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Review of The Flash 1.03 ‘Things You can’t Outrun’ (Spoilers)

TV SHOW: The Flash

SEASON/EPISODE: 1.03 ‘Things you can’t outrun’

WRITERS/DIRECTOR: Alison Schapker, Grainne Godfree/Jesse Warn

PLOT:

Barry investigates a Meta-human who can turn himself into a poisonous gas, while his friends at STAR Labs figure out a way to contain future Super-villains, which in turn brings back memories of that fateful night of the Accelerator Accident.

VERDICT:

It’s good to know that not every villain appearing on this show will end up dying in some sort of way by their episode’s end, because after Weather Wizard and Multiplex were killed in the previous episodes, I was beginning to fear that the show would go into a pattern similar to how Smallville dealt with it’s meteor-freaks (having them kill themselves by accident/or someone else killing them, just so Clark never got any blood on his hands). But luckily this was nipped in the butt in this episode, the characters even had a discussion on the subject (which was an interesting coincidence). A discussion which led to Star Labs staff converting the disused Accelerator into a makeshift prison for future Meta-Humans who go bad (which brought up another problem for me, I do hope that not every person who gained powers from the Accelerator incident turn evil in this show, because surely there would be more decent people out there with powers, and not just Barry), and this in turn led to Caitlin, Cisco and Professor Wells all having flashbacks to the night of the accident. The memories also show to us what happened to the fourth member of their team, Ronny Raymond who is the Fiancée of Caitlin (and who in the comics becomes Firestorm). The scenes were very well made really helped to flesh out these characters and give us a feel for what they each lost (though Well‘s own scene gave us more questions about the secrets hiding Professor), with some terrific sets and CGI used to show the Accelerator and helps give Star Labs that extra wow-factor in just how large the place actually is.

It was a good call from the writers to have Joe find out the Flash’s secret right from the start (instead of dragging it out), because it’s made the Cop/Father figure become a more fun character to watch and his scenes with Barry are both entertaining and also heartfelt at times.

The Meta-Human bad-guy of this episode was Kyle Nimbus (or The Mist as he is known in the comics) and though he had a very interesting ability, which led to another well executed set-piece with Barry (the special effects were top notch). He was basically a dull character on a basic revenge-plot (taken directly from the ‘How to train your comics book writers’ school of learning), so in that respect he was not that interesting. I am really looking forward to when this show gives us a villain who not only has a visually interesting set of powers, but also the personality and back-story to give us the complete package.

One part of this episode I could have done without was….of course the Iris and Eddie drama (can’t really call it drama though, since if the scenes were longer than a few minutes at a time, then it would have put me to sleep), I just think the show could do with less of that. I would much rather have more scenes of Barry and his friends at Star Labs, especially more scenes between him and Caitlin, like the ones we got in this episode.

I did love the scenes showing Barry saving people while he was on his way to work, or during his socialising with friends (these made up for the boring-romance moments, and we need to see more of these).

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