General warning for spoilers ahead so please don’t come after me with pitchforks and torches…
The Plot
Some seriously cool stuff with timelines happening in this show. I understand that some people have a beef with season 3’s plot because their Flashpoint is so lame when compared to the Flashpoint in the comics. But really, think about that–the CW doesn’t have the rights to 99% of the main characters involved in that story arc. Wonder Woman? No way. Aquaman? Nope. Batman? Even a weird, alternate-timeline, Thomas Wayne version of Batman? Hell no. It would have been impossible to tell the same story, or even one close. So they did their best.
I digress. I like the whole Back to the Future style time travel philosophy they have going on, very chaos theory/butterfly effect. It makes it challenging to keep all the threads straight. (Challenging here is a word that means enjoyable to a person watching the show. However, to a writer of the show, the word might be more closely synonymous with maddening or insanity inducing.) It can also add layers of suspense and intrigue when characters from the future show up who know things our present-day characters don’t.
On a related note, I think The Flash and all other shows in the Arrowverse do a much better job of making a large, cohesive fictional universe than anything DC has done on the big screen yet. So that’s cool.
A Bit of Cheese…
But not the whole dairy.
C’mon, it’s a superhero TV show on the CW. I’m not dissing any of those things, but it’s kind of the perfect storm for cheesiness. As such, a little is allowed and even expected, but I think they strike a nice balance. Once you get past the first handful of episodes, (which are a difficult time for any show, period) the cheesiness either becomes manageable or you learn to deal with it.
Cisco.
Hands down my favorite character. He’s the Samwise Gamgee of Team Flash. (This is the highest compliment I am capable of giving as Sam Gamgee is literally my favorite fictional character of all time.) I love all his geeky references. I love that he’s such a sweet and loyal friend. I love that he would rather solve problems with his knowledge than with his (admittedly badass) superpowers. Aside from maybe one instance, he never has a selfish emotion, and even that one instance wasn’t all that selfish and was a great opportunity for character development.
Plus I almost wet my pants from laughing when this happened in season 2, episode 20 titled “Rupture”.
The Relationships
Apart from Iris (who royally pissed me off in season 1, but started to grow on me in season 2), Barry Allen’s relationships with practically all the other characters in the show are sweet and rich and natural–again, apart from the weird Don’t tell Iris Barry is the Flash even though she’s the love of his life for some Goddamn reason BS that happened all throughout season 1. Even Barry’s relationship with Eddie Thawne–his rival for Iris’s love in season 1–was still a great friendship. The writers very easily could have made Eddie a jackwagon, which is typical for the rival archetype in these kinds of stories, but they made him rounded and brave and kind and endearing. All of that made the culmination of his plot line even more effective and powerful.
I tend to gravitate more toward the brooding, asshole-ish type superheroes like Batman or Iron Man, the kind that push the people they care about away for whatever angsty reason. CW’s Flash doesn’t do that. It’s made clear that Barry Allen is only strong because of the amazing people in his life, and I very much appreciate that.
The Soundtrack
The OST is a huge part of any story for me, whether that story is a movie, a TV show, a video game, or some other form of media that involves sound. The music can make or break a story for me, and The Flash seriously delivers.
The Flash’s soundtrack is composed by Blake Neely (the same guy who writes music for Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl).
Neely does a fantastic job of giving different characters their own musical theme and then weaving them together depending on the needs of a scene. Here’s an example of a piece with several different themes woven together that appeared in the season 1 episode “Out of Time”. The title is “Reveal to Iris / Running Back in Time”.
There’s the track “The Race of His Life”, which played during the season 2 finale and literally gave me goosebumps.
Then, to round it out, here is the very last track of season 2, titled “I Will Wait for You”. To give you some idea of how much this music affected me–by the end, I kinda sorta didn’t hate Iris…
I’m cheap and therefore can’t embed the videos, but you really should give those tracks a listen.
Bonus:
DRACO MALFOY IS IN IT AND HE TALKS ABOUT THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. That’s like getting bonus XP on the epic geeky version of Life.
To Sum Up:
It’s a great show that I love for a number of different reasons, not all of which I had the time or the motivation to get into here. If you haven’t seen it yet, then you should totally check it out. If you have seen it and you’re all up to date, then get in touch with me after tonight’s episode airs, titled “I Know Who You Are” , and we can geek out after finally learning who Savitar is!
Project Procrastination 