The Flash, Season 1, Episode 6: The Flash is Born
First up before anything else... Wells has been calling the Flash just that, and Barry's out-of-context opening monologues have been calling himself the Flash, and there's the Arrow's line in the pilot episode with 'saving people like a flash'... and finally, six freaking episodes in, Barry Allen is now officially the Flash.
Granted, like the Streak, it also has the additional meaning of running around showing people your nudity, but the Flash is, you know, the Flash.
Oh, this made me happy. I honestly thought we were going to spend the entire season calling him the Streak, which, while not only a phenomenally stupid name (even the in-universe characters comment on it), I also absolutely hate how Arrow's show call him 'the Vigilante' and 'the Hood' in the first season and a good part of the two. Not only are those names associated with other DC characters in my head and makes it hurt, it's also stupid to, you know, make a show about Green Arrow and not call him Green Arrow.
Between Arsenal and Flash, though, this past few days had been awesome in the name-obtaining department.
Anyway, the show's gotten a fair chunk of screentime devoted to Iris to make her less... hateable. I still dislike her because it doesn't really make sense that she's so adamant at writing her blog despite it putting friction between her and her father, as well as her best-friend-brother-figure. Really strikes me as selfish, especially since at the end of this episode Barry actually acquiesces and lets her do her thing. It's really stupid. And Iris herself is still pretty two-dimensional in my opinion.
We get something out of a Superman movie as the first scene as the Flash zips Iris up on top of a roof and gives her a... well, not an interview, but something. They talk a bit, the Flash tells Iris he doesn't like to be called the Streak, Iris fangirls over Flash... you know, Barry, if you really want Iris to stop blogging, you should probably be more forceful. We get a nice fun moment as Barry zips around and returns Iris to the coffeshop right after zipping off for the first time.
Let's talk Iris first. She obviously misses Barry, and at one point she even ignores Eddie's phone call just to talk to the Flash, which is really worrying. Lady's got a bit of an obsession. But this episode's villain of the week is something out of a Spider-Man movie in that he's Barry's old bully in elementary school, except he's gotten new superpowers now. The bully, based on Girder from the comics, shows up at where Iris works, having tracked her down from her blog (see, the idiot) and shamelessly flirts with her like the massive douchebag that he is. Iris goes all 'I have a boyfriend' and Girder just talks about how he's awesome and he's made the Flash run away and all that, and when Iris tries to warn her father (though she's not a very good liar, going all 'police ball' and everything) Girder just crushes her phone and drops a bundle of money into the tipping box.
You know, it would have been her arm or her neck that's broken if someone else other than an old school bully who wants to get in her pants had showed up at Iris' work.
Of course, like any sensible person, knowing that Girder is aware of her blog... Iris proceeds to ask for the Flash's help... in her blog. The stupidity of this I have no words for.
After a quick conversation with the Flash, she's later escorted home by police officers. That doesn't stop the Girder, though, because he basically blows everything up and abducts Iris and presumably kills those two poor policemen. And, again, it's fortunate Girder is a massive egomaniac who wants Iris to blog about him and maybe get a little comfy with him afterwards instead of some psychopath looking for revenge. You stupid dumbass, Iris.
She's standing up for herself later on, at least, refusing to back down and continues to do absolutely stupid things like sounding the alarm right next to Girder, and it's a miracle the dude hasn't beaten her to a pulp yet. She does manage to land the final punch onto Girder's face, so at least she's got that going for her. And she has enough dignity to apologize to Barry later on when the two meet each other at the end of the episode, so she's not completely hateable... and she's definitely the one responsible for spreading 'the Flash' name to the world, so she's got that going on for her...
But I still really don't like her. She's annoying, her stupidity got quite a few people killed and she isn't really interesting at all.
Barry's theme in this episode is anger management, and possibly a bit of conquering your bullies. There's certainly a bit of an Aesop theme going on in the flash episodes. And I thought it's a nice little contrast with this show's sister title, Arrow, in which Oliver never really visibly loses his temper, having been through the five years in hell and all that. After the little ego-trip with Iris on the roof, Barry heads off to stop this criminal who turns out to be a metahuman... and learns what happens when you punch metal. You break your arm. It's an absolutely painful-looking scene, and when Barry realizes that the criminal is, in fact, the bully from his childhood...
He basically gets even more and more angry. I do like how it's subtle, how he loses his temper only when Girder is involved. He's quite cool and chill when he's doing the investigation thing with Eddie, or when he's training with the robo-girder that Cisco built, but he completely flips off and zips around town when Iris tells him that Girder had confronted her. And that gets him... completely crushed by a rack filled with heavy weights.
And, oh god, that was an absolutely horrifying image of someone crushed by these heavy metal things. It's a miracle he somehow survived without any bones that break too much or whatever. It's a personal thing I cringe about, because every time I see someone weight-lift, I really am afraid of what will happen if the rack full of weights would fall down and crush someone. Now we know.
Barry and Eddie then get some nice bonding scene as Eddie, the very nice guy that he is, gets Barry to train in a little boxing and teaches him how to drive a punch properly and gets him to learn some control. We get a little bit of training before this via Cisco's girder-robot, but all that earned Barry is a dislocated shoulder. Cisco also does some simulation things about just how fast Barry needs to go, and we get a little flashback of adorable little Barry being taught a little about how to fight and knowing when to run by Joe.
Then there's the final battle, where Barry learns to fight smart, applying what Joe and Eddie taught him and just go zip around Girder and use his speed to his advantage. Though why Barry felt the need to hang on to that flagpole instead of letting go and super-speeding elsewhere, I don't know. Barry finally knows 'when to run'... except he's, you know, the Flash, and the Flash beats enemies by running. So Barry does run, zipping straight to Girder and punching him with a supersonic punch that's apparently so powerful it jars him back to normal.
You know, Barry, if you're going to run five miles away from the bad guy, why didn't you zip and bring the girl with you and get her out of harm's way? Jeez.
We get Barry apologizing to Iris at the end, of course, and accommodating her big interest for the Flash, though he suggests the name to Iris himself, which is sort of cool.
Also during their conversation we get references to a man who's on fire, but doesn't feel hot or something like that. Firestorm anyone? Granted there's like a gajillion other DC characters who's visibly on fire, but Firestorm has, y'know, actually shown up in this show.
We get a Keystone City reference somewhere in the episode too, I think.
And then Barry reveals himself and his identity to the Girder just to be petty and gloat a little and I thought that was an absolutely moronic move on his part.
Girder himself is a pretty fun villain, even if his personality is just your average bully. He's a big jerk, but he's certainly able to fend for himself, having the second-best track record amongst the villains so far in beating down the Flash a grand total of three times. I'm extremely bummed, though, that they changed Girder from being this rusty, dreadlocked, bearded giant man made out of rusty girders and has been turned into a Colossus ripoff, though. It's a bit irritating.
Also, Girder never gets called that, not even by resident villain-namer Cisco... which is odd, considering this episode's big thing is Flash getting his comic codename. Cisco instead calls the training robot dummy Girder... maybe somewhere in the future, when the show's got a larger CGI budget, the two Girders will fuse and become the comic version of Girder? I can only hope.
Though we're finally getting another proper Flash villain! It's nice. As much as I like them, none of the other villains that Flash has fought, other than the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold, have been Flash villains. Plastique and Wade Eiling are both antagonists of Captain Atom, Multiplex is Firestorm's enemy, Simon Stagg is an antagonist of Metamorpho and the Mist tussles with obscure superhero Starman. Girder, on the other hand, is very definitely a Flash enemy. So yay for that.
Girder's pretty douchebaggy, especially in his scenes with Iris, and has this narrow-minded big ego where he wants the whole world to know about him... but only tries to compete through a blog. I thought it was rather over-cheesy that Girder brought Iris to their school, right onto the lockers that he fought Barry at, in fact. But while he's not really awesome beyond being a super-tough guy, I do like the Girder. He's apparently fallen into molten metal during the night of the change. Girder ends up being imprisoned, making him the second inmate of STAR Labs after the Mist.
The action scenes have been pretty punchy-punchy despite Girder being a metahuman, though I guess it can't be helped. Girder's powers doesn't really lend to big flashy fight scenes. We get a fun fight scene with Eddie and civilian!Barry apprehending a thug and Barry needs to take a hit. I liked that scene. The scene where Flash just runs several miles away and then zooms towards the school, breaking like every single window in his way (just how much monetary damage did Barry cause?), and doing this Supersonic Mach Punch on Girder's face is equal amounts cheesy and awesome. And you know what? I'm fine with cheesiness and ridiculousness. It's a freaking superhero show, and I love it. It's fun. It's really, really fun to watch.
Eddie gets a bit of a spotlight here as well, finally getting some scenes that turn him out of the 'handsome love interest' role. Eddie helps Barry and is genuinely a nice guy, and actually helps Barry let off some steam. Eddie also reveals how he's bullied as a kid and he used to be short and fat. We also get some Eddie-Barry team up as they take down this dude who runs away... he's becoming relatively likable.
He's also asking questions about metahumans, first during the battle with Girder and seemingly being aware of the oddity of Barry getting where he was so fast. And considering Iris is all blogging about the Flash, I don't think it'll take long before Eddie does his own investigation.
Of course, thanks to his name, Eddie Thawne is one of the two primary suspects for being the Zoom/Reverse-Flash creature, but he's so nice! And he, like, hangs around with Barry and everything! Granted, if he's a time-traveling Zoom getting Iris is certainly in line with his M.O., and if he's the second Zoom (Hunter Zolomon) that's initially a cop in present-time, he has that one's backstory. Or he could just be some guy.
Whatever the case, I'm starting to like Eddie.
Caitlin and Cisco have a bit less screen time, but they're all pretty funny scenes. Freaking Caitlin's actually jealous! She's all pissed off at Barry seeing Iris and giving her not-interviews, and she's stalking Iris' blog like a jealous girlfriend. Man, Caitlin's fun. That scene with the dislocated shoulder, where she deals a world of hurt to Barry... Cisco's a lot less fun this time around, actually coming off as a bit of a shallow ditz, being more 'YAAAAY SUPER SONIC PAWNCH' than actually worried about Barry's wellbeing. And there's the whole idiocy about the girder-robot that dislocated Barry's shoulder, of course. We get some extra fun moments with the whole bully thing and whatnot, and I thought that the team has pretty good chemistry.
The fourth member of the team, Harrison Wells, continues to be cryptic. We get him being absolutely furious at Barry almost getting himself killed, which we know is a big deal for him. And he makes this 'a man of steel' joke with a knowing laugh... and I honestly laughed so hard at that point I had to pause the episode. But that's the extent of Wells' involvement with the main cast.
The big B-plot of this episode is Harrison Wells and Joe West. Joe basically talks up to Wells and just talks to him, seemingly recruiting this entirely-possible-Professor-Zoom-candidate to try and solve the mystery of Nora Allen's murder, asking about him regarding the possibilities of someone with about Barry's powers. Wells acts confused, of course, because the particle accelerator wasn't around back then, but Joe pressures Wells, who happens to be in Central City around the time Nora was murdered. Their conversation turns a bit sour and Wells tells Joe to look up Tess Morgan or something like that?
Well, apparently Wells had a wife who died in a car accident and he moved Central City to try and get away from her memories. Joe shows up and apologizes to Wells. These two characters really play off each other well, I must say. There's a fair bit of dialogue being exchanged, but I guess those are the ones that are the most important...
And for the moment, Wells seems free of suspicion, except, you know, we know he's faking his crippled-ness, he has some knowledge of the future and has this newspaper excerpt and technology from the future, is almost certainly behind the making of Barry... and yet he has a wife who died before, so he's been around ever since the time of Nora's murder and even before that. Granted he could've just been Professor Zoom who showed up earlier in the timestream or something, or making this all up... highly interesting.
After all, isn't it convenient that Nora Allen and Tess Morgan died at around the same time? Might be something more sinister at play.
And at the end, with Joe working on the case and crossing off Harrison Wells from the suspect list... freaking Professor Zoom (or, well, the Reverse-Flash, whichever name this thing is using) just zooms in and runs around the room and just fucking screams with that hollow face and those black eyes and puts the fear of the devil into Joe. I must say, they made Zoom look freaking terrifying here. He's already unsettling in the comics with his trademark black eyes, but here, he literally feels like a damn ghost-monster deal, just zipping into Joe's house and just showing how easily he could murder Joe. Zoom just spirits away nearly all of Joe's evidence and research on the Nora murder, which is certainly a practical way to do it, and threatens Iris' life if Joe doesn't stop digging into this.
Man, poor Joe.
Certainly interested to see a lot more about the whole Zoom situation. Lots of theories. Wells and Eddie are the two main suspects, though there are really some points that kind of strike both of them off the suspect list. Eddie's too nice a guy, for one, and the name seems to be a red herring, or that he'll be the second Zoom, the present-day Hunter Zolomon instead of the Zoom from the future. Wells would be phenomenally stupid to alleviate suspicion on himself and then attack Joe right afterwards, though he could just be banking on Joe having the same logic as I do and cross him right off the suspect list. And there's the story which may or may not have been fabricated and manipulated... and this all is just going off what I know of the comic's Professor Zoom and the other Zoom, which the show might or might not follow strictly.
Though this episode has thrown off my old theory about how the happening in Barry's childhood is caused by Flash and Zoom traveling back in time in the midst of a battle or something along those lines, because Zoom is definitely well and alive in the present time and has his own agenda, it seems.
Regardless, this was a pretty great episode. Certainly looking forward to more Flash villains.
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