Episode Title: Crazy For You
Original Airdate: 2-3-15
While Gotham may be the show I most enjoy discussing, the Flash is still the show that I just completely enjoy on almost every level. It gets the right combination of drama, action, and humor without generally taking itself too seriously. I seriously doubt that Gorilla Grodd would ever be able to make its way into Gotham, but he’s already been teased a couple times before now and during the final scene before the credits we get our first glimpse of the intelligent ape even if he stays mostly in the shadows. But this episode wasn’t really about Grodd, instead it was about Peek-A-Boo, or a Nightcrawler style teleporting metahuman. As well as a bit about what really happened to Ronnie.
I will say that while Peek-A-Boo isn’t a very good name, blame it on Snow getting the chance to name her, she was a fun villain of the week. Her style of Bamf-ing looked quite nice and she had a decent motivation. I did have a couple problems with the way she was handled. First off, she was never really a dangerous criminal in the same way that the other metahumans that they’ve dealt with so far. She was much more of a petty criminal that had a dangerous infatuation with her bad influence boyfriend. So when she suffered the same fate of being locked away in the metahuman prison it felt a lot more cruel than it usually does. Also, the science behind how she was defeated was a little lame. I get that she should teleport only to where she can see, but the reasons for that in other science fiction is usually so she won’t teleport herself into a solid object. Not because she needs light for it to function as it is explained here. But while the science wasn’t great, it was at least backed up by a very cool looking fight in the tunnel.
But the Flash is also just as much about developing the characters, and there is quite a bit of character development in this episode aside from fighting the teleporter. While it may be a very cliche thing to do, it was nonetheless quite hilarious to see Caitlin Snow getting wasted at a Karaoke bar, and it was topped off by the great moment when Barry took her home, setting up a really solid friendship between the two of them. But the heart of the episode really revolves around the characters letting go of what’s holding them back. Barry starts to let go of his crush on Iris when he meets Malese Jow’s Linda Park, a journalist from the comics who at one point was a love interest for Wally West’s Flash. Cisco works with Hartley Rathaway to learn what happened to Ronnie and even though he let Hartley escape, he was also able to share his guilt over sealing Ronnie inside the particle accelerator and make a step towards letting that go. And Cisco did find out that Ronnie’s consciousness merged with a scientist to create a single being, which means that the Ronnie that Caitlin Snow knew really is gone and she can let him go. And while it doesn’t quite follow the theme of “letting go”, my second favorite scene in the episode was definitely Barry’s moment with his father. Henry Allan was working on the inside to get information for Joe and got punished for it, but that ultimately meant that Barry was able to see him face to face in the hospital without the glass between them, and they have a heart to heart where his father shows how he knows that Barry is the Flash without having to come out and say it. A really great moment that shows that they don’t have to make every character ignorant to the Flash’s secret identity, I mean Henry Allen was a doctor before he went to prison. Just an all around great episode.
Channel: Superhero 