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FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 3×03 – “Magenta”

The Flash (3×03) – “Magenta”
Written by:         Judalina Neira & David Kob
Directed by:       Armen
V Kevorkian
We return
this week to a presentation of Barry Allen being the kind of employee that
drives supervisor to drink.  As this
continues I find myself more and more in Julian’s corner.  Work your scheduled shift, Assh-… Allen!
Then Barry
races off to a date with Iris (with a neat little call back to his date with
Linda in season one.) Then he and Iris head off to dinner with the caveat that
she wants a date with Barry Allen, not the Flash. That goes about as well as
you’d expect until they’re eventual called by Cisco to STAR Labs because of a
little problem.
No big deal
really, just a small breach in the fabric of space and time down in the breach
room. It’s fine!  While Cisco and Joe
have their guns trained on it, Barry asks what happened…
Barry, so
far this episode you’ve been a clock-watcher at work, whined about your
supervisor to your girlfriend and now have shown little in the way of logical
thinking.  I’m starting to be Team
Villain. Before it can sink in for Barry that they wouldn’t call if Cisco could
have closed the breach out pops Wells from Earth 2 to say “Hi” and present them
with a bit of a problem.  Jesse’s got
herself some speed.
Everyone’s
back together again!  This is great, everyone’s
excited to catch back up with Wells and Jesse. 
Well, except for Wally. He looks like a kicked dog. So they take Jesse
to the Speed Lab, which has totally been there the whole time. However since
Barry and Wells don’t recognize it that means it’s another change in the
timeline.  With the cool plot development
of allowing Wells to immediately figure out that Barry’s been playing the home
game of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek because
he doesn’t remember it either.
After Wells
gives Barry the first of what will no doubt be several lectures, Jesse hits the
track and Wally graduates from kicked puppy look to “I have to go home and
listen to Linkin Park” then he leaves. 
Iris follows him but Barry encourages Joe to do so as well because it’s
actually a good thing Wally doesn’t have powers because of Flashpoint. (Though
I’m not sure I see the connection.)
Across town,
it’s time to introduce our villain of the week. 
So we’re treated to the blue-collar-abusive-foster-father cliché!  I guess with Tom Felton on the cast it would’ve
been too on the nose to go full-Dursley. 
So, Frankie, our villain of the week goes a little Jekyll/Hyde and
suddenly… A lamp post attacks her foster father.
The next
morning, Barry arrives at the Police Station to find Iris looking for
information on the street lamp attack but Barry wants to have a
boyfriend/girlfriend talk.  Barry!  The workplace is for work!  No wonder I like Julian better than you!  You have the work ethic of the kid behind the
counter at my local Game Stop that is always on Snap Chat when I go to sell my
copy of last year’s NHL game.
Down in the
Captain’s office, Joe is trying to get Frankie to open up about the attack but
she’s got some memory issues.  He sees
Barry and tries to get information but Barry’s actually pretty useless.  Fortunately, Julian is on the case!  He’s not looking for a meta with super
strength because it wasn’t physical strength that did it.  He hears them talking about Frankie’s
blackout and now he has a theory that requires him to taking Frankie’s glass.
Back at STAR
Labs, Jesse’s powers seem nice and stable, no real need to conduct more
tests.  So why is Wells so intent on more
tests? Cause he’s her father and he needs Team Flash to help him talk her out
of using her powers!  Cisco can’t help,
he doesn’t need to unleash hypocrisy on Jesse, and so it’s up to Caitlin
because she absolutely doesn’t have powers that are scaring her. No sir!
Wally
arrives at the Police Station to talk to Joe, he gives a pretty good Dad Speech
about all the different ways to help people. 
Meanwhile, up in Julian’s lab,
Julian is showing Barry what happens when you actually put in the forensic
work.  See he’d found a common link in
all the husks they found on last week’s episode and it turns out Frankie has it
to so he heads down to confront her. 
Unfortunately, while Julian is superior to Barry in almost every way his
ability to not piss people off isn’t quite there and he causes Frankie to flip
the switch from scared teenager to villain of the week!
She tries to
drop the big gold mural on Julian and she escapes.  Barry tries to talk to her and sees there’s
some problems with Frankie.  Or Magenta,
as her evil side wishes to be called. 
Magenta’s not one for talking so she throws a car with an officer inside
up in the air and Barry has to save him which gives her a chance to escape.
Back to STAR
Labs to put a backstory to Frankie and Magenta while giving the opportunity for
Wells and Jesse to learn the story of Flashpoint.  Iris decides to talk to Frankie’s foster
father while Joe and Barry head out to find Frankie.  Wells pleads and Caitlin agrees to talk to
Jesse.
It doesn’t
go well because Jesse plays the “My dad put you up to this” card and then blows
up at Wells.  After she leaves, Wally
volunteers and I’m sure there won’t be any problems.
Magenta
finds Alchemy and asks for help destroying Frankie, but Alchemy tells her that
she just hasn’t done enough evil to fully level up yet so she should go kill
her foster father.
Out on the
street, Wally finds Jesse and he gets her to talk about how her powers while
they have a shippy little moment.  Jesse
explains that one day while walking home she was almost hit by a car and Wally
gets the brilliant idea to step out into traffic.  This is followed by the part of the episode
where everybody yells at everybody else for five minutes because basically
Barry and Wells are wrong and they have a moment together.
Meanwhile,
Iris finds Frankie’s foster father but he’s as helpful as the
drunken-foster-father cliché could be. 
So really, Iris is just there to see Magenta throw a tanker the
hospital.  That should definitely be
enough murder for Magenta to level up. 
Barry arrives on the scene and tries to stop the tanker by being a
super-speed propeller.
That means
it’s time for Wells to give Jesse the helpful advice of “Run, Jesse. Run!”  So she holds up the tanker while Barry talks
Magenta down.  Barry’s speech works and
the day is saved.  Back at STAR Labs,
they’ve arranged for a much better foster home for Frankie in Keystone City but
first they ask her how she got her powers. 
Wally seems shaken by experience but when Joe talks to him about it he
plays it off.
Down in the
breach room Jesse and Wells have a father/daughter talk followed by a
father/daughter hug.  Also a gift from
Wells to Jesse.  The gift of her very own
superhero suit.  Say hello to Jesse
Quick.
Which brings
us back to about where things started with Iris meeting Barry for a date.  Barry’s figured out that since his powers are
part of who he is that they should embrace that.  He then speeds her off to somewhere for their
date before running off for Flash things and I’m left with the question: Does
Iris even know where she is or did Barry ditch her somewhere like Coast City?
Back at the
Station, Joe shows Barry and Julian some security footage from Iron
Heights.  The footage of Clarris’ death
to be specific.  Barry is spooked, but
don’t worry. Julian is on the case.
Something of
a mixed bag episode this week.  There was
stuff I liked this week, The Julian/Barry dynamic is good.  Wally’s struggle with not having powers is
interesting and the Barry/Iris dates were fun. 
But the problem is that the main-story of Magenta is overdone and
straight out of Smallville and I
mean that with the implied lack of respect. 
You can talk about Smallville paving the way for DC on TV until you’re
blue in the face but it won’t change that fact that it just wasn’t a very good
show when it came to storytelling.  So it
would be in team Flash’s best interest to steer away from the example
Smallville set.
There’s not
really much to say, I suspect that this episode was more of a set-up for future
episodes than anything else so it’ll be a while before we can see what they have
set up.  The plot was pretty
paint-by-numbers while most of the season long things they’ve set up are still
in act one and still can’t be judged.  So
in the end, we’re left with a review equivalent of this: 
Thanks
Henry. (Totally Team-Cavill by the way. Tyler has been blander than bland on Supergirl. If Tyler’s Superman was fast food, he’d be Burger King. Sure he won’t make you sick, but you’re not exactly going to rave about the experience.)

Three Things We
Learned This Week:
1)     
Barry is a clock-watcher.
2)     
Alchemy is definitely running around granting
powers to people.
3)     
Jesse’s manifested a connection to the Speed
Force.
Three Questions:
1)     
Is Frankie in danger?
2)     
Has Julian been given enough to figure out Barry
is the Flash?
3)     
Has Wally or Caitlin had some sort of contact
from Alchemy?

Just another guy on the internet.