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FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 2×15 – “King Shark”

The Flash
(2×14 ) –
“King Shark”
Written by: Benjamin Raab
& Deric A. Hughes
Directed by: Hanelle
Culpepper                
Let me take
a moment from digging out from over a foot of snow to review this week’s Flash.
As expected
after last week’s cliff hanger, we pick up with Caitlin screaming no into the
empty air that once held Jay Garrick. 
She breaks down pretty quickly and Cisco ushers her away.
Barry’s not
handling things much better, what with the demanding that Wells reopen the
breach.  Forgetting that whole part about
you guys closing them permanently, Barry?
Barry, Cisco
and Wells meet up to check on a now sleeping Caitlin and discuss what
happened.  Wells instructs them not to
talk about Earth-2 with the others as all it will do is cause pain.
The Team
spends the next few days trying to put things back together but it’s not going
that well.  Caitlin buried herself in
work, Jesse’s depressed and Barry is feeling more alone than ever and looking
for a fight.
Lucky for
him ARGUS is in this episode in the form of an Arrow crossover.  This time it’s Diggle and Lyla, now if you’ve
fallen off the Arrow wagon like I did last year you might not know that Lyla
has taken over for Amanda Waller after her “death.”  But Waller has trained ARGUS to be great at
two things:  Capturing metahumans and not
being able to keep them contained. 
Welcome Back, King Shark!
At the West
Home (God, why haven’t I been using that joke all along?) it’s game night and
Barry is there in body but not in spirit. 
Which allows Wally to win the cup stacking game and gloat a little when
Barry begs off even trying.  Tension
fills the room and Wally makes his exit. 
It seems we have a bit of a sibling rivalry brewing as Wally becomes
more a part of their lives.  Iris and Joe
ask Barry to try and be more inclusive with Wally and he promises to try then
he leaves.  Joe and Iris know that
something’s wrong but he’s not talking with them.
Back at STAR
Labs, Cisco is being a jerk toworried
about
Caitlin.  He keeps trying to
get her to relax until she finally snaps at him and storms off.  When Barry arrives and Cisco brings up his
theory that she’s turning into Killer Frost Barry is unimpressed.  C’mon Cisco, it’s not like she lost her
husband hours after marrying him only to fall in love with a new guy then watch
him die too… Oh, wait!
Diggle and
Lyla walk in and tell Barry, “Hey, y’know that giant Shark man that almost
killed you?  The one you thought that
Wells killed?  Yeah, he’s on the loose
and coming your way.  Oopsie!”
Gathering
the team together, Diggle and Lyla explain the situation.  King Shark is still set on finishing the job
Zoom gave him.  Barry’s fine with that,
kicking someone’s ass is just what he’s wanted. 
He sets the team with to the tasks, Wells will figure out a tracking
system, Diggle, Lyla and ARGUS will search locations King Shark’s been spotted
at previously, Cisco and Caitlin will question his Earth One Counterpart’s
widow and Barry will search the waterfront.
Before he
can go, Joe calls asking Barry to help Wally with a school project.  Barry would like to help but there’s an eight
foot shark looking for him and they mentioned Patty and…
…And I’m
okay.  Huh.  No, I’m really okay guys.  I promise.
Anyway,
Barry changes his mind and promises to help Wally.
Caitlin and
Cisco arrive at Nautilus Labs and talk with Tanya Lamden and she tells them
that her husband died days after the Accelerator Explosion and she’s not sure
what they want to know.  Caitlin is a bit
clipped when she asks for her notes and Cisco tries to diffuse the situation
before convincing Dr. Lamden to help them. 
Cisco tries to admonish Caitlin but she points out that he’s been acting
weird since he came back and leaves.
At the
waterfront, Barry’s on the lookout for King Shark but having no luck.  He has a talk with Diggle (I guess something
happened to Felicity this season) and Diggle points out that Barry’s learning
some of the wrong lessons from Oliver aka taking everything upon himself. Meanwhile,
King Shark eats a couple redshirts.
At the West Home,
Wally shows Barry his project to get into the engineering program at Central
City University.  He’s pretty proud of
his project so when Barry starts pointing out things they can work on Wally
takes some offence.
Back at STAR
Labs, Cisco is still acting like a jerk worried about Caitlin and lets slip the kind of person her double
was on Earth-2.  Caitlin explains that
she’s holding on to herself by the fingernails and she’s afraid if she stops to
think about Jay’s death she’ll never function again.  So she needs Cisco to stop acting like she’s
turning evil for five minutes and help her.
Down in
Cisco’s lab, Jesse finds Wells working on a way to find King Shark and when she
offers to help he resists at first but relents and they get to work.
Barry and
Wally are still working on Wally’s project but seems to only be able to piss
each other off.  Barry is trying to do
things his way but Wally came for help not for him to do it.  Finally, Wally’s had enough and goes to leave
but that’s when King Shark arrives by punching through the ceiling.  He knows the Flash is there and is looking to
eat.
Barry slips
out a window on the second floor and leads King Shark away from the Wests then
tells the meta that there’s no way home. 
King Shark is understandably upset and shows it by bashing Barry into a
car and if not for the arrival of ARGUS probably would’ve taken a bite out of
our hero.
Iris and Joe
are cleaning up while Wally is a bit stunned at their blasé attitude to
metahuman attacks.  When Barry returns
Wally flat-out calls him a coward and asks what people see in him before he
storms out.  Iris tells Joe to talk to
him but Barry feels that’s the problem. 
They’ve talked to Wally and presented Barry as some sort of a saint when
he feels like he’s a failure.
Then he
tells them everything about Earth-2 and what a disaster it was for him while he
was over there.  He tells them about his
double’s marriage and Joe’s singing career and Joe dying.  He tells them that he just can’t stop
thinking of all the pain that he caused an entire world because of him and then
he abandoned them to boot.
The next day
Barry gathers the team together to figure out how King Shark is tracking
Barry.  Caitlin has a plan, King Shark is
“smelling” the energy of the Speed Force that Barry puts out in the
same way sharks track their prey. 
Caitlin’s idea is to use that to lure him into a trap.
Barry,
Caitlin, Diggle and Lyla go out to the docks and have placed a dummy Flash out
on a buoy to lure King Shark and play the waiting game.
Eventually,
Shark shows up and basically punches through their trap so they have to
improvise.  Barry gets him to chase him
out into the bay and uses his power to electrify the water and zaps King Shark
into submission.  The day is saved, and
after Lyla promises a kinder, gentler ARGUS and a quick pep talk from Diggle to
Barry about not letting the loss of a friend break him our crossover is
complete.
The next
morning at Jitters, Joe is with Wally reading his project summery and he’s
really impressed.  Finally Joe explains
why they are so protective of Barry.  He
explains that he worries that had they not been so protective things could have
gone much worse for Barry.  That just
means Barry is his son, like Wally is his son and nothing is going to change
that.
At STAR
Labs, Cisco is working on Reverb’s glasses in the hopes of getting them to work
for him when Caitlin arrives.  She’s
acting pretty strange, talking about breachers and how much she hates the name
Caitlin and her hands are ice cold and… Cisco’s a big dumb jerk for thinking
she could be turning evil with trying to talk to her like a normal human
being.  Then she tells them that Barry
needs to talk to them.
Up in the
lab, Barry has gather Team Flash 2.5 together and explained to them that if you
stop and think about it, everything that’s happened with Zoom can be traced
back to the night he went back to save his mother.  This makes it his mess to clean up, not only
on Earth-One but Earth-2. 
So, they’re
going to find a way back to Earth-2 and he’s going to defeat Zoom and save TOG
and their going to do it in Jay’s honor. 
To drive the point home, he reveals Jay’s Helmet in a trophy case to
remind them of what they have to do.
Speaking of
Taps On Glass, he’s still in his cell on Earth-2 and he gets to watch as Zoom
brings Jay’s body (corpse) into the hideout and drops it.  He then takes off his mask and reveals the
face of Jay Garrick!
Quite an
episode this week.  I won’t hide that
I’ve been less than impressed with the crossover episodes.  To this point they’ve come off more like
stunt episodes and doing work for the other shows.  This wasn’t the case this week, Diggle and
Lyla were here but they were here to help the story of the Flash and not trying
to draw viewers into Arrow.
Barry’s
exploration of his turmoil was satisfying as well.  Going so far as to connect Zoom to his trip
through time, which is an important part of time travel in the DC
Universe.  When someone travels through
time in the DC Universe for selfish purposes, time has a way of screwing them
over quite harshly.  (The other most
famous example outside of Flashpoint being a story where Booster Gold tried to
prevent Barbara Gordon being crippled by the Joker.)  This makes Time Travel dangerous and a plot
device to be used sparingly and with importance which I like a lot.
Another
thing I liked a lot was the Wally plot. 
I find myself looking at thing from Wally’s point of view, and if he’s
looking at the way Iris and Joe welcomed Barry into their lives it could easily
look like they replace he and his mother with this guy and it would be no
surprise that he’s looking to make his place in their lives by pushing Barry
out.
I think I’ve
made my point about Cisco’s adventures in an episode of Three’s Company with
Caitlin so I’ll move directly onto the final five minutes.  I like the setup for the final push of the
season especially Barry’s rallying cry of them saving Earth-2 for Jay.
Of course
this brings up the final scene.  Last Week, I offered up four possibilities that I felt we were looking at.  I think the only option that scene rules out
was Number 2: Jay is Working for Zoom. 
It is still possible that Jay is Zoom, Jay was Zoom or that Hunter Zolomon of Earth-2 is posing as Jay but we
will have to see what’s happening when the Flash returns on March 22.
As for Patty… 
Ah, Patty.  I’ll miss you my love but I’m
ready to go on with these reviews and find a new meme to annoy entertain
you with
from week to week.  See
you in four weeks.

 

Three Things We
Learned This Week:
1)     
Caitlin apparently doesn’t have the meta-gene.
2)     
Lyla intends to change the mission statement of
ARGUS.
3)     
The writing staff is really into the movie, Jaws.
Three Questions:
1)     
Caitlin doesn’t
have the meta-gene?
2)     
How will they reopen the breaches without rupturing
Space and Time again?
3)     
Seriously, how is ARGUS allowed to keep
prisoners?  They’re terrible at it.

Just another guy on the internet.