This reminds me of a quote from The Book of Exalted Deeds, a Dungeons & Dragons supplemental guide to making exceptionally “Good” characters:
“Whether or not good ends can justify evil means, they certainly cannot make evil means any less evil.”
I just caught up with Ep 10. I’m on board with several other posters, in that the fact either Flash and/or the cops didn’t take out the two bad guys in two seconds flat really annoyed me.
I’m trying to like this show, I truly am, I’ve given it more time than most shows that bother me, but the writers are just pretty bad IMO.
Wells’s suit isn’t the same suit. Doesn’t prove there’s no connection, but the Wells suit is only partly yellow. Which makes me think there’s some Kid Flash of the future connection going on rather than Zoom. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, no big whoop. And we have seen Wells murder before so… I dunno.
I’m sure (or at least hoping) that Wells is just an alias though. Harrison Wells? Some sort of time travel or manipulation involved? Hey does his middle name start with a G?
In fairness to the writers, it’s VERY hard to come up with any antagonist against whom the Flash would not be able to achieve victory just by running really fast and taking away his weapons and handcuffing him, etc. I mean, if they were more intelligent about it, maybe we’d be complaining because yet AGAIN the Flash just happens to be up against a guy who has a polarizing-time-reversal-field just like the last 8 weeks.
I’ve decided to just grant a blanket suspension of disbelief exemption to why the Flash can’t actually usefully be fast when it would be useful and enjoy the show for what it is.
Gotham has a similar problem, in that major characters who should have been murdered by now, considering who they’ve infuriated, aren’t dead yet.
Well, at this point, its Barry’s Life Lesson of the week -
“To beat him, you must be faster”
“To beat them, you must go slower”
etc and so on - he (Barry) has much to learn - and common sense isn’t on the agenda yet.
(after all, look at this weeks villan - he anticipated Flash taking the gloves and used it against him)
“Never do the same thing twice if your opponent is really, really smart”
I understand it is hard to do, especially with a superhero like Flash. And I’d cut a fair bit of slack for the ‘learning his powers’ shtick, but in a few cases, with this only being the latest, we’ve seen several enemies/villains who could easily be handled just by the cops, no meta-human required. I’ve never read a lot of Flash, so I’m not sure what his rogues gallery is like, but I would hope there would be some more serious threats in there.
I liked that they explicitly played with the ‘why doesn’t Flash just insta-disarm his opponents’-thing this week, by having him do exactly that—and it blowing up in his face. Though it doesn’t excuse where it would have worked, but he just didn’t think of it, I think it shows that the writers are at least smartening up to the problem.
And I don’t think it’d be impossible to frame his powers in a way such that this sort of failure to utilize them is explicable—for instance, it could be that he’s not, as most of us are implicitly assuming, just experiencing a ‘frozen world’ (which also invites the question of how he endures the subjective months it must take him to travel over to Arrow’s), but he has, in a way, just really fast reflexes—i.e. most of what he does in super-speed mode is automatic, like the way you catch a falling vase without really being aware what you’re doing until after the fact. It doesn’t cover all bases, to be sure, but to me, something like this would go a long way suspension-of-disbelief wise; but if the writers do intend something along those lines, they should be explicit about it and then stick to it.
Basically, give us the rules and then play by them; leaving Flash’s powers somewhat vague and ill-defined is, I think, at this point one of the show’s greatest problems. Of course, it opens up flexibility, but risks that their extent and applicability is simply dictated by plot needs, whereas it should be the other way around.
Drunk Caitlin is a riot. While they probably shouldn’t overuse that particular trope, I’ve always thought the writers have under-explored the comedic possibilities of her character.
So, uh, solitary confinement is generally considered torture. And the jail cells in that particle accelerator basement don’t appear to have bathrooms or any way to get food or water. The only way they could work and not kill the inmates within about 3 days is if time is suspended while the prisoners are in the holding area.
Him not rescuing his wrongfully imprisoned father is a bigger issue to me. He has near omnipotent supernatural powers. The normal cops have no realistic chance of arresting him or keeping his father locked up if they catch him after he escapes. He could rescue his dad and just keep breaking him out every time they catch him.
Or, uh, steal nuclear warheads, hold the President of the United States at gunpoint until he signs a pardon, etc etc. Being able to move faster than any human can even perceive or react makes for a lot of options…
Fun to see them use teleportation vs. super speed. That really works as a match up.
Speaking of match ups, I’m pretty sure it won’t happen, but Caitlin and Barry made a cute couple. Unfortunately, their respective true loves are both involved with other people. (Ronnie in a different way, admittedly…)
Well, it looks like they’re setting up Linda Park as a rival for Barry’s affections. In the comics,
Linda is actually married to Barry’s successor as The Flash, Wally West, who also happens to be Iris’s nephew.
Yeah, the whole accelerator/prison thing makes no sense.
I agree she was hilarious–but it worked because she’s usually kind of stiff and dour compared to Cisco and Barry so it played against expectations.
I’m sensing Barry’s love life is going to get complicated. Linda Park also a reporter? Caitlin needs to find someone new to be crazy about?
I also noticed the holding cells don’t have toilets or anything. Solitary confinement is okay for murderous evil doers prone to escaping, and certain beings like the one that transforms into gas, may not need food or water.
And no, Barry can’t whisk his dad out of prison, wrongly convicted or not. He’d be a fugitive the rest of his life. They need to prove dad’s innocence. Besides, on this show there’s no reason to believe his dad is totally innocent. Also, I thought his dad already knew he was the Flash. Anyway, he could probably take his dad out for coffee once in awhile.
That reminds me, how does Barry move someone else at super speed? Caitlin said, “are we still running?” Does that mean she was running too, or Barry was carrying her? It looked like he was moving at super speed with Caitlin standing next to him, which doesn’t make much sense. But whatevs, Barry could take his dad in & out of prison for short trips pretty easily.
Barry has a pretty good singing voice, if that was his real voice. Maybe they’ll have a musical episode if the show lasts long enough.
The actor previously had an arc as a villainous member of a rival singing group on Glee, so can almost certainly sing far better than will make any sense for Barry.
I agree that it’s best not to think about the logistics or humane-ness of the prison.
I think this was a fairly weak episode. Dude, Cisco, EVERYONE knew that that guy was going to escape. I mean, come on. And the technobabble seemed a bit worse than usual.
Introduce a villain who can only be defeated with song & dance.
Neil Patrick Harris voiced the Music Meister villain on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon. Maybe he could squeeze in a reprise of the role in between hosting awards shows, starring on Broadway, and everything else he does.
Was that the same CG gorilla from the latest episode of The 100 used at the end of the show?
Anyhow, what’s up with that anyway? Did the accelerator accident make a gorilla super-smart or something?
I think that was a separate experiment and the accident allowed him to escape. Gorilla Grodd’s an established DC comics character.
I think Arrow might have a better chance of having a musical episode, as this behind the scenes clip demonstrates. I sure it was just a coincidence that the Arrow cast is singing the same song as Barry and Caitlin at karaoke.