The Flash, Season 4, Episode 10: Trial of the Flash
There's just something about 'trial' episodes that just makes me groan. I've never really found them interesting, really -- I suppose its the fact that trials end up just being a long-winded, cheap way to lengthen drama even though the verdict could really have been done quickly to just edge on the real story. And I found this episode of the Flash to be particularly bland and uninteresting. Obviously the audience knows Barry Allen is innocent, and so do every single member of the cast who has a name, but because of Thinker planting all the evidence leading to Barry's conviction, without the revelation that he's the Flash he's never going to be able to prove his innocence. We're supposed to take this as the culmination of a chess game that Barry can never win, except I still think it's plot-induced stupidity that Barry even refuses to super-speed away at the end of the previous episode.
So yeah, while the actors do competent acting here, I don't really care all that much, and the big emotional beats like Barry walking out of the courtroom to save the city from convenient Metahuman-of-the-Week Fallout feels like needless drama, and the long, long "we are the Flash" moment with Barry and Iris slowing down time in the courtroom feels insanely melodramatic for no real reason. It seems like they're just rushing through a bullet-points list of just what could happen in a courtroom drama trial without really bothering to make the audience invest enough in the trial to care about any of this. It feels like Flashpoint all over again, where we're just rushing to get to an interesting point where our hero's fucked up, so that we can begin to undo it next episode.
Fallout himself is a sympathetic villain, not actually aware that he is radiating radiation, but he ends up being a one-and-done deal as Barry, Caitlin and Cisco funnel away his radiation cloud into Earth-15, the wasteland dimension. There is so many things wrong with this because radiation doesn't work that way -- using wind to funnel something away would be convection -- but eh.
Clifford (now apparently able to access Brainstorm's mind-reading powers) and Marlize are... adequate here. Marlize's hysterics provide one of the better moments of the episode, and while Clifford is pretty neat, being simultaneously threatening and somewhat hilarious. It all doesn't really improve my opinions of the Thinker all that much since I still think he's not that convincing as an ultimate-chessmaster style villain, but at least we're not getting another evil speedster with a vendetta.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the extremely touching scene between Ralph and Joe, perhaps the only scene in this hot mess of an episode to get any sort of reaction from me beyond "okay, yeah, get on with it." Joe wants to plant evidence on Marlize's house to convict her and pay her back, and Ralph goes, "yeah, sure!" before going into a nonchalant ramble about how everyone will be driven away because Joe decides to break the rules to get the bad guy, the same lesson that Ralph had learned earlier this season, and it's genuinely moving, as is the scene when Joe wordlessly looks at the open door (great move for them to have Ralph open the door anyway) and closes it shut. That's amazing. Sadly, I can't say the same about the rest of the episode.
So yeah, while the actors do competent acting here, I don't really care all that much, and the big emotional beats like Barry walking out of the courtroom to save the city from convenient Metahuman-of-the-Week Fallout feels like needless drama, and the long, long "we are the Flash" moment with Barry and Iris slowing down time in the courtroom feels insanely melodramatic for no real reason. It seems like they're just rushing through a bullet-points list of just what could happen in a courtroom drama trial without really bothering to make the audience invest enough in the trial to care about any of this. It feels like Flashpoint all over again, where we're just rushing to get to an interesting point where our hero's fucked up, so that we can begin to undo it next episode.
Fallout himself is a sympathetic villain, not actually aware that he is radiating radiation, but he ends up being a one-and-done deal as Barry, Caitlin and Cisco funnel away his radiation cloud into Earth-15, the wasteland dimension. There is so many things wrong with this because radiation doesn't work that way -- using wind to funnel something away would be convection -- but eh.
Clifford (now apparently able to access Brainstorm's mind-reading powers) and Marlize are... adequate here. Marlize's hysterics provide one of the better moments of the episode, and while Clifford is pretty neat, being simultaneously threatening and somewhat hilarious. It all doesn't really improve my opinions of the Thinker all that much since I still think he's not that convincing as an ultimate-chessmaster style villain, but at least we're not getting another evil speedster with a vendetta.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the extremely touching scene between Ralph and Joe, perhaps the only scene in this hot mess of an episode to get any sort of reaction from me beyond "okay, yeah, get on with it." Joe wants to plant evidence on Marlize's house to convict her and pay her back, and Ralph goes, "yeah, sure!" before going into a nonchalant ramble about how everyone will be driven away because Joe decides to break the rules to get the bad guy, the same lesson that Ralph had learned earlier this season, and it's genuinely moving, as is the scene when Joe wordlessly looks at the open door (great move for them to have Ralph open the door anyway) and closes it shut. That's amazing. Sadly, I can't say the same about the rest of the episode.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Fallout, a.k.a. Neil Borman (I don't think his real name was ever spoken on-screen in this episode?) is a likewise sympathetic antagonist of Wally West's Flash, affected by a nuclear explosion which gave him uncontrollable nuclear radiation powers. He was captured by the staff of Iron Heights prison, who later used him to power the prison, prompting Flash to rescue him.
- Tracy Brand, the scientist that helped the team against Savitar at the climax of the third season and is subsequently shuffled away, is briefly name-dropped.
- Barry and his ramblings from episode one of this season is shown by Cisco via archival footage.
- Cisco vibes the radiation into Earth-15, described as a barren wasteland. After the events of Final Crisis, Earth-15 has been left as a barren plane of existence, its entire inhabitants being destroyed by Superboy-Prime, a fact that persisted into the New 52 continuity.
- The whole premise of the Flash being put on trial and convicted a murderer is a reference to a similar trial arc which took place as one of Barry Allen's final stories before his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
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