The Flash, Season 1, Episode 18: All Star Team Up
A filler
episode, this one is. I wasn’t expecting a crossover with Arrow, and I definitely wasn’t expecting a crossover
featuring Ray Palmer instead of Oliver Queen. But here we go with the Atom and
the Flash hanging out, dealing with Eddie’s love problems and a swarm of killer
robotic bees because why the hell not. Barry and Felicity share some pretty
great scenes together because Felicity as an outsider is the only real person
Barry can talk to about STAR Labs problems. But the Atom really didn’t feel
needed other than to, y’know, hang out. He does have some interactions with Cisco
and some cool action scenes but otherwise he really kind of feels redundant to
the episode as a whole.
I did
like the effects for the swarm of bees, and the fact that they were actually
able to kill Barry for a few seconds is legitimately impressive and pretty
fucking hilarious. Granted I was expecting some kind of bug-controlling
metahuman (a non-alien version of the Queen Bee was my guess right until her
identity was revealed) instead of a gender-swapped version of the Atom enemy
Bug-Eyed Bandit. But other than some impressive visuals with her bee drones –
the scene where they come out of the second victim’s mouth was a pretty
impressive one – she ends up being kind of an underwhelming villain. And the
hacking war between the Bug-Eyed Bandit and Felicity? Boring.
I
mean, I know we’re adapting this from DC comics but not every themed villain
makes puns around their theme.
I really
liked the opening scene with Barry, Joe and Eddie screwing up those car thieves
and generally having a ball. That was fun! I can’t really say much about it
other than variations of ‘I like it’ and ‘that was fun’.
There
wasn’t really anything particularly bad about
this episode. Not even the Iris-Eddie romance plot tumour or Ray Palmer’s weird
‘hey guys I’m here to hang out’ thing really bugs me. Or even the unexplained
reason to why Cisco would remember the revelations in the retconned timeline
when no one else – not Wells, not Iris or anyone – does. It’s just, well, an
average episode. And while I enjoyed it, it was just kind of average.
There’s
a constant theme of secrets and betrayals – obviously the whole Barry
suspecting Cisco and Caitlin to be in league with Wells thing, but also Iris
feeling that Eddie is keeping secrets from her (a plot thread that’s done to
death in Flash’s sister show) and the Bug-Eyed Bandit being betrayed by her
employer, and Joe and Barry are keeping the investigation about Harrison Wells
a secret from Cisco and Caitlin. It’s a theme, though they didn’t really do
much with it.
But as
it slugs through its multiple plot threads in a far more elegant way than I would’ve
expected, we’re finally paving a way to the final stretch of the season with
everyone fighting against the Reverse-Flash and hopefully we get the Iris
bullshit out of the way so it isn’t a gigantic distraction with all the time
travel and Harrison Wells and Gorilla Grodd stuff. We did get Cisco and Caitlin’s
recruitment out of the way by the end of the episode (complete with a
Reverse-Flash jumpscare) and Barry and Joe’s argument on whether to bring them
in was valid in both directions. I’m just happy it doesn’t eat up another
episode’s worth of screentime.
Again,
I’m just a bit confused about the whole Cisco remembering the splinter timeline
thing. Who else does? How does splintering the timeline work? Does Wells know? Will
it be explained? I sure hope so.
While
Ray was kind of wooden, and holy crap how many Superman jokes do we need to
make WE GET IT BRANDON ROUTH PLAYED SUPERMAN ONCE SHUT UP, Felicity was fun. Fun
the way she hasn’t been for the third season of Arrow. Move shows already, wouldn’t
you? I did like the fact that they barely even touched the Barry-Felicity
shipping angle other than Felicity remarking that Ray is Oliver and Barry
rolled into one. They’re mutual friends who really care for each other without
any romantic tension between them and I like that. I’m also waiting until they
finally implement the ‘go smaller’ solution that Ray finds in this episode and
not just leave the Atom as a cheap Iron Man knockoff and actually, y’know, be the Atom.
Eddie
and Iris, though, well… it’s a bit realistic and I don’t fully hate how Iris is
reacting to what she considers is a breakdown of their relationship. But
honestly why doesn’t anyone tell her anything? Eddie even lampshades how
everyone but Iris knows that Barry Allen is the Flash. I thought we are heading
to something interesting with how Eddie isn’t happy to play secret keeper and
would be the one to reveal Barry’s identity to Iris and open a whole new can of
worms, but no. We did get a nice scene of Eddie briefly standing up to Joe, and
Barry actually helping Eddie out by trying to brush his weirdness off as being
part of police work stuff. But this is approaching the end of the season so
status quo will be shattered and Iris is pissed at Eddie. As much as I dislike
romantic plot tumours, I thought this was handled rather quickly and suffers
really badly by being so compressed. It would probably work better if it was
spaced out… but on the other hand I don’t really give two shits either way so. Man,
Iris is just kind of messed up, isn’t she? The characters keep her in the dark
about the big secret for no good reason, she’s basically useless to the plot
other than being part of the love triangle now that all the news stuff is gone.
What
else… I was surprised to see dr. Tina McGee return to the show, and other than
being the plot device of the Bug-Eyed Bandit’s revenge scheme, she does serve a
small plot point by planting the idea in Barry’s head that Harrison Wells is a
different person after Tess’s death, which is an important plot point and everything.
I do
like how Wells is still passive-aggressively dropping hints about his evilness
like in the earlier episodes, but this time Barry actually catches them. Also a
fan of how Ray is just grinning like ‘oh wow it’s cool’ at every single thing
that happens in this episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment