5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular” (1977) as a lab assistant for Barry. She has been romantically linked with Barry at various times, and in the current New 52 continuity she is Barry’s main girlfriend.
• Thinking that the image at the top of this article looks a little familiar? That’s because it’s a clever homage to the cover of The Flash #123 (1961).
• Sand Demon was a short-lived villain first introduced in Firestorm #51 (1986). He was killed off a mere two years later.
• Patty says she went to Hudson University. This fictional institution has been mentioned on the show before in season one’s “Revenge Of The Rogues” and “All Star Team-Up”. In the DC comics universe it’s where Dick Grayson and Martin Stein studied, among others. There’s also a fictional Hudson University that’s been used in various TV shows including Law & Order and its spin-offs, Castle, Beauty And The Beast and Murder, She Wrote. It’s unclear if the comic and TV Hudson Universities are supposed to be the same place, but if they are, think of the crossover potential! Somebody get Angela Lansbury’s agent on the phone!
• Jay mentions, “the war of Americas”. The Flash’s executive producer Greg Berlanti worked on a series called Jack And Bobby back in 2004-5, which was about two teenage brothers, one of whom was destined to become president of the United States in 2041. In the final episode a faux documentary features a conflict called “war of Americas”.
• Blimey, a crim in The Flash who wasn’t sent to Iron Heights! Instead, Eddie Slick spent time in Blackgate Penitentiary, which is situated on an island in Gotham Harbour. It was introduced in Detective Comics #629 (1991) and has also been seen or referenced in Gotham, Batman The Animated Series and the Arkham games.

• Central City has a Woodrue Greenhouse, which must be named after the comics villain Jason Woodrue, aka, the Fluronic Man or Plant Master, introduced in Atom #1 (1962).
• Remember those international trailers that showed a speedster with blue lightning trail (see here)? Zoom in this episode has a blue lightning trail so that explains that. It’s also leading internet punters to suspect Zoom might be Edward Clariss, aka The Rival (see here). However, Jay also describes Zoom as, “an unstoppable demon with the face of death,” which does make us wonder if he could be Black Flash, a kind of Grim Reaper for Speedsters (see here).
• INNUENDO OF THE WEEK: “Took me a lot longer to learn how to toss lightning, believe me.”

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other reviews of The Flash season two