FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 3×14 – “Attack on Central City”

Directed by:       Dermott
Downs

Part
Two!  Let’s go! I’ve got to make lunch!

We finished
last week with Gypsy (who is still totally genderbent Cisco from Earth-19!)
about to bring the Gorilla Army to Earth One. 
So what better time than now for a cute shippy, Barry/Iris breakfast
scene? With that out of the way and we’re over to STAR Labs where it seems HR
blew up a Hallmark Bomb in the Speed Lab and I find myself wondering if they’d
planned for this episode to air three weeks ago on Valentines.  

We have the
first Wells vs Wells faceoff.  It’s time
for hot Tom Cavanagh on Tom Cavanagh action! First, HR remarks on tooth-brushing
technique, Harry calls HR an idiot then spits in HR’s coffee mug then leaves.  It’s apparently Valentine’s on Earth-19 so HR
is celebrating it with them with cards and HR lamenting that he can’t put the
moves on Joe’s girlfriend.  Jesse decides
that with romance in the air that she should get her new boyfriend killed by
telling her dad she’s staying.  Good
plan!

As it turns
out, it actually was a good plan since Harry takes the news really well before
giving them his blessing.  Huh!  I’m a little disappointed.  Back to the speed lab where Cisco has the
single guy on Earth-19’s Valentine’s.  In
fact, Cisco eludes to going MGTOW but is interrupted by Gypsy’s arrival,
unfortunately for Cisco and everyone else, she’s in a fighting mood and is only
stopped by Harry and his BFG.

Gypsy comes
to and Good News! She can’t remember attacking them or anything after arriving
in the African Jungle on Earth-2.  Bad News!
She was in Gorilla City!  That’s a
problem, but hey Worse News! Grodd’s telepathy can’t breach dimensions that
means the Gorilla Army is already here.

But we’ll
wrap up our game of Good News/Bad News with so Kinda Good News!  Harry thinks he can jury rig Cisco’s Vibe
Glasses to help him see into the future and get some intel.  As a bonus, Wally gets some Bad News!  Harry wants him to help him.  Sorry Wally, this might have been a trap.

Caitlin
thinks that maybe Gypsy can help and Cisco seems to think he can convince her.  Spoilers: He can’t.  Gypsy is out of here!  She saw Grodd’s plan when he was in her head
and she’s bailing out.

Meanwhile,
Wally and Harry are leveling up Cisco’s Vibe gear while Harry gives him his
blessing… Even if he doesn’t know how long he has left.  Harry’s dying?  What?! Now I’m depressed.

No time for
that, we’ve got to Vibe into the future and he gets a street address.  So Barry and Joe round up the Kid Flashes and
the CCPD SWAT Team and it’s time for the fight, right?  Wrong! 
But that’s okay, Grodd will settle for telepathically forcing Joe to
blow his own head off after a monologue. 
(Side note: Jesse L Martin has a hell of a Grodd voice!)  Barry manages to outrun the bullet and save
Joe but he knows he’s been tricked.

Meanwhile,
some Air Force General is kidnapped across town.  It’s time for more tech!  This time they’re gonna help Joe remember
Grodd’s vision with magnets!  My experts
are baffled… 

But Joe’s
too far down the rabbit hole to protest. 
Meanwhile, Barry has some serious brood-face going on and when Iris
tries to talk to him he lets her know that maybe it’s time to kill Grodd.  Iris seems to have forgotten that Barry
slaughtered a ton of villains in the last two and a half seasons and worries
what that might do to him.  She does have
a point though, do they really save anyone if they compromise who they are in
the process?

Meanwhile
Jesse learns that Wally is having second thoughts but when he lets it slip that
Harry told him he was dying Jesse suddenly gets what’s going on.  Good news! Harry’s not dying!  Bad news! Harry’s a liar.  Shoulda seen this coming to be honest.

Welp!  With Harry seriously embarrassed and dressed down
by Jesse I guess it’s time to give Joe a brain tumor!  Fortunately for the gang, the magnets
stimulate the artistic part of Joe’s brain. 
Here’s hoping this helps because our Air Force General seems to be
stealing weapons for Grodd and even better, it’s probably Nukes.

Back at the
Speed Lab, Barry shows us that Steve Rogers is a punk.

Before Harry
shows up with a good old fashioned Wells pep-talk on the nature of the slippery
moral slope.  Good for Barry that the
gang learned that the General is in charge of Central City’s nukes and Barry’s
going to have to stop a launch.  So he
has to guess a five digit kill code from any number of approximately 100,000
possibilities (Zero counts too, writers!) in under three minutes.  With that TV timing Barry shuts the launcher
down with over two seconds to spare.

Grodd’s just
going to have to go with Plan B.  They’re
super-strong-super-smart gorillas and they’ll just have to kill everyone.  Barry’s got a plan but he’ll need Cisco and
Gypsy’s help to do it.  That means Cisco
has to go to Earth-19.  We get a cameo of
Earth-19’s Flash 

and then Cisco manages to convince his doppelgänger Gypsy to help.

Meanwhile,
back on Earth One it’s finally time.  Black
vs Red.  Fight night! The second greatest
gladiator match of all time! Grodd vs Man! Day vs Night! Son of a Monkey vs
Flash of Central City!  

While Wally and
Jesse take on the Army, Barry gets to take on Grodd.  It doesn’t even remotely go well.  In fact, Grodd just gives him some Spartan
Shield action and the fight is over.

Good thing
Barry’s got an ace in the hole in the form of Cisco, Gypsy and Solovar.  It seems the deposed king is more than happy
to beat Grodd senseless but when he goes for the kill, Barry convinces him
exile is better.  (They’ll need Grodd for
season four after all.)  That’s fine,
Solovar mostly just wants to go home with his army.

So, that’s
that.  The Gorillas went home, ARGUS has
Grodd (That’ll go well!) and Gypsy’s heading home after giving Cisco a
memorable goodbye kiss.  Cisco vows to
marry her.  Get a blood test first,
buddy. Cause you two of super related. 
After that, Harry says goodbye again. 
This time giving Wally his actual blessing.

Finally
Barry and Iris wrap things up at home and Barry decides the best way to change
the future is by fighting the future and that means proposing to Iris. Awwww!

Back at the
West Home for Wally and Jesse’s movie night. 
But Jesse grows tired of the movie. 
She’s in the mood… for Big Belly Burger. 
Wally takes the blow to his ego in stride and heads out to get some, but
runs into Savitar instead!  Dun. Dun!
DUH!

Well at the
risk of saying I told you so. I told you so, last week’s incompletely feeling
was resolved pretty solidly.  Though the
Valentine’s Day episode vibe was weird. 
I liked how things played out and I like how they’ve continued to make
Grodd a multi-faceted villain.  Sure he
could cave Barry’s skull in and eat his brain but where’s the fun in that?  Grodd is more interesting the more he is
capable of doing.

The
Jesse/Wally stuff was fun as was the Harry/HR stuff and Cisco had a lot of good
stuff to do.  Nothing to really complain about
just a satisfying experience all around. 
They resolved the story, they moved plot lines along.  They raised the stakes by having Barry and
Iris get engaged.  They even managed to
plants some seeds for the future like the Flash of Earth-19, Grodd in ARGUS
custody and the still possible threat from Gorilla City.

So, what’s
the verdict for the two-parter as a whole? 
Let’s go with:

Things We Learned
This Week:

Unanswered Questions: