[Review] The Flash (2014) Episode 2×19: “Back To Normal”

It’s all George this week on Flashcaps because Becky was at Dragon*Con ACTUALLY MEETING JOHN WESLEY SHIPP OMG anyway while I die of jealousy read this recap of CW’s The Flash.


This week, I’m riding solo.

No, I said riding so– wait, never mind, I don’t want to see the pic that comes after that.

Spoilers under the cut.

After last week’s plan derailment, Barry’s now just a normal schlub again and this pisses off Harry to no end. Not only because Barry was the best chance to stop Zoom on Earth-2, but because Zoom can now hop on over to Earth-1 anytime he sees fit. So, naturally, Harry goes looking for Jesse. When he finds her, though, she refuses to go back with him. Jesse tells Harry that she’s always going to be in danger and he can’t keep doing whatever it takes to save her. I like this. It really hammers home that Harry hasn’t processed the consequences of his actions, i.e. murdering a man.

On his way back to S.T.A.R. Labs, Griffin Grey steps into the path of Harry’s truck and smashes it, then kidnaps Harry. Griffin’s based on the comics character of the same name, but lacks the energy manipulation and disintegration powers of his comic book counterpart. He does, however, share his weakness, which…I’ll get into that later. For now, Cisco and Barry begin trying to track down Harry’s abductor. Meanwhile, on Earth-2, Caitlin is a “guest” in Zoom’s lair. I say “guest” because she’s not trapped in a cage and I use the quotation marks because it’s fricking Zoom. Anyway, she comes across the Unknown Prisoner and Killer Frost, both in separate cages.

Frost wants out, and makes a deal with Caitlin to help her escape, too.

Harry comes to in an abandoned funhouse. Griffin wants Harry to cure him of his powers because they come with a cost. Griffin looks about fifty years old, but in reality he’s only seventeen. His powers are causing him to rapidly age.

Here’s where we get into the problem with this. Griffin’s degeneration makes sense in the comics (well, as much as anything does in comics) because he was the only one affected by the explosion which gave him his powers. But on the show, he’s one of the endless metas affected by the particle accelerator explosion, yet he seems to be the only one whose powers are going to kill him. There’s no indication that maybe some genetic defect is triggering his powers to manifest in this fashion, just that “the particle accelerator made him rapidly age”. I get why they chose Griffin, I get the whole “Harry has to learn that his actions have consequences” thing, but it’s apparent that this was one of those things that got overlooked by the crew.

Barry brings Jesse back to S.T.A.R. Labs, and they immediately get to work trying to find Harry. I’ll go ahead and address the C- and D-plots here: Iris is getting hot thinking about Barry and Wally wants to thank the Flash for saving his life. Spoiler Alert: he does. Back to the main story! Harry is trying to fake a cure for Griffin, but Griffin knows what’s up and is going to kill Wells. That’s when Team Flash shows up and, even without Barry’s powers, they manage to take down Griffin by getting him to expend his powers and thus kill himself by turning into an old man and giving himself a heart attack.

Wells and Jesse hash it out, and then Wells tells Barry he’s going to get Barry his powers back…by causing another particle accelerator explosion. Good plan, can’t see any drawbacks to that at all! Meanwhile, on Earth-2, Caitlin succeeds in freeing Killer Frost, who then proceeds to try and kill Caitlin. But Zoom shows up and impales Killer Frost with her own icicle. Zoom is trying to make Caitlin love him, which is why he kept Killer Frost alive for so long, but because Caitlin keeps pleading to go home, he decides he wants to kill all the Earths. Which is a completely normal motivation, if everything you learned about relationships was from r/incel. (Don’t Google that.)

This was an okay episode, a bit of filler plotwise before the final four episodes of the season. There was some good character development for Wells and Jesse, but that’s about it.

Next time, Zoom returns and he’s not alone.

George Hatch can be found on Twitter @Raeseti. This author blurb is also filler.

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