Marie F.

I'm sick of the romances on this show. They've ruined Frost and Firestorm for me, and heavily damaged Barry and Iris, and irritated the heck out of me with Barry and Patsy. I'm not confident this show can execute a passable romance. I wish they would stop and stick to the action, villains, family, and perhaps write some good season-long, villain-related mysteries for Iris to be involved in. Regarding Killer Frost spoiler, I knew this would happen. Of course, Earth 2 Caitlin is going to be Killer Frost. That's a complete cop-out. They've now ensured that the whole Frost story will be devoid of drama, tension, or buildup because no one cares if a Caitlin we don’t know becomes Killer Frost. Viewers don’t have a history with that Caitlin. That's a big missed opportunity to make Caitlin interesting.

Yay, we finally know what Zoom is up to. I’m glad he’s back and hopefully all that Legends stuff is over. The Trickster was fun, but most enjoyable scene was Cold talking to Iris/ Barry. It could have been longer. And I liked Cold mentioning Iris’s work. Loved everything with the Wests. Wally was only there for a few seconds but he looked so young and vulnerable, I was hoping Iris would run up and hug him or something. I know I wanted to hug him. I think I’m going to enjoy the actor even if I wind up not liking Wally himself someday. I liked Christmas at the Wests’. Glaring absence being Henry Allen. Barry could have made a comment like, “My dad is coming by later but he’s got to take care of some stuff first” or something. I don’t think we necessarily have to see him (or Patty for that matter, Barry could date her in Off-Screenland), but I wish he was there, even if it's in name only. I hope there’s a better reason for his absences coming, though I can’t imagine what it would be. I thought the one scene between Caitlin/Jay at the West house was cute—even though I don’t like Caitlin or the pairing and there’s no heat whatsoever between them. And I’m glad they found something for Jay to do this episode. I just wish Barry got to be super smart like him and Harry, I think having all the people at Star Labs kind of dumbs him down. And that was really impressive from Candice Patton. She’s a very graceful actress and it was nice to see more of her/Iris. I even liked the woman that plays Patyy in the scene where she told the Flash about her dad. Reminded me of her scene when she was talking about him with Joe; in fact, I wish all of her scenes were with Joe and no one else because I still can’t bring myself to care about Patty. I hope she leaves soon.

Caitlin said Jay is gone. She made it sound like he went back to Earth 2. Color me disappointed if he is. They could have done so much with him instead of sticking him in a weak romance with Caitlin. I always hand-waved/imagined him off looking for Earth 1 Jay to explain his weird absences because that’s what I’d be doing if I were visiting from another earth. I don’t know if anyone else is counting, but this makes Caitlin the fourth person/woman to get kidnapped this season. (Patty got kidnapped first, we then found out that Zoom kidnapped Jesse, then Zoom kidnapped Linda, and now Caitlin has her second kidnapping.) Only abduction that doesn’t get an eye-roll is Linda’s because that was relevant and necessary; it would have been anticlimactic if there weren’t consequences for her for messing with Zoom. The rest? No, because there's never any tension. No one knows enough about Patty or Jesse to care or worry that they may be in danger (they're just plot devices) and this show loves Caitlin so she was never in any danger. Boring and unnecessary. I hope they don’t do this with Iris. One of my favorite things about her in season 1 and now in season 2 is that they seemed to make a conscious effort not to damsel her. And when she does get into sticky situations and needs rescuing, they have her somehow contribute to her rescue—punching out the bully, the Clock King, jumping out of the building, shooting Dr. Light. And where is Zoom? Why does he conveniently disappear for entire episodes? He disappears for legends episodes and now for this Grodd episode. What’s he doing?

Does anyone else think it's weird that Harry's metahuman detector watch went off randomly when Zoom was on the roof? Cisco was standing right next to him. Why wasn't it already going off? The last time he used it, I think he flipped it open and did something to it before holding it up to Cisco and Caitlin to see if it went off. In this episode, he was just sitting in a chair when it went off because Zoom was on the roof.

They def knew it was going to happen, but I wonder if they expected it to be like this. I think most people see racial hatred as a bunch of people saying the n-word and calling her other names or outright saying that they don't like her because she's black. That's how most people view that type of hatred. Iris haters can be a lot more subtle than anyone would expect and I think some of them don't even understand why they hate her. Yep, there needs to be someone to say "Hey, let's not make Mama West a druggie and make Wally a crack baby" or "Hey, let's not strong!black!woman! Iris" or "Let's make sure that while Iris is giving Barry support that he is shown doing the same with her."

I think they tried to write her as the typical love interest/romantic object for Barry to daydream about and prize for him to win, but it just fell flat and looked like they weren't trying. At least, in my humble opinion. I don't think they know who she is outside of that relationship. I still have to wonder, though, if they're scared of the criticism from S1 and the heat they're getting now. And you're right, Iris never gets pov. The only time Iris got a little pov (just a little) was when she confronted people for lying to her and the character got hated on for being "angry" "whiny" and "bitchy." I think a lot of the hate she got from some viewers stemmed form her being black, being a woman confronting the men in her life, and not just the way she was written--she's not allowed to defend herself from people who hurt her because if she does she's angry and combative. She can't demand that people respect her or treat her like an equal because then she's whiny. And she can't have a conflicting opinion with a guy because then she's bitchy. I wonder if the writers understand why people react like that and if they know what to do about it because, as mentioned in the post above, they have actually been writing her as likeable, nice, and warm. Yes, it's frustrating to see this. It's always tricky having conversations about race but I understand how exhausting the race-bait-and-switch is. They pull you in with one thing and try to sell you something else--Sleepy Hollow, for instance. Iris is what attracted to me to the show and though I like it, I'm not really interested if they're not going to do her right.

Which is my main problem with her--not that she's blocking the Barry/Iris relationship but this is clearly her only purpose and they didn't even bother to give her her own personality--they just took one aspect of Barry's personality (his awkwardness), magnified it (Barry was never like that with Felicity or Linda or Iris), split it in half, and gave one half to her in lieu of her own personality. I am also bothered by how she and the new legends show eat up some of the screen time of the core characters. Patty has no personality of her own, Iris's personality is underdeveloped and a mystery because they mostly ignore her (though they are clearly trying to integrate her in the past two episodes), and Caitlin gets a new personality whenever Ronnie dies, comes back, goes away, comes back, dies again, Jay comes along, she meets Jax/Hewitt. I'm not interested in Patty, but I wish the actress had more to do because there's clearly something to her. And people always complain about Panabacker's acting, but what is she supposed to do when Caitlin is so inconsistent and plot-driven? None of the guys suffer from this. Also, I hate when disinterest, dislike, or even hate for a female character to is regulated to just shippers being shippers. It's one of the ways that people dismiss legitimate criticisms on Barry/Iris as a couple, or Barry/Caitlin, and now with Patty/Barry. Fact of the matter is, we don't know who any of the women on this show are.

They should have named the show something other than The Flash then or they shouldn't have even brought in an Iris West or a Joe West or people named Thawne or multiple earths or Zoom or Reverse Flash. People expect to see those things on a show based on the comics because they are huge elements of those comics. People who watch this show expect them to have the Tornado Twins (Iris is their mother) and to usher in Bart, her grandson, etc. They wanted to see Grodd because he is a huge character/villain in the comics. I don't get why it's so unreasonable for people to expect that a tv show about a comic series actually take those elements from the comic series. I mean, if you name a movie Hunger Games or Harry Potter and say that it's an adaptation of the book, then why wouldn't people expect the main characters from the book and their relationships to be explored in the movie? Personally, I've lost interest in Barry and Iris and still don't care about Patty. Actually I'm actively starting to resent her because my main problems with her are the fact that 1) she/LOT/and other uninteresting stuff are eating up screen time that I think Iris or other core characters should have, 2) the fact that she's only there to be a love interest, and 3) despite how hard they've tried with her they still haven't given her a personality. This show is terrible with how they write the women and the romances.

Pardon the length of this essay but if I were writing/producing this show, I probably wouldn't want to go anywhere near Iris anymore for fear of upsetting people. Someone is always upset about something w/ her and it’s hard to separate legitimate criticism from the criticisms of 1) biased haters or 2) biased fans. Iris fans are very vocal and her fan base seems huge, but it can get a little sticky when most of the comments about her character often resolve into conversations about her race, relevant though it is much of the time. Maybe that’s where part of the problem lays? The people making this show decided on their own to make the West family black but I do wonder if they’re starting to regret that decision? It has come with a lot of baggage they’re clearly not used to managing. I don't think they understand the Iris hate in S1--because it was an unreasonable, illogical type of hatred they’ve never experienced before. People are uncomfortable dealing w/ race or being anywhere near it if they don’t have to be. I think most of the problems with the character wouldn’t exist if the character were played by someone else. I think she would be easier to write for and to display prominently in promos, for instance. I also don’t think there’d be a Patty. There’s a theory here that Patty only exists to get Barry laid, but why couldn’t Linda do that or a random one-nighter? I think they didn’t just want to show him as being able to pull hot blonde white chicks, but also wanted to show that he’s super into hot blond white chicks, too. I mean, there was the pilot where he kissed Felicity, but his last gf was an Asian woman and he’s in love with a black woman. Allegedly. Maybe they don’t want the fangirls to think he doesn’t find them attractive so they had to shoe-horn this relationship in? Because God forbid! I wonder if they’re starting to resent the character because she’s the source of a huge chunk of the criticism of S 2. There are huge problems with other characters, too, especially the women, but Caitlin and Patty don’t seem to have huge fan bases that speak up on their behalf. Maybe they think the best thing to do is push her aside, leave her there as window dressing, at least for now? When you think about it, they don’t know who any of the women are outside of romantic pairings—Caitlin is plot-driven and gets a personality transplant every few episodes (w/ Ronnie, Jay, Hewitt/Jax storylines being the catalysts) while paper-thin Patty doesn’t even get one personality of her very own. I think/hope that the other part of the issue is the fact that they have way too much to do right now w/ too many characters, trying to launch a new show. A lot of the characters are suffering from this, but it looks funny because she is bearing the brunt of the suffering and it looks like they’re trying to replace her and have in several senses (Patty has assumed her position as LI , taken over Iris's metahuman investigations, and eaten up a lot of screen time especially for a new character, screen time that could be used to show Barry/Iris being friends or Iris/Linda's friendship or something). I really hope she is a huge factor in Wally's story, but wish there was an Iris-centered story. This is my problem with Barry and Iris now. I've lost interest, but maybe that was the reason for isolating Iris from everything and keeping them apart? They want us to forget and kill off interest. I was indifferent to Barry and Patty before, but now they've made me resent the Patty character. I also like Barry a little less but for other reasons.

I didn't watch the whole episode. I checked out of a lot of scenes, but I feel like when we find out who Zoom is, it won’t really make sense, kind of like A on Pretty Little Liars. Like all the little clues you pick up along the way won’t really fit because they’ll just make it who they want to make it in the end. My theory was that Zoom would be Earth 2 Barry who went evil after his Iris died, but I’m assuming he saw Iris when he brought Flash to her job, right? I would have expected a reaction when he saw her. I’m thinking it’s Earth 2 Henry and maybe somehow Earth 1 Henry knows something about it? And it can't be Earth 1 Eddie because Eddie was being sucked up into the portal while Jay and Zoom were fighting on Earth 2, but maybe Earth 2 Eddie? I fear they're probably going to drag this out so long that I lose interest, but Zoom was pretty scary. Did Candice Patton accidentally run over somebody's pet? Seriously, what the heck is going on there? Poor Barry, too, because it looks like he's getting sidelined with his convenient paralysis so that Caitlin and Patsy can get their shine in the next episode. I thought he had super fast healing?

If I recall correctly, Barry lost his speed, too, for a minute and it turned out it was all in his head.

Yep. There are way too many characters on the canvas right now and I think the only few people that are completely necessary at this point are Barry (obviously), Wells, Cisco and I think Caitlin is comfortable too because she's clearly very popular with the people who make the show (writers/producers). And Patty is filling the love interest role on the show and I think that if they like the character, they could keep her (let's hope not) as a recast if the actress leaves.

It concerns me that Iris's mother is apparently gone. I mean, that's been her only story up til now. What are they going to do with her until Wally gets here? When exactly does Wally get here and what will they do with her then? I'm imagining that Wally and Barry's relationship will get more attention than Iris/Wally's. I was shocked that they made Jay a coward and actually had him (and Wells) telling Barry that he was a better Flash than Jay.

I actually lost interest in Wells a long time ago, but was wondering how they planned to incorporate him back into things. They made him interesting, but maybe a little over the top--he talks like Shatner now. Stupid fight between him and Jay--will there be an Earth 1 Jay? And I guess Caitlin isn’t a meta since Wells's watch didn’t go off? And I'm guessing once he saves his daughter, he'll go back to profiting off of metas and be an enemy of Barry's. Okay, I like Linda. And thumbs up to the Iris and Joe scenes; I saw pictures of this episode of her holding a gun and wondered what that was about and thought it would be stupid and contrived. I’m so not interested in Barry/Patty, but I keep waiting for him to tell her about Iris since he’s allegedly in love with her. Same problem I had with him and Linda last season—no woman wants to date a man that’s in love with another woman. Allegedly. At least, tell her up front so that she can decide if she still wants to go there with you. Patty seems excessively agreeable; doubt she’d have a problem with it. Other than that, Barry/Patty makes me sleepy. Also, That was a weird setup for the kiss between Caitlin and Jay. Special thanks to Dr. Light for breaking that up. Cool supervillain.

Let's hope that's the case. I just hope that if she is temporary that they don't have me completely lose interest in Barry/Iris by then. Because I'm starting to wonder if they're still into each other at all--or if they're even friends.

I think this is what a lot of people would like to believe and Iris is a big deal to the entire mythos of the Flash, but I wouldn't put it past them, to be honest. I think they're trying really hard to make Patty work and to put a whole lot of distance between Barry and Iris--and not trying to make Iris work at all. Someone mentioned that commercial they aired during Supergirl which was about a Barry/Betty kiss that didn't happen in this episode; I think they really want her to work and aren't interested in at least keeping some of the tension between Iris and Barry. At this point, I'm not sure he ever loved Iris and when he inevitably professes his love for Patty, I won't believe that either. This show is terrible at romace.

The Caitlin thing is interesting. I liked Hewitt because he was an a-hole. I wish he had stuck around longer, but his anger was kind of jarring. It didn't really make sense. They could have had him get angry and accidentally burn/killed--a loved one and then went after Team Flash for turning him into what he is; instead, his anger just kind of came out of nowhere. Also, it could have been interesting if the team had a moment of "Do the ends justify our means?" One thing that I think the show needs is someone to occasionally step in and ask people if they're going about things the right way. Someone to ask them, "Should we really be taking people's blood without their permission? Is there another way? Is it ethical to hold Hewitt captive like this?" And if Hewitt had accidentally killed someone he loved, it would have given them a moment to sit back and reflect on the negative impact they may be having on people and the lengths they're willing to go. Back to Caitlin, she was definitely displaying some not-so-subtle "-ism" or bias there and I think the only reason she even liked Hewitt in the first place was because they are so much alike. Did you see the way he didn't even bother to shake Barry's hand like he was insignificant or beneath them but went to shake Dr. Stein's? It kind of mimicked how Caitlin treated Jax, like he was unworthy because he isn't a celebrated scientist. If it were anyone else, I would say that part of the Caitlin/Jax thing was just wanting the very best to fill in the shoes of the person she loved/lost, but since it's Caitlin, who I don't believe ever really cared about Ronnie, I don't think it had anything to do with doing Ronnie's legacy justice. I think it's classism more than anything else. She thought Hewitt's degrees/profession made him a better person than Jax, but it turns out that Jax had more character and heart than him. Yep. They're not going to do that because now it's Patty that does the metahuman research instead of Iris. I realized that this episode when she took that tooth to Barry; it reminded me of Iris taking her metahuman/Star Labs research to Barry. They've taken away much of her purpose on the show--she's not even his bestie anymore--and she seems to currently exist just to set up Wally's entrance. What happens with Iris after that?

I expected more from Mama West. I'm disappointed that she's a drug addict (or a recovering one). When I heard they were bringing her on board with Wally, I assumed he would be her son and came up with all these scenarios in my head. I thought maybe Wells/Thawne or another time-traveler had something to do with her disappearance--like Thawne went back in time to kill Barry but also went back in time to eliminate Wally before he was born. Of course, Francine somehow survived and fled/went into hiding only to return 20 years later now that she's heard of The Flash from Iris's blog because she wants his help to keep her son safe (or teach her son about his powers assuming Wally has any)... I just thought the story behind her disappearance would be bigger than it is. At any rate, I'm just sitting back and enjoying Iris and Joe's performances because they're really selling it. As far as being better integrated into Team Flash, they could show her getting tips about possible metahumans from her blog (if she still has it) and taking her info to Team Flash, sticking around to see how they capture the bad guy, then going off to write about it for work. It's not hard to think of ways to integrate her; I think it's intentional because there seems to be a big effort to keep her and Barry out of scenes together (maybe to calm all the shippers down and give Barry and Betty some breathing room?).

I don't think the commercial was for females. I think it was for males for the same reason that they've written Patty the way they've written her. She's this fantasy female character that's blonde, pretty, never argues with anyone/talks back to the men or demands things from them, smiles and never frowns, laughs at all the guys' jokes, etc. I think they expect Patty to appeal to men and not necessarily women--a bit like they were trying to do with Katrina/Katia on Sleepy Hollow and now SexyBetsyRoss on the same show.

I like the way that Iris handled the situation with her mother and loved all her scenes with Joe. Francine is deeply selfish—coming back after so long. It’s self-serving, all about what she wants, not what Iris needs. Iris needed her for years. Would she have come back if she wasn’t dying? Nope. And I like that Iris investigated her and found out that she had a baby. I guess she’s wondering now if the baby is still alive, if Joe is the father, if he was given up for adoption or Francine raised him. Seriously, if Francine stuck around and raised the baby but didn’t stick around for Iris and kept her brother/half-brother a secret for twenty years… Yes, Tina McGee is back! I wish she would stick around. She could be useful and I guess I missed that Caitlin was working for her? People are always saying that the show needs more women, but they’re only talking about women in Iris/Caitlin/Linda’s group. I love Iris, rarely like Caitlin, don't know enough about Linda, and don’t care about Patty enough to hate her. I will say this about Patty, though, her and Barry’s scenes have calmed down a little. They don’t seem like they need Ritalin anymore or like they're high/drunk on something. Still don’t care about her or them together. I liked Jax and his interactions with Stein. I even liked that Hewitt guy. They could have kept him around for a while and turned him into a bigger problem for the team. I wasn’t really happy with Barry stealing their blood, but at least he acknowledged that it was wrong.

Wentworth Miller and the actress that plays Lisa are really similar in their mannerisms and speech. Even without a scene together, I really buy them as siblings and I like that what they're doing with Cold. I can see him as a hero. I wish Lisa would stick around; she has an easy chemistry with everyone. I'm not cool with her kidnapping and torturing Cisco/his brother and just having it all swept under the rug, though. I've been kind of disinterested in Jay up until now, but I like him (and his hair cut) after this episode. I wish he had his powers and he was in on all the action. Still not interested in him and Caitlin; I think he's being wasted. Of course, Iris's mother is a drug addict. Of course. I wish they had taken that in a different direction--maybe made Francine mentally ill and a danger to Iris and have her run away to keep Iris safe or something? But of course she's a drug addict. However, I liked the opening scene with Iris; it was kind of random and irrelevant to the rest of the episode, but it was well done. I just wish they could figure out a way to integrate her better. She couldn't have been investigating a metahuman instead of scammers? Couldn't she have gotten a lead on Snart's dad planning a big robbery since that's what the episode was about? Good to see Barry doing some actual CSI work, though. I'm over Barry and Patty scenes, though. Why is it that neither of them can finish a sentence? They keep puttering and stuttering around awkwardly; it's not cute and they seem like they're high on something.

This episode was really boring. I'm intrigued by Cisco's story and I like Stein, but there was literally nothing else interesting about it except for the fact that Mama West showed up alive (and Joe apparently knew she was alive). It seems like they're trying to insert Iris into the main story, but she still doesn't have much to do. It would have been cool if they'd had her interrogate Jay and investigate on reports of doppelgangers in town little. I'm not even sure why she was in this episode except for the pep talk with Barry. She seemed like an afterthought and like they're not really invested in her (which makes me not want to invest in the show either). I'm not interested in Patty, but the actress is okay from what was shown. Sucks that she got damsel'd in the very first episode and I'm tired of the spunky, plucky highly-motivated go-getter types. She could have been harder or edgier maybe and not so much of her in her introductory episode. Also, I know six months have passed but no matter how much follow-up Caitlin gets on Ronnie's death, nothing can convince me that she was ever in love with him; I wasn't convinced last season and I'm not convinced now. Part of it is the actress, but most of it is the writing. They don't seem to know what to do with the character, but seem to really be trying to sell her and her stories. I'm not bummed that I didn't catch the preview for the next episode (I used to be glued to my seat waiting for it).

In my humble opinion, there was a lot of awkward line delivery in this episode--maybe it's the writing? Fave part of the episode was the convo between Ichabod and Abbie at the end; I hope there's some followup with Abbie's father. I liked Daniel immediately and it's nice to see Joe back. And I can't figure out if they're trying too hard with SBR or if they're not trying hard enough. Pandora is creepy as hell, but the rhyming may get old quickly. I hope we get some more backstory into her soon. Sidenote: I see Sleepy Hollow is continuing its tragic wig tradition with Pandora's wig.

I was also thrown off by Iris not being shown grieving; all she got was a very subtle, sad look at a picture of him. It struck me early on in the episode when Barry hugged Caitlin and Iris seemed to put her hand on her shoulder to comfort her after Ronnie disappeared. It was so weird because less than a minute before Iris was holding Eddie as he died in her arms. Caitlin needed comforting after her husband disappeared, but Iris didn't after she watched Eddie's suicide? Is Iris some kind of emotional superhero that doesn't need support, that doesn't need to be consoled? (rhetorical question)

I was expecting Wells's video message to self-destruct, too. I thought he was just trolling Barry from the grave. Henry's getting out of prison and leaving town happened way too fast. I thought maybe Barry was having another dream.