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The Flash: Revenge of the Rogues

"For a non-metahuman, Leonard Snart is proving to be quite the nemesis."

We return from the mini-break with a high action episode. Captain Cold returns with a new friend, Heat Wave, and a new target: The Flash.

When we began this year my biggest complaint was how young Barry and his team seemed. They don't seem quite that young anymore.

As the story opens Barry’s working out his inner guilt with some training, hoping to get fast enough to beat the Reverse Flash. In the middle of all this training pops up a familiar face: Captain Cold. Cold’s working with a new partner, Heat Wave, and stealing a symbolic painting: but all this new is just a cover for a burningly cold inner rage directed at the Flash.


During all this, Iris continues to finalize her move-in with Eddie, leaving Barry with Wonder-Years style mixed feelings. He bonds with Caitlin, who’s in nostalgia-land herself, thinking about and hunting for Ronnie. Cold's drive keeps him on his toes as the violence escalates; failure after failure leads Cold to try and bait the Flash to be on the ropes–by capturing members of the Flash team, starting with Caitlin.

When it all comes to a head, Eddie and Barry reach a new level of trust, Eddie and Iris find a new level of strength in their relationship, and even Cisco takes on new aspects to his character – but neither side exactly wins, and neither Captain Cold or Heat Wave will be spending any time in the pokey this time around.

Bits & pieces

–Barry redirecting the missile during his training. Awesome!

–Joe asking Barry to clean up after Iris. Cute scenario, cute question… and extremely hubba-hubba cute in the eyes. I’d clean up for you, man.

–Cisco’s speech to the cops. The question that came to my mind was “What is Wells training him for?” And he IS training our Cisco for something.

–Joe catching Wells out. “I thought, that doesn’t sound like him. I guess because it sounds like you.” Brilliant.

–The painting before it’s unpainted looks exactly like the sort of abstract Meaningfulness I don’t enjoy, just FYI.

–Joe leaping over to rescue Caitlin: DUDE!

–Barry moving back in with Joe. The whole scene was just well done.

Quotables

Wells: …to catch Cold. Yes, I said it, Cisco. As soon as it came out of my mouth, I heard it.

Caitlin: My dead fiancĂ© can fly. I haven’t broken that to my parents yet.

Barry: (holding up a beer) You know this does nothing for me.
Joe: Just drink it.

Overall

Once again, Jesse Martin gets the record for Awesomest Number of Scenes. You don’t realize it till afterwards and you look down at your list of Best Moments and go, uh-huh. This episode saw our team really begin to gel, and the supervillains were nice, but sugary background for once to the more meaty interaction of our characters.

Four out of four Absolute Heat guns.

8 comments:

  1. This episode was a hoot. It was great seeing the Prison Break brothers reunited. Based on this episode, and interviews they've given, they definitely seemed to be having fun working together again. I'm glad they made it clear we aren't done with these two, if this version of The Flash is going to have a proper Rogues Gallery, these two need to stick around, especially Captain Cold, who's traditionally been the leader of the Rogues. The tease that we'll be seeing Cold's sister(aka Golden Glider) is interesting, I wonder who's going to play her.

    Very interesting developments in The Flash's public image. I wouldn't have expected him to move from urban legend to public figure this fast, and I give the writers credit for having the guts to do it. As good as the storytelling has been on both Arrow and The Flash, they've earned plenty of goodwill from me. I'm going to trust that they won't paint themselves into a corner or run out of story to tell until they prove otherwise.

    This episode wasn't just a "coming out" for The Flash, it was also one for STAR Labs, in a way. That was a very cool scene with Cisco in the police station, and it was cool to see Cisco taking center stage instead of Dr. Wells. Plus, the Rogues took a member of STAR Labs hostage, claiming she was a friend of The Flash. It shouldn't take much for a clever person to theorize now that there's a connection between The Flash and STAR Labs. Though I must say it was refreshing, I was expecting Iris to be the hostage.

    I'm glad Barry & Iris handled their awkwardness with a fair amount of maturity, if this was Smallville they'd be not-talking for like half a season after a confession like the one in the last episode. We also got even more lovely chemistry between Barry & Caitlin. I get that she's preoccupied with Ronnie at the moment, but I really think she & Barry would be good together.

    Speaking of Ronnie, I'm really enjoying the ongoing mystery about Firestorm, or I guess F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. now, good way to work the name into the show. We also know that they're not only bringing in Professor Martin Stein, but also Jason Rousch, making me curious how this is all going to play out.

    On a lighter note, I hope Cisco's been making more Flash suits, since that's another one trashed this week. :)

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  2. I really enjoyed this episode (and your review went up so quickly, JRS!), but every time Cold was fully suited up I thought of Dr. Horrible complaining about he's not going to do battle with "every poseur in a parka."

    Anyone else?

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  3. Ha! I was definitely waiting for this ep - and I'm looking forward to seeing where they take the publicity around the Flash. It could go wrong quickly - but so far they seem to be giving the Flash some Spiderman-type attributes, namely, teh People love him.

    Dr. Horrible is one of those shows that was never captioned back in the day - think they've added captions yet?

    Frankly Cold is probably the sexiest of the Flash rogues so far. They should give him more tank tops. Got to do the whole name-costume matchup though.

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  4. JRS, the DVD has captions on the show itself, but not on any of the commentaries.

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  5. The former Prison Break fan in me loved every minute of the Captain Cold-Heat Wave team up. (I gave up early in S3, but I still really loved that first season.) Even if Dominic Purcell was pushing the camp a little too hard. And I was thoroughly delighted to see them sitting in the prison transport, wearing the orange jumpsuits, and just waiting for the next phase of Cold's plan to click into place. Tee hee! I'm glad these rogues continue to remain in play out in the world.

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  6. I'm just catching up on the Arrow and Flash episodes after the (thankfully) brief winter break, and wanted to jump on and say how much fun this episode was.

    Quick thoughts:

    Loved Purcell's scenery-chewing Heatwave.

    Barry steals every scene he's in and basically elevates the whole show.

    I really wanted them to lampshade how ridiculous an acronym FIRESTORM is.

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  7. Did I say Barry steals every scene he's in? I meant Joe. Not that Grant Gustin puts in bad work.

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  8. Great episode. My one peave is how useless the p.d seemed. I know, I know, comic book logic, but come on. the whole precinct is just standing there watching. A bullet travels much farther than either gun. have snipers not been invented in this timeline?

    ReplyDelete

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