The second part of a two-parter is often times a spiritual cousin, or at least tonally similar, to the first installment. Well, “Attack on Central City” didn’t feel at all like “Attack on Gorilla City,” for reasons that were both good and bad.
1. Friend Day
While I appreciate that Earth-19’s Valentine’s Day equivalent is less focused on romance and more on friendship, this seemed like a silly contrivance to build into the show. All the romance on display was clearly established earlier, from Cisco and Gypsy on down. We didn’t need to know why people who are clearly into each other are into each other. We get it, we’re grown ups.
H.R. continues to be a character that is equal parts fun and obnoxious and, thus far, the show has done a good show showing us both sides of him. The balance is pretty spot on, too; it would be really easy to make him totally grating, but the show has nicely walked that line without crossing it. Seeing he and Harry interact was a lot of fun, too, and continues to grow my deep, deep appreciation for Tom Cavanaugh.
The best part of Friend Day? Hands down, the kiss between Gypsy and Cisco. Everything about their flirtation is wonderful, and Cisco’s “I’m gonna marry that woman” was pitch perfect and hilarious. I want to see them take a multiversal vacation someplace nice together.
2. Grodd control
Taking nothing away from Jesse L. Martin, who is a fantastic actor, but he didn’t go for it the way that Cavanaugh did when being possessed by Grodd. Joe looked like a more serious, monosyllabic version of himself; Cavanaugh dug in and went full on ape-man. But what the show had Grodd do to Joe was amazing, and the sort of thing that I’m shocked the show hasn’t explored more often.
Sure, we’ve seen Barry save every cast member’s life a dozen or so times thus far, but to stop someone from committing suicide – even of the Gorilla-assisted-variety – is a libertarian’s nightmare, but a superhero’s dream. Seeing Barry realize what was happening and, literally, acting in the blink of an eye was really something to behold.
3. Harry’s lie
I have to give it to Harry: I believed he was dying. I’m a sucker, I realize, but again, that damn Cavanaugh!
This show is borderline obsessed with fathers (who am I kidding, they are totally obsessed with fathers), and seeing the type of father that Harry is makes for yet another different type of Wells. Every Wells we’ve met so far, aside from Harry, doesn’t have children, and so we can’t compare that part of his life to anyone else’s. But he is protective, which makes sense, but he’s also surprisingly tender with Jesse, which is something I wouldn’t have expected necessarily.
Harry and Wally don’t have nearly the contentious relationship that you’d expect, however, and that’s another nice choice the show made. There’s very little that the show does as well as it does its father/child relationships, but the idea of surrogate fathers is an equally strong thread. Cisco and Harrison, Barry and Joe, Barry and Jay Garrick, and now, Wally and Harry look to be joining those ranks. Sure, Wally’s dad is still hanging around, but Harry as father-in-law is certain to be quite different than Joe.
4. WEIRD AL REFERENCE
The joke about the ‘great poet’ Alfred Yankovic got me laughing out loud, who H.R. was bemused at being called weird. “Because of the hair?” Oh, that is some funny stuff. As I said recently, we don’t need the show to become a Yakov Smirnov routine (“On Earth-19, water drinks you!”), but showing us a little bit of Earth-19 culture each week is fun. Keep it up, show.
Do you know what else is fun? New fucking speedsters appearing out of nowhere! According to IMDB, that was the “Accelerated Man” of Earth-19. Whether or not we will see more of him or not remains to be seen, but that was a pretty dope costume design.
5. Gorilla warfare
Remember last week when I praised the Gorilla CGI? Well, I may have been a bit premature on that front…but hey! The show is really going for it, and trying to do fun stuff. Another Solovar/Grodd battle was fun, and keeping Grodd on Earth-1 doesn’t seem problematic at all, does it?
While last week was all swashbuckling adventure, this week was dark and full of questions of whether to kill an enemy, leave a home, or take a risk. I think I prefer this episode, but I love that the show can effectively do both.
What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
