The Flash, Season 1, Episode 8: Flash vs Arrow
Oh my god this episode was so much fun. How do I even break it down?
First off, before everything, I absolutely love how both crossover episodes are relatively standalone and you don't need to watch Arrow to understand the Flash's episode or vice versa. And how the tone difference is felt -- the Flash's episode is a lot more livelier like the show itself, and Arrow's episode is a lot more grounded and grimdark which suits both shows' tones perfectly. Also both episodes actually do contribute something to their respective plots, Flash's moreso than Arrow's, which makes the episodes feel a lot more relevant than just 'Arrow, Flash, fight!'
The main plot, Barry-wise, sort of involves him dealing over his naivete, which is the one thing that Oliver has a lot more than him. Barry's a bit of a show-off about the whole thing too, which is kind of what Oliver is trying to get across that the whole thing isn't just a game and he needs to be a lot more serious about taking the environment into account and all that. We get to see a bit of this as the Flash is a lot more concerned about trying to swiftly taking out the enemy, which got him under Rainbow Raider's whole red eye anger thing. There's also the whole thing with Iris, which both Caitlin and Oliver lampshade at different points in the episode -- Caitlin flat-out calls Barry out for trying to break Iris and Eddie up as the Flash, whether on purpose or not, which is a relatively pretty accurate description of what he's doing... that 'did you guys break up' sounded quite hopeful, ditto for the 'should he be'.
And probably partly thanks to Oliver being a jerk with the crossbow traps and partly due to the whole Eddie-Iris thing, the Flash quickly falls prey to the newest metahuman, Roy G. Bivolov, otherwise popularly known as the complete loser of a comic villain, Rainbow Raider. Except that the live-action Rainbow Raider focuses not on his ridiculous hard-light rainbow surfing capabilities, but on his ability to stimulate emotion (we only see red-for-anger) with his light powers. Although, granted, the whole 'emotion stimulation' thing is not something I realized up until I look it up, so yeah.
Anyway, while I expected some cut-and-dried mind-control villain to be behind the Flash fighting the Arrow, whoever it is gets controlled, we actually get a fair amount of characterization from this. Bivolov's powers enhances the anger within Barry, but his unique physiology makes the anger manifest a lot slower than the normal people Bivolov affects, and that leads to him being a lot larger jerk, especially towards Oliver. We get to see him deliver a massively brutal 'you're just jealous of me and my speed' confrontation between Barry and Oliver, goes all 'I'm not Ronnie' on Caitlin which is absolutely hurtful and he explodes on both Singh and Joe as well, which was pretty awesome in a 'man, Barry, you're a dick' kind of way.
Also, he later brutally assaults Eddie under the whole rage thing, which was relatively horrifying especially considering how there was no guarantee what Barry could do under the effects of the Rainbow Raider's 'whammy'. Barry just trash-talking Eddie and being such a massive jerk progressively, well... thankfully the Arrow shows up. And I do like how the fight between the Flash and Green Arrow played out, which was really awesome. Not only from a visual standpoint, because that one massive melee that mixes Arrow's awesome fighting choreography and the Flash's brilliant CGI... it was pretty awesome as Arrow just manages to dance-fight his way close enough to punch Barry once and he delivers a pretty brutal high-speed beatdown and a spinning vortex thing. It's awesome how the Flash's speed lets him massively outclass Arrow in everything, and equally awesome just how Oliver manages to survive long enough against Barry. That freaking moment where Barry just super-speed-metabolizes the horse tranquilizers out? Brilliant. I thought it was a fair fight between the two, where Barry wins thanks to sheer brute difference in physical ability, and Oliver wins thanks to experience. It's all awesome. And I thought how Oliver managed to get the leg up to drive it into sort of a tie is pretty awesome, first with the double-crossbow trap which Barry caught, and then by stabbing a shorter arrow through Barry's leg, the shock giving Oliver enough time to subdue him, in turn giving Wells and Joe enough time to use the crazy spectrum thing on him.
I do like how Barry's outrage at all the other characters are absolutely hurtful, yet he doesn't deny that it's partially because of suppressed emotions, and I'm a big fan on how the show doesn't make this explicit until after he's been a dick to a fair amount of people. I do like how Oliver knows Barry enough not to take the whole 'you're jealous of me' speech too seriously and knows to call it in. Likewise, Barry is always defending Oliver to both Joe and Wells, which I thought was a massive moment of awww on his part. Though in the same vein I do like how they don't just sweep Barry's massive act of brutality against Eddie under the rug.
Also, to a much lesser extent compared to the 'Flash vs Arrow' fight, I do like how Barry is using his superspeed for a lot of fun, mundane things like helping people's love life out (and also subtly telling us about how lovesick he is over Iris) and speed-painting a house.
Oliver himself is apparently tracking down Captain Boomerang down into Central City, and makes an absolutely awesome dramatic entry, taking down a brainwashed policeman with the equally awesome one-liner 'no mask'. He acts a bit tsun-tsun towards Flash initially, but eventually relents and that shake-hand for a team-up is pretty damn awesome moment in and of itself. Oliver gets to be a bit of a douche with the whole crossbow trap thing shooting Barry in the back -- a couple centimeters off and he could've speared Barry through the heart, super-speed-healing or no. Can't fault Barry for being angry. But then, Barry was a little cocky and considering Oliver's backstory and how he trained Roy, it's probably the only way Oliver knows how to train people.
Oliver acts as the unlikely mentor, and I do like how both Barry and Oliver are portrayed as being pretty flawed so each of them has their own fair points, though not all are compared until Arrow's own episode shows up. I also do like how Oliver is basically the epitome of how us normal humans can achieve to be (Batman notwithstanding) and just how dangerous an out-of-control metahuman like an evil Flash can be. Or, y'know, how fucking terrible someone with super-speed actually out of blood could be, since Angry!Barry doesn't really seem to be out for actual murder. Not like, oh, how Zoom/Reverse-Flash is. I'm a lot happy with the fight. Pretty fucking awesome. If I haven't said that like a dozen times already.
I'm a big fan how Oliver and Barry parts the episode under good terms. Both of them need some light in their lives, and I'm a big fan how Oliver and Barry has a fair amount of chemistry together and their little brotherly bond is pretty fun.
Coming with Oliver into the Flash series are Felicity (who's been around as a guest star before) and relative newcomer John Diggle. And Diggle is just so fucking hilarious. His initial appearance to Barry's super-speed is just a big, massive gaping 'what' and 'my cousin got struck by lightning once' he just takes a fair while to process everything despite them keeping him up to date. And Diggle just doesn't let it go, continuing to wonder just how fast Flash is and just how crazy he is. Also how he just stares down Cisco simply because he comes from a show that's a lot more serious, and then actually going on a bit of a 'I bet Arrow will win because of these reasons' argument with Cisco, which is a fun little reflection of how a lot of fandoms are like. And as much as the Flash had the advantage in their fight, Oliver wasn't going for the kill and Oliver only 'won' because Barry got cured of his extreme anger.
Felicity is still around doing Felicity stuff, being pretty close to Barry though they both insist that it's not happening. Barry did cause Felicity to have to strip down to her bra by burning her shirt, which is pretty hilarious. (So's Cisco's reaction afterwards). Felicity helps out with Team Flash was a bit with computer software, and despite her all-around-borderline-Mary-Sue science-awesomeness, she still defers to both Cisco and Caitlin for their respective specialties, and vice versa in regards to Felicity's computer skills, which makes a lot sense. There's also a moment where Wells cornered Felicity and straight-out demands Oliver's identity from her, but she says no. I mean, Wells figured it out, which is equal moments awesome and horrifying for Wells' part, but it's pretty cool moment for Felicity taking her stand nonetheless. Felicity gets to interact with the non-Barry members of the cast, which is cool as well -- she geeks out about Captain Boomerang's boomerang with Cisco and gets some girl-talk with Caitlin, which is cool.
Between the Flash and Arrow casts, we get the Flash cast kind of investigate Captain Boomerang's, well, boomerang, which led Team Arrow to Central City in search of where exactly it came from. Felicity also talks to Caitlin about asking her help regarding identifying the DNA for Sara's murder, which is also a nice tie-in, if a bit spoiler-y for anyone who doesn't watch Arrow yet and are going to thanks to this episode.
Caitlin and Cisco jointly really don't do much more than their usual fare, though they do get a lot of fun moments. Cisco gets that funky Yoda line, all those geek-outs over the Arrow, the little arguments with Diggle about whether which one of the Flash and Arrow would win in a fight... pretty fun. Also, the scene where Cisco just causes the boomerang he's investigating just zooming all around the lab wrecking everything is pretty fun in a morbid way -- that could've killed Caitlin. Caitlin herself gets that moment where Barry shoots her down cruelly regarding Ronnie. There's still that moment where she shoots down Barry regarding Iris too, several times, about the whole 'why are you doing this, are you trying to ruin her love life', which is pretty nice. Is she jealous?
Basically, Barry's a big dick all throughout the episode is what I'm saying. Part of it is thankfully amplified thanks to the Rainbow Raider, but I'm curious about the ramifications it'll have.
What I do know it will have is that, well, Iris, for one, hates the Flash now. We get your normal 'Iris meets the Flash secretly and it's all borderline shippy' scene early on, but when Barry outright physically assaults Eddie and throws him out of a moving car, and then ignores everything Iris said, well, I think Iris would have to be massively dense not to distrust Flash a lot. In the same vein, Eddie has been lobbying for an Anti-Flash movement... I'm not quite sure just why, since the Flash is doing a lot more good than harm, but I think it's sufficient to say there's a fair amount of jealousy from Eddie's part as well. We get into the start of an argument between Iris and Eddie in the car, about how Iris is hiding her meetups with the Flash from Eddie, but after Eddie's brutal assault from the Flash, Iris basically tells the Flash to fuck off, and Eddie gets his little taskforce. Also, pretty realistically, Eddie and Iris get back immediately afterwards after they both agree that, yes, the Flash is a menace. I actually like this -- I would think that Iris would be massively dense if she broke up with Eddie despite seeing all that.
Also I do like the little fake-out early on about how the police would not hate the Flash and be cooperative, and then throw this little curveball with an excellent explanation onto why the police are hunting down the Flash.
On a lighter tone, I do like Iris' little cheat-list line and her general fangirling over Oliver Queen, and the reaction from Barry is a bit hilarious.
Joe is a bit pissed off at the Arrow and brings up Oliver's methods of interrogating people through torture, as well as his track record of murder... though it's played in a more lighthearted 'oh, that Oliver' tone here. The Arrow episode will fix that. I do like how Oliver's behaviour in the first season is not completely forgotten, and how it's morally not right. I do like how both Wells and Joe aren't happy about Barry taking advice from Oliver, though they both learn Arrow's secret identity thanks to Wells... who either found it out himself or through his fancy future computer. Either way, Wells reveals Oliver Queen's secret identity to all. We get some funny dialogue from Cisco about this too.
Wells gets some ominous threatening dialogue with Felicity, but Felicity stands up to Wells which is awesome. Wells also apparently knew Robert Queen, and Oliver also remarks that there's something off about Wells. Yes, indeed, Oliver, if only you knew... did Wells engineer Oliver's origin story as well? That would be a bit too much meta, but it is something to think about.
Anyway, Roy G. Bivolov, the Rainbow Raider. Cisco can call the dude Prism for all he likes (that's a different DC character) but Caitlin confirms 'Rainbow Raider'. Other than the name and part of the powers, Bivolov has not much in common with the comics' version of the Rainbow Raider, who's a complete loser. The Raider gets some pretty awesome moments with his rage-vision thing, but he doesn't really do much other than make me confused as to his true identity (even though, y'know, ROY-G-BIV should be blatant). His capture even takes place off-screen! He doesn't get any kind of backstory regarding what he touches during the explosion and he doesn't get any kind of motivation beyond robbing banks and generally showcasing Barry's inexperience. He's literally a plot device. Shows up to rob a bank, which is the most banal of supervillain plots, does his whammy on Barry and disappears from the plot until the end. Which is fine, because I suppose that makes the Rainbow Raider a bit of a loser. He was a pretty fun and unexpected villain, I have to say. Like the Girder, though, he's been given a bit of a realistic overhaul as well as to make the special effects team not cry themselves to death by trying to animate their comic-book abilities in a way that doesn't look stupid.
The whole 'colour spectrum of emotions thing'... that is quite a bit of a nice little reference to the Green Lantern comics, and that actually makes sense with the context of the episode and how they managed to reverse Rainbow Raider's rage effects on Barry with multi-coloured light. That was pretty fun.
Also, the stinger this time isn't Harrison Wells doing something crazy, but FIRESTORM! Extremely hyped for his appearance, and this episode lets him shoot fire everywhere and be a fire man, which is awesome -- shame we'll have to wait until at least after next episode to see him actually be Firestorm.
Are we getting a Firestorm vs Flash fight? That would undoubtedly be awesome. ALL THE FIGHTS! Next week we're apparently getting a mid-season finale between Flash and Reverse-Flash, which is cool.
In lieu of minor characters, we learn that Singh is gay. Equality for all, I guess? I'm a lot more interested in seeing Arrow's baby-mommy, who I didn't recognize up until the end when she meets Oliver. I'm not quite sure what the point of showing this in Flash's episode is, but there certainly is no way to show it in Arrow's episode... and it's not really much of a massive plot point other than Oliver knowing that she's still around. The audience gets to know that she's a mommy, most likely to Connor Hawke. So yay for that Connor Hawke tease!
Also we get a fair amount of continuity nods to a fair amount of Arrow episodes. Not merely counting the reappearances of Firestorm and Oliver's baby-mommy, we get references to Deathstroke and Huntress (also funny how Oliver's point about funny codenames gets shot down), we get an extremely funny reference to Oliver's prison on Lian Yu when he walks around the STAR prison, Wells and Joe bring up the two terrorist attacks in Starling City (courtesy of Merlyn and Slade), there's a Palmer Industries logo briefly shown in the opening scenes, the fight against Captain Cold is referenced as an example of Barry's inexperience, and Cisco brings up Captain Cold's cryo-gun, which was initially developed to take down Barry. Tight continuity, is all I'm saying.
Overall, uh... awesome episode? I'm pretty sure this review is 90% just me going 'awesome awesome awesome' and I cannot lie, that was 90% of my reaction while watching the episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment