The Flash Ep 4 Going Rogue was Cool (yes spoilers!)

[Tonguez]

Episode 4 of The Flash was definitely the best so far and not least because of the guest double date/crossover with Felicity who was Smoaking! and the second best part of the episode.

The best part was the villain who despite not being metahuman was Cold, calculating, amoral and a great challenge for our hero, highlighting again that Barry is new and still coming to terms with his abilities. It was good that they dropped the meta of the week run and instead set up the groundwork for the Rogues team up.

It was also cool that the villain was willing to exploit Barrys hero status and that set up for great FX in their confrontation. CW must have some good FXs budgets invested, which is great!

Felicity being present did show up the lack of chemistry between Barry and Iris and just how incompetent Cisco and Caitlin are in comparison to the Arrows team, her Pep talk to the Cisco and Caitlin was a nice touch though. After the Wells 'knowing about her' exchange and Felicitys later comment about the difference between Team Arrow and Team Barry I'm wondering if Cisco/Caitlin being a bit weak was deliberate - did Wells deliberately recruit clever but dumb groupies who would not be a threat to his long term scheme.

I still have no idea how Cisco managed to create the gun without the rest of STAR labs knowing about it and the rationale did seem a bit forced, as much as Barrys tantrum when he learnt about it. Of course that did set up a chance for Wells to be menacing to his own team, again setting up an interesting tension that might flow through to future episodes.

I liked the Felicity-Barry dynamic, the playfulness of the E=MCHammer thing was so nerdilicious, but it made the Irisi-Barry thing so blahblah yawn. Joes talk to his daughter was nice, which attest to his good acting. Cisco as a character seems to be a bit pointless (at least Caitlin has the occasional glimmer of hope, even if this episode she was invisible) and the sooner they get him abandoned in the desert....

Easter egg references included

• The Museum came up again this week and we also see the Museum Manager Dexter Myles
• Khandaq Diamond
• Statistically trains are still one of the safest ways to travel - I thought that was Airplanes (nice Superman reference)

Oh and Felicity was missing from this weeks Arrow, right until the end when she walked in wearing the same outfit she was wearing when she left Barry - that was a cool touch.

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm now kind of wondering if the larger S.T.A.R Labs organization even knows these people are still camping in the old facility. They probably think they are conducting an investigation into what went wrong, hoping that if Wells can remain out of the public view long enough people will forget what happened, so they're happy to let him putter around in the ruins until the political heat dies down. He says his reputation is ruined but he probably still has enough pull with STAR to keep internal investigations off his turf long enough for him to complete his Master Plan. He's been working towards this whole thing for quite a long time; it's likely he's put in place people in the upper echelons of STAR that he knows won't interfere with him, or might even be wholly his creatures.

With just the three of them rattling around in this titanic facility, I'm pretty sure Cisco has more than a little private lab space to do whatever it is he wants to do. Same with the others.

I'd call Barry's reaction the same as the League's when they discovered Batman had plans to deal with all of them in case they went rogue. I think it would have been much more plausible, though, if the gun had come from the same STAR source as all the other weapons that guy was peddling.

I wouldn't call them dumb, but 'naive'. Cisco is brilliant but he's an unfocused polymath that's probably been let off the leash for the first time - he's spending most of his attention thinking about Barry's powers and such. Caitlin is spending most of her time wrapped up in her grief over Ronnie to bother paying attention to much of anything right now. They are scientists who have stumbled into being superhero tech support, not the trained specialists that Oliver recruited directly or trained himself.

I was very, very pleased with Snart, and with the Cold Gun effects. That was just brilliant. I hope that Heat Wave holds up just as well.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I found this story OK but it had two things that didn't work well for me.

First, who on earth is is felicity? Barry acts like he knows her, but we have never seen her before on the flash have we? I had to stop my recording and check that I'd not missed an episode somewhere along the line (I hadnt). I've never seen any 'Arrow', nor has my wife; if this was a crossover it was a bit clumsy IMO. It might have worked well for avid followers of both, but for people just getting into a series it was jarring.

Secondly, the whole plot revolved around Barry carrying the stupid ball. If (at any point) he ran up to captain cold, relieved him of the gun and zoomed it a mile away in the blink of an eye, the story is over. Why would he appear on the train, stop to chat with Cold and allow him to damage the train? How is it that even after that, Cold is able to react faster, getting a train door open and safely jumping out while Barry just, I dunno, waits? This is always a problem with flash level super speed of course... But at least it was avoided in the previous meta human encounters.

So anyway, despite some good moments, this was the worst one so far for me.

 

[WayneLigon]

First, who on earth is is felicity? Barry acts like he knows her, but we have never seen her before on the flash have we? I had to stop my recording and check that I'd not missed an episode somewhere along the line (I hadnt). I've never seen any 'Arrow', nor has my wife; if this was a crossover it was a bit clumsy IMO. It might have worked well for avid followers of both, but for people just getting into a series it was jarring.

It's a crossover. There will be multiple more instances of this, by the way. Felicity is probably one of the best computer hackers on Earth. She and Barry met in on Arrow before Barry became The Flash, and they hit it off. Felicity is still unsure how Oliver feels about her, but by now she's figured out that Barry has it bad for Iris.