The Hype
The season one mid-season finale, is riding in strong off the steam of last week's big crossover. A lot of what us fans have been asking for has been put on the table and a lot of viewers along with it, Flash matched it's premiere in viewers and Arrow had it's biggest episode since it's premiere. So now that the inevitable crossover episode is over these series of another job to do, introduce the big bad that will be driving the conflict in the second half, in Flash's case, the Reverse flash, a subplot that's getting touched on a lot sooner than I thought, but i'm not complaining. The Flash mid-season finale was actually extended another 2 minutes, the last episode to do this was the pilot, so there's my reason (excuse) to have very high expectations.
[WARNING: Major Episode Spoilers Follow]
The Review
This episode doesn't quite live up to those expectations however. It's now Christmas time in Central City and it has been a year since the accident that gave Berry his powers. It feels very strange that a year would pass in half a season, but seeing as one of my biggest early complaints was the weekly villains, I guess I should be happy, this makes it more believable.
Danielle Panabaker has really impressed me, i'm hungry for more Caitlin Snow, she has done a great job making the character likable with so little script to work with. We finally get to see firestorm but his first scene was extremely awkward, Snow follows him and when he bursts into flames she just strolls away like she forgot something in the oven not like she just saw A FUCKING MAN ON FIRE, let alone her believed dead fiance. And yes I realize those two points are contradictory. Cisco has also surprised me, over the course of 9 episodes he has gone from forced and annoying to a charming and vital part of the series. I'm also eternally grateful that there's no friendzone sub plot between the two.
The Reverse Flash was cool and creepy. The whole episode I had myself convinced that Eddie, Thawne was the reverse Flash, even when they were in the same room, my answer was time travel ,which seems like will become a prevalent plot point in the series soon. I still wasn't convinced even during the big reveal, that Wells was in fact the reverse Flash. The scene where they finally caught him really annoyed me. The Central City police should know It's not really a "freeze" type of situation when your dealing with a wanted murderer superhuman who just savagely beat a quadriplegic half to death.
We also get to see Berry finally confess his feelings for Iris with his options slowly disappearing. Iris no longer has such high regard for the flash and has now agreed to movie in with token douche bag Eddie Thawne. These scenes were almost painful to watch, not necessarily because of the acting or writing but just the awkwardness of the situation. So, I guess this would be points for the show for being effective! Anyways we never truly get a response from Iris even though we get plenty of Berry driving the point home, this is a little frustrating with the almost 2 month break coming up. It seems this episode was out to serve the purpose of getting people exited for the return rather than deliver a payoff for the fans who have already invested 8 hours into the story.
Finally this episode did have some amazing geek out moments, especially for those of us already familiar with some of the characters. Firestorm at first seemed a little off, but the ending with him flying away was fantastic, it was very unexpected and was possibly the best special effects sequence of the entire series. Also the ring Wells was holding should be very recognizable to most flash fans as the same ring the flash uses to store/use his costume on the go.
Overall this episode was honestly pretty good, but was quite dragged out and could have accomplished a lot more. More questions have been raised than answered, and was even more anti climatic due to how much it is over shadowed by last weeks outing.
The Verdict
Good but not Great
7.5/10