Jim’s Review

Well, if you followed my live tweets of the show, you can probably guess I found plenty to pick on this week. That doesn’t necessarily make for a bad show, but in the case of this one, it sort of does.

The biggest thing that bugged me this week was the dialogue. Having Barry talk about Wells, and Caitlin about Ronnie was sloppy. Essentially, we had characters simply tell us what their motivations and emotional statuses were. Barry being a jerk to Jay felt forced, and it shows the writing team still needs to work on its lighter touch.

Joe’s new meta-human squad sidekick felt tacked on. Her character wasn’t developed, so it wasn’t that tense to see her strapped to a bomb.

What I liked about this episode was Cisco moving closer to his superhero fate. I didn’t buy his unwillingness to investigate or reveal it to the group, but it’s some much-needed character development.

All in all, I think this week was a step back. The season still has some potential, but I’m hoping next week we get some real momentum.

Kyle’s Take

“Flash of Two Worlds” tried to do too much too soon. Dr. Stein spoon fed us the multiverse theory, and that was okay, but the lectures didn’t end there. Every character, including the ones we just met, vomited their life story at the slightest provocation. Storytelling of this nature would feel out of place even if you didn’t skip ahead five months from the events of last season to the beginning of this one but it’s especially out of place here.

I think you’d know if you had 52 rifts in space-time well before a five month period. And what was Jay Garrick doing during that timeframe? Garrick came out of the largest rift, which happened to be in STAR Labs. Did it take Jay five months to find the floor Barry was on? Fortunately, there were a lot of comic book mentions in “Flash of Two Worlds” (here’s a link to our secrets page) but it’ll take more than good Easter eggs to message the kinks in The Flash’s storytelling. I’m still hopeful for this season.