Jessie Robertson reviews the second episode of The Flash season 3…
The only thing that would hit the spot for dinner tonight is Grandma Esther’s Noodle Dish!
Exactly, Cisco; we’re in another timeline, and this time, it looks like we’re staying put. Iris and Joe are at odds; Cisco hates everyone because his brother is dead, and Barry has a CSI-roomie that can’t stand him? Things are not looking good this week. Barry starts by going to Felicity for advice (which adds up to nothing more than a glorified cameo) basically to find out he’s just like pudding. But, she’s not wrong; everyone likes Barry and if they don’t, he needs to change that; he doesn’t like the conflict on his team so he does all he can in several hilariously innocent speeding around Central City montages to get all his conflicted friends together in one room to hash it out; it doesn’t work out so well. Barry’s solution: reset the time line again. Except it’s time for an intervention:
This is a Jay Garrick I can get behind; tough guy accent, leathery face and wisdom aplenty, he sets Barry straight because as he says, I’ve made the same mistakes you have; spinoff anyone? You have to live with them and move forward; and if nothing else, Barry’s life has always been in perpetual motion, just as the Flash; it’s so on the nose mine’s been twitching this whole hour. But, like all the good father figures in Barry’s life, he always takes nuggets of wisdom from them and decides it’s time to lay roots. At first, I felt like running from another problem was a obvious character flaw the writers shouldn’t have laid on Barry at this time, to run again, just because stuff sucked, but Barry’s a creature of making mistakes and learning from them; as soon as he got the talking to from Papa Flash, he was 100% behind the idea and I liked that bit of storytelling.
There are some flaws to the whole Flashpoint scenario though; it’s cute and moving to have Iris say that she knows they will always find each other, but she’s so easily persuaded to come back home and even says it was silly for her to hold a grudge against her father for so long, so it’s just a plot device; and Flashpoint in itself, was basically a story of the week; All summer long, it was hyped “They’re doing Flashpoint.” That wasn’t the case at all; they jocked a familiar storyline title and applied it to a 1 week storyline that doesn’t seem to have much repercussions on the current timeline Barry exists in now. It seems the idea was to alter the show’s dynamics just a bit to be able to move forward a lot of ideas the writers had cooked up for this season and that’s not a bad thing but the grandiose way of doing it seemed a bit theatrical.
In this new reality, Barry does have some new adversaries to play with; Tom Felton, more famously known as Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter fame, plays Julian Albert, a Metahuman CSI expert who seems to be Barry’s senior at work; he does the crime scenes and Barry just watches. At first glance, he seems to be a minor character put here to cause drama in Barry’s personal life, but he gets a nice, meaty scene that he plays off very well, not threatening or sinister, but real determination to find out what Barry is keeping from everyone because he sees right through it. And then we have Doctor Alchemy (glad to know Cisco’s villain-naming super-power didn’t go away in this timeline). Here’s what he looks like in the comics:
Here he is in the show:
Which do you prefer? I’m going with the creepy sinister Bioshock looking guy instead of the guy picking apples with Fred Jones’ ascot tied around his head. Alchemy is cool; he seems to be able to do a lot of things and I think this is going to be a refreshing change for Flash not to be chasing an evil speedster around.
7.5/10- Flashpoint continues to reverberate through the beginning of the season but not amounting to much; everyone seems to need to align to this new Flash continuity but luckily for us, most of the best pieces still seem to be in place….now if only we can get Harrison Wells back
Other Notes:
– Barry finally, FINALLY got his kiss with Iris and didn’t erase it from the timeline….yet
– “epic fail- party of 6 Cisco shines through even in deepest despair
– how many timeline explanations are we going to get this season? we’re up to 4 I believe so far
– I know it’s early, but really want to know Alchemy’s motivation….and powers…and what the h*** are these husks?
– Vibe is here! Cisco looked truly bad ass and loved seeing him put to use what he learned from Reverb from Earth-2 last season
– Did anyone explain how Rival’s speed worked? No? Okay, no bother, hopefully he’s gone now anyways and take your Power Ranger mixed with a Crow’s head costume with you
– Uh Oh Caitlin is looking a bit Frosty…..
Jessie Robertson
Originally published October 12, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
