Courtesy of The CW
Warning: Spoiler Alert
Barry Allen has graduated to multitasking at high speeds. Which does prove helpful in tonight’s ‘caper’. An armored truck gets robbed by professionals. However, Barry gets there in time take care of four armed robbers, two security employees and prevent the robbers for getting what they came for. Meanwhile Thawne doesn’t quite understand the parameters for dating the bosses daughter. And Joe is giving Iris the silent treatment. Which Barry (and I) are perfectly fine with. And if that’s not enough, Iris has started a blog covering “the Streak”.
In better news, we have a Felicity citing. That’s right, another Arrow crossover. Why is Felicity showing Barry Allen this flirty attention? Full disclosure, I’m behind on Arrow, but this seems a little odd. Odder still is the tie in with Dr. Wells. Who knows who Felicity is because he “keeps his eyes open for promising talent”.
Joe is taking at least some level of joy in telling Thawne that he has no interest in hearing anything about he and Iris. I’d go so far as to say, Joe would prefer Thawne keep the name Iris out of his mouth when in Joe’s presence.
Side note. At the double date trivia night thing, the team of Iris, Thawne, Barry and Felicity (sans Felicity at this point) is introduced as E=MC Hammered. May sound cute enough. However, that phrase or line is all but ripped directly from the movie Beerfest. Not saying they stole it, just saying it’s not completely original.
Leonard Snart the ‘bad’ of this episode (and maybe beyond) makes a deal with a very sketchy individual about tech stolen from Star Labs. A gun that will slow the victim down. It burns cold. As it turns out, Cisco developed it and it has been missing for what Cisco thinks is two days tops. Snart decides to take it for a test run. He does hit Barry as Barry attempts to save Joe. And then Snart shoots it at an innocent and Barry tries to beat the substance from the gun. But he fails and the man is left like charred stone.
Wells informs Barry that the gun was made in Star Labs. It was made to slow down Barry before he knew that Barry was a good guy. And now, Barry is flying off the handle actually getting angry about mistrust when the issue should be about how to retrieve the gun.
Iris attempts to strong-arm Joe into dropping the silent treatment. And while I don’t think it’s the Jesse L Martin scene of the week we’ve grown accustomed to, he does make it clear that it’s not about being angry with Iris. It’s about losing focus and what would transpire between the two of them (Iris and Joe) if something bad were to happen to Thawne.
Barry has not left Star Labs yet. Instead he’s pushing himself hard to get faster. He’s still angry about the Cisco lack of trust. However, Felicity comes in to add some perspective. In the end she tells him that it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t Cisco’s fault. This life is a lonely path and he should not make it any lonelier than it has to be.
Cisco has a way to get a location on the gun by sending a fake system update. With Felicity’s help they are able to get that location in under a minute. Barry suits up, still angry, and turns off his ear piece. Another sign of this Superhero’s lack of maturity in one area. But hey, it’s an origin story.
It seems that at this point, Felicity’s purpose in this episode is to lend guidance and experience in this sort of endeavor because this young team is experiencing its first sense of trouble. Meanwhile Joe chases after Snart. In doing so, out of fear, Joe insists Thawne stay and wait for backup. He is now making decisions based on the probability Thawne will survive and not the best case scenario for catching the bad guy. Thawne disobeys the order and after shooting (and missing) Snart, he says, “I’m your partner, not your assistant”.
Until now, the imagery of the small lightning bolts at Barry’s feet when at top speed seemed arbitrary. As if he sparks when he goes fast. Earlier, Wells told Felicity that Barry has not yet reached his top speed. Then, after the Cisco trust issue, Barry began to train harder in order to go faster. Snart sets a trap for Barry. He will endanger and entire subway train full of people and make his getaway while Barry saves everyone. The train derails and begins to topple over. Barry begins racing in and out saving people. Here’s the tie in. As he’s doing it, the lightning or static electricity (whichever it is) is now surging all around him. As I am a fan of the Flash and not a historian by any stretch, I cannot accurately place the relevance of this. But something tells me that Barry just graduated to the next step of his physical abilities.
While all of that was happening , Snart had no intention of making his getaway. He ducked out of sight in order to shoot Barry with the gun at point-blank range. While Barry sits there listening to how his actions forced the bad guy to improve the way he approaches his craft, Cisco shows up holding a prototype ‘cold gun’ that looks more like he half sibling to the gun Phil Coulson used to kill Garrett at the end of Agents of SHIELD season 1. Yeah, I just connected DC to Marvel, what of it? Turns out the ‘prototype’ is just a fancy vacuum cleaner with L.E.D. lights on it. Friendship and trust renewed.
Felicity said her goodbyes and heads off to return to her team in Starling City. There is an embrace before she goes. Just not the type that leads to anything. If you can’t tell, I’m pulling relatively hard for Iris to be nothing more than a friend Barry grew up with. For now.
There is a painful attempt for Joe and Iris to start again on the Eddie Thawne situation. Joe feels he underestimated Thawne’s ability and Iris never considered the work implications of dating him to begin with. Pretty mundane detail in the scope of thing except… Iris says, “from now on no more secrets”. Which is fun because Joe can agree to it all he wants. A father is going to keep the Flash’s secret because of the potential harm that could come to his daughter. Superheroes need their anonymity because if not, loved ones become collateral damage.
I was expecting the next scene to be our weekly ‘Harrison Wells is shady’ scene. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to discover Felicity on a train by herself. In an instant, Barry appears in the seat facing her. She ‘yelps’. They talk about pining for people they can’t have and then opposites attract and what not. Then Barry says “goodbye Felicity” then leans in just a little and she does the same. The first kiss of the series does not belong to Iris. This is a much better match. Long term, I’d be skeptical that this is where it stays. However, it does create the potential for repeated Arrow/Flash crossover episodes.
Instead of the Harrison Wells scene we get a different scene that plays to a future episode. If you didn’t notice, the Snart character is played by Wentworth Miller who is probably best known for his work on Prison Break. In this scene he partners up with a man he calls “Mick”. Mick uses a match to see the weapon that Snart insists he will like. The prevailing speculation is that Mick is a character named Heat Wave and that some further digging reveals that Heat Wave will be played by Dominic Purcell. Yeah, the other guy from Prison Break (and Blade Trinity). Sometime CW, you try too hard to be cute.
