The Flash 'The Flash is Born' Review

So I didn't have a topic for today's post, but I thought "hey there was a new episode of The Flash yesterday, let's talk about that!" So that is exactly what i'm doing. Now as for my opinion on The Flash overall, i'll most likely do a full review on YouTube once the season is over, but right now, I'm loving it! But, focusing on this episode specifically; 'The Flash is Born' focuses on Barry having to fight the meta-human of the week, in this case that would be Tony Woodward, or as they refer to him in the episode, The Man of Steel (HA! I get it!). But, the twist here is that Tony is Barry's old bully from school, who now has the ability to turn his skin into metal *cough* Colossus *cough*.

Now it's still early on in the show, so these meta-humans of the week thing aren't bothering me just yet, but that being said I feel like enough has been established for us to actually focus on the story by this point. I mean the theme of this episode was all about controlling your emotions, if Barry wants to fight against Tony then he needs to learn to control his emotions...and run at 837 miles per hour from exactly 5.3 miles (How Barry knew he had travelled 5.3 miles is beyond me). But this would be my initial dilemma with themes established in this show, a lot of the time, the outcome seems to be "Barry just needs to run a little faster than before" which, i get it, he's The Flash, it's kind of his thing, but what's the point of establishing a new theme every episode when the outcome is always the same? I will admit this villain had a little bit more of interest to him, being Barry's old school bully, and the resolution when Barry is so happy that he beat him, admit it, we all want to experience that satisfaction over our old bullies. But the execution of it honestly felt like it could have been any other villain, i don't think they played up the personal connection as well as they could have. And then there were the flashbacks. Which I inherently have no problem with them in the show, but in one of the Flash-backs (Puns!) it has Joe teaching young Barry that there's no shame in running from a fight. And later on in the episode, Barry does just that...not before reshowing that line of dialogue, you know, just in case your audience was too stupid to retain that information. I hate it when shows do that, yeah, the flashback was 20 minutes ago, i can remember it, i knew that was going to be an important factor later on, give me some credit!

But really the final fight in itself was kind of underwhelming, and again, it comes back down to the theme, it ends the same way it does for every episode so far, he runs fast, not to mention the wasted personal connection to the meta-human and the repetition of the flashback, it kinda ruined it for me. But I still wouldn't call it a bad episode, after all, i did a post a couple days ago talking about Arrow and whether or not it is technically good, because it suffers from a lot of problems that i've talked about here so far and it's the same with The Flash. But I don't really hold it too much against it because I thoroughly enjoy the characters and it's a really entertaining show.

And even so, there were plenty of things that I liked about this episode, and it's the stuff that i like in every episode. First of all the buddyness between Barry & Eddie was nice, because Eddie so far is my least favourite character because he was the least developed, here we get some of his backstory, we see him interact with characters in a way he hasn't before. Like i said, I enjoy this show because of the characters so whenever they get development, it's always welcome.

And the subplot about Joe investigating Dr Wells in his possible involvement in the murder of Barry's mother. I like this for three reasons, one, it's actually focusing on the overall arc of the season, because i prefer story arcs over villain of the week anyday. Two, development of Dr Wells' character, again, always welcome. And three, that ending scene man...holy shit. I genuinely was kinda spooked by that ending, the Reverse Flash (or Professor Zoom of whatever the fuck they're gonna call him) showing up at Joe's house and threatening him was very well paced, had plenty of atmosphere and sets up plenty for the overall arc in the season. Who is this guy? How did he know Joe was investigating? What's he been doing since the first episode? Is Wells involved? It was a great scene, in fact the final scene in every episode has been the best because it's always the scene that contributes most to the story arc, which is what i really want to see have more focus because that's the best stuff.

I give this episode a 6/10, it has multiple problems, mostly with the A-Plot, but the B-Plot was so damn good that I really feel like they should have been switched around, because I'm done with the villain of the week, i just want them to focus on the main story by now.

-Danny