The Flash, Season 4, Episode 15: Enter Flashtime
I don't really have that much words for this episode. It's not that it's bad, it's very decent... but at the same time, my head's just really reeling about the fact that apparently if this is how Barry Allen and other speedsters perceive time -- i.e. everything slows down -- it makes a lot of the times that Flash just lets some random villain get away because it's not the third act yet, or the nonsense about how he can't outrun the Thinker's portal when it opens fast enough to be perceived by us viewers watching the show without super-speed... I can just chalk it up to simple artistic license and "don't think about it too hard", of course, but at the same time the show really shows that it remembers every single sci-fi goobledeygonk it does, which is the catalyst to the resolution of this episode, ending up with the Speed Force mythology feeling far, far more muddled and weirder than it already is.
It's a pretty gimmicky episode, I guess, a simple, standalone episode that really could've taken place anywhere in the show's life. It's the style of episode that's been seen in many Flash comics over the years, an entire issue that takes place over the course of milliseconds, with Barry trying to prevent a nuclear explosion on the way, quickly rattling off the justifications about why he can't just run it out or whatever, and then one-by-one transferring his speed to talk with Cisco, Harry, Iris and Caitlin. Oh, and Jesse Quick returns for a very, very welcome guest star cameo and I'm definitely sad that Flash's lost both Wally and Jesse.
Jesse actually gives us the very, very plausible solution of "let's go back in time and punch out the terrorist before she detonates the bomb", to which Barry goes absolutely FUCK NO. And I get it, he's learned his lesson since Flashpoint, but at the same time... it's like, five seconds. Not going back to prevent someone's murder or whatever. Nothing's going to really change all that significantly in those seconds, and it's not like The Flash is running alongside a show that features a bunch of carefree dudes dicking around with time and shrugging off significant changes as "eh, we meant well, so it's okay".
Still, after I finish complaining about the fact that the CW showmakers clearly just don't give two shits about logic, and I can just sit back and enjoy a rather decent episode. It's certainly not stellar, though, and the B-plot of Jesse and Harry trying to work out their distant-father-pushy-daughter kink feels like a bland rehash of their dynamic we've seen multiple times last season. Jay shows up to... to really not do much, to be honest, beyond announcing that he's retiring and training a successor. It's shoehorned in and I'm not sure I'm that big of a fan.
Still, it's a fun enough bit with some neat moments for both Barry and Jesse, making this a particularly successful one-off episode, even if the ending feels like a gigantic asspull. overall, a fun, but ultimately honestly somewhat forgettable episode if you remove the gimmick. Yes, mysterious Jitters girl that's totally not Dawn Allen shows up to talk to Caitlin and Harrison, but even that's not a particularly huge moment. That moment with Jesse and Harry at the end with the reverse-neural-inhibitor is amazingly done, though.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The main terrorist identifies herself as Veronica Dale, otherwise known as Hydrax in the comics, leader of the minor terrorist group Eden Corps. In a neat twist considering how many villains Arrow borrowed from other DC properties, the Eden Corps was originally a minor Green Arrow enemy, although they did manage to do what no other villain ever could -- kill the Green Arrow, albeit indirectly, by forcing him to detonate a bomb with a plane in it to stop it from blowing Metropolis up.
No comments:
Post a Comment