The Flash S02E12 Review: Fast & Furious

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 12: Fast Lane

The Wells part of this episode was pretty good. The West family drama was decent. The villain-of-the-week plot, which took up the biggest chunk of the episode? That kinda fell apart. Which is a shame, really. The CGI team did some decent work with Tar Pit's full form at the end, and the makeup crew certainly made Tar Pit's human form look like, well, a tar demon... most of the time when Tar Pit just transforms an arm or whatever it ends up looking like a balloon.

Bloop

Not to mention that Tar Pit is the most bland of the villains to show up in this series so far. The origin story just really felt overdone and it's annoying that we had to go through the flashback, and then the detective work of finding one of the victims... just cut that all out and have Tar Pit already around. Tying the Tar Pit plot to the Wally West Fast'n'Furious race scene is done rather shakily, and in the end, when we see Tar Pit's awesome full form... he goes down with a simple thrown gadget. Seriously? It's a shame. Tar Pit is a bit of a minor villain in Flash lore, but he really deserved better than that. 

Add that to some utterly silly moments, like that ultra-super-duper slo-mo moment of Barry going "noooo" while that shard of glass flies towards Iris. They don't make car windows like that anymore, don't they? Car windows are supposed to shatter upon impact and everything? And yes, it's supposed to highlight how Wells stole Barry's speed, but seriously, that's just insanely overdramatic.

The Wally/Iris drama was decent. It's nothing spectacular, but it didn't grate the way that Patty/Barry's romance did. The Fast'n'Furious scene and Wally defrosting and becoming a good kid is cliche and they're just spending enough time to acknowledge it but not really delving too much time into it. The bit about Iris confronting the crime boss without backup was stupid, though. I mean, yes, she's recording it, but what if the crime boss decides to actually hurt her there? I think the show's building something about Iris being reckless thanks to the whole Flash thing, but seriously, at least bring Barry or Wally or someone with you. Hell, maybe bring Jay along, give that dude something to do. 

I mean, Jay exists, right? I mean, he doesn't appear in this episode, but he, y'know, fucking exists, right? Seriously, why bring in Jay motherfucking Garrick when you're not going to do anything with him? Might as well as have Zoom kidnap Garrick and chain him up next to Jesse Wells. It would give the same amount of impact as his role in the show right now, and we wouldn't be wondering why Jay is like a ninja.

The bit about Joe being confronted by Iris about being a friend versus being an actual parent is very great, even if it doesn't really go anywhere beyond the utterly predictable daddy-son talk between Joe and Wally. The bit where Wally opens his heart a bit to Iris and how he's just remembering his mother by racing -- apparently Francine passed away off-screen, which is a nice moment of subtlety -- is pretty well-done, and Wally's slight obsession with speed and similarities to Barry will certainly be nice when he eventually dons the lightning-bolt.

The strongest bit here was Harrison Wells, of course, and while the whole 'steal 2% of Barry's speed' thing was kinda overdramatic in my opinion... maybe have Harry install the speed-stealing device last episode, so that plot has some time to stew? We get some great moments when Barry's talking to Harry Wells, we get some great scheming moments, the scenes where Barry's all like "man, Harry you helpful" that irritates Harry so much he lobs an eraser, Barry annoying Harry with his superspeed reading, Zoom finally shows up again and acts all scary when he threatens to torture the hell out of Jesse Wells... and the expressions on Harry Wells' face s he struggles between choosing his daughter and choosing Barry -- earlier speech delivered in gusto notwithstanding -- his tormented expressions and conflict are plain for the audience to see. And, yes, Joe beat him up and threw him in the pipeline, and Harry gives them an out by utilizing the portal-closing science thingamabobs that he and Barry accomplished in this episode, but Barry does bring up a good point. The cast of Flash (and Arrow) has done a fair amount of questionable things in attempts to protect their family, and Barry brings up Cisco's "betrayal" of them to Captain Cold way back in season one when his brother was threatened, and, yeah, I actually do agree with Barry, especially when Harry Wells owns up to his own betrayal before he could do more harm than 2%, and he has been nothing but helpful aside from this one incident and killing Turtle (who everyone glossed over). 

And apparently we're going to invade Earth-2 to go knocking on Zoom's door! Well, I sense a big mid-season event coming up... Overall, despite the weak villain in Tar Pit, and some rather odd scenes, it's still a wholly average and decent episode that's definitely rescued by the great acting on Wells' part.