Every week, I feel like I keep marveling at just how much the show is becoming a live action comic book, and this episode took that concept to an entirely new level. Be warned, spoiler live below.
1. Comic Book Logic
I truly appreciate how the show attempts to bring logic and reason to things that don’t really deserve or need it, but this week took that to a new level. For instance, it was great that Wells being in a wheelchair was not just misdirection, but also a practical way to give him more power. That was a really nice piece of business. Cisco being able to look at a battery from the future with no display screen and estimate it needs 36 hours to charge? Well, that’s just dumb comic book nonsense.
Similarly, the show got into a moral debate between Joe and Barry this week, trying to reason why it was ok to sometimes bend the rules. Barry’s logic was “we only break the rules to help people,” which is just about the best summation of superheroic moralizing you could ask for. I mean, Superman is the avatar for hope and the right thing to do in all circumstances, and yet he commits fraud every single day of his life. But Joe instantly pokes holes in his theory, and Joe proves to be right about it, too.
One of the nice bits of The Flash is that Barry is never presented as having all the answers – in fact, he is quite frequently wrong, but it isn’t a tragedy when he is. On Arrow, because Oliver is so clearly the boss, he gets the final say a lot, and he often times mucks it up. But because he makes everyone else go along with him, his mistakes end in deaths and/or destruction of property. This isn’t the first time Barry has been wrong, but because Barry sees himself as an equal to the rest of his team, he defers to them at times, and so realizes his mistakes a comfortable distance away from them.
This is one of the first times that Barry has made a call that has totally blown up in his face, and that’s an important step in the maturation of the character.
2. Special Effects
This episode was a CGI-fest, with some really great sequences (they do super speed chases really, really well) and some not so great ones (some of the weather/lightning stuff was a little too WB 2001 for my tastes). But the worst effect of all might have been a practical one, which was the gassing of the metas in their cells. At first, I thought that Captain Cold was spraying them with his cold gun on a lesser setting, because they didn’t establish that they were gassing them, and it looked like someone opened up a vent and told the actor ‘flail around like Bela Lugosi fighting with a non-motorized octopus in Bride of the Monster.’ You couldn’t even see their faces at various points, so it looks like they just had the gaffer and craft services lady put on black clothes and obscure their faces.
I understand that not every shot in a 20+ hour season can look like a million bucks, but that one was particularly cheap looking and, due to the show’s excellent track record, it shows.
3. Green Lantern?
This is the second specific Ferris Air reference on the show, and tonight’s bit of information that Ferris Air died after ‘one of the test pilots disappeared’ seemed to just further the idea that, next season, we might meet Hal Jordan.
Now, this is a) fucking awesome and b) a little surprising. We know that there will be two different live action Flashes from now on – Grant Gustin on TV and Ezra Miller in films, but this means that there may actually be three live action Hal Jordans within a decade: Ryan Reynolds, whoever The Flash casts, and whoever Justice League casts. But, this could also mean that Justice League is going to have John Stewart as their resident Lantern, and then this all makes more sense. Plus, this might rehabilitate that character a little bit, after the GL feature crashed and burned like Hal’s dad’s plane.
Continued belowIf there is one character that should be brought into a world that already has a Flash and a Green Arrow, it is Hal Jordan. Hal was extremely close with both Barry and Ollie, and it makes sense to grow the TV universe around pre-existing relationships. The big stumbling block, going back to #2, is how effectively they can make the constructs on a weekly TV budget.
4. Rogues Being Rogues
This week, Captain Cold came into his own, and really set up the Rogues as a concern for the show going forward. It can be easy, especially when Geoff Johns is around, to treat Leonard Snart as more hero than villain, but that’s not how the character should be. He should be a criminal who isn’t a terrible person, and that was established quite well. He actually protects Barry when he straight up freezes a dude’s face off, but he also double crosses Barry big time, releases a bunch of criminals, and establishes himself as the leader of the Rogues, even if they don’t really exist yet.
This is a character that started off as incredibly one dimensional, and the show has, over the course of one season, completely rehabilitated him. This is an incredibly fine example of why comics on TV work so well – when you totally fuck up Superman in Man of Steel, it is 3 years before you can course correct in the slightest way. When you don’t nail Captain Cold properly, within a few months you can work to get it right, and it doesn’t feel like a huge shift, but small increments, all building towards something. I can only wait to see how the Rogues look this time next year.
5. That was the Justice League, yo
Whole. E. Shit. That final fight? That was awesome.
That was the promise of the Justice League on TV, right there. And I don’t just mean ‘superheroes teaming up,’ we’ve seen that on the screen a number of times before. I mean, this had a specialized trick arrow, a coordinated plan, and a perfect use of specific powers. This felt like a classic Justice League scene in all the best possible ways. It also showed that the CW shows can do this, even on a budget. That is a huge revelation.
Next year, Stephen Amell ahs talked about bringing John Constantine onto Arrow. A Supergirl show is starting. We’re going to see Hawkgirl on TV (possibly as soon as next week). If DC is smart, they’ll do a Justice League TV movie or miniseries sooner than later. And I will be right here to review it for all you fine folks.
Sound off in the comments, friends!
