The Flash: Season 8

It was all right, all right, all right, but by the end I was fed up. Not by one specific thing. Just as a whole. It was too melodramatic, and the ending was too pat. And I frankly detest fiction that has a woman call another woman the b-word as form of empowerment. Allegra's coworkers are all right, but the episode bugged me.

The sad thing to realize is how stupid and pathetic Thawne's psychology is. Only in the past couple of seasons have we gotten the context of exactly how thoroughly dumb and inane his motivations truly are. Thawne as played by Matt Lescher on DC's Legends Of Tomorrow (who actually got a cool redemption arc) is awesome. Thawne as played by Tom Cavanaugh is a total loser. And he's SO easy to manipulate a dummy like Barry Allen (or a Caveman) can do it. I'm ashamed it took Barry this long to utterly defeat somebody this already broken.

The scene at the end was a rare instance of the show doing the dazzling visual effects Season 1 was famous for, and that the series can obviously no longer afford on a regular basis. That's probably also why both King Shark and Gorilla Grodd have been MIA for a few seasons. The budget has been drastically cut. But I liked that moment anyways.

The "Big Reveal" of the scientist at the end fell utterly flat for the stupidest of reasons: Nobody in the audience has seen that character before and nobody recognized her! As far as I can remember she's never been mentioned on the show before either, and she's suddenly one of Barry Allen's "inspirations". Derp. You do a Lower The Hood moment, the person under the hood needs to take the audience by surprise. We can't just say "Who?" and have the producers consider the moment successful.

I could maybe say I've outgrown this show. Or maybe it's genuinely much worse than it used to be. Either way, an average episode (of which this qualified) winds up annoying instead of entertaining me. **1/2.

I guess I liked it? Question mark? I don't know. I don't trust the show enough to have actually enjoyed it but what we saw was interesting.

Frankly, I'm not down with reformed Matt Lescher Thawne being resurrected. Because while Legends Of Tomorrow had the capabilities to handle that character correctly, I don't think this show does.

Deon's out of nowhere heel turn is still frustrating.

Equally so is what's going on with John Diggle. He's basically had a two-season arc to figure out he doesn't WANT to be a hero? I actually agree with his decision. But did they need this many crossovers for him to come to so simple a conclusion? Is this set-up for Justice U? How? How could John refusing to be a superhero tie into that?

Cecile's stuff made me groan. Everything they do with that character winds up making me cringe. I don't like her place of prominence on the show, and I don't like a single thing they've done with her powers. Giving her powers at all was one of the series' biggest mistakes, and changing them randomly isn't going to fix that.

My biggest objection to the episode is how stupid Barry Allen is. How stupidly he reacts to amnesiac Thawne. I was like, "This is appropriate for an action cartoon in the 1980's." For an modern genre show that tries to take itself seriously? It's ridiculous how badly Barry wrecked that. Did I mention this is season 8 and he's still this dumb?

Let's say Barry doesn't believe Thawne has amnesia and is shamming and up to know good. It is in Barry's best interest, as well as the interest of the truth, for him to openly accept that at face value. Barry confronting and antagonizing him instead is so stupid because if Thawne IS telling the truth, he's literally volunteering dangerous information to the guy an amnesiac version of him should NEVER get. Who is to say that Barry's carelessness regarding Thawne's treatment here isn't the actual thing to jumpstart Reverse Flash's entire turn to the Darkside in this specific timeline? What I hate the most about the fact that Flash doesn't bother humoring him to gather information, and not showing him all his cards like the chump he is, is that it happens that way not just because the writers aren't talented enough to make that decision. Well, they aren't. But I truly believe on some level if they DID come up with it, they nix it because they'd believe the audience is so stupid they wouldn't be able to follow along with it as it was happening, even if it was explained in hindsight. It's not just that the writers are dumb that I object to. They think I'M dumb. They think this is all I can handle. That's the truly insulting thing about Flash bumbling into Amnesiac Thawne's life and giving the store away unasked about why he's so dangerous. It's done under the understanding that I'm too stupid to accept Barry Allen acting any other way. That unpleasantly reminds me of the awful 1990 Flash show, which went out of its way to dumb down Barry's every reaction in any given obvious scenario. As far as Berlanti is concerned, audience's tastes and sophistication has not changed from that shady era of genre. And it pisses me off this show thinks that about me.

Can you imagine if in Arrow: Season 2, upon Slade Wilson's unexpected appearance in Queen Manor, if instead of the cat and mouse rules Oliver tacitly agrees to play by, he started screaming at him and accusing him of all sorts of malfeasance in front of his confused family? It would have been a bloodbath, and Moira and Thea instantly killed. I don't like that Barry Allen not only is never as smart as Oliver, but the show doesn't ever hand him negative consequences because he isn't.

I liked it? Sort of? Question mark? Interesting concepts? Ish? Why am I still annoyed? ***1/2.

I'm going to ignore the last five minutes for now. Because my review before then was solid in my head and I don't want to deviate from it too much. Let's pretend for now that five minutes occurred at the beginning of next week rather than at the end of this week.

My opinion before the last five minutes is that the episode was above average. And that fact made me resent the hell out of it. Not because I wish more episodes were like it. It's just that the storytelling turns were so shaky and shady that's it's appalling that this show can give us something like that and pass it off as respectable. I will concede the revelation than the Forces were the negative versions was decent. Every other bit of science (particularly regarding Cecile's new power-stealing ability) was pure nonsense. None of it made a lick of sense, and was random crap happening because the writers wanted it to happen, not because it should have, or even that it made sense. I admit that there is a certain appeal to nonsense storytelling without a real-world logic to it. But the show has to have cred elsewhere to get away with it. Twin Peaks is a good example. It routinely trafficked in pure nonsense, but that nonsense made sense in that particular world, and the stories and characters of the show were so strong otherwise, I was willing to not go overboard in picking either threads or nits at its logic. For the most part, it holds together as a world unto itself for that reason.

The Flash, the show, is just an utter mess with no rhyme or reason attached to the stupid random things occurring.

So we've delivered the proper shade for the episode when it looked to be a poor substitute for acceptable. After that ending? The episode is awful. I KNEW the show would utterly botch DC's Legends Of Tomorrow's perfect version of reformed Thawne, and they did it in only two damn episodes, which is like the absolute final middle finger to that underrated and unjustly canceled show.

Iris's death is stupid for the same reason Frost's was. They are obviously going to buy it back, and it's annoying whenever television does that. It remains to be seen if the show is dumb enough to make the characters grieve her next week (the show was dumb enough to have them grieve Frost the week after she fake-died) but it's a waste of time, false drama, and the show manipulating me and screwing me around. I hate that. The Flash is basically the Forrest Gump of Superhero shows. That is not a compliment to compare it to an Oscar winning film. It is an accurate comparison to the worst film to ever win an Oscar.

I'll give Forrest Gump this over The Flash. It may have been manipulative, unfair drivel, but it was EFFECTIVE manipulative, unfair drivel. I actually cried, which made me hate myself and the film even more than I would have if it hadn't given me that reaction. None of the Flash's tragic moments EVER land, and not just because the show sucks at great drama (and it does). It's because the show is so fundamentally dishonest about character deaths I don't ever believe what the show is showing me. Ever. That is the biggest failing a TV show can EVER give a viewer. It's the biggest failing any piece of fiction could give an audience member or reader: Breaking their trust so often and so much you can't ever accept what the project is showing you. If a show does that, it is a failure on every level you can think of. The Flash IS that complete failure.

I'm disgusted by an episode that appeared annoyingly average and turned out to be such a reprehensible fraud. Berlanti should hang his head in shame, DC should fire him, and Superman and Lois's showrunners should be put in charge of The Arrowverse from this point forward. I am beyond fed up with this crappy show. 0.

That wasn't technically terrible, but by the end it was just random crap happening for no rhyme or reason. There was no science or logic to anything seen onscreen.

I don't think the writers have made any final decisions about Frost yet which is both ominous and possibly hopeful.

Am I going to be the first one to say it? Is it just me or just Tom Cavanaugh look utterly doofy in the suit? When we actually have clear shots of his wearing it, and not just shadowy flashes, he looks silly rather than fearsome. Which is a huge weakness for both the actor and the character.

I admit it was nice seeing Damian Darhk again, and I'm glad the girl whose mother vanished was not forgotten, and they were reunited. But the finale still felt like a mess. **1/2.