Flash "Exit Earth 2" (REVIEW)
Written by Jacob Chimilar (@sweetlows)
When we last left Barry he is in the hands of Zoom locked away in a cell with Wells daughter and a man in an iron mask, though i presume he is not Leonardo DiCaprio. The man is tapping on the glass in some kind of code. After some thought the two of them realize he is using a type of morse code. He taps out the name Jay Garrick but before they can get any further in to questioning, Zoom, well, zooms in and stops the chit chat, phases into Barry's cell and beat the tar out of him. That right there gives Barry the idea he should have had right away “hey maybe I can phase out of this cell” which was my first thought but then I imagined that Zoom would have a “phase proof” cell somehow which didn't prove to be true. Oh Barry you are awfully smart but something you are pretty shortsighted. Maybe that's why your Earth-2 self wears glasses.
Speaking of Earth-2 selves. Cisco, Iris, Wells and Bartholomew set out to get Barry and Wells daughter back but they seemingly have no way to do that. That is until Cisco puts forward the idea that since Zoom killed Deathstorm, the Ronnie of Earth-2 chances are Killer Frost, Earth-2 Caitlin, were likely close and she would have a bone to pick with Zoom about the whole situation and she may lead them to him. It is a similar tactic to the deal with Snart and Flash a while back before he went to jail. After some pushing and shoving they convince her to come along and help save everyone. She creates a sort of ice ladder for them to climb up and they rush in and break out Jesse and try to break out Barry as well but his cell is much more secure than hers and it turns out that since Earth-2 is on a different frequency all together, his phasing powers don't work correctly. Earth-2 Barry gives Earth Prime Barry a pep talk to really get him pumped up, to believe in himself. This of course works and Barry is able to phase through. Barry Prime insists that they help break out the mystery man but run out of time, Zoom appears and Killer Frost manages to catch him off guard and hold him off long enough for the rest of them to escape. Overall it was a pretty thrilling and interesting sequence of events that lead to some kinda of emotional moments, some of those coming from Earth-2 Barry who is a lot of nervous dorky fun around his tough wife Iris, kind of like “Pre-Flash Barry Prime Concentrate”. Will we get to see who is behind the mask and reveal exactly what exactly about Jay Garrick he wants to say? Hopefully but probably not for a few episodes.
On Earth Prime a meta human named Geomancer who has gone around setting off earthquakes has been causing havoc throughout Central City and since there is no Flash to stop him, Jay has to step in using the Velocity serum to help. Caitlin has steadily been making improvement to it to allow him to use his speed longer and stop it from killing him. Geomancer breaks his way into STAR Labs, an easy feat at this point for some reason, and starts to destroy the lab. He almost succeeds and begins to go after another building when Jay injects himself with Velocity-9 and takes him down. It also appears as though the serum Caitlin has been giving Jay now is able to help heal his cells again and could very well get better. Additionally the Breach has been acting up and has become unstable. Jay and Joe work to keep the breach active and working until they return, using typical comic book science, Jay races around the machine stabilizing the breach and the gang hops through. They throw the last breach closing grenade but poor Jay is standing right in front of it and Zoom managed to reach a hand in and phase through Jay's chest and bringing him back to Earth 2.
Boy howdy was this one heck of an episode. Flash just keeps on trucking with its high production value superhero story lines. I mean props to the movies for being the big budget action fests that they are but comic book TV is where it's at right now. There is still tons of action, lots of drama and intriguing story lines that can be fleshed out over the course of 16 hours worth of episodes. Thats like 8 movies a year! We are 2/3rds of the way through Flash and just like last season the train just keeps on moving. I've been so impressed with how The Flash has managed to keep up its quality story telling through what many shows find difficult to achieve in 22 episode seasons. The quality stuff has come at the hands of those 13 episode or “split seasons” 8-10 episode chunks which may benefit the writers but they really are there own mini seasons and not two halves of the same whole. Those situations allow them to have more time to really nail what they have, Flash just manages to make that happen with way more episodes. This week was a real treat as it was like the conclusion to a mini movie So even TV gets movies now, no wonder Hollywood is worried! We get more of the amazing Earth-2 Barry, Jay got better and they presumably died, Wells daughter was saved but Zoom is still out there and could possibly find another way into earth-1 and steal Flash's speed. This isn't over and I'm thinking someone on Earth Prime has something to do with it.
