The Flash, S1E21: Gorilla motherfuckin' Grodd

The Flash, Season 1, Episode 21: Grodd Lives

I am really torn about this episode, really. It's a great episode, of course, as most Flash episodes are. On one hand, this version of Grodd is extremely faithful to the comics/cartoon Grodd, and I am totally so into this altered origin for him. And Grodd is a gigantic monster of a presence, and easily steals every scene he's in. I'm also a fan of how... not-annoying Iris was in this episode. But on the other hand, as much as they try to play up Grodd being affiliated with Eobard Thawne, nothing ever really comes out of it beyond Grodd being used as a distraction while Thawne continues with his mysterious timey-wimey plans, so this episode does fall a wee bit flat. Also the ending of the Flash-Grodd fight with how Barry finds his strength when Iris talks to him felt way too cheesy for my liking. 

What's good about Iris this time around is that Iris herself voices what we, as viewers, have been asking for months, which is why the fuck does everyone keep her in the dark. And really all the keeping her in the dark bit throughout the season ended up with absolutely no payoff at all since in this episode she decides forgiveness is better than being pissed at his family who could die anytime. I just hope she outgrows her clueless borderline-incestious love interest bullshit after this episode. I do absolutely love that we didn't get Iris just wallowing around but instead just straight up confronts Barry and the others in STAR Labs within two minutes of the episode starting. Good stuff.

But let's not talk about Iris too much. She got adequate screentime. Not too little as to make her seem like a doormat with regard with the revelations, but not too much that she becomes obnoxious. It's just the right amount of screentime for Iris to be... not hateable. Almost likeable. Almost. But let's not talk Iris here.

Let's talk Grodd.

Because Grodd is an excellent example of how the Flash, as a show, absolutely and truly loves the comic world it is adapting, while not being a 100% adapatation that doesn't inject anything new. In particular I'm a big fan on how they reworked Grodd's origin, yet still manages to deliver what's essentially the same character. Or what will become the comic book's version of Grodd, anyway, because as threatening and dangerous Grodd is in this episode, he's still learning, his mind still growing. 

And Flash pulls off Grodd absolutely perfectly. I have been antsy about how Grodd would be handled. The foreshadowings were perfect, of course. The show has foreshadowed Grodd all the way from episode one, he's got a bit appearance killing Eiling and holy shit what an awesome appearance that was... but Grodd is still a freaking giant gorilla with telepathic powers, and despite the recent succes of the Planet of the Apes movies with its Andy Serkis monkeys, giant gorillas are kind of a passe thing in TV shows and movies. But Grodd? Grodd was freaking perfect.

And the sheer absurdity of having a telepathic, sentient gorilla is delivered absolutely nicely. The set piece with Barry, Joe and Cisco trekking through the sewer while Grodd is just going around being a horrifying monster, striking from the shadows and creating Jurassic Park-esque ripples in the water is just brilliant, as is the creepy scratches on the wall and the helmet from that hapless worker that Grodd killed in one of his earlier appearances. And when we see him in full view, the first thing he does is telepathically force Joe to point his own gun at his head. Joe's fear is truly evident, and Grodd's little dismissive hand-wave and telepathic speaking makes it clear that Grodd? He's smart. And reducing Joe into a sobbing, terrified wreck is just a powerful scene in general.

Also he hates bananas, which is both chilling and motherfucking hilarious at the same time.

And he's an absolute threat, too. In addition to being, y'know, a freaking telepathic mass of muscles, he also easily no-sells the supersonic punch that beat the Girder during the season's earlier episodes, as well as Flash's rapid-fire punch stream, and ends up breaking the telepathic block goobledeygonk halfway through their fight. That's awesome. And he didn't really get taken out, Flash merely put him out of comission by knocking him into the pathway of a train, and as this episode's final shot shows, Grodd isn't even hurt. He's still dicking around climbing towers and being awesome.

I also love how the opening scenes showed this fully-costumed soldier, causing me to think who this presumably-obscure-DC-villain is? I mean, I thought he was going to be a simple cameo as Grodd's minion or just a throwaway villain early on, but no. It's Eiling! And Eiling being this brainwashed puppet of Grodd is utterly chilling, with Eiling's blank expression while Grodd talks through him just selling the creepiness of the scene.

Also Grodd likes Caitlin, which may or may not come into play in the future.

Barry also frees Eiling from his superhero prison and is all nice and stuff to Eiling, which actually earns him the jackass general's respect. I mean, savvy comic book fans just know that Eiling's eventually going to become the comic-book supervillain the General, but for now Eiling and Barry are having a mutual-enemy bonding moment. Will Eiling play a role in the finale against Reverse-Flash? We'll see.

Barry does his whole 'I love you Iris and we are just trying to protet you' deal, but honestly Grodd and Iris stole the entire show from Barry in this episode. Meanwhile, in the background Thawne continues being a gigantic dick to Eddie while doing mysterious, mysterious future-timey-wimey related things, being all 'hey you don't even get to marry Iris West in the future ha ha'. But Thawne just being so emotionally abusive to Eddie really feels like it's going to build up to having Eddie don the yellow suit as a version of Zoom, which is nice.

Also, Eobard's creepy red glowing eyes are apparently from his real eyes and not an effect made by his costume. That was cool.

It's not really made clear that Thawne is atually being the man-behind-the-man for Grodd. Team Flash assumes it's the case, of course, and Grodd outright states that Wells is basically 'father' and he hates guns (a possible hint to whatever trauma Eobard Thawne might've gone through?) but Eobard and Grodd never once interacted throughout the episode.

We also get a fair bit of nice little geeky nods, both to the CW universe and to the comics in general. Not only do we get continuity nods to the random worker that Grodd killed, as well as the supersonic punch, apparently Cisco had attempted to enlist Lyla and ARGUS to help out to find out about Eiling sometime before this episode, and Barry compares Grodd's mental attack to be similar to Rainbow Raider's own rage inducing powers. The comic book nods in this episode... well, besides Grodd himself, we've got his hatred of bananas, a running gag in the Justice League of America cartoon. We've got Eobard telling Eddie that the Thawne clan is a prestigious bloodline, and indeed in the comics the president of Earth's government during the far-flung future that Impulse came from is one of Eobard's descendants. And Grodd being defeated by being hit by a train is, as some nice folks have informed me, a shout-out to Solomon Grundy's first appearance in the comics when the Golden Age Green Lantern, Alan Scott, had the same problem with Grundy shrugging off every attack Alan did on him, so he lured Grundy in front of a speeding train.

And despite the filler-y feel of this episode, it's a great buildup that settles down the annoying Barry-Iris dynamic rather adequately, with an awesome late arrival in Grodd that still builds up to the remaining two episodes. And unlike Gotham or Arrow, there is very little in Flash's buildup to finale that I can really criticize, because, well, if my reviews aren't already clear enough, I truly love this show.