The CW Superfriends: Flash

Next up on our trip through the CW Superfriends, the Fastest Man Alive gets his own show.

Don't blink.

Wait. Now I want to see Flash vs the Weeping Angels.

That does not happen in this show. So what does?

Full disclosure: As with Arrow, I only got so far into this one. I quit after season two. Jump to the Writing section if you're curious, but beware the spoilers.

Show Summary:
Barry Allen, a somewhat dorky CSI for the Central City Police Department is struck by lightning and wakes to find himself able to move at speeds only fighter pilots ever reach. Along with his friends at STAR Labs, he studies his new found powers and helps hunt down the mutant Metahumans that also received powers in the same catastrophic event.

Costumes/Visuals:
The Flash has always had a more campy aesthetic than some of the other superhero properties at DC. When some of your major villains include a guy in a parka, a talking gorilla, and a guy who dresses like a turtle (no, really) it may take a little more suspension of disbelief to get into a live action version.

That said, I do think the costuming remains faithful to the source material.

Visually, the show looks good. The powers are well represented visually and aurally, the camera work is decent, and we get a good deal more brightness and color than in Arrow, which fits the tone.

There are a lot of stock footage shots of Barry running in this show that get recycled, though and some costumes look a little...less impressive.

Not that we're picking on anyone.

Ahem.

Music:
Blake Neely, again, putting in another solid body of work. No complaints.

Action:
Most of the action in this show revolves around the super powered criminals and their interactions with police and the Flash. Especially in the first season, we have a Meta-of-the-Week mentality that sets Barry and his brain trust up against a different villain every episode.

I didn't think the show would fall out that way at first. When Barry shows up at the crime scene in the first episode (and in his brief pre-powers cameo on Arrow), it's his mind that is the superpower. I was really hoping they would retain more of that than they did.

Without that element, you get a lot less Barry having to be clever and lot more "Run, Barry, run!"

And run he does, zipping through streets, up the sides of buildings, into and out of an overturning train, over the water, and through time itself.

Along the way through this hyper-marathon, he faces villains who can project destructive sound waves, turn their skin to steel, manipulate weather, freeze objects solid, and turn into a sentient cloud of lethal gas. And also a guy with a time obsession.

Barry also fights fires, dodges bullets, stops a tornado, repairs a building, gets poisoned, outruns a nuclear blast, and punches a guy at Mach 1.

Normal people are shot, stabbed, blown up, and one has a hand vibrated through their chest.

Acting:

Grant Gustin as Barry Allen: He's not a bad actor. His comedic delivery is pretty good. But I don't know much about his range, since Barry bounces between "Woah, this is awesome!" and "Woe is me!" without much in the middle. He's believably affable, but he doesn't seem to have the charisma to carry the show by himself.

Tom Cavanagh as Dr. Harrison Wells: I first saw Cavanagh as the eponymous "Ed" in the comedy series of the same name. He's a great actor and it's the interplay between him, Gustin's Barry, and our next actor that moves the acting out of forgettable territory.

Jesse L. Martin as Joe West: Veteran actor best known for Law & Order and Rent, Martin makes the third pillar that holds the show up. He brings a very believable warmth to the show as the father figure and voice of common sense.

Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon: Comic gold. Another relative newcomer to television, Valdes lightens the tone and has great delivery as the geeky sidekick.

Rick Cosnett (Eddie Thawne), Candice Patton (Iris West), and Danielle Panabaker (Caitlin Snow) put in okay performances as the other three leads for the first couple seasons, but they lack the cast chemistry that is on display with the other actors. Especially the on screen romance between Cosnett and Patton. It just felt flat, which robs a whole subplot of punch.

Writing:
The first season did a good job establishing the tone for the series, especially in the fact that Barry enjoys being the Flash. He may not have chosen it, but he's not broody and angst ridden about it. It was a nice change of pace and completely consistent with the comic characterization.

Meta-of-the-Week is repetitive, but the overall arch for Season 1 held things together very nicely.

The action is at its best when the Flash is up against his arch-nemesis, the Man in Yellow:

Wait, not that one.


This one:

The stakes are highest with Reverse Flash, given Barry's backstory. The character so desperately needs to win and the first season gives that contest weight. The slow build up to their final confrontation is definitely a draw for viewers.

Also great is the theme of family, specifically fatherhood, throughout the show. Family loyalty and devotion are depicted in an unwaveringly positive light.

Barry's biological father (played by John Wesley Shipp, who incidentally also starred as the Flash ) was wrongly imprisoned. Barry was raised by his foster father Joe West, who did the best he could with a new genius son. As the show begins, Barry meets Dr. Harrison Wells and finds a mentor for both his scientific interest and dealing with his new superpowers.

The interactions between Barry and all three of the father figures in the show propels a lot of the plot and adds some real depth to the characters.

Sadly, we come to our first big minus: by changing Joe West to be Barry's foster dad, the writers make Joe's daughter Iris West into the next best thing to his sister.

Which is a bit icky, since she's also Barry's main love interest, both in the show and the comics. I'll let you digest that on your own.

Despite some pacing issues, including absolutely zero falling action from the fateful choices in the last episode of the season, Season 1 of the Flash gave us a hero who is always trying to do the right thing, loves his family and friends, and faces his own worst nightmare down to protect the innocent.

Season 2 promptly dumped a bucket of cold water on the viewers.

First, Flash's confidence and ability, built up so carefully in Season 1, are immediately undercut in the very first episode. We get a lot of mopey Barry and a lot less wise cracking, grinning from ear to ear as he takes bad guys into custody Barry. Attitude is contagious and this was much less fun to watch.

Second, the new villain, Zoom, forces us to go through nearly the EXACT SAME plot arch again: Barry isn't fast enough to deal with the bad guy, Barry works with the brain trust and a mentor to build his confidence, Barry comes to believe in himself again and uses his mind and his speed together to turn the tables.

Third, and worst of all, we get nullified character development. There is an absolutely excellent episode where Barry puts to rest his guilt over his mother's death and allows himself to move on. This seminal event gives him the strength to go after Zoom one more time.

And then the writers chuck all of that out the window by killing his dad and having Barry hop through time and save his Mom, thereby changing history. Every lesson he's learned about dealing with failure and the possible deadly consequences of messing up the timeline, to say nothing of the sense of peace he earned just a few episodes earlier?

They mean nothing. Which made me angry that I had bothered to watch them develop those characteristics in their hero in the first place. This is almost Spider-man "One More Day" bad.

"Here, let's take our hero who's character has been on display from Day One and who's already made this choice before, and we'll make him make the choice again only badly in defiance of who he is."

And after that, I was out. Haven't watched a single episode since.

Conclusion
This show had a lot of potential. Once the actors and writers found the characters' voices, they had a fun, upbeat show to play with that gave the network a palette cleanser and foil for the much darker Arrow. The themes of family and of pressing on to become excellent were very refreshing.

Then they dipped the bright Flash brush in the darker CW hues and redrew the map in an ever downward direction.