The Flash
Season 1, Episode 4
“Going Rogue”
Rating: A+
I need The Flash to stumble and fall, just so I can feel like I’m being fair in my reviews. As it stands, I have nothing bad to say about The Flash. It’s the perfect superhero show, a great mix of action, suspense, and all out fun. It’s proven on every outing it’s had so far that it knows exactly what it’s doing with the genre, and Barry has a blast doing it. Add to that some pretty spectacular looking special effects and you’ve mixed together something pretty unexpectedly amazing.
We get a very special treat this week in the form of Felicity Smoak, Arrow’s right hand in Starling City and, come on, Barry’s soulmate. Nerd love! I knew that we’d get more of a crossover than that initial conversation between Oliver and the Arrow. I just honestly thought it would come later in the season. To be fair, I thought The Flash’s most recognizable villain would also be saved for a little while, but debuting Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold this soon is actually a really good move.
We get a lot of really cool Flash moments as Barry joyfully shows off his powers to Felicity and tests his limits with his partners. I can’t understate how much fun this show seems to have with its main character, sending him from ping-pong, a game of operation, and a game of speed chess with three people at once, all to test the limits of his powers.
Leonard Snart, or Captain Cold as he is better known, is the first member of Flash’s rogues gallery that even a layman in Flash lore (like myself) will be able to recognize. He’s also the first of Flash’s rogues to not be physically changed by the explosion of the particle accelerator. While he wasn’t physically changed, he still wouldn’t be Captain Cold if it weren’t for the accident, because all roads lead back to Harrison Wells and that explosion. Rather than being caught in it, he gets gear stolen from S.T.A.R. Labs. Namely, he gains access to something Cisco developed to stop Barry Allen, a gun capable of freezing anything the beam makes contact with.
Snart, which will never not be an awesome name to say, decides to test Flash’s limits himself, albeit in a much different way. He fires the gun around a museum, trying to take out innocents as Flash rushes to save them. Then, in yet another bit to be chalked up to how freaking cool this show looks, Captain Cold fires it forward, and Flash is too far away. He races against the beam, trying to make it to the man targeted in time, but, for once, he’s not fast enough. He fails, the beam hits, and an innocent person dies. This leads to a confrontation between Team Flash in which Cisco tells Barry that he built the gun to be able to stop him, in case he wound up being a psycho with superpowers.
The chemistry between Barry and Felicity is everything that is lacking between Iris and Barry, or hell, even Felicity and Oliver over on Arrow don’t have chemistry as palpable as these two. It’s a pipe dream that anything will ever happen between the two, since they are lead characters on two different shows. Flash being a spin-off of Arrow, compared to sitting on another network a la Gotham or Constantine, gives me a little hope, but overall I don’t think we’ll get anything more than a stray kiss or a passing glance on crossover episodes.
For our final showdown, we get what has to be the coolest, most goosebump inducing sequence this show has had yet. Captain Cold derails a train and tasks Flash with saving everyone else so that he can save himself and escape. What follows is a fantastic achievement in special effects, as Barry runs through the tumbling train cars, saving person after person, never faltering, never falling. Flash is a true hero, of course, and innocent lives always take precedent. On top of that, his loss to Captain Cold’s ice-cold murder gun earlier ensured that he was never going to be too slow again, and he proves that to himself.
Snart gains the upper hand, though, pinning Barry to the ground with his freeze gun, and interestingly, thanking him. The game has changed, now, and Snart was able to see it and adapt accordingly. This is no longer the age of cops and robbers, this is rapidly becoming the age of heroes and villains, and Snart is the first of them to make an escape, to remain at large, the threat of him looming over everyone in S.T.A.R. Labs. This is the beginning of Flash’s rogues gallery, and the promise of cool returns from Leonard Snart is definitely a promise I want kept.
Stuff And Things
– “Cool it.” C’mon Captain Cold, did we learn nothing from Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze?
– The Kahndaq diamond refers to DC’s fictional Middle Eastern nation, home to Shazam villain Black Adam.
– “Your shoes are smoking!” I love Felicity so much. Is it too much to hope that she will make a permanent move to Central City?
– Really? A ‘radio is playing things that relate to our situation! Repeatedly!’ gag? Flash, you’re better than this.
– “Just go! …. And stay safe! And I’m talking to air now. Which is odd. And I’m still doing it!” Felicity, ever the wordsmith.
– NEW SECTION: AWESOME FLASH MOMENTS: Take your pick; Three games at once, burning shoes, taking out all of Captain Cold’s gang, and my personal favorite, racing the freeze beam — and losing, or Flash saving an entire train full of people.
– Love that Cisco finally got to tell a villain the name he came up with. And judging from Snart’s face when he hears the words “Captain Cold”, he loves it too.
– Snart was definitely the most fleshed out villain, as well he should have been with Wentworth Miller attached (you don’t waste the talent that lead Prison Break!)
– Our tag scene finally got us away from the mystery of Harrison Wells, and all but confirmed Cold’s return and the formation of a villain team. And with Heat Wave’s obvious debut at the end, and the fact that THEY ARE REUNITING THE BROTHERS OF PRISON BREAK FOR THIS SHOW, means that episode 10 can’t come soon enough.
