The Flash 706 The One With The Nineties Television 

Five Thoughts on The Flash’s “The One With The Nineties”

By | April 7th, 2021
Posted in Television | % Comments

Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This week’s episode is named “The One With The Nineties” and as you can guess it’s a retro episode! Set in the nineties! Let’s dive right in.

1. A Dinosaur!

One of the very first images of this episode was a Tyrannosaurus Rex coming after CC Jitters’ barista, it was a very brief scene, and it was repeated –also briefly– at the climax of the episode, and it left me thinking. This is the third week in a row with a CGI monster appearing very briefly, first it was Fuerza, then it was the monster that the guards hallucinated last week because of Psych’s influence.

On past years the CGI monster was featured only once per season and it was the main feature of that episode, like King Shark, or Gorilla Grodd, because it is a common belief that those kinds of effects are really expensive for a TV show, and now with showrunner Eric Wallace we have seen three monsters that appeared not as part of the story but as a visual device for what is happening in the story.

I think it shows how committed the team is to delivering quality episodes, no matter the cost or the time invested, if it works for the show, it will be included, and that deserves a lot of praise from me.

2. Chesco

Cisco has been paired with many iterations of Wells, Draco Malfoy Julian Albert, and Ralph Dibny, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I was especially fond of Ralph and Cisco but Elongated Man is not here anymore.

Enter Chester P. Runk, the character that appeared very few times last season that has become a series regular now, and we are seeing the first attempts at showing us their friendship, with an episode where they were the main protagonists.

So far it has been alright, they both are nerds and looks like the actors get along great, I could argue that the main drawback of this new pairing is that we know very little about Chester, making it a little hard to the audience to empathize with him, but that gets resolved right in this episode.

3. Treasure from Trash

The main story of this episode involves Chester and Cisco trapped in a time loop in the nineties, and it also features a little bit of background on Chester’s life, it turns out that they are trapped in December 4th, 1998, and his dad is going to die tomorrow.

It’s a classic story about an absent father and a hurt son, then it is revealed that Mr. Quincy P. Runk’s actions are driven by the constant intention to show love to his son, whether is it teaching Chester to be inventive or see treasures in other people’s trash, he was always trying to make life better for his son. And Chester got the chance to enjoy one last afternoon with his father. Damn, this show still can throw some emotional punches at me!

4. Pain and Comfort

The other story in this episode was the Speed Force in Nora Allen’s body processing her emotions towards Barry Allen. She realizes that taking Barry’s mother’s form was emotionally triggering to him, but Iris tells her that those are not negative emotions, on the contrary, it’s good for him.

And I gotta be honest, I’m not enjoying this storyline, I mean, it’s weird to talk about suspension of disbelief in an episode where the characters all wear clothes from other decades, but I’m struggling to believe that this story is plausible.

Why did the Speed Force appear in human form so easily? Why does she have maternal emotions for Barry when first, she is not his mother and secondly, SHE IS NOT HUMAN? How did she know who Chester and Joe were when she has never meet them? Why is everybody so okay with all this?

At the end of the episode Iris invites the Speed Force/Nora to their home and Barry reacts weirdly to it, maybe he is not trusting her? I don’t know but I do have confidence in the creative team and I’m sure this storyline will develop into a good direction.

Continued below

5. “I have no future!”

The reveal in this episode is that there’s a new Force that can alter time, and Cisco finally names all the forces, Strength, Still and Sage.

In this episode the Still force is controlled by football player Deon, who had an injury and now sells used cars, but is trying to fix his present. Actor Christian Magby made an incredible job as Deon, he was a villain but also you could feel his pain as a person trapped in his past, not capable of moving on.

At the end Chester tells him that he could focus on his future instead of his past, but the villain misunderstood him because he disappears with the plan to chance everybody’s future at his will, so, we have three representations of the Forces loose, so Team Flash has a lot of work to do.

And that’s it for this episode, I had a really enjoyable time with the premise and it’s always funny to see our characters altered in some way. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 707, “Growing Pains”.


//TAGS | The Flash

Ramon Piña

Lives in Monterrey, México. He eats tacos for a living, literally. You can say hi on Twitter and Instagram. Besides comics, he loves regular books and Baseball - "Viva Multiversity Cabr*nes!".

EMAIL | ARTICLES



  • -->