Wed, 26 Feb 2020 07:59:41 -0700 Arthur Lipscomb<
art...@alum.calberkeley.org>
wrote:
> The Flash - "Grodd Friended Me" - Thanks to some techno mumbo jumbo that
> I'm sure doesn't make any sense, Flash winds up in Grodd's mind. To
> escape all Flash has to do is run really fast past someone who can only
> move at normal speed and is standing in front of a portal. So of course
> Flash is trapped. Because how can Flash possible get past someone who
> is standing 10 or 20 feet in front of a large wide open portal he needs
> to get through.
So much deeply burning stupid here.
It starts out with somebody I've never seen before manning the comms ... he
has the run of Star labs, works the coms and yet ... doesn't know Barry Allen
is the Flash. What the Hell? It's unclear throughout this episode who
remembers the Crisis as well.
So Barry is searching every cemetery in town trying to find his parent's
graves (carrying flowers, and on foot, at normal speed). It never occurs to
him to, oh, I don't know, check the newspaper morgue for notices. Hell, how
does he even know they're dead? And he searched everywhere except where they
were buried pre-Crisis first.
A Meta crime alarm goes off! It takes Barry minutes to run there while he
talks to the new kids on the comms and they throw backstory exposition they
all know already past the audience. It's the Pied Piper, but not quite the
one Barry remembers! Given the dialog, it's pretty clear the Piper is
watching along with us; otherwise his responses make no sense.
Later at Star Labs, the new guy fiddles with Gideon without permission and
screws up stuff. Barry ends up trapped in Grodd's mind. But not before Gideon
tells us that she has cataloged all XX trillion changes in the post Crisis
world, and can sort them by various categories. So why the Hell is Cisco out
doing this on foot?
Barry and Grodd mind merge. Barry gives Grodd all his powers and the
knowledge of how to use them (gee, that doesn't have any potential of coming
back to bite him on the ass, does it?) and yet they STILL can't beat a lone
enemy ape.
Then they can't escape through the portal while merged, so only the new guy
in Comms can hack Gideon to separate them at the millisecond they enter the
portal because ... hey, why don't they saunter up to the portal, separate,
and then go through one by one?
The new guy is only there to remind us that it's black history month, and boy
are they ham handed about it "Nobody ever gives people like us a second
chance" Sigh
Meanwhile Evil Iris is a bitch to her father, and real Iris and the chick
trapped in the mirror ... well, none of that makes any sense at all.
This wasn't as awful as the other CW shows, but it sure as Hell wasn't good.