Culture of Pop

The Flash Review: 2.10: Potential Energy

The Flash returned last night with an episode that focused on Barry Allen’s relationship with Patty Spivot. The old problem of him keeping secrets from a woman he’s close to felt worn out. There’s nothing fresh here, except for the fact that Patty is already a cop who fights metahumans, making the idea that Barry needs to protect her and keep her out of this extra ridiculous.

The end tag showed Eobard Thawne returning and the title of next week’s episode is “The Reverse-Flash Returns.” I honestly couldn’t be less excited. It feels like the show isn’t even trying to develop the characters or take the story to new places. There’s a lot of elements thrown in, but none of them feel like a coherent story and certainly not one based in character.

Barry Allen is a bit of a disaster of a protagonist right now. This episode had him smirking as he told a metahuman that he’ll be locked away– not for the first time. This creepy control freak attitude doesn’t seem to be addressed. No one is trying to keep him in line or pointing out that he seems to be enjoying hurting criminals as much as he enjoys helping people.

Speaking of the villain of the week, The Turtle didn’t leave much of an impression. The transition from him being a low-level thief to terrifyingly violent felt jarring. Also, I know at this point I need to stop making this complaint and just come to expect it, but the crisis always being “Barry has to go at X speed in order to defeat the bad guy” gets so repetitive. I know it’s a show about The Flash, but you don’t see Oliver Queen needing to get slightly better marksmanship every week. The one potential interesting thing about The Turtle: will Harry Wells really be able to use his DNA to defeat Zoom?

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