The Flash, Season 1, Episode 11: The Sound and the Fury
Well, that's another awesome episode. I wasn't really too familiar with the Pied Piper as a character -- I know he exists, I know he's a cool anti-hero/anti-villain dude in the comics, I know he's gay, I know his powers... but I'm not acquainted with the character all that much. And as the villain of the episode, he's awesome. It's an awesome episode, really, combining both the 'villain of the week/moral of the week' formula with the whole big Reverse-Flash plot. I certainly was not expecting all the whole Harrison Wells stuff being part of Pied Piper's backstory.I mean, the Flash still does a fair amount of things in this episode, but it's safe to say that Harrison Wells and Pied Piper (a.k.a. Hartley Rathaway) stole the show. Let's go with Piper first... I'm quite happy to see him be a badass villain. They openly talk about how he's gay, how his father disowned him for coming out (which we saw a bit of last episode when Captain Cold robbed his dear old folks) but other than an off-hand comment about being escorted with men wearing leather, never in this episode did the Pied Piper act like a stereotypically camp gay person, which is a good thing. He's pretty cool, in fact, with his being a gigantic douchebag and being a chessmaster.
I also like how this one villain isn't someone new that Team Flash encounters like practically every other villain out there, but rather a blast from the past. And they simply never mentioned Hartley before simply because 'he was mostly a jerk, but sometimes he's a dick'. And he is! We saw that he's awesome in both chessmastering, he was basically Harrison Wells' second-in-command back in the day, but he is also a gigantic prick. He insults Cisco simply for showing up with a Keep Calm shirt, he dicks around and makes jokes about Ronnie's death in front of Caitlin, slaps Caitlin, he basically treats Cisco like shit and tries to kill Flash just to spite Harrison Wells.
He's kind of a psychopath, but hey, he's got reasons and stuff, so he isn't entirely unsympathetic. Still a gigantic fuckwad, though. I do like his design, keeping the iconic green hood from the comics, even if he hasn't gotten a flute yet and relies on these two metallic gauntlets on his arms to launch sonic waves at stuff which can break stuff. His sonic waves can apparently also move cars in the air and toss them down a dam, because, uh... physics I guess. He's also rendered deaf by the particle explosion, and requires what Cisco dubs to be 'evil hearing aids' to stop a ringing pain going off in his ears, which is kind of a cool concept to tie to the whole sound thing.
Overall he's a petty little shit who's playing a big chess game with Wells, and I do like the little bait and switch. We think that Rathaway knows about the whole Reverse-Flash secret and Wells tried to get him silenced or something, but no. The big secret is that, y'know, Wells had Rathaway fired because Rathaway warned Wells about the possibility of the accelerator blowing up. Which is a fair thing to get angry about, but Rathaway kind of crossed the line after he tried to kill Barry even after Wells had admitted his sin in front of everybody.
I thought some of the sonic waves didn't look so good, actually, though I bet animated those sound waves can't be as easy as the glowing zap lines of Captain Cold and Heat Wave's guns. It's still nice enough to not distract, though, especially in the later scenes.
Rathaway also has a little rivalry going on with Cisco, basically refusing to acknowledge Cisco's worth and getting into verbal fights with Cisco several times. Which I thought was kind of nicely done, and Wells consoling Cisco about how he is the heart of the team, while a bit cheesy, was nice. Rathaway also drops the big bomb on Cisco, though, promising him at the end of the episode that Cisco will let him out because he knows all about Ronnie. Dun dun dunnn! Also didn't expect all this to tie into the Firestorm plot, which is a nice way to make everything connected without turning it into a clusterfuck.
Granted there is the big, gaping plot hole on why they placed Rathaway in their metahuman jail block instead of, y'know, handing him over to the police. I mean, the police arrested Captain Cold and Heat Wave last episode, so why the fuck did they leave Rathaway to Team Flash? He's definitely not a metahuman, people can definitely charge him for resisting arrest and blowing shit up with sonic beams... and he's definitely someone who is pretty likely to figure out a way to break out of that prison.
That's something that really bugged me. And he ended up in the STAR Labs prison not once but twice.
Harrison Wells gets the brunt of the characterization, though! He gets some 'it's nice to be a hero' moments and some cryptic 'oh, yes indeed, we need to document this for the future' lines that, y'know... he also gets a fair bit of characterization that at times makes me doubt that he's actually the same Reverse-Flash that's been going around killing people's mothers and shit. But if there was ever any doubt that Harrison Wells is the Reverse-Flash, he actually gets on his feet and zips around in super-speed, leaving behind red lightning. More on his speed and whatnot later on, but Wells does shine pretty well in this episode. He is certainly humanized more than the heartless chessmaster, and from acknowledging his sins to the public and his friends, admitting his pride (or, y'know, most-likely-deliberate sabotage of the particle accelerator) and generally being taken down off his pedestal is pretty well-written. It's definitely Wells' time to shine this episode.
And that's without all the fun Reverse-Flash stuff. Harrison Wells has super-speed, yes, and he is the Reverse-Flash, yes, but when he ran out of his little Gideon safe chamber, he basically falls down because his legs are vibrating badly, which means that there is something... odd with his speed. Rathaway isn't a secret keeper for Wells' alter ego, however, and we learn at the end of the episode as Wells speaks to Gideon the AI that he is apparently absorbing his speed from the weird robot chest-claw thing... from the Speed Force, which finally is named. Wells notes that he can only absorb around 35% and his speed is fluctuating, which actually gives somewhat of a reason for why he likes to run off from his fights with Flash other than, y'know, plot necessity. And it seems that his 'endgame' is attempting to permanently drain Barry Allen's speed. Or something.
Also, he says 'I failed this city' in his apology speech, which, thanks to Arrow, is absolutely fucking hilarious and I laughed so hard at that one.
Cisco also gets a fair bit of screen time this time around, dealing with his self-worth issues and constantly being put down by Rathaway back then and now, and I do like how he gets really serious when shit gets down, and how Wells later reassures him that the fact that he has empathy and humour isn't a bad thing. It's a pretty fun episode and I do like how the secondary characters are slowly getting fleshed out. Caitlin... I don't think she does anything notable beyond general Caitlin stuff, but next episode's probably going to be a Firestorm one so we might see her do stuff.
The sudden alternation of languages that Rathaway uses to talk to the STAR Labs people (Latin when talking with Wells, Spanish with Cisco and French with Caitlin) is kind of a nice touch to show just how accomplished Rathaway is in things other than physics... and how much of a dickwad he is.
There is a B-plot of Iris getting a job as a reporter, finally, which is her comic book counterpart's job. And there's the twist that the bosses basically don't give a shit about her if she can't pull out her Flash connections and get a Flash story and how her superiors are being a dick to her... which is kind of being somewhat similar to Agent Carter's plot but more subtle. Wells does throw her a bone, which is nice, and I suspect the Flash will be talking to her very very soon, and maybe she'll have to choose between being known as 'that reporter who's only something because she knows the Flash' and being an actual, legit, reporter, which could be an interesting thing to explore.
Joe doesn't do much other than fooling around with Barry's explanation of sound shattering glass, and later having that 'aw' moment with how Barry tells him he can't be replaced (which IMO kind of came out of nowhere) but he's apparently conducting his own investigation of Wells alongside Eddie Thawne (who very may well be an accomplice, but likelier to be a red herring). He does laugh at everything from Cisco's description of Rathaway to Barry's little glass-shattering experiment and he's funny. I like him.
Barry himself... again, other than his interactions being the good guy while talking to Wells and Joe and the rest, I don't think there's anything particularly notable that he does.
Oh, and the Royal Flush Gang reappears! Which is always fun. It's the second appearance of the gang in the CW show's continuity, and this time they're a trio of motorcycle riding thieves or something wearing helmets with card markings they may or may not be the same group with the ones that showed up in Arrow. If they aren't, it is kind of fitting considering how there's like a gajillion different incarnations of the Royal Flush Gang in the DC comics... but it's likely that they are. Which is cool. I like the idea of a Royal Flush Gang hanging around. And the way Flash took them down was funny.
Overall a pretty solid episode, and I'm highly interested to see what's to come. Reverse-Flash, Firestorm, Pied Piper... so many things are going on, and I'm definitely looking forward to the mysteries being unraveled little by little.
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