Earlier this fall, The CW premiered a new superhero series, The Flash, which tracks the origin story of the titular DC Comic character. To be sure, the show is cheesy, particularly with some of its uplifting, the-Flash-can-do-anything dialogue, but once you embrace the somewhat clichéd optimism, it’s also a lot of fun. The writers of The Flash stick pretty closely to the original story, so fans of the comics should enjoy this adaptation.
In the first episode, we meet Barry Allen, played by Grant Gustin (Glee), a geeky-cute forensic crime scene assistant. He has all sorts of demons, due to the fact that his father is in jail for the murder of his mother.
Spoiler alert: Barry’s father didn’t do it, as is shown through flashbacks throughout the series. Instead, some supernatural, otherworldly force caused his mother’s death. The show follows this mystery throughout the series, although in more recent episodes the subject has been all but dropped.
Barry’s family struggles, however, provide the necessary setup for the show’s supernatural plot elements. In the pilot, for example, we watch as Barry is struck by lightning and months later wakes up with super speed.
With the help of Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) and his assistants Caitlin and Cisco (Danielle Panabaker and Carlos Valdez, respectively) at S.T.A.R. Labs, the Flash is born.
Gustin is perfectly cast as Barry; he manages to get the cute nerd trope down pat, and he has a great rapport with Panabaker and Valdez. Though each character falls into the same sort of flat stereotype in the beginning — Barry is headstrong, Caitlin is uptight and cautious, Cisco is the funny guy — as their characters develop, the actors’ chemistry only grows.
The first few episodes follow pretty much the same plot formula: New bad guy appears, personal crisis for Barry arises, bad guy is defeated and a huge cliffhanger lingers regarding Dr. Wells. As a result, it takes The Flash a while to find its footing as it focuses less on super villains and instead digs into the more interesting character arcs of Caitlin and Cisco.
The show also finds some interesting depth in Barry’s relationship with his adoptive father Detective Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) and Joe’s daughter Iris (Candice Patton). Again, though, it takes a few episodes before the writers explore these relationships as deeper bonds than the initial surface-level fluff.
The Flash also makes use of its ties to another CW show Arrow. Co-creators Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg conceived the idea for a show based around The Flash while working on Arrow. Consequently, several characters from The Flash are introduced on its sibling show, and Oliver Queen, the protagonist from Arrow, is featured in several episodes of The Flash, including the most recent episode, which was a crossover between the two shows.
As for the visual effects, The Flash is a mixed bag. Barry’s super speed is done in a very smart way. Instead of slowing down everything around The Flash as he moves at a normal pace, his super speed is portrayed as a red streak giving off lightning. Occasionally the camera does a close-up of Barry’s face with the background blurred, but overall the speed looks nice on camera. Unfortunately some of the powers of the other metahumans (a.k.a. super villains) on the show use poor quality CGI.
The Flash certainly isn’t the most brilliantly produced show currently gracing television screens, but its feel-good charm, witty humor and intense cliffhangers will keep you coming back to see what happens next. Check it out on the CW on Tuesdays at 9 p.m.
