This episode was at an immediate disadvantage because it had to make Central City, which the audience sees every episode, compete with the scope of Gorilla City, one of the show’s most spectacular locations. One thing that might have helped was seeing the city under siege, desperately trying to fight off Grodd’s army — but as it is, Grodd and company didn’t arrive until the final few minutes of the episode, and everything was more or less business as usual. While it’s understandable that the show might not have the budget to show an entire gorilla army, it doesn’t exactly make for compelling viewing to just hear about an offscreen army for most of the episode.
Certainly the showdown end up with wasn’t enough to make all the waiting worth it. After the constant teasing of a threeway speedster team-up between Barry, Jesse, and Wally, all we really ended up getting was Barry fighting Grodd with Jesse and Wally as blurs in the background. There was none of the strategizing or coordinated attacks that you’d hope to see when you’ve got a group of superheroes working together; it was basically a one man show. While the trio will undoubtedly team up again in the future (especially if Jesse follows through on her decision to move to Earth-1), it’s disappointing that their first outing ending up being so anticlimactic.
It also didn’t help that this episode had quite a few plot holes. I try not to nitpick too much about the fantasy science or constant jumping to conclusions because frankly that’s just a part of the genre. But in this episode Cisco suddenly needed special help to see into the future, despite the fact that we’ve seen him do it before unaided, and Barry agonized over whether it was right to kill Grodd or even to let someone else do so, when he himself has killed several human foes. Small continuity errors are bound to happen on a long-running show, especially one that involves time travel, but these weren’t dates or throwaway lines. They were important character attributes that were being ignored or skipped over, as if the writers randomly forgot what they’d previously written.
There were definitely some nice moments to be had in the episode — Cisco and Cindy’s banter was enjoyable, the effects used for Grodd were impressive as ever, and Barry saving Joe from shooting himself gave a pretty unique spin on yet another “Barry outruns a bullet” moment. But all these beats got lost in the mix of lackluster storytelling and confusing retcons. The Savitar conflict hasn’t been perfectly handled, but I’m a lot more eager to return to it after an episode this dry, especially since it looks like Wally’s dormant connection to the evil speedster is flaring up just in time to burst Barry and Iris’s engagement bubble.
Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer -- Click to read Kaitlin's posts
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