Written by Matt Kelly
Plot: While Barry (Grant Gustin) tries to hide his activities from his friends and family, a new threat arises in the form of Danton Black (Michael Smith), an assassin who has the ability to make copies of himself and has his mind set on assassinating a powerful businessman in Central City.
Finally, a superhero with daddy issues.
“The Fastest Man Alive” spends most of its time exploring the relationship between Barry and Detective Joe West (Jesse L. Martin), which, to be fair, is a pretty weird relationship. West raised Barry because Barry’s real father was framed for his mother’s murder. It gets more complicated because Barry is kinda falling for Det. West’s daughter Iris (Candice Patton) — who happens to be dating Detective West’s partner. It gets even more complicated because Detective West also works with Barry at the police station and seems to function as his boss. Then it gets exponentially more complicated when, in the pilot, West learned that Barry was The Flash. So how is Detective West supposed to react to that news? When he laid it out, I totally understood his point of view. I pretty mucn agreed with him.
It’s rare for a superhero show to convince you that the superhero probably shouldn’t do superhero things. But, that’s exactly how I felt for most of the episode. The Pilot was different. The super threat was existential. If the tornado hit Central City, everyone would die and ONLY BARRY could stop it. “The Fastest Man Alive” is not like that. Barry had to stop a guy who could make more guys. They weren’t special. They couldn’t fly. They weren’t even really good at shooting. The police could have certainly handled this one, but because Barry needs to learn a valuable lesson about family, he takes it on his shoulders.
The villain, Multiplex, was fine. If they wanted to turn him into a more complex character, they probably wouldn’t have had time. This early in the season, so we have to lay a lot of groundwork on the characters we are going to be spending all of our time with. The other villain, Simon Stag (William Sadler) also seems pretty one note. “An evil businessman!? Tell me more!” said no one. But whatever. They don’t need to get into the big players in The Flash cannon too early considering we have so many already. We can take this slowly.
http://youtu.be/BUwbQ2KhbXY
A lot of people are complaining that Flash is doing what Smallville did with the “Freak of the Week” formula. Every week we get a new bad guy with new powers that forces Barry to learn about a new power or a new strategy. Weather Wizard was all about teaching Barry to push his limits. Multiplex seemed to be a lesson in not being an idiot and trying to beat you enemies by doing something other than running really fast. The big issue I have with the “Freak of the Week” plan is how they have gone ahead and killed both of the freaks. The fun of The Rogues is how they keep coming back and committing new crimes. Team ups are the best. I get that the Weather Wizard we saw may not be the Weather Wizard but that was the Multiplex. But, now he’s dead, which is a real bummer, because his power seemed like fun. Hopefully Flash will figure out how to not kill a character before Barry has to fight Captain Cold or someone really important.
The episode ends like an after school special. Barry says that West is as real as a father gets. As stupid as it sounds, I almost teared up. I didn’t, but I probably could have under different circumstances. It was cute. Similarly, Barry tells the team that they are as important as he is to the crime fighting organization. This is pretty obvious considering Barry has done very little by himself. Without Cisco (Carlos Valdes), how would he know how many tacos to eat? (It’s 850.) There was also a moment earlier in the episode where Barry stopped time and bore his soul to Iris using super speed. This was nice but really makes you wonder about the limits of Barry’s speed. If he can move that fast, there should be very little stopping him from catching Multiplex as he falls out of the building.
Overall, the episode gets to an amount of schmaltz that is silly but ultimately tolerable considering how good the rest of it was.
Lets talk about the big moment from this week.
SO what on Earth is going on with Wells (Tom Cavanagh)? In the last scene he goes to talk with Stag about all of the Flash excitement but once the conversation gets good, Wells rises from his chair (which is quickly becoming his signature move) and stabs Wells. His motivation is not incredibly clear. He seems to want to train the Flash but he also seems to be really concerned with Barry’s safety. Clearly he is some character from the future but it seems like my Metron theory from last week may be a bit off since Metron isn’t the stabby type. The Reverse Flash theory is looking better after this episode but one thing struck me this week: Wells looks a lot like Barry. He is pretty much just a grown up version of him. You don’t notice immediately but I think that is because he is always seated. Could it be possible that Wells is a time traveling Barry Allen? Maybe something went wrong and it turned him into a lunatic. Maybe he has been hypnotized. It seems most likely that he is a Flash from another dimension, but even that seems like a long shot. Who knows. It would be pretty cool though.
Rating: 7/10
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Matthew Nando Kelly is a contributing writer for Pop-Break. Aside from TV reviews, he also writes about films, music, and video games. Matthew also has a podcast called Mad Bracket Status where he discusses pop culture related brackets with fellow Pop-Break writer DJ Chapman. He loves U2, cats, and the New Orleans Saints. He can also occasionally be found writing lists on Topless Robot. His twitter is @NationofNando
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