The Flash Review: Episode 1×11 – “The Sound and the Fury”

A Familiar Face Forces Harrison Wells To Reveal A Long-Kept Secret But That Won’t Be The Only Revelation In This Episode

This week on The Flash, Dr. Wells finds himself attacked in his ridiculously pretentious home immediately following an ominous phone call. He is able to quickly surmise that his attacker was a former protégé of his, Hartley Rathaway (with the comic book alias of “Pied Piper”). Wells isn’t the only one Hartley has history with, as Hartley was the big shot at S.T.A.R. Labs when Cisco started, and Caitlin also knew him while he was working there. But once Hartley gets caught, what secrets will he force to the surface and will Barry be able to survive against one of his most cunning opponents yet? Iris gets a call about a new job, much to her delight, but when she realises she’s mostly been pulled in because of her apparent “in” with the Flash, how will she prove that she has more professional value than just that? In the end, there will be more than just sonic blasts for the team to deal with… and a new threat to Wells’ shadiness will rise… so let’s discuss!

Tell-The-Truth Wells

When Wells is attacked in his home, Hartley uses his sonic blast abilities to shatter the glass which comes raining down on him below. It’s all very theatrical with “Nessun Dorma” being used to set the mood of Wells’ self-importance but it was a terrible waste to not follow through with the song and have it climax as the glass shatters. The big secret that Hartley has against Wells is revealed to be that Hartley had come to him beforehand to warn of the risk that the accelerator could explode. Wells is forced to admit this to the rest of the team, who don’t take the news very well. It’s all very understandable, especially for Caitlin who reacts perhaps most negatively of all (and understandably so).

“Hartley was telling the truth. I have not been honest with you, with any of you. The accelerator, Hartley warned me that there was indeed a chance that the accelerator could explode. His data did not show 100% certainty, just that it was a risk but it was a real risk and yet I made the decision that the reward, that everything we could learn, that everything we could achieve, that all of that simply outweighed that risk. I’m sorry.” ~ Eddie Thawne

Wells calls a press conference to share this long-kept secret regarding his prior knowledge of the risks of the exploding accelerator and just… let’s just keep it real here, shall we? We were left rather confused on what the writers were trying to accomplish with Wells’ narrative. If they were trying to garner sympathy for him, we’ll be forthright about the fact that it wasn’t successful. His smarmy remarks and expressions that range from smirking to sulking have started to grow stale. When Wells was first introduced, there was excitement, mystery, and allure as to what he was up to. But now the end-of-the-episode updates on him and his secret room do little to stir up interest. The strides in revealing his motives and plan(s) needs to speed up. There are far more interesting plot points that can be used to take up screen time if the writers aren’t going to shake up the Wells formula. But for this week’s snippet of meta, we will say that we’re intrigued by the notion of Wells’ metahuman abilities starting to diminish and in turn, Eddie being tasked by Joe to start investigating Wells. If these two are going to have their paths cross, perhaps this will bring us closer to Eddie being Reverse-Flash. Yes, the show has only thus far presented Wells as being Reverse-Flash, but we simply cannot ignore the fact that Eddie is Reverse-Flash in the comics. Seeing as how Black Canary has thus far been played by two different characters on Arrow, we wouldn’t rule it out for Eddie to be Reverse-Flash 2.0 in this show.

Hardly-There Hartley

If we’re being entirely honest, Hartley wasn’t our favourite villain. But we will say that there seems to be great potential for him to be developed further. There were interesting little snippets that intrigued us, like his multilingual brilliance, but he simply didn’t offer us enough in his own right for us to be truly blown away. His styling was decent, though. The final showdown between him and Barry/Team S.T.A.R. Lab was rather underwhelming, as the conflict was over just as soon as it had begun. Sure it all made sense logistically but we feel like there was a lot more room to explore the psychological motivations of Hartley and it would’ve been a better use of the screen time. We weren’t quite sure what to make of the fact that Hartley’s coming out to his parents and then them reacting negatively was the catalyst to his spiral. We’d like to challenge the writers of The Flash develop their LGBT characters a bit further. The material for the recurring character, Captain David Singh, has been lacking and now with another LGBT character being under-developed it further reads as tokenism. Also, Hartley is a member of the disabled community, in regards to his hearing. Let’s give him more material so we can start raving about him like we want to, shall we?

“I was thinking of calling myself Pied Piper.” ~ Hartley
“Hey, I assign the nicknames around here. Although that one’s not bad.” ~ Cisco

It’s All About Iris

More than anything else in this episode, we were delighted by Iris’ agency picking up. She stops by her father’s place and he lets her know that she had a missed call from Central City Picture News. One returned call and we see her light up with excitement at being offered a job. Sadly, things are a little less pleasant once her job begins since she quickly surmises that she received the job because the outlet is hoping to pump her apparent “in” with The Flash. Seeing Iris’ disappointed, dejected expression was enough to have us clutching our hearts but true to form, she bounced right back better than ever. At Wells’ press conference, she jumped right in with a question and gumption, leaving us cheering and pumping our fists in celebration.

“Hey, what was that?” ~ Iris’ uber-rude colleague
“Gumption.” ~ Iris

We’ve had mixed emotions about Iris’ character development thus far since it often felt like the writers were never fully letting her blossom. Much of her story was about her being the object of affection for Barry (and Eddie, I suppose). Things started to pick up once she got on the trail of The Streak/Flash but this was the most we’ve seen her shine yet. The fact that Iris came in on her first day of a new job proposing a story to help victims of domestic violence made us love her all the more for having such outstanding compassion and being so socially conscious. We can only hope that this is a sign of even greater things to come for Iris. Though really, we’d like for her to just be brought in on the whole Barry/Flash secret already because we just know that she could be an asset to the team. Till then, we’ll be left pining and sighing at all of the glory that is Iris West.

FINAL VERDICT

Though this episode wasn’t one of the stronger ones, this is more so a reflection of the high standards set by previous ones. Still, director John F. Showalter put some nice shots together in this episode, including those of the falling glass in Wells’ home and writers Alison Schapker and Brooke Eikmeier were awesome enough to throw in some snippets to move the plot forward, namely the fact that Hartley knows where Ronnie is. (Of course he could be lying but we’d wager he knows something since he seems to have a knack for knowing secrets). We also found it interesting to see that Wells was in need of recharging his speed, though we’ve already unleashed our meta on the matter above. We don’t have quite as much to say on this episode as we normally have but we can forgive a slower episode since the show has more often than not, delivered bountiful content. We’re still looking forward to the next one.

Questions, Comments, Concerns…

• On a scale of 1 to Barry Allen, how strong is your selfie game?
• Sure Iris, you “forgot” a few things… like Barry… laid out and ready to be pounced on WHAT WHO SAID THAT
• I’m sorry, no, that was a WASTE of Nessun Dorma. That song’s climax is too epic for you to use it just to try to make someone seem generically pretentious.
• Well EXCUSE YOU, Hartley; what planet did you grow up on where you don’t comprehend that Star Wars is awesome?
• YAAAS, reporter Iris is doing everything for me!
• The search for Ronnie is back on! Let’s go!