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The Flash, Season One
My name is Barry Allen, and I'm the fastest man alive. When I was a child, I saw my mother killed by something impossible. My father went to prison for her murder. Then an accident made me the impossible. To the outside world, I'm just an ordinary forensic scientist, but secretly with the help of my friends I use my speed to fight crime and find others like me, and one day I'll find who killed my mother and get justice for my father. I am the Flash.
I really enjoy this show. It’s dramatic without quite devolving into the Smallville-esque “I don’t want anything to get in the way of our friendship;” it has a delightful amount of diversity; it has plenty of nods to the comics without slavishly following the mythology; it’s genuinely funny.
Of course, the fact that the cast is full of people who are very smart but not very bright (and Barry, who is very fast but not particularly swift) makes for a decent amount of the drama. At least they’re generally good about calling each other out when they have colossally stupid ideas?
The nods to the previous Flash TV show have also been excellent: most of the major characters have come back (John Wesley Shipp as Henry Allen, Barry’s dad; Amanda Pays as Dr. Christina McGee of Mercury Labs; and Mark Hamill reprising his delightful Trickster character).
Iris, when she finally figures out Barry’s secret, reacts really appropriately to the fact that everyone she loves has been lying to her for months. And clearly had managed to piece together 90% of the puzzle despite being lied to at every turn.
I had been saying since mid-season when the Reverse-Flash was revealed as Eobard Thawne that Eddie could solve all of their problems by getting a vasectomy. He opts to shoot himself, because it’s TV and that’s what you do, but man, wouldn’t that have been a kicker? “I don’t have to die, I just have to make sure I never father children.” (My theory, right now, is that Eddie’s body is sucked into the singularity/time vortex where somebody can revive/clone him into a new Eobard so we can have a Reverse-Flash going forward. Who thinks that Barry ruined his life but can’t really remember how.)
Additional prediction: Cisco’s power to see through time-fluctuations will eventually lead to him becoming Chronos. (As we’ve already had a Clock King.) And whether they plan to use Green Lantern or not, they clearly planted a seed with the bit about the Ferris Airfield test pilot disappearing.
I also loved the reveal that Wells wanted Barry to save his mother—because that would restore the timeline to what Wells originally came from, so he could return to the future he originally left (a future that was presumably changed by his myriad of alterations to the timeline). Really, the nature of Wells’ plan and exactly how far he was planning was impressive. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the other Barry in the past warning off the current one—which implies either we’ll see more pieces of this story, or that things were a lot worse in the “original” timeline.
Overall: We need more superhero shows like this, where the hero is genuinely and unapologetically heroic but also human and prone to screw-ups; and where not everything has to be grimdark. I’m in for season two, no question.
I really enjoy this show. It’s dramatic without quite devolving into the Smallville-esque “I don’t want anything to get in the way of our friendship;” it has a delightful amount of diversity; it has plenty of nods to the comics without slavishly following the mythology; it’s genuinely funny.
Of course, the fact that the cast is full of people who are very smart but not very bright (and Barry, who is very fast but not particularly swift) makes for a decent amount of the drama. At least they’re generally good about calling each other out when they have colossally stupid ideas?
The nods to the previous Flash TV show have also been excellent: most of the major characters have come back (John Wesley Shipp as Henry Allen, Barry’s dad; Amanda Pays as Dr. Christina McGee of Mercury Labs; and Mark Hamill reprising his delightful Trickster character).
Iris, when she finally figures out Barry’s secret, reacts really appropriately to the fact that everyone she loves has been lying to her for months. And clearly had managed to piece together 90% of the puzzle despite being lied to at every turn.
I had been saying since mid-season when the Reverse-Flash was revealed as Eobard Thawne that Eddie could solve all of their problems by getting a vasectomy. He opts to shoot himself, because it’s TV and that’s what you do, but man, wouldn’t that have been a kicker? “I don’t have to die, I just have to make sure I never father children.” (My theory, right now, is that Eddie’s body is sucked into the singularity/time vortex where somebody can revive/clone him into a new Eobard so we can have a Reverse-Flash going forward. Who thinks that Barry ruined his life but can’t really remember how.)
Additional prediction: Cisco’s power to see through time-fluctuations will eventually lead to him becoming Chronos. (As we’ve already had a Clock King.) And whether they plan to use Green Lantern or not, they clearly planted a seed with the bit about the Ferris Airfield test pilot disappearing.
I also loved the reveal that Wells wanted Barry to save his mother—because that would restore the timeline to what Wells originally came from, so he could return to the future he originally left (a future that was presumably changed by his myriad of alterations to the timeline). Really, the nature of Wells’ plan and exactly how far he was planning was impressive. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the other Barry in the past warning off the current one—which implies either we’ll see more pieces of this story, or that things were a lot worse in the “original” timeline.
Overall: We need more superhero shows like this, where the hero is genuinely and unapologetically heroic but also human and prone to screw-ups; and where not everything has to be grimdark. I’m in for season two, no question.