Jessie Robertson reviews the eleventh episode of The Flash season 2…
If anyone’s going to Big Belly, I’ll take 2 Triple-Triple’s please!
Ok, now Patty’s gone….I think- This week was all about turning back the clock, er…I mean, erasing history….well, let’s start with the easy stuff. Patty, before she left, did some digging into Barry’s past cases after he’s all ignoring her while she’s trying to get him to ask her to stay. Let’s think about this: she knows Barry’s holding back, so she finally gets into CSI school and drops the bombshell she has to leave. Barry accepts this, knowing on one hand it saves him the heartache of having to protect her from metas while also allows her to pursue her dreams, while on the other, he loses another person he loves. He thinks he’s doing the right thing and at least from this viewer’s perspective, he is. But, she lingers around, almost begging him to ask her not to go. It doesn’t make sense to me; then when she figures out that Barry has to be the Flash, she again, nearly begs him to tell her, which he doesn’t, then to top it all off, she fakes a train robbery to prove it. Patty’s kind of a little psycho now. I didn’t like her in this episode at all; if that’s some kind of hard-nosed chauvinistic point of view, please let me know – just hate to see her leave the show like this.
Never, Ever Vibe too much!- Wells and Cisco, after stumbling upon the news that the Reverse-Flash has returned, start trying to think outside the box to get a grasp on the crazy comings and goings of Central City; they figure out to “scare” Cisco into his powers will get them under his control. So, the build him some goggles to help do that which works. But, with Thawne back in the timeline but his course of action altered after he’s capture, it’s somehow causing Cisco to “vibe” out of time. It’s a weird state of affairs. But, I do think the potential for Cisco to be an even bigger part of the show has been tapped into. Who’s to say he couldn’t somehow “vibe” into Earth-2’s timeline as well?
It’s his Origin Story – Eobard Thawne, the real Reverse-Flash, has once again shown up in Central City, in the Flash’s real timeline; he doesn’t know any of that yet and as Wells explains, he hasn’t come back from the dead; his connection to the Speed Force has left a “time remnant” of him remaining in the time stream, so the Thawne they are seeing now is the one from the future who came back to the past but hasn’t killed Nora Allen yet because he doesn’t know the Flash’s identity. Yeah but what if….? Just don’t ask. I applaud (whole-heartedly and standing up) this show’s ballsy attitude to tackle subjects and storylines that could completely confuse their audience, but I think this week’s just goes a bit too far out there. When you explain it all, you do your best to give the simplest explanation; but sort of, but not really undoing something that was the season finale last year, just 11 episodes into Season 2 sort of takes some of the punch out of the power of that episode. Especially when The Flash has a plethora of Rogues to use in any given episode. And despite possibly setting up future installments of Thawne coming after the Flash, re-learning all he knows about him, the episode didn’t do a whole lot for forward progression.
6.5/10 – a weird Patty storyline, our (dead) not really villain of last season back with a far less creepy actor playing him and Wally doing his best Paul Walker impression don’t leave a lot to like here
Other Notes:
– Dr. Tina McGee returns and almost gets the vibrating hand through the chest treatment; but not to be thanks to the Flash
– As Patty departs, we see she’s attending Midway University, in Midway City, another famous DC comics city, this one inhabited by Hawkman
– Cisco’s high-pitched yelp from the commercials got a chuckle out of me every single time
– When Joe tries to throw Patty off Barry’s trail, he says he runs like “a slow-ass duck” now that’s poetry.
– The latest (failed) idea to help Jay live is to find his Earth-1 doppleganger; Jay does and informs Patty his name is Hunter Zolomon; that name rings true for Flash fans as that’s the identity of the character in the comics known as Zoom; perhaps this gives us a clue as to Zoom’s origins on the show?
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Originally published January 27, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
