Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: candice patton, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards, entertainment, Flash Vs. Arrow, grant gustin, Patrick Sabongui, Rick Cosnett, stephen amell, tv

Who's More Dangerous In Flash Vs. Arrow? Recapping This Week's Episode

By Rich Epstein

From the beginning of the episode, you wouldn't know that it was a crossover with Arrow. That is, unless you happened to notice one of the carefully placed, nearly hidden ads running nonstop for the past couple of weeks. The bad guy of the week can make his eyes turn red, which in turn makes anyone who sees him angry. Very, very angry. He uses this power to rob banks, causing everyone in the bank to fight with each other, and ignore him. The Flash (Grant Gustin) shows up in time to stop anyone from getting hurt, but not in time to get the bad guy. Yet.

Elsewhere, Iris West (Candice Patton) and Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett) are having some problems, and it's all Barry's fault. At first, Eddie doesn't believe that the Flash exists. When he finally sees the Flash for himself, Eddie wants to stop him, and asks the Captain (Patrick Sabongui) to form a task force. The Captain, we find out, is gay, and it is one of the best introductions to a gay character I have seen on television. The Captain makes a reference to his boyfriend, nobody reacts, and it is never mentioned again. The fact that he's gay is completely irrelevant to his character or to the plot and it is treated that way. He mentions his boyfriend in the same way a straight male character would mention his girlfriend. The show makes a very subtle but very important point, there is no difference between the gay captain and any character. He is treated exactly the same as everyone else on the show. Anyway, Eddie doesn't get his task force. Yet.

They find the bad guy's hideout thanks to a tracer in the money, and the Flash shows up to find the police on the scene. One of them makes the mistake of looking at the crook, and he gets angry. Only instead of getting angry with the bad guy, he gets pissed at his friends. Why? I have no idea. I guess it wouldn't be a very good power if every time the bad guy used it someone tried to kill him. The Arrow (Stephen Amell) shows up, stopping the cop from shooting any of his fellow officers, but the bad guy gets away.

It turns out, Oliver, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) and Diggle (David Ramsey) came to town to get help with the boomerang killer. I guess Roy isn't important enough to go on a road trip. Arrow heard the call on the police radio, and wanted to see Barry in action. Oliver isn't too keen on working together, he doesn't want more people knowing his secret identity.

Joe (Jesse L. Martin) and Doctor Wells (Tom Cavanagh) are not too happy to have the Arrow in town. Joe, a cop, doesn't like the Arrow's methods, with the torture and killing and what not. As for Doctor Wells, who knows what his motives are.

Diggle, it turns out, didn't know about Barry's powers and he has probably the line of the episode…"Does he do everything fast? How fast do you think he goes to the bathroom after eating something?" That never occurred to me before, but it really is a great question.

Oliver tries to train Barry, who, despite his super speed, has a habit of going into bad situations head first without doing any recon or anything. Oliver tells him that he needs to be precise, that he needs to know every inch of his battle ground. Oliver proposes a challenge…Barry will run straight at him, and Oliver will shoot Barry with an Arrow. Barry seriously doubts that Oliver will be able to do this, but he agrees. Barry runs, Oliver shoots, and Barry catches the arrow in midair. Then, as Barry is gloating, two hidden crossbows shoot Barry in the back. I absolutely loved this scene. Oliver used his smarts to stop someone with super powers. It shows what is great about Arrow…it's the best Batman show on television since The Animated Series.

They find out where the bad guy is, and Barry goes in first. He looks the bad guy right in the eye, and the guy gets away. Again. Barry seems fine, so he goes to meet Oliver. Barry snaps, telling Oliver that he's jealous of Barry's speed. He then goes to the station, yells at the Captain (his boss), then at Joe. Barry's eyes go red letting Joe know something is wrong, so Joe heads over to Star Labs. No phone call? Wouldn't it be faster? Joe doesn't have super speed, and it seems like Barry going psycho would be really important for everyone to know as soon as possible.

Doctor Wells tells Felicity to call Oliver Queen so the Arrow can help. The man must be a genius to figure that out. What, with the Arrow appearing at the same time that the millionaire appeared back from the dead and all it must have taken about 5 minutes of research.

Eddie and Iris arguing in a car when Barry runs up and grabs Eddie. Oliver goes to help, and Cisco Ramon (Carolos Valdes) and Diggle have a fan boy argument about who will win the fight.

Oliver shows up at the car as Barry is beating the crap of Eddie. Oliver stops him, and the two have a pretty damn good fight. It ends with Oliver throwing an arrow through Barry's leg, then holding him while Joe and Doctor Wells appear in a van and flash some lights at Barry, curing him.

At some point, they catch the bad guy. We don't see it happen, as he just ends up in the Star Labs jail, but it works. He was clearly just a means to an end, and I don't think anyone cared to see Barry and Oliver take him down.

The two gangs say goodbye to each other. Oliver asks them not to reveal his identity, and Felicity asks Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) for help solving Sara's murder. Doctor Wells tells Oliver that he had once met Oliver's dad, who would be proud of his son. Oliver seems like he can sense that something is off about Wells. We all can. If Oliver can fill us in on exactly what is going on here, we would really appreciate it.

At Iris' coffee shop, Oliver tells Barry that he can always reach out to Oliver for help. He tells Barry that Iris won't work, that he needs to let her go. Oliver looks at Felicity, says "guys like us don't get the girl." In walks Oliver's baby mama. Wow, I completely forgot about her. I wonder if we will see Oliver Junior at some point.

Barry, dressed as the Flash, tells Iris that a metahuman had messed with his head, that's why he attacked her, says he would never hurt her. She tells him not to contact her again, and the show ends with a shot of the Human Torch. Sorry, wrong publisher. The show ends with a shot of a guy on fire.

This was, by far, my favorite episode of The Flash. It wasn't just because Barry got darker, but it dealt with a lot of issues as well. This is the first time that the show has explored the dangerous part of someone with Barry's powers. Even though Barry is good, what if he isn't? What can a normal cop like Eddie do? What if Barry makes a mistake?

The contrasts between Oliver and Barry are great. Oliver is brooding, always serious. Barry constantly loving that he has his powers and can help people. You can see the best and worst of each of them. Oliver is absolutely right that Barry will get himself killed if he doesn't start taking care. But Oliver's methods alienate him from people he could be helping, like Joe.

I'm really interested to see what they do with Iris going forward. It's one thing for Barry's best friend, the girl that he loves, to have a crush on his alter ego, but to have her hate the Flash? How will Barry deal with Iris hating a part of himself? That's harsh.

So, does anyone know what is going on with Eddie Thawne? Did they just give him the same name as the comic-universe Reverse Flash as a joke? I mean, Flash beats on him, unless Eddie somehow knew that Oliver would stop him, Eddie seemed pretty helpless. Hopefully we'll find out some more info next week.

Rich Epstein writes for Bleeding Cool.  He can be found on twitter at @kaspe_r11. 

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!