Jessie Robertson reviews the eighth episode of The Flash…
I want to go ahead and get the negative out-of-the-way upfront, because there was a lot to like about this show. First, the fight kind of stunk. We get Oliver doing his typical fight scene, but for some reason, with a CG-Flash buzzing around him, his moves looked way more choreographed and fake than ever before. And his facial expression and body language as Flash was giving him 100 punches all over his body? He looked like he was doing the Robot high. And our villain this week: Roy G. Bivolo (otherwise known as Rainbow Raider, which Caitlin likes as his name). His eyes turn red and if you look into them, it swells up the emotion of anger in you; he turns a whole bank full of customers against each other, fighting, attacking and even shooting bullets at one another! This, to me, is a crazy powerful ability, but we got absolutely zero backstory as to what this guy’s motivation was for using this power to rob banks. I would have loved to have seen his reaction when he discovered this ability but he was just the background piece to this epic crossover.
Now the good news, this episode was funny as hell! Even Oliver just being on The Flash’s show made him lighter in tone and he smiled more. Speaking of smiles, Candice Patton (Iris West) could win awards with hers. There is a ton of under the surface stuff going on here and none of it felt particularly rushed or done slapdash; everything was very well-balanced. There were some honestly laugh out loud lines in this episode, and I could tell the writers have probably been polishing these scripts for a while. I mean, Diggle’s reaction to seeing Barry run for the first time? He killed it with that! Iris salivating all over Oliver Queen and mentioning he’s one of her 3 (you know, the three people you’re allowed to cheat with? Come on, every couple has discussed this). And least we not forget Barry carrying Felicity back to Star Labs…and setting her shirt on fire! Man, Emily Bett Rickards usually pulls everything off she’s asked to do and going shirtless in a comedy scene is just perfect for her. Even Cisco was slaying with the one liners, his reaction to finding Felicity in such a predicament, and him using a Yoda-voice and asking “No one is feeling that quote?” I was Cisco, I was.
Ok, enough fanboy-love, the meat and potatoes of this plot is all about getting these two heroes to do battle in some contrived way; it’s the way these crossovers always go, but to give Barry that extra motivation of being jealous of Oliver (and Eddie) for capturing more of Iris’ attention than he can (even as Flash) and using Bivolo’s rage-inducing powers was a good stroke of genius for how to get to that point. Plus subplots were springing up all over the place; Oliver telling Barry he needs further training, Iris v. Eddie relationship problems, Barry comparing himself to Ronnie in regards to Caitlin, Dr. Wells and Joe’s untrusting of Oliver, even Felicity putting the final word into whether her and Barry will be a couple. They cemented layer upon layer of information and story and all of it fell into place pretty well. There’s even a tiny plot that gets maybe 1 min of air time where Wells wants to know the Arrow’s identity, and smiles deliciously when Felicity won’t tell him. He finds out of course (guessing by consulting his future-finding-friend Gideon) and Oliver knows something’s up with that guy after just meeting him. The writers have a pretty good handle on most of these characters now and it’s nice to see them be able to drop any given combination together and make it work.
Looking forward to tonight’s episode but did anyone else think this was going to be a two-part story instead of two separate stories? Comment below if you did.
Other Notes:
– “Didn’t you sleep?” Barry to Oliver, which leads to a discussion of naming your super villains, haha.
– The Flash team and Arrow team arguing over who’s going to win while Dr. Wells and Joe actually doing something about it speaks volumes. Come on, you know Diggle should have been there!
– “The buzziest” Only on the CW can you get away with dialogue that trite!
– Ronnie Raymond, the man on fire that’s been rumored about, finally shows up
– In the biggest surprise of the show, Oliver runs into his baby momma! She even mentions how much his mom loved him, which she would know seeing as she paid her off to keep it a secret! That’s coming back around again, better believe.
– Also, before we go, Iris “breaks up” with Flash, which badly needed to happen as it was giving Barry a creepy vibe, as he was living out his fantasy of wooing her while in the costume.
Jessie Robertson is a contributing writer who loves all things comic books. He currently has one novel on Amazon.com, exploring people able to consciously do what they want in dreams. Yeah, sounds good right? Feel free to email him anything, questions, comments, critiques or Lost trivia at phdreamer81@yahoo.com.
Originally published December 3, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
