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FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 2×10 – “Potential Energy”

 
The Flash
(2×10 ) –
“Potential Energy”
Written by: Bryan Q Miller
Directed by: Rob Hardy
What’s say we come back from
the hiatus with the greatest woman- NO, the greatest person in the history of
all time.  *sigh*
Oh, Patty!  I just love her you guys.  I really do, I feel like I should just put
down like sixty animated gifs to express my love but this isn’t Tumblr, this is
the Flash spoiler review and we have a job to do.
Like I said, we’re back after
six weeks away and Barry is running to a date with Patty and he learns that roses are a little delicate when they burst into flames due to friction.  Patty quickly forgives him and just when it
seems we’re going to get some romance Zoom shows up and kidnaps Patty.  Barry chases after and they end up on a
rooftop where he drops Patty but thankfully this is only a teaser dream fake
out before the title card.
That was close, guys. I don’t think I could handle it if something were to happen to my One and Only.
The next morning we have what
Iris will later dub “West Family 2.0” taking Wally on a tour of the
Police Station.  Joe and Iris are trying
to make him feel comfortable with them but Wally is not and when he’s
recognized by a perp he makes a hasty exit. 
Patty arrives and asks Iris out for coffee and some advice about Barry.
It seems Barry’s nightmare
was not the first time and he’s been acting strangely.  Iris shows she’s come a long way from
unintentionally helping to torpedo Barry’s relationship with Linda and gives
Patty the only advice a person can give; talk to him.
At STAR Labs, Wells is
working on something (presumably his part of the whole “Zoom kills
Barry” plan that he agreed to last time) but frustration sets in and he
throws a tantrum.  Cisco arrives and he
has an idea, instead of making Barry faster them make Zoom slower and he has a
plan.
Also a nemesis, Cisco has
been chasing after a metahuman that he has dubbed “The Turtle.”  It seems to be his obsession, and Barry is
surprisingly out of the loop.  Cisco
explains that The Turtle is capable of slowing everyone around him down so much
he appears to move at superspeed and he’s been using his powers to rob people
of their most prized possessions.
After some speed force
enhanced internet searching, Barry races off and Caitlin explains that the
police are about to return a collection of diamonds to the Vandervoorts.  At the Police Station, Barry finds our Turtle
but when he tries to catch the man he uses his power and while it doesn’t stop
Barry it does slow him down too much to stop him.
Back at STAR Labs, Caitlin
checks Barry out medically while he explains what the Turtle did to him.  Wells puts a nice science spin on things
saying that he can convert kinetic energy back into potential energy which
brings everything around him to a halt.
Later at the West residence,
Joe, Iris and Barry are waiting for Wally to show up for dinner but he’s blown
them off.  Joe leaves in a funk and Iris
talks to Barry about Patty.  Barry is
frustrated but Iris has got two thing working in her favor.  First, she’s right; if Barry wants to have a
healthy relationship with Patty he has to talk to her about being the Flash.
Secondly, she’s a big old
guilt card.  She tells him how much
better their friendship would have been last year if he’d been honest with
her.  Barry relents and tells Iris he’s
going to tell Patty he’s the Flash.
At STAR Labs, the writer
works a little too hard to shoehorn in a Ninja Turtles reference and Cisco has
found the next place he believes The Turtle will strike; The museum is hosting
an event for the return of a priceless painting to the Silverberg family.
Barry is all ready to go stop
The Turtle but he has made plans with Patty already.  He decides to kill two birds with one stone
and tell Patty at the museum while he waits for the Turtle.  The others are supportive, except for
Wells.  Wells has a different idea
straight from the Lance family Handbook; Why tell her, when he can keep her in
the dark for her own good. 
That night at the museum,
Barry, Caitlin and Jay are inside looking for the Turtle, while Cisco and Wells
are staking the place out from the STAR Labs van.  Patty arrives, dressed to the tens and she
and Barry decide to have a dance.  While
they’re dancing, Barry starts to tell her the truth when our friend shows his
face.  Barry bails out but before Patty
can process her boyfriend being jerk she sees the Turtle stealing the painting.
We’re then treated to a cool
POV sequence showing us what it’s like to be whammied by the Turtle.  Flash shows up to stop but Turtle uses a chandelier
to give him the classic choice; stop him or save the girl.  Thanks to the nature of his powers, Turtle
gets the chance to observe Barry as he goes to save Patty and convinced of the
connection between them he uses his powers to slow Barry down even more so that
the chandelier lands on him.
Jay and Caitlin rush him back
to STAR Labs to make sure he’s okay and Barry realizes how he must have looked
to Patty and runs out.  Jay pulls Caitlin
aside and they have a little moment with some champagne before Jay goes to help
Cisco and Wells figure out how to stop The Turtle.  Caitlin decides that medical ethics are for
suckers and she takes Jays glass to run some tests on it in the hopes of
helping Jay get his powers back.
At Patty’s, Barry finds a
girlfriend who is understandably upset. 
She’s tried to be understanding, she’s tried to be supportive but from
her point of view, Barry’s been the King of the Crappy Boyfriends.  She’s running out of patience with him and he
needs to get his act together.
Across town, we go from the
Flash to Wally West in the Fast and the Furious.  Wally’s been drag racing to help pay his
mother’s medical bills and when Joe confronts him Wally is having none of it.  He points out to Joe that though he may be
Joe’s son they are not a family and that he’s not interested in them becoming
one because he’s the man of his house.
Back at Patty’s she sitting with some wine and an
ominous looking envelope when there’s a knock at the door.  It’s not Barry this time, it’s The Turtle.  He’s come for her because she’s the most
important thing to the Flash.  Barry
finds her empty apartment and calls Joe before racing off to STAR Labs.
At The Turtle’s lair, The Turtle explains to Patty
why he steals things.  His wife left
him.  From that he learned that people
take the things they value most for granted and he wants people to suffer as he
suffered.  Since Patty is what Flash
cares for most, he’s going to take her from him.
At STAR Labs, the gang is working on finding the
Turtle when Wells points out that the things the Turtle steals never pop up so
he must be keeping them.  Then Cisco
remembers something he read about the man. 
The Turtle’s ex-wife was the curator for a library that was closed
shortly after the Accelerator Explosion.
With Patty in danger, Barry races off without a
plan.  Fortunately for Barry, he’s stronger
than even he realizes and even with the Turtle giving him the full blast, Barry
manages to overpower him and save Patty.
At STAR Labs, the Turtle finds himself locked in a
cell in the Pipeline and all seems “right” with the world.  Caitlin confronts Jay about her findings; without
his speed, Jay is dying and the only way to get it back is to stop Zoom.
At Casa del West, Joe’s about to sit down to Chinese
leftovers when Wally comes calling.  He’s
heading back to Keystone City but he left his sweater behind.  The two men talk and Joe offers a new way for
them to go forward.  He understands that
Wally is not interested in having an instant father and he’s not quite sure how
to help Wally become part of his life so he offers to go forward more
casually. 
This way they don’t have to pretend.  Wally seems more comfortable with this idea
and the two sit down for dinner.
At the Police Station, Barry finds Patty and he
has every intention of telling her but Patty has something she has to say.  That ominous envelope was an acceptance
letter from Midway City University. 
She’d applied for their forensics program before her father’s death but
she deferred to become a cop to catch Mardon. 
Now with Mardon in jail (and Barry being a creep) she has to move
on.  She’s going to go to school and
become a CSI… and leave him behind.
At STAR Labs, Wells is composing a message for
Jesse.  It’s a heart wrenching tale of
his terror at the memory of losing Jesse when she was a child and the
realization of how far he’d go to get her back. 
So far in fact, that he walks down to the Pipeline and takes a biopsy of
The Turtle’s brain tissue.
After the credits we see some neighborhood at
night.  A hole in space-time opens up and
out comes a flash of red lightning. 
That’s right, as though things weren’t bad enough with Zoom and Jay
dying and the personification of all that is truly good in this world leaving…
(I’m not going to cry) Eobard Thawne is back.
Pretty good episode this week, hard to top the
last episode but to be fair that was a climax while this is re-establishing the
status quo for Season 2/Part 2.
I liked the Turtle a lot.  Cool use of an often silly villain concept (Oh
the Flash is so fast, he needs a villain that’s really slow!) and Arron Douglas
gives the character a lot of menace. 
They also were able to do some cool stuff with his abilities visually, like
Barry’s speed by taking opportunities to present them in more than one way it
makes them easy to pick up on.
I’m not super-happy about the return of the
Pipeline.  I really feel the idea of the
hopeful and optimistic Barry Allen running a private prison cuts the tone of
the show off at the knees.
The West stuff was good, it would have been easy
to go down the road that television so often goes with the long lost son trope
in either direction by making it too easy or too hard but they managed to
straddle the line.  Wally would resent
the hell out of Iris and Joe and Joe would be so racked with guilt over mission
out on so much with his son that he wouldn’t know where to begin.  This feels real.
Speaking of Iris, I liked that they took the
opportunity to show Iris gaining maturity and perspective.  As with the Wally plotline, it would have
been easy to write Iris as trying to help Patty but unconsciously marking Barry
as hers at the same time.  Instead she
gave Patty the right advice.
And Patty… Patty… No!  Nononono! 
Come back, please!  Don’t go, I’m begging
here.  I just- I can’t-
Then there is the final scene.  With Wally, we had the return we were all
waiting for.  This week we had the return
we all knew deep down was coming.  With Eobard Thawne back in play I can only imagine where things
will go from here, and I can’t imagine they’re good for Team Flash.
Good return episode. Not great but not every
episode has to be.
Three Things We
Learned This Week:
1)     
Without his speed, Jay is dying.
2)     
Patty has left Central City to study forensics. Shattering my heart into a million piece.
3)     
Eobard Thawne is alive and has his powers.  But…
Three Questions:
1)     
Where is he?  Earth-One? Earth-Two? Past, present, future?
2)     
Is Jay dying because he doesn’t have his speed
or was his speed preventing him from dying?
3)     
How are we even supposed to go on without Patty?
Shut up! You’re crying!

Just another guy on the internet.