Jessie Robertson reviews the fourteenth episode of The Flash season 3…
Flash vs. Grodd- Let’s Get Ready to Rummmmmblllleeeeeee!
Actually, not really. If I were to say that the four show crossover in the beginning of the year exceeded expectations, by quite a bit actually, with insulated really good stories as well as an epic superhero team up in the midst of it, the next most exciting prospective episodes were the two part Gorilla City episodes. But, they were a major letdown. They weren’t all bad; but I think expectations were a bit high on my part. I have to face the facts: as amazing as the special effects budget is for this show, they simply can’t CG Grodd and thousands of gorillas for a whole hour. It’s not possible. So, what we see is major television trickery where as Grodd is doing things but we don’t need to see him for these things to happen. Such as his mind control power. It works on Joe and it works on a US military official. So, Grodd only needs to be in action for about 2 minutes near the end. Does that make it bad? No, but does it make it satisfying? not really.
So instead of getting to the meat of the episode of finding Grodd and where is he hiding this massive army, we get not just one but two Wells creation’s just to locate his probable location. Both don’t put in the final piece of the puzzle but get them there. To the average viewer, it just feels like filler. And the other sub-plots to go along with those: Wells feigning a mortal disease to stop Jesse from staying on Earth-1 and Barry considering becoming Oliver just to get these gorillas out of his hair; neither which we know will get very far. So there’s not a lot of material to absorb in this episode. The only real snippet of decent plot moving forward is Cisco putting more moves on Gypsy but only after he’s thrown himself a love pity-party. Does Cisco ever think of making an online dating profile? He only finds Metas to fall for; there are like a million other women out there!
So the gorillas do attack but they are only faced by three speedsters; the battle doesn’t really last all that long. But it doesn’t need to because the episode does a nice job of tying the bow neatly around these two episodes by bringing back Solovar to challenge Grodd for dominance and leadership of the gorillas. I will say; hot damn was that a crazy fight scene for the brief time we got it. Grodd now remains on this Earth as Solovar leads his people back to Earth-2 to leave us be.
7.5/10- Still on the high water of entertaining television but not by much, honestly
Other Notes:
– Grodd’s war armor was a very distinct callback to an invasion storyline DC comics did during the New 52 and it looked freakin sweet.
– In a cameo so quick, you may have missed it, Flash (or the Accelerated Man) from Earth 19 (legit) showed up tonight in a very cool bonus moment
Jessie Robertson
Originally published March 1, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
