The Flash Recap: The Man Who Saved Central City

Season: 2 / Episode: 1 / The CW

[dropcap1]A[/dropcap1]nd you say Central City! We’re back up in this muh fucka! Barry is fresh off of closing the singularity hole in the sky that’s about the same size as the one that Republicans are trying to dent into Planned Parenthood’s funding. Barry is taking on Captain Cold and Heatwave with some help from Firestorm. We see Barry back up in STAR Labs doing high fives with everyone on a job well done. Then Eddie Thawne comes out the woodwork for an up-top too but he deader than a muh fucka. So you know this is a straight-up daydream.

WHAT HAD ACTUALLY HAPPENED WAS… Barry stabilized the singularity / black hole by running suicides in it to keep it open. However, in order to close that shit Firestorm had to merge the event horizons in order to… Man they had to fly in the hole and separate, causing a nuke bomb to fix that shit. The suck part about being a hero is not being able to say, “Yeah, naaaaaah” or “Fuck that shit” in situations like these.

Barry up there straight-up running sprinting drills to keep this black hole situated and sees Firestorm and KNOWS shit is about to get so suck. Stein & Ronnie separate, which causes the nuclear explosion but sends Professor Stein hurling to the ground like dude that hit the propeller and flipped in Titanic when it was sinking.

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Like, there was no better exit strategy after they separated tho? You might disappear into the ether like Ronnie does or get flung to the ground?! Yo the hero shit too real for me. I can’t. Barry does the ill NFL catch to save Stein but has to tell Caitlin the other half of her mans and dem ain’t make it.

SNAP BACK TO REALITY! Which is six months later. Barry has gone at the Flash business by himself. We join him at a crime scene where he is checking out a welder at a nuclear plant that was strangled to death. His name is Al Rothstein (oh shit, WWE’s Edge is in this episode?). Barry puts Joe’s fears of Grodd runnin’ round stranglin’ folk to rest and tries to get outta dodge once Joe asks if he is coming to Flash Day.

Joe: You not going to show up for the mayor trying to give you the key to the city? For real? Bruh, he made a whole day celebrating you. You know how hard it is for a Black hero to get a day or a key to anything? *pulls up a YouTube video on his phone* This is what happened when New York tried doing a celebration for a Black hero…

Barry: Oh oh- Ooooooooooooh shit, is that Blade?! Daaaaaaamn. Look I hear you but — 7, million views? Wow. I don’t deserve the praise man…

Meanwhile as Barry leaves he doesn’t notice some dude has taken paparazzi-style pics of him.

Back at Central City precinct Cisco rolls up complementing Captain Singh on his new Drake bear. Cisco is helping Joe with the Anti-Metahuman task force the police has put together. Cisco out here creating tech for the cops on some Tony Stark shit man but givin the captain the receipts cause he got that Stark Tech but not them Stark Pockets. Joe and Cisco talk about the Flash Appreciation Day and how they should all be getting keys but he ain’t mad about that. Iris comes over and Joe tells them all that Barry still on his Jason Derulo “I’m solo” shit. Joe suggests he needs a word from someone close to get him back into things.

Iris lookin’ at Cisco like, “booooooooooooooooi, Fuck wit it.” She rolls up on Barry at Jitters. He’s been fixing up local businesses that were ruined by the singularity/black hole. Barry tellin’ Iris why he ain’t bout this appreciation day for Flash life and she basically just looks at him and says, “If you don’t stop this Oliver Queen brooding cosplay shit you on and show up for that damn key, we goin have problems. I’m out.”

At the celebration for the Flash the Mayor is talking him up, “You know we use to run track together right? I ain’t tryin’ say we boys or nothing but you know, I’m his wing-man on Sundays. Enough about that and the budget cuts I’m bout to hit these rich folks with (Rich Folk in the audience: *clutching their pearls* Wait… who he cuttin’?) Let’s give it up for The Flash!…” Why Barry leave everybody hangin’ for a minute before showing up tho? I’m sorry but if I’m the mayor I’ma call him out on having super speed and being late. Flash is accepting the key to the city from the mayor and you know how it is, some folk get jealous, they gotta hate, boooo, throw a hot dog stand to ruin shit for everybody cause there wasn’t a chair around.

How much hate in your heart is there that you throw a fucking hot dog stand at the stadium yo? I never been THAT pissed at somebody. That’s somebody’s business too yo, you asking this poor dude for a frank then costing him mad profit loss cause you know the insurance goin’ fuck with’em and hold out on that pay. Anyway you run up on The Flash Day you got to pay the price.

Oh… oh my. The price is too high. The price is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too high. Joe pulled the guns out but apparently that does nothing to dude, even when his arms are exposed cause he just eatin bullets like they candy corn. Police might as well have been throwing Tic Tacs at homie. Cisco goes acid tripping between worlds again until Joe snaps him out of it and reminds him to get “The Boot”. Aww yeah, we got the tech that’s going to take home boy down. I mean it looks like the claw used to get plush toys but whatever. This shit bout to take down this dude… until it doesn’t. Homie absorbs the energy it emits and powers up. Now when I say power up, be clear, I mean he gets Iron Giant dunking height big. Flash comes back with two propane tanks that might as well have been the explosive red barrels from every 2-D beat’em up game ever. He chucks them shits at big dude while Joe shows off his Call of Duty marksman skills and makes that shit explode in dude’s face. Shrapnel nails Barry as he braces Joe for the impact but more importantly they see their assailant’s face. It’s Al Rothstein. Da Fuq?

At the precinct, Cisco does the background check and sees that the Al Rothstein they found at the crime scene is still dead, he has no twin brother (only child) so shit just got mad weird. Joe asks him about when he freezes up, but Cisco is still in the dark about these between dimension acid trips. Iris shows up to tell her father that it’s time to get the band back together cause Barry lookin’ pitiful out there getting smacked into windshields and shit. Cisco goes to try and convince Caitlin to rejoin to no avail. She got a better job with better pay she ain’t bout to risk that shit.

Barry is up in his forensic attic when he gets a visit from a lawyer. He been bequeathed STAR Labs by Dr. Wells. The final part of keeping it is watching this thumb drive video. Barry don’t want shit from “Wells” since dude kinda (not so low key) ruined his life. An alarm goes off in STAR Labs (cause their security is trash) and Barry runs over to see what’s happening. We got Cisco, Iris, Joe, and Stein back in the seats tracking down their new villain’s whereabouts. They figure out that dude feeds off atomic power, so they check places he could be and find a radiation plant he is draining.

But how they find dude’s location and Barry’s ungrateful ass kicks them out and leaves without his communicator? Dude, if you do some boss shit like that you gotta back it up. The team taps into the security feed of the plant dude was at to watch what is going down. Yo, why Atom Smasher straight-up snorting mad vats of radiation like Tony Montana doe when Barry arrived?! Dude straight up doing tons (not lines) but tons of radiation when Flash shows up. Dude was hopped up on that Nuclear Molly and molly whopping Flash something nasty. He yokes Barry up and repeatedly knocks his head into the wall (one-handed) — I’m surprised he didn’t straight up disrespect’em with a spear. Why Edge wasn’t allowed to hit the Downward Spiral WWE finisher is beyond me, but CW know that y’all missed some big ratings with that shit.

Anyway, Stein tells Cisco to start the alarm system to distract Atom Smasher, which works, and allows Barry to run away back to STAR Labs, pass out, and have a flashback of Joe telling him to eat his mac and cheese and stop trying to go at shit alone. Barry then wake up to Joe saying, “‘Member when you were a kid and I told you to stop that fuck shit with pushing people away? Just recall that speech so I ain’t gotta repeat myself and do better.”

Barry goes to see Caitlin and apologizes for not being able to save Ronnie. She tells him that she blamed herself all this time and not him. He mentions the video that Wells left for him and convinces her to watch it with her. Yo, Wells comes into the video on some “If you’re seeing this shit I’m probably dead and you found out about my evil plans yada yada yada.” I honestly thought he was going to drop an ill 16 bars on some “Fuck ya dead homies, run ya bead homie” shit and diss Barry from beyond the grave but he actually did something much better. Wells was like, “Look I’m dead whatever, it was cool getting to know you, I still hate your guts but that’s whatever, here is the real 16 bars you been waiting for.

Oh shit! “Wells” finally confessed! I mean personally if I am a villain I’m taking shit to the grave regardless. I woulda left Barry my fucking student loans, but that’s just me. Joe works on getting the footage to the DA to clear Henry Allen. Meanwhile, the crew (with Caitlin back on board) concoct a plan to defeat Atom Smasher; but first they need something in order to get his attention. While that’s going down, Atom Smasher is up in a Motel 6 eatin oatmeal at like 7:46 pm and looks outside his window and thinks, “You gotta be fucking kidding me…”

We not even going to be subtle with the homages/biting now huh? How many royalty checks the CW making out to Bruce Wayne and his lawyers? Anyway, Barry gets Atom Smasher to start chasing him and leads him into the same warehouse that Nickelodeon’s GUTS was filmed in because there’s mad glowing blocks all over the place. Barry runs into a chamber and then ducks out of it once Atom Smasher follows him. Barry closes the door and we see that the room is actually a radiation drainer.

Dude, this guy just got beat by the science version of a panic room. That’s an embarrassing way to go yo. Like for real you can’t go to super villain hell and say that’s the way you went cause the Devil will send you back for a redo on that shit. That’s just embarrassing man. Barry tells him he had to do him like that, and we discover the reason Atom Smasher was trying to merk Barry is because he was promised a trip home from this season’s big bad… the man called Zoom. But more importantly we gotta realize that the CW had Edge as a villain and didn’t let him hit any signature moves plus get beat by a panic room tho? Maaaaaaaaaaaan how you going to do the Rated-R superstar like that.

Henry Allen finally gets released from doing his big up north and comes home to a surprise party at the West house. Barry is telling his dad shit about to be back to normal for him, they going to get his medical license back, he bout to be getting his stacks up again but Henry Allen is like, “Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, you a grown ass man now you don’t need me coddling you… Plus, I just did a bid up north for a crime I ain’t even commit, so daddy gotta go do some shit in Vegas that involves some Johnny Walker and a blackjack table.”

I don’t blame Barry’s dad not one bit. Papa Allen got some living to do yo. And the next day at STAR Labs Joe is there to remind Barry that things aren’t all bad.

Joe West: I mean look at Ollie, homie went broke, got stabbed, kicked off a mountain side, died, got his one Black friend pissed at him, and all the police hate’em. Bruh you got the key to the city off the strength of one season tho! You know we bout to get syndication up in this piece. You done made it baby.

Shit is looking up for the Flash squad. They got STAR Labs, got their lights on, rent paid, and a whole new security guard and system so folks won’t be walking up into the most advanced research center in the city askin’ “where the nearest Pinkberry at?”