The Flash, Season 1, Episode 16: Rogue Time
The previous episode was awesome. This episode? Really not that great. I mean, it's not a bad episode by any means. Captain Cold was absolutely stellar, and I really liked the developments with Cisco as a character as well as the nice parallels between this episode and the last. There are no shortage of great scenes here, but a really weak B-plot revolving around Barry confessing his love to an Iris who had no memory of the last episode was really cringe-inducing, even moreso than all of the previous Iris and Linda scenes put together. The sudden shift from stopping a big tsunami and Cisco's sudden death to dealing with the Rogues' return and Cisco's family problems is also extremely jarring. But this episode does find its footing relatively quickly, annoying romance plot tumour aside.
For how cringeworthy the Iris stuff are, though, I do like how much of a slap to the face that was to Barry and how it solidifies the time-travelling rules of the universe. We get some hints here and there from both Barry exploring things and Harrison Wells' cryptic explanations that time can be changed. But overall not really much happened due to the time travel beyond Barry completely ignoring Wells' instructions and arresting the Weather Wizard like a bitch. Also, as Barry himself have tried, he cannot just try and time-travel on the fly and he needs to be under some kind of emotional pressure or some specific condition .
The Barry-Linda relationship was simply just... called off for no good reason. Poor Linda, existing only to be the third wheel. And I'm still not a big fan of the Barry-Iris plot. Iris hasn't really been annoying me as much as Laurel Lance did before her, but I am just so done with this super-forced borderline-incestuous relationship plot. I did like the scene where Eddie punches Barry straight in the jaw, as well as the ridiculously funny explanation ('lightning psychosis'?) that Caitlin provided Iris and Eddie with. Also liked Joe's little advice to Iris to be honest with herself and not force her to go either way.
Captain Cold and Heat Wave return once more for some excellent campy and over-the-top awesomeness, though this time Heat Wave takes a back seat for Lisa Snart, Captain Cold's sister and otherwise known as the supervillain Golden Glider. It's just brilliant, campy fun. Heat Wave does get a few fun moments just admiring flames on a cocktail and generally being a loose cannon, but otherwise he's just there. Golden Glider does get a few 'fun crazy family' moments with her brother, but likewise she's just kind of there. She does get a revised power, though. Instead of skating on a pair of wacky ice skates that can generate their own ice, Lisa Snart now wields a gun that shoots gold at people. Um.
Not quite the most impressive power, but at least it keeps with the 'golden' theme...? They could've just shot everything in that mansion and get a shit-ton of gold, but I guess they're just thrill seekers. And that's a big point of Captain Cold's conversation with the Flash. "Get a new job!" -shrug- "Don't wanna." Captain Cold makes it clear that he's doing this for the simple thrill of the job, for the adrenaline rush, and to just show that he's that good. He's awesome. He also manages to maneuver events so that he discovers the Flash's secret identity, though Barry manages to appeal to his ego to not kill while on the job. I do like Captain Cold and Flash's to-and-fro, they're pretty fun.
I am kind of on the fence about the revision of Cisco's death and the discovery of Wells prior to it. The reporter who is on to wells, Douchebag McJackass, gets put through a horror show by the Reverse-Flash at the end of the episode and stabbed with a vibrating hand through the chest, and really who expected him to live? Barry does get suspicions thanks to living through the reporter's warnings in the first episode... but Cisco's death does kind of feel cheapened.
I mean, we did get Wells bringing Cisco down to the forcefield machine and talking about how Cisco is like his son and everything -- minus all the power display and killing -- and I get that it fits with how shitty Cisco feels after dealing with self-worth issues and having to reveal Barry's secret identity... but I dunno. That was an awesome death scene and I'm sad that this episode isn't about Barry trying to prevent Cisco's death without previously having known that it happened.
Cisco does get a good scenes this time around, though, as we explore his relationship with his brother Dante... who is handsome and loved by their parents because he's a concert pianist and a pianist can be shown off and paraded in front of family friends. Whereas being a super-smart engineer really doesn't amount to much in some parents' eyes simply because they don't understand what their children do. We did get some hints of Cisco having friction with his family and I do like that it's explored. Compounding Cisco's self-worth is that he was kidnapped by following a disguised Lisa Snart (she's an actual blonde in the comics, by the way) home from a bar and that a guy like him can never get an actual pretty girl.
And as much of a douchebag his brother is -- calling him a dog and telling him to fuck off and get a job -- Cisco, of course, ends up succumbing to Cold's demands to create new guns and I do like how Cold is savvy enough to have memorized the design of his gun (already repeated several times in the Rogues' last outing) as well as get Cisco to tell him Flash's identity. Do like the little reconciliation moment between Cisco and his brother, as well as having what is normally the comic relief guy getting put through so much emotional shit this episode.
Another nice detail is how Cold's gun isn't always in 'encase people in ice' mode and causing frostbite on people is also a possibility.
Overall it's still a pretty great episode, don't get me wrong -- I'm just a bit disappointed in the lack of timey-wimey stuff and the abundance of the Iris plot that I really don't care about enough to talk much of.
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