Jim’s Thoughts

This week’s episode wasn’t bad. It wasn’t terrific, either, and given that it was a Kevin Smith episode, that sort of balances out to a little disappointing.

The episode didn’t do much of anything, but it did serve to get us where we all knew we were going. Barry got his powers back. As I’ve been griping, that definitely needed to happen, but the episode mostly offered looks into the “Speed Force,” and I feel like it answered a lot of questions I doubt anyone was asking. The segments where Barry spoke to the Speed Force personified as familiar faces came off as a cross between A Christmas Carol and the parts of The Matrix trilogy no one likes to think about.

The Flash has had some pretty good emotional moments in its first couple of seasons, but this week it felt like they were trying too hard. On the other end of things, The Zombie-Girder story was forgettable, and only served to provide cheap tension for the team that Zoom and his plans should have been used for. Since being unmasked, Zoom has lost just about all of his credibility, and when the show shifts focus away from him to give air-time to a zombified former villain of the week, they’re not doing the character any favors.

As with most romances on The CW, I don’t care about Barry and Iris’ story, so I was disappointed to see the episode lean so heavily on that, and I worry about it going forward.

While this episode felt like an exaggerated bombardier turn, the end result seems to be that they’re pointed in a better direction. Let’s get back to Barry being The Flash, and while Zoom has been gutted, it looks like he could be introducing quite a few new villains from the DC multiverse. Better days may be ahead.

Kyle’s Take

I have yet to watch The Flash or Arrow. My daughter’s graduating this week and I’m taking a week off from our weekly shows.

I will say that The Flash has lost a lot of steam after they shackled Zoom into a whiny, crazy-for-Caitlin loon. I’ve been looking forward to some new blood, specifically new Flash villains, and it sounds like there may be hope for this season yet.

Also, I wasn’t that excited about a Kevin Smith directed episode. He’s done some great things in the past, but he was aggressive with promoting Batman v Superman just before it was released, even though he had seen a pre-screening. Not cool, dude.