The Flash S1E4 Review: Captain Cold and Adorable Nerds

The Flash, Season 1, Episode 4: Going Rogue

The Flash is easily my favourite superhero TV show, and at four episodes in that’s saying something. I didn’t really fall in love with Agents of SHIELD or Arrow until halfway through the season, whereas the Flash is just something that clicked on me from day one. Maybe it’s because of the pre-established universe from Arrow, and maybe it’s just that the writers are more daring and prepared to do something more obviously a comic book adaptation compared to Arrow’s initial gritty-reboot premise which they have thankfully started to shed off.

Anyway, episode four introduces one of my all-time favourite villains, Captain Cold. The Rogues, or the central four, at least – Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Heat Wave and Mirror Master – are my favourite bunch of bad guys, mostly because they’re actually a good bunch of friends in addition to being, you know, bad guys. Plus they’re hammy and look colourful without being really huge psychopaths. And I have been quite eagerly anticipating their inclusion in this show, especially after realizing that the Weather Wizard that got killed by Detective West in the pilot… is the first Weather Wizard instead of the second, more prominent one. But enough DC geekery…

The main premise of this episode is, of course, the introduction of Captain Cold and eventually the Rogues, but there’s also a distinct theme of partners going on throughout the episode. It’s a bit cheesy, definitely, especially the Barry bits, but between Barry and Cisco/Caitlin having to work out their partnership, and Detective West having to accept Eddie as his partner instead of his daughter’s girlfriend, are both pretty well. And I do like how they brought Felicity in so we can get this over with in one episode instead of taking several like Team Arrow did.

Oh, and Felicity! She was as geeky and charming as always in this episode, dropping unintended innuendoes every now and then (“I want to see it”, “by doing that I don’t mean coming to my hotel”) and having a little fun with Iris when they first meet. The little geekery scenes are just cute in a slightly-embarrassing way, and I do like the little ‘whaaaat’ expression that Eddie has when Felicity got the e=mc-hammer joke. I thought it was a bit out there, but eh, whatever.

Also what the hell happened in episodes two, three and four of Arrow that Felicity is somehow wandering off to Central City? Did the break-up piss Felicity off so bad that she wanders off to search for another man? It doesn’t really affect the plot here, other than non-Arrow-viewers probably not really knowing who the hell Felicity is, but they do a fair amount of explanation to help newer viewers catch up, so good for the show-writers. That fun little ‘I’m totally not bringing Oliver Queen up because he’s related to the Arrow’ flub was absolutely hilarious. She’s pretty fun in general.

Felicity’s pretty sweet here, and it’s obvious that she and Barry are pretty great and suitable for each other if they’re not already in love with Oliver and Iris respectively. It’s a pretty sad yet sweet dynamic for both of them, though they did kiss in the end and that just adds even more fuel to the shipping fire between the two of them, now, doesn’t it? And I’m still a little bit creeped out with Barry and Iris, considering the two were raised under the same roof and are basically adopted brother-sister, but thanks to canon they’re going to end up together in the end. But eh. Felicity plays off Caitlin and Cisco pretty well, giving the nice teamwork speech and having a slight proverbial cock-waving fight thing about ‘my base is bigger’ argument with Caitlin which I thought was funny. The one-minute hacking was a stupid because she literally just sits down on a laptop and types like a sentence, but it was a bit funny with the finger-cracking joke. (Also she looks good in that black dress, I must say.)

Anyway, to the episode itself… Captain Cold is as great as I could ever hope for, from his appearance to his voice to his personality. I’m not as familiar with Flash villains as I am with the Batman lore, but I’ve seen enough of Captain Cold to be extremely excited about him before and during watching this episode. There’s just that feeling when you see a favourite character adapted into live action and they fucking nail it. More Captain Cold raving later, but the episode is pretty solid. We’ve got the Captain Cold plot, we’ve got the Felicity and Iris B-plots weaving through… it’s pretty solid in general, and probably my favourite out of the four episodes so far simply because it introduces a character I really like and guest-stars one of my favourite Arrow stars.

I did think that the Vacuum Cleaner Fake Ice Gun was extremely ham-fisted and just shoved in there so that Cisco and Caitlin can contribute to taking down (well, shooing off) Captain Cold, because we need the teamwork moral and stuff, but the alternative is to have them actually take down Captain Cold, and I wouldn’t like having one of the big players (possibly the big bad of season one?) get taken out so early.

Also, we see more of Harrison Wells and while he doesn’t do anything particularly significant here like killing corrupt businessmen or looking at future newspapers, there are moments when he’s talking to Cisco where he’s absolutely terrifying. He also seems to know who Felicity is, though he covers it up with keeping track of smart people or something like that, but I think we know better. Wells is pretty fucking pissed off at something that might kill Barry Allen, and is pretty evidently trying to protect him. Also he really, really hates weapons. Pretty interesting. Just who the hell is Harrison Wells? Future Barry? Barry’s Descendant? The Pariah? Who is he?

And if he’s from the future, wouldn’t he know where Captain Cold gets his gun from? And wouldn’t he need to keep Captain Cold around to preserve the future? But then we have no idea what the hell his agenda really is, so… He is pretty furious and downright terrifying in his anger here. Highly, highly curious to know about the whole Harrison Wells situation. 

We did get a little 'I'm from the future thing' with Wells actually letting it slip that he knows what Barry's top speed is and waves it away as it being theoretical.

We get to see a little bit of Barry training. We get to see the proto-Cosmic-Treadmill again, and I thought the little multitasking exercise with the chess and ping pong was a really fun scene. Wells did mention something about how he’s training Barry’s mind, which builds up credence to the Future Barry theory. We get some nice little moments for Barry adjusting to his powers, like trying to impress Felicity by running to a building and ending up burning part of his shoe off. Or using super-speed in a highly utilitarian way by speeding through a shit-ton of mugshots. I thought that was a pretty practical and fun use of powers.

Caitlin didn’t do much here other than play operation and exchange some hilarious lines with Felicity. In general I think this show keeps a pretty nice balance between joking and characterization, which definitely is something I really welcome.

Cisco didn’t do much either, but he plays a large part by being the one who designed Captain Cold’s gun and having this little crisis of trust between him and Wells, and him and Barry. Though balls for Cisco for immediately manning up to Barry and telling him that the ice gun was a contingency to stop him… though why Barry would get so upset about someone who he probably only knows for less than a month to do something like that is a bit overdramatic. Granted Barry seems to be too much of an antisocial person, but still…

Let’s talk Captain Cold now. The ice gun’s effects is shown to be a lot deadlier than its comic or cartoon incarnations, basically causing instant death just as what a sudden drop in temperature to your body would do instead of, y’know, putting a layer of ice around you and giving you no harm other than a slight chill. Kudos for this more scientific take on Captain Cold, and the cold-counters-kinetic-energy thing is certainly a welcome explanation to make him so deadly.

I do chuckle a bit at the ‘hey, cool it’ lines that Captain Cold says early on, and I absolutely agree with Captain Cold when he smiles as Cisco gives him that name. Though if you are born with the name ‘Leonard Snart’, well, that’s not exactly a name you would want to keep now would it? Cold gets introduced as a pretty awesome mastermind, calculating the times and distances of police response to banks and whatnot, and isn’t portrayed as just some dumb muscle. We get hints of his abusive father cop (who he causes the death of in a comic I read) as well as his sister, otherwise known as the villain Golden Glider, or just Glider. But I’m assuming she won’t show up until quite later.

“Keep it cool, we don’t need the heat” is one of the better ice puns, though… Captain Cold’s ice puns may be as groan-worthy as any ice puns, but at least they make sense in context.

I absolutely cheered for Cold when he got the gun and goggles shot that poor broker bastard, and then donned that awesome fucking blue wooly-trimmed hoodie. Hell to the yes, Captain Cold, that is what you should look like. It isn’t as ridiculous as his original inception with a white icicle-designed parka thing over his shoulders, but the look is unmistakably Captain Cold with the goggles and the hoodie and the gun. Absolutely awesome. I might be overreacting a bit, but there is nothing like seeing a character you’re really familiar with from comics and cartoons and then seeing him realized on a great television show and that they’re quite faithful to the source material. I cannot believe just how much I love this incarnation of Captain Cold.

And then, as if the hint of Heat Wave’s gun in the broker’s inventory isn’t quite enough of a little easter egg, we actually follow through with a MCU-style stinger where Captain Cold offers the gun to his buddy Mick, who as DC fans would recognize as the real name of the pyromaniac Heat Wave. Brilliant! Two down, two more to go. And maybe throw in Trickster or Captain Boomerang or someone to round it up.

Detective West get a fair amount of characterization in here too, further setting him apart from Quentin. We get some nice funny moments between Joe and Eddie Thawne, who’s trying so hard to be that a guy that his girlfriend’s father approves of, but Joe is just being, you know, a dad. And he’s pretty annoyed about the whole ‘my partner might die any time’ thing which is absolutely valid and I’m sure is going to happen sometime down the road.

Also, “no more secrets”… yeah, that went so well with Moira, Oliver and Thea. Word of advice, Joe, stop fooling your own daughter.

Eddie Thawne is a pretty nice guy! He does rib off on Barry a bit about the E=MC-Hammer thing, but that’s totally justified since that’s a bit silly. Eddie is a genuinely nice guy and doesn’t come off as a sanctimonious prick like he did in some of the earlier episodes, and I’m really interested if he’s really going to become the Reverse-Flash, or if they pull another Merlyn and it’s Eddie’s grandson or whatever that is the Reverse-Flash.

Iris is still being this cool big sister who tries so hard to ship Barry and Felicity, and she has started a blog about the Red Streak, and there’s the whole Eddie thing. Not overtly invested in Iris as a character, but so far she’s been fun.

Barry’s got a lot of charm just bouncing off Felicity and Iris and I do like how they’re not afraid to bring up the love life angle so early on. We get some nice geekery moments, and I do like Barry’s little slip-up with the police chief about four thugs and then trying to smoothen it up. I did think that him shutting off the earpiece off in a hissy fit is a bit too immature, but hey. I do like Barry as a protagonist, which is certainly surprising, considering how extremely apathetic I was to Barry Allen compared to Wally West. You go, Glee dude. You made Barry Allen be awesome. And I do like that while everyone’s going with ‘the Streak’, like how Green Arrow’s been called ‘the Hood’ and ‘the Vigilante’ in the first season, Barry’s already thinking of new names. Harrison Wells basically calls him the Flash two episodes ago although not out loud, and Barry’s thinking of the Flash as his codename if only Iris hadn’t interrupted him with a fresh cup of coffee.

Please don’t take an entire season to be the Flash. I beg of you, showmakers.

Though the showmakers seem to know what they’re doing, so more power to them. We’ve got great scenes thanks to them. The slo-mo show of Flash zipping around punching Captain Cold’s team during the first robbery, and that big Optimus Prime truck just latching on to the armoured car… it’s very smooth and looks very good as Flash just hits everything. The train scene likewise looks brilliant as the train cabins are just being flipped around and Flash is just zipping in and out and saving everyone and good lord, man, this is a freaking TV show! It looks so good! I mean, if you pause it you get some goofy lightning bolts but that’s the point of the Flash – he moves. He moves really fast.

In contrast, I thought Captain Cold’s freezing effect isn’t quite as good, but what can you do.

Shame that there’s this point during the initial robbery where Flash goes through this cool scene of punching the four people present and… runs away to the distance and giving Cold’s goons a chance to shoot one of the guards? What the hell? Did I miss something, or was that utter stupidity? That allowed Cold’s team to get away scot-free, because Barry needed to zip the dude back to the hospital, and even then can’t he run fast enough to chase a bunch of dudes on motorcycles? Jeez. Also, in the climax, how did team flash get there so fast with the heavy thing? Bugs me.

Also, Captain Cold… hates killing without reason, which seems to adapt the rogues’ code of honor in the comics. I’m not quite sure of the specifics in the comics, but he certainly advocates against killing unnecessary, but in the same breath executes the goon who protests. He leaves Flash when he kills that security guard, yet was fully prepared to kill the Flash with the ice gun. And his goons? Those idiots should’ve shot him instead of talking, and I’m surprised Captain Cold didn’t turn around and turn them into dead ice people, but I guess he’s got his rogues’ code of honor and all that which is nice. Makes him a lot more interesting.

Also as per normal we get a fair amount of references to DC comics, which is cool. Golden Glider and Heat Wave are pretty obvious, and we’ve got the Blackhawk Security Team, named after the Blackhawks, a squadron of ace jet fighters. The main plot device, the Kahndaq Royal Diamond or whatever, comes from Kahndaq, Black Adam’s country, and I thought it was an absolutely hilarious joke where the museum lady was building up to Kahndaq’s hero and it doesn’t turn out to be Black Adam and instead some farmer with a wacky name. Rounding up the little easter eggs is that the host of the trivia show is Oswald Loomis, otherwise known as the minor Superman villain the Prankster. Not sure if this is foreshadowing a future appearance by the Prankster since Flash has already fought villains of other superheroes (Multiplex is a Firestorm villain; Mist is a Starman villain) and Green Arrow is certainly no stranger to fighting Batman villains, but we’ll see.

As you can see from all the stuff above, I’m really into this show. It’s a great episode, we’ve got a great Captain Cold that makes the DC fan in me really really happy, and we’ve got a lot of hints for future things that seems to show that the people running this really do want to adapt comic books unlike, oh, the Dark Knight Rises and its stupid Bane. But that’s a rant for another time. Now I'm just happy about the Flash.