EPISODE 12: "Crazy For You"
SYNOPSIS: Barry's speed isn't the only thing that's beginning to pick up, so is his love life. During a night out on the town with Caitlin, Barry meets a new love interest named Linda Park, but how will Iris take the news? Meanwhile, Cisco uses Hartley Rathaway to get more information about Ronnie Raymond aka Firestorm.
RECAP (Beware of spoilers!):
This episode of THE FLASH had its definite hits and misses. The character-driven elements of the storyline were top-notch. I cheered, I shipped, – hell, I even cried! Where THE FLASH always excels for me is in the relationships between the characters, and that aspect of the show was running on all cylinders tonight. What was unfortunately lacking was the lame villain duo. Peek-A-Boo and Clay (what a name) have been the weakest villains yet, and really brought down the action. However, all of that was kinda forgotten by the end of the episode when we got our first look at GORILLA GRODD! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
Barry’s training is really paying off. While saving people from a burning car at the top of the episode, he went faster than he ever has before. But, although Barry is getting faster, his nemeses in tonight’s episode were so yawn-worthy he didn’t really need to be at his best. Shawna Baez, aka Peek-A-Boo (I’ll be happy when Cisco is naming villains again), has the ability to teleport, though she has to see where she is going for her powers to work. Naturally, the first place she goes, once she is comfortable with her powers, is to break her loser boyfriend, Clay, out of jail. Once free, Shawna wants to flee Central City, but Clay refuses to leave until he pays back the debt he owes his boss, Marcus. And thanks to Shawna’s new powers, it shouldn’t be a big deal for her to teleport into banks and steal money, right?
While investigating the prison break, Barry is reunited with his dad. Because none of the prisoners want to divulge information on Clay, Barry’s dad becomes the ears of the investigation, which sets up the most we have seen of Henry Allen for the entire season. Whenever he and Barry share scenes on this show, I always end up in a puddle of tears. This episode was no exception.
Unfortunately, being a police informant isn’t a good thing in prison, and Henry is stabbed by a fellow inmate. In an emotional scene, Barry goes to visit his father in the prison hospital, where Henry reveals he knows his son is The Flash and is so proud of him. Cue the water works. Barry (as The Flash) does get revenge on his father's assailant, though, whisking him out of the prison to get further information about Clay. Once he is done talking, Barry leaves the prisoner out in the yard, making it look like he tried to escape, thus adding 10 years to his sentence. Bad ass!
Thanks to information from his father and the S.T.A.R. Labs team, Barry faces off against Shawna during a robbery. Although Barry is able to catch Shawna, he loses her when she teleports. But that's not really a huge issue because Shawna is never that scary of a villain. The most she ever really does to Barry is get in a punch or two, or makes him dangle off a ledge, from which he quickly escapes. As Dr. Wells notices, however, Shawna’s powers don’t work when she is unable to see where she is going. So, Barry should try to get her in a dark place. Conveniently, the two next meet up inside a tunnel. Barry knocks out all of the lights, leaving Shawna helpless. Although Clay escapes, Shawna is captured and imprisoned in the Pipeline (in a cell with mirrored walls so she can’t escape). Lamest. Villain. Ever. Especially after such high-caliber villains as Captain Cold and Reverse-Flash, Peek-A-Boo was just as silly as her name.
Meanwhile, Cisco has started a whole subplot of his own. Although Caitlin is ready to give up the search for her ex-fiance Ronnie and move on, Cisco needs closure. After all, he still blames himself for not opening the door for Ronnie when the particle accelerator exploded. So, no surprise, Rathaway’s closing words in last week’s episode, regarding knowing what happened to Ronnie, really hit home. In order to get the information, Cisco agrees to let Rathaway out of his cell, with the addition of heavy-duty handcuffs, of course.
Rathaway points out a bomb shadow, allegedly from from Professor Stein (Victor Garber), on the wall of S.T.A.R. Labs and then tries to make his escape. But, little does he know, Cisco can actually kick some ass and has modified Rathaway’s cochlear implant to act as a loud deterrent; Rathaway doesn't get far. Eventually, Rathaway tells Cisco that Professor Stein specialized in transmutation, or taking two things and making them one. Surveillance footage shows Stein being engulfed in flames (Ronnie’s Firestorm body), which means the two are now merged into one being.
While telling the story, Rathaway is able to rip his cochlear implants out and somehow breaks them so the debilitating noise only affects Cisco? This part was a big plot hole for me because I can’t imagine that Cisco, who already modified the implant, wouldn’t have had a contingency plan in place if the implant was that easy to rip out. Anyway, Rathaway is now a free man.
The final major subplot was Barry and Caitlin. I ship this couple so hard. After tonight’s episode, how can you not? This episode has seemingly revealed that the writers realize this is the couple with legs. Gustin and Panabaker’s chemistry is through the roof and if there is going to be a “Barry ultimate love interest”, it should be Caitlin. Both characters realize they need to move on from their past loves, and the only way they can do that is by getting back in the field. So, they decide to kill two birds with one stone, go to a local bar that was a former haunt of Shawna and Clay’s to see if they come in, while also putting themselves "out there" in the dating world.
After Caitlin gets sufficiently wasted (poor Barry’s super-metabolism won’t let him get drunk) the two duet to “Summer Lovin’” from GREASE. We already knew Gustin, the former GLEE star, could sing, but poor Caitlin wasn’t as, shall we say, gifted. Unfortunately, while Caitlin is in the bathroom Barry is approached by a new girl, Linda Park, who gives him her number. But even though Caitlin tells Barry to call Linda because he deserves to be happy, it’s obvious by the end of the episode that she has feelings for Barry. She even says, “It’s time for me to move on and find someone else to be crazy about.” :wink wink: C’mon Barry, pick up on Caitlin's signals!
Unsurprisingly, nothing too exciting happened with Iris this episode. Barry, as The Flash, met with her to give information about the prison break so she can write a story and help him find the fugitive Clay. During their meeting, Iris was also able to capture a quick picture of The Flash, which will put her in the newspaper’s good graces. She was also pretty embarrassed when Barry showed up at the office and said he was there to see Linda, not her. Eeeek!
STINGER: GORILLA GRODD IS HERE and killing poor construction workers who venture down into the sewers! Can't wait to see when he will make his grand entrance on the show!
DC UNIVERSE EASTER EGGS:
COOL ALTERNATE USE OF "THE FLASH" POWERS: Barry uses his super speed to jiggle open a car door to save the people inside. He also helps get a drunk Caitlin out of the bar in record time so she doesn’t throw up inside and quickly undresses her to put on her pajamas.
FAVORITE QUOTE: Cisco says to Rathaway, “How can you speak six languages and sound like a dick in every one of them?”
FINAL VERDICT:
I really debated between a 7.5 and an 8 rating. I genuinely loved the character-driven elements of the story. However, Shawna and Clay were so blah, it really took away from an otherwise great episode. Maybe they were lamer than normal so viewers would focus more on the characters, but I think a little more could have been done to make the duo more entertaining and menacing.