I’m gonna be completely honest. I never read comics like that, but tv has always been a forte of mine and based on the commercials and subway ads I really thought the CW’s The Flash was gonna be trash. (Bars) It wasn’t until I saw a list of the highest rated new shows of 2014-15 and saw The Flash near the top of the list that I started to rethink my stance. Growing up with him as my favorite Justice Leaguer combined with some good reviews? I was sold like a bag of discounted bath salts in Florida.
The show was broken up into two halves (presumably to conserve money in the case the show sucked and got cancelled early). Instead it became the highest rated show on CW because of the solid foundation they laid down early in the season. Our hero is Central City’s Barry Allen, who saw his mother killed by some mysterious lights and/or a man in yellow when he was a kid. Barry’s dad tried to save her life, being a doctor, but that got him locked up because the blood was on his hands when 5-0 arrived. All his life Barry has been doing everything in his power to figure out exactly what happened that night. He became a forensic scientist to get better at examining crime scenes and prove episodes of SVU wrong.
He squashed all feelings for girls and his adopted sister/lifelong crush.. and on the low wants to get down with the Unsullied. He was adopted by his dad’s chocolate homie, Joe West so he also gets tips on how to track down perps. He basically became the world’s greatest son with a deep dark vengeance buried beneath the good guy act.
Ok, let’s get into the action. Central City is filled with some braniac type cats. Three of the best and brightest are Harrison Wells, Caitlin Frost, and Cisco Ramon. For years they have worked at S.T.A.R. Labs building a particle accelerator that was supposed to change the game. Barry watches them on the news with Wells leading the scientist squad, talking about how tonight’s unveiling of the accelerator is gonna make Central City the new utopia? Eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels? Rid the world of racism and corruption? Nope! It’s gonna blow up and send a wave of superpower filled energy across the city turning ordinary citizens into mutants that we’re forced to called Meta Humans because the X-Men woulda rolled up and beat the snot outta Flash for copyright infringement.
Speaking of Flash, while Barry is up in his lab analyzing turds and watching the accelerator blow up, an enormous flash of lightning descends throught the roof and strikes Barry in the chest, puttin ya boy in the deep sleep. While in his coma, Harrison Wells, who’s now a disgraced used to be, convinces Joe West to leave Barry in his care because of all the next level equipment just chillin collecting dust at S.T.A.R. Labs.
In his coma, Barry’s adopted sister/secret crush Iris ‘Baby Olivia Pope’ West starts dating Joe’s partner Eddie Thawne. (Yes I just threw that in there)Barry eventually wakes up and realizes someone slipped on those Sonic kicks and now he got that Keanu Reeves speed.
The show gets cool from here on out. Wells, Caitlin and Cisco are all that remains of the once prestigious S.T.A.R. Labs and as soon as Barry wakes up, they hop all over his ass like kids in a McDonald’s ball pit. They perform test after test, get him a hyper hamster wheel to test his speed, craft him a crimson colored flash suit, create a few devices for him to use against the big bad Metas and are overall ride or die right out the gate. However, there’s something a little off about Dr. Harrison Wells, Barry’s science mentor. The dude just exudes creep. Evidence of his creeptastic ways are shown when Barry and the gang discover he has a secret Cerebro type future room with a artificial intelligence communication device and newspaper from 2024 hanging on the wall.
From here on out James Bond Joe West leads the charge in trying to find out what happened to Wells the night of his car accident when his wife died and everyone says Wells was changed forever..which coincidentally occurred like a fuckin month before the death of Barry’s mother! The show reveals to the audience pretty early on that Wells is actually a guy named Eobard Thawne from the future, who killed the real Wells’ wife then stole his body and now runs around as the super evil Reverse Flash.
As the season progresses the gang begins to learn more and more about Wells that leads to a change of option and heart by Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco who all kinda see Wells as a scientist father figure. Unfortunately they can’t focus all their time deciphering whats really good with Harrison ‘Has no Hairline’ Wells. Why? Dont forget that we have a bevy of super powered and pissed off people who want all sorts of revenge on Wells handicapped ass (oh yea, when the accelerator blew up, he faked that he lost his legs) and those who have done them wrong.
When the season started, I was pleasantly surprised to see the writers of the show include some brutality in a very lighthearted and humorous show. They straight murder-death-kill a few of the first MetaHumans we’re introduced to. It then dawned on me that they’d run out of dope villains for the Flash to fight. Luckily, The Flash didn’t stick to this villain of the week approach. Eventually Flash started getting better at not allowing dudes to get murked, usually resulting in Flash discovering he can do something amazing (like run at top speed for exactly 5.3 miles to create a super sonic punch) to knock out a MetaHuman and then lock them up in their Alcatraz type Assailant prison underneath S.T.A.R. Labs.
At other points they introduce well known villains such as Grodd and Captian Cold. But the overall arc of the show and ultimate purpose is to find out who Harrison Wells really is and for Barry to become the hero that he is destined to be by defeating the Reverse Flash who makes his return to Central City to try and scare Joe out of snooping into the night of Wells accident and what really happened.
Not only does the show introduce familiar villians, they also (sometimes) forcefully, sometimes gracefully introduce us to some other superheroes in the DC universe. We get a couple episodes where Arrow stops by, ends a few lives, teaches Barry a few lessons then skates back over to Starling City. I don’t watch Arrow, but apparently it finally hit its stride in this 3rd season and I’m usually happy with the inclusion of Oliver Queen, his awkwardly hot hacker Felicity and some wanna be Iron Man suit wearing guy named A.T.O.M.. We also get a flash made superhero partner in Firestorm who is essentially Caitlin’s fiance, Ronnie and some old super smart guy, Prof. Stein, who do the DBZ fusion dance and merge into one guy commanding all fire Pokemon. Na, I’m kidding, Firestorm is pretty impressive. There appears to be a team up spin-off in the works featuring a bunch of these characters so it’s safe to say, I’ll be tuning in for that when it drops.
The season wraps up with Barry finally capturing The Honey Mustard Flash with the help of Arrow and Firestorm. They hold him in their super psycho prison and Barry finally gets his opportunity to ask, “WHY? WHY DID YOU KILL MY MOTHER?!” Wells/Thawne responds with a simple, “because I hate you.” Then does the typical super villain explain my plan to my enemy thing and lets Barry know that he hates him so much that he went back in time to end his little kid life. Unfortunately for him, future Flash went back in time as well and stopped Reverend Flash from murkin out lil Barry by zooming him out of the house. Evil Flash got mad and killed his mom instead with the hopes the event would crush his spirit and he would never become the Flash. INSTEADDD Eobard Thawne/Reverse Flash got stuck in the past cuz his speed ran out and was forced to help Barry become The Flash so he could use Flash’s speed to get back to his time.
Somehow Eobard/Wells was able to still be a convincing creep and get Barry to let him go in exchange for the instructions of how to go back in time and save his mom from being murdered. E. Wells continues to swindle the gang by convincing them to build him a time machine. Long story short. Flash run fast. Flash rips open hole in space time continuum. Flash goes back in time but Future Flash somehow knows OUR Flash is there to save mom dukes and plays his Drake ringtone “Don’t do it, please don’t do it.” Our Flash couldn’t do it, but soothes his mom as she passes and runs back to the present day. And boy does he come back to the present with a bang!! He flies back in through the wormhole and delivers a HELLA super punch that destroys E. Wells’ face and the time machine he was in trying to skeddadle out of there.
The Flash and Reverse Flash have their final battle and Barry gets molly whomped on most of the time. Rev. Flash gets his vibrating death hand swag going and is about to kill Barry when Eddie Thawne (descendent disruption alert!!) shoots himself and makes Rev. Flash disintegrate.
The wormhole becomes unstable and starts to grow to black hole status and we’re left with Barry running in a vortex trying to stop the world from being eaten..andddd end of The Flash, season one… are you looking forward to season two?
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