The Flash Review: “Grodd Lives”

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Due to a family situation I’ve missed the last couple weeks of The Flash (and Arrow but I digress). I caught up today just before last night’s episode so I’m ready to go. Side note, I realized how much I really like binge watching and hate waiting week to week.

First to catch up quickly, the mess with Eddie and Iris is done. Thankfully.

Wells has been outed and they found his ‘Time Vault.’ Check.

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Iris knows Barry is the Flash. About time.

So this week’s episode basically picks up where last weeks left off. Iris suspects the truth about Barry and Barry is running around town trying to find the boyfriend of the women he loves. Awkward. Iris finally confronts Barry and the Scooby Gang at STAR labs since apparently no one locks the doors around there and they have a bit of a tiff. Iris is justifiably upset with everything, especially when she learns Joe was the one that suggested Barry not tell her to ‘protect her’. A phrase she (thankfully) tires of real quick.

It was nice to see Iris stand up for herself to both Barry and her father, basically telling them that she was a big girl and could make her own decisions thank you very much. Oh, and she said the one thing I’ve wanted a character in her situation to say for a very long time, “Did you ever think that if I had known I could have prepared?!”

I’ve never understood how not telling someone that they were in danger was a good thing. It’s annoyed me multiple times in this show and especially in Arrow.

And can I just say how freaking amazing Tom Cavanagh is? How much fun is he having right now with Evil Wells? You can see it in every movement and hear it in every sentence, he is having a ball. It will be a major loss to the show if he leaves or because a sideline character. I know that Reverse Flash can’t be the villain every season (can he?) and can’t feature in every episode but man is he fun to watch. I just hope that they don’t kill off the character or this version of Thawne anyway.

Speaking of which, this show has done something else that I’m impressed with in regards to super hero shows: they don’t kill off the villain each week. In fact, I’m not sure that more than a couple have actually died. Most are locked away in STAR Labs (Hello, anyone else thinking Wells is hiding there and plans to release some of them?), turned good (Firestorm), or are still active (Cold). A nice break from the typical superhero show and a great way to have story lines in the future that you can bring characters back for. There is a ton of material in the comics to pull from and it’s nice to see they are respecting that a little.

Now the not so good; Grodd. It’s not that I hated the CGI because I didn’t. Yea, there were a couple of places where you could tell it was fake and the scene where Grodd is walking down the tunnel was off. He lacked presence then and weight. The problem was he just seemed cheap. I know he was a distraction thrown out by Wells to distract the team but he felt like it rather than a threat all on his own. And he never really felt like a threat. I do appreciate the fact they are following his origin story closely.

Then there was the whole catching Barrys fist during the super punch. I’m at a loss to explain how Grodd was able to move fast enough to spot much less catch and cancel the kinetic energy of Barrys punch, though I have my suspicions (it has to do with the Speed Force).

Overall a good episode and a great driver into next week when Arrow and Firestorm join Flash to confront Wells.

Last Updated on January 12, 2019.

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