Earth-2 Calling Earth-1: The Flash Season 2, Episode 5 Review
"I just want one week where we're not surprised by anybody from our past."
(This is The Flash, Joe West. You're on the wrong show.)
There's an app for that: Earth-2's Harrison Well's Metahuman Awareness app, although it doesn't work for most ex's.
Harrison Wells is back. And not. Well, sort of.
Harry, as Cisco calls this doppelgänger, is a completely different guy, because Tom Cavanagh is just that good (and whoever created Earth-2's sets is just that good, because those universes are distinctly different in color, style, costuming - everything).
Harry is a rude, egotistical prick. In other words, a high-tech entrepreneur. He dodges responsibility for his mistakes, but tells superheroes to stop making excuses and DO THEIR JOBS, as Harry tells Jay Garrick/The Flash Earth-2 when Jay confronts him at the product launch.
(Wells' daughter, who will later become Jesse Quick, intervenes.)
True to form, Harry shows up uninvited, unannounced, and unwanted on Earth-1, takes over Cisco's lab like he owns the place, and changes the soundtrack.
To Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good." What, no Carly Simon? "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you..."
Is it so wrong that I liked the mentoring scientist/psychopathic killer Dr. Wells better?
Like other rude, egotistical pricks before him, Harry does have a valid point: Barry is the key to stopping Zoom and everybody at Star Labs needs to get over themselves and onto that program.
If Barry can work with a man who looks exactly like his mother's murderer, then you can, too. Iris will need to suspend disbelief that Harry is not responsible for Eddie's death.
Harry brings more of this high-tech tough love to Star Labs when he outs Cisco about the powers he's been keeping secret - meet The Flash's newest metahuman, Vibe! - and coerces Cisco to figure out how to use them to find Earth-2 thief Dr. Light, who's after her Earth-1 counterpart, Barry's ex Linda Park.
Barry, on Harry's advice, tricks her at the train station with a "Speed Mirage."
Some constructive criticism, The Flash Writers: Dr. Light was a serious lightweight who Barry should've had no problem putting down by himself on the first go, without injury. We know what Barry is capable of. What's with all this skills regression among DC superheroes this season? Oliver Queen is having the same problem on Arrow.
Zoom needs to be genuinely menacing and the special effects polished and prominent. The Flash season 1 set a high bar, and season 2 has to top it!
"Reverse Flash is a symptom; Zoom is the plague," says Harry, and schools Jay Garrick/The Flash Earth-2 about being a coward for running away when Zoom was trying to kill him. Maybe unfair and definitely a little harsh, but that's how Harry rolls.
For Caitlin, Jay leaving town means no re-do of the kiss so rudely interrupted by Dr. Light, but with a line like "coffee is the one constant in the multiverses," Jay is welcome back on another Flash stakeout anytime.
Speaking of couples, although the Season 1/Earth-1 Dr. Wells predicted that Barry and Iris would end up together, evidenced by her future journalist by-line Iris West Allen, is it so wrong to like Barry and Patty together so much?
Temporarily Blind Barry - thanks, Dr. Light - being coached on his first date from behind a monitor by Slurpee-slurping Cisco was completely hilarious, as was Barry thinking he could get any of that past a police detective.
A detective who thinks Central City is the best place to live ever because she randomly encounters stuff like a half-man/half-shark trying to eat The Flash.
Cisco, who got his groove back and a date with Hawkgirl (barista Kendra Saunders, en route to Legends of Tomorrow) all in one hour, is not wrong:
"Optimism must be an Earth-1 thing."
Episode 5 was the first of a 2-parter that continues with episode 6, "Enter Zoom"
