The Flash S06E13 Review: Gorilla Flash

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 13: Grodd Friended Me

A singular episode of The Flash. Again, I'm going to do this basically arbitrarily depending on a combination of my watching schedule and whether I feel like I have enough to say about the episode to talk in length.

And... "Grodd Friended Me" is... it's certainly an interesting episode? A good part of what got me cautiously excited about the post-Crisis Flash episodes is that Cisco promises that thanks to the funky way that cosmic reboots work, some of the villains that didn't quite get as good of an adaptation the first time around might be given a do-over. Mirror Master is one that was certainly handled with far more respect in post-Crisis land compared to the original one, and I do like their new version of Doctor Light, so that's two for two. This episode starts off with a fight with Pied Piper, a character who was massively mis-handled as he was introduced as an angry villain, and then randomly rebooted via a time-travel segment as an ally-on-call, and basically never mentioned again. As one of the Flash's more prominent comic book antagonists, Pied Piper gets a do-over as he's revealed to be a metahuman and a card-carrying villain again.

But then we get into the meat and potatoes of this episode, and that's Gorilla Grodd. Even moreso than Pied Piper and Mirror Master, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Grodd is easily one of the most prominent enemies in Flash's Rogues' Gallery, perhaps only second to the various Reverse-Flashes and Captain Cold. And... and it's bizarre the direction they decide to take Grodd in, and I'm not sure I agree. Grodd episodes are always a bit more problematic due to the sheer amount of CGI involved in bringing Grodd to life on the small screen, and most Grodd episodes tended to keep the big ape in reserve to be as economical as possible. Sometimes this is done well -- Grodd's whole deal in the first season has him shadowed for most of his appearances before the epic revelation of how terrifying he is, but as he gets a bunch of subsequent appearances, it has been erratic for everyone's favourite telepathic ape.

While the A-team is out on their various excuses, we get the B-team of Kamilla Hwang and Chester P. Runk (a character I completely forgot about since I don't think he's shown up since the season premiere) hanging out in STAR Labs. And a good chunk of the episode is basically properly establishing Chester as part of the team, but I feel like this would've been a bit more effective if we've gotten Chester appearing a couple of times in the background of the past couple of episodes. Chester is overly infectious and tries a bit too hard to impress, while Barry's dealing with a lot of stuff, being unable to remember a lot of what's going on in Earth-Prime after the Crisis. The graveyard where his parents are buried has been moved, Pied Piper has gotten a reboot, so on and so forth, and Barry's having trouble adjusting, and tossing in the unfamiliar voices of Kamilla and Chester instead of Cisco and Caitlin throws him off bad.

Thanks to [insert technobabble here], Chester mucking around with Barry's equipment as he's trying to read about the changes to Earth-Prime causes him to be zapped into a cage where he's prodded and mucked about with by Caitlin Snow and Season One Harrison Wells. Turns out, though, that this isn't an alternate universe or whatever, but instead this is Grodd's telepathic world, and Grodd is basically putting Barry through his pre-season-one memories to build up some empathy or something. And... I dunno, I genuinely feel like it's not quite as effective or as psychologically disturbing as the show thinks to have Grodd take the form of Caitlin and Harrison (and Joe for a scene) for a couple of scenes, and seem to be an obvious attempt to shave off money from the CGI gorilla budget.

There's a bit of an odd set-up, too, as Grodd insists that he has changed, and he wants to return to his life in Gorilla City, because he has totally changed and realized what he's done is evil, telling Barry how unjust being trapped in a comatose body is and whatnot... but after all that Grodd's done throughout the various seasons, could you blame Barry? And then Barry finds out that the way out of Grodd's mind is blocked by a guardian, because of course it is, and said guardian takes the form of King Solovar. At this point, Barry's willingness to work alongside Grodd ends up feeling less about him deciding to trust that an old, hated enemy can change, and more out of necessity, yet the episode plays it off as Barry finally realizing that people can change and stuff.

This is tied into the far more sensible "second chances" storyline when Chester realizes that it's his attempt at helping out that ended up fucking over the Flash, and all of his huge bluster ends up immediately deflating as he basically walks out of STAR Labs, dejected at being a failure and talking about how people like him never get a second chance. Of course, though, out of the assembled cast members it's Killer Frost that ends up talking to Chester, the poster child of obtaining second chances from Team Flash, who tells Chester that, hey, if you fuck up (and Team Flash fucks up a lot) what you do is to undo said fuck-up. It's a very well done scene, and both Chester and Frost are great in this one.

Eventually, through some honestly rather ambiguously-earned partnership, Grodd and Barry team up and fuse together, Dragon Ball Z style, into a gorilla with super-speed and a lightning bolt on his chest to beat up Solovar, and also Chester ends up programming something that allows them to split apart the moment they get out of Grodd's mind. The gorilla-vs-flashrilla scene is gloriously comic-book-y and over the top, and I can't say that I dislike it, but Grodd is basically released back into the wild to Gorilla City under probation... but honestly, I really do feel like they ended up rushing through a lot of the Grodd stuff, and if this is meant to be either a redemption or a conclusion episode, it really is pretty unsatisfying. Honestly, the only way that this supposed reboot on Gorilla Grodd works is if this leads into Grodd revealing that this is all his sinister plan to escape all along, or if he tried to find acceptance and it doesn't work out. Or something. I dunno.

The B-plot takes place in the Mirrorverse, as Iris and Eva basically do a bit of a repetitive talk of trying to escape, with Eva being panicky and alternating between being manic and being depressed that they can't get out, while Iris is the giver of best pep-talks. There's a particularly odd bit of Eva insisting that her mirror portal machine won't work without explaining why, and without even really trying to talk to Iris about why, ends up doing the pretty painful-looking demonstration of burning her hands as she shoves them through said portal. It's a scene that feels very forced just to build trust between the two (particularly since we already got a couple of equivalent trust scenes before), but the final revelation of the episode that Eva McCulloch is planning something sinister and is the one who created Mirror Iris (sirI?) and sent her out to the world to be her flunky is significantly more interesting and makes Eva's desperate attempts to gain Iris's unconditional trust to feel far, far more sinister. I guess what we see from the two of them sharing arm injuries is that Mirror Iris is essentially tied to Eva, and I suppose creating mirror clones is Eva's true power?

Mirror Iris (I'm going to call her Siri now) starts to lose her cool a bit. She still does a decent job at balancing the act between being the perfect Iris with slightly believable changes withing being too suspicious, I guess? She is certainly skirting the line into being suspicious, though, being very rude to Joe at one point in this episode to hunt down information on Joseph Carver, and manipulating her mirror-dad to agree to a meeting just to get him out of his office.

Speaking of B-plots, there's the continuing bit of Nash and Allegra's storyline as Allegra finally finds out the photo of Nash and Allegra's alternate Earth doppelganger that's totally Nash's daughter, and sort of freaks out thanks to it. Frost tries to help out, but this is clearly a storyline that's not going to be resolved in this episode. Also, Nash keeps seeing random Wells-ghosts... and this time around, it's the same old evil Eobard Thawne as Harrison Wells that thematically also shows up as part of Grodd's visions. Okay?

It's a solid episode, I'm just not the biggest fan of some of the directions that they take certain characters. Mostly Grodd. We'll see if the next couple of episodes and what their ominous-sounding titles are going to entail.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Firestorm Matrix is used by Barry as a comparison to how his and Grodd's mental states are entangled in the mind-world. 
• Grodd having super-speed and a red lightning bolt on his torso is a nod to the New 52 version of the character, who has those powers. 
• Hartley "Pied Piper" Rathaway hasn't been seen since his random reboot into an ally in the season two episode "Flash Back", where Pied Piper was originally promised to be an ally but nothing ever came out of it. 
• Pied Piper is now a metahuman with sonic-manipulating abilities, which is exactly what happened to the comics version of Pied Piper post-Flashpoint in the comics. 
• Sherloque's memory machine from season five is utilized.