DJ Watches: The Flash Season Three: Episode Five: Monster
After being, shall we say, nudged out of the nest by Joe last week (to be fair, upon Barry’s suggestion that he go and find his own place to live, finally) the speedster is busy making breakfast, as it’s revealed that for the interim, he’s crashing at Cisco’s place. Mr. Ramone, for his part, isn’t unhappy about hanging out with Barry, but is starting to seem a little less then thrilled about the whole thing, if only because Barry’s daily breakfasts and attempts to be a good guest are perhaps just a bit much to handle. We live this sitcom, however, to enter the substantially more dramatic and soapy life of Caitlin Snow, as she enters a sterile, fancy lobby and requests a meeting with one Carla Tanhauser. The secretary seems to rebuff the request, though Caitlin insists to try because she would absolutely make time to see her…correctly, as she is greeted by Dr. Tanhauser from the catwalk above – her own mother. Being rather cold and distant, Caitlin’s mom makes some snippy and sharp remarks about how she hasn’t spoken to her in a few years and asks what she wants regardless, stating she’s busy. A second and a frozen solid desk later, and Caitlin suddenly has dear old Mom’s absolute and full attention.
Speaking of relationships, the new, hipster Harrison Wells – “HR” – is trying his best to ingratiate himself to the team at STAR Labs, with mixed results. While most everyone is accepting of his attempts to be friendly, Cisco can’t help but be a little weirded out by the guy, not to mention being the one thinking what the audience thinks – that is, the team is two-for-two in Wells’ who’ve betrayed them, and he can’t help but find it all a little much. Ducking out to work, Barry heads off to CCPD and finds himself being questioned by the captain and his brand new pal, Julian, who’s lodged formal complaints about Barry’s constant tardiness and seeming lack of regard for the rules. After a stern message and talk, the captain….lets Barry go and leaves it at that, much to Julian’s annoyance and disgust. Meanwhile, back at Mom’s Lab, Caitlin runs through a handful of tests with her and her lab assistant, commenting that if all she wanted was the science, she could do all that herself. One thing leads to another, and after finally getting tired of how chilly she’s being to her, Caitlin snaps and complains that her mom was hardly a mom after the death of her father, and this shutting her out is the reason for their frosty relationship, pointing out that she didn’t even know Caitlin was married and in fact lost her husband in the interim years between meetings. Mom doesn’t have much to say, which is just as well, because suddenly a giant monster attacks Central City.
Wait.
-makes sure he’s watching the right show-
Yeah, that’s it, a giant monster attacks Central City, which the Flash runs to and….can’t do much more about other then save civilians in its path because it’s a GIANT MONSTER. Still, oddly, for a gigantic beast, after a few blocks it…disappears without a trace, much to everyone’s chagrin. Cisco, however, notices that HR isn’t exactly as helpful as either Reverse Flash Wells or Harry, and gets even more suspicious, and shares those suspicions with Barry. Against Mr. Allen’s wishes, Cisco rifles through HR’s bag and discovers his secret recorder, in which they hear him stating that they have no idea why he’s there. Seemingly busted, HR walks in the room, and deflecting the accusations from Cisco, merely states to listen to the rest of it…which reveals that he’s there secretly observing the world in order to write a book. As it turns out, HR is both a tech lab/corporation’s CEO and a novelist. As far as awkward situations go, that’s still probably a good bit better then what Caitlin deals with. The not-so-friendly and actually-pretty-creepy lab assistant threatens her when she tries to leave, which turns out to be a bad idea as Caitlin flat out freaks out and nearly kills the lab assistant as she yells angrily at him about what she’s dealing with. Fortunately for all involved, her mother finally acts like a mom and interrupts, gaining her attention and allowing her daughter to regain her composure, and assures her that she’s safe and this will all be taken care of. Presumably, she dumps the lab assistant’s body into a furnace or something and says it was an accident, but who knows.
Whatever the case, she makes it back in time to STAR Labs for the team to take another shot at the monster. In the meantime, Barry, mostly in guise to try and get to the original crime scene but also out of some genuine concern, weasels his way into Julian’s investigation by….completely failing to appeal to his ego, and settles with agreeing to leave the lab and go to another office if he “mentors” him. While at the scene, Julian seems to acknowledge that Barry is perhaps deserving of the job, albeit in an incredibly insulting way, when suddenly the monster strikes. After saving him from a falling piece of debris, the good crime doctor finally comes clean and admits that he doesn’t so much hate meta humans so much as he’s completely disappointed that so many of them waste their time committing crimes and other things with their powers then trying to help change the world, all while feeling impotent with his science background suddenly made useless in this new world of weird and wacky marvels.
Still, Barry doesn’t have much time with that, as he rushes to another monster sighting, using the new carbon fiber rope that HR claims to have made but, on second thought, didn’t actually do much more then state the idea for. Not that it matters, as an attempt to mimic a Snowspeeder fails, and Barry comes to the realization that this was just a hologram. Triangulating the energy that would be useful in making a hologram, there are two revelations made by the team – one, that the source is in an under construction nearby skyscraper, and two, HR doesn’t know jack about science and is completely useless. First thing’s first, as Flash, realizing that the police are ready to take this thing down with deadly weapons, takes off to the next sighting and in the nick of time stops a bullet from phasing through the hologram and hurting a bystander.
For his part, Julian is also playing hero, albeit a little too overzealously, as he confronts the “man” in the building, and Flash also steps in in time…to reveal it’s just some jaded 15 year old kid. Julian leaves, a little shaken by the fact that he almost shot a child, and Detective West takes over just in time to have a heart to heart with the kid. Reaching a…reasonable understanding, the kid is taken away in cuffs, as the STAR Labs team confronts their own imposter. HR reveals that he is legitimately the owner and CEO of his STAR Labs…but he’s just an idea guy, his silent partner is the scientist and engineer, HR is merely the face of the company. Somewhat irritated, Cisco asks why they should even bother keeping him around, to which this Wells points out that he’s valuable since his version of Earth ahs dealt with far more metas then Earth One, including ones they haven’t even met yet. Agreeing that would be useful, they nonetheless only agree to have him on a try out basis for a few weeks before giving him the boot. On the flipside, Barry makes good with Julian, giving him some genuine encouraging words without the hidden agenda this time, which for once, he seems to take in stride and receives. Barry even offers to buy him a drink, and he agrees to it.
However, things don’t entirely end well, as Caitlin receives a message from her mother, and it’s not great news. She notes that whatever’s happening to Caitlin, it’s accelerating, and if she keeps using these new powers, it’ll be permanent and have unknown consequences, and she pleads with her daughter to not use them again. Caitlin responds by freezing the workstation and computer into a block of ice, and not being as entirely disturbed by her icy rage this time around.
Another more character driven episode of the series, though one a good deal better then last week. We get some good insight into Julian in a way that’s not super TV like and I actually pretty similar to many real life instances where someone spends their life studying to be good at one only for technology or the world to change in such a way the person is now either completely useless or needs to learn even more to even get their foot in the door. He certainly shouldn’t be buddy buddy with Barry after this, but a little defrosting would do the character some good so he’s not just that asshole co-worker. We get some nice bits with Caitlin and her mother as well, and it seems more like her powers are Alchemy’s doing, with the sudden shifts in personality and icy, glowing eyes. It would make for a nice twist if he wasn’t behind it though, but we’ll see. Her estranged relationship with her mother and the maybe beginning of a mend were nice enough, though yeah, she almost killed a guy. I have a hard time seeing how that’ll be covered up unless they -ahem- ice that guy.
While the monster subplot ended up kinda lame, and the kid was also equally grating, I liked Joe’s talk with him. It wasn’t a cheery, happy “Everything’ll be all right pal!” talk that you get in a lot of these shows, but just brutal and honest, but with a little hope. I mean, yeah, you screwed up, and you can get over this, but you still gotta deal with the consequences of your actions, and if your talk about changing and wanting to be better are true, you’ll do all those things even after accepting the just punishment for those actions.
Overall, it doesn’t do much for the plot, but it does much more for the characters involved and is ultimately a good, decent episode of the show. No complaints here, though dammit, next time you tease a monster, give me a real monster guys. Damn thing didn’t even look as good as King Shark, so blech, whatever. The teaser for the next episode looks promising, tough I guess we as a whole gotta deal with that OTHER thing as of this writing next week, so if everything’s still standing, I’m eager to see it…