Originally aired May 5th 2015
In Grodd we trust! That should be the motto of Flash fans moving forward. As good as season one of the Flash has been the question I always come back to is: how will the show continue to live up to expectations once the man in yellow story line is concluded? Specifically how will the show do without Tom Cavenaugh bringing eccentric evil to screen every week as Harrison Wells? Relax Flash fans the giant,telepathic, TV CGI Gorilla is on the job. This episode is an example of just how rich the Flash Rogue’s gallery is, specifically in nemeses. Just like Reverse Flash, Grodd is exactly that! While Arrow has to continuously borrow from the Batman mythos, Flash has the luxury of regularly facing interesting villains. While Grodd may seem nothing more than a Reverse Flash pawn at this point, concluding scenes would indicate that will not continue to be the case.
While this episode did much to solidify the future antagonism of the show it was also extremely entertaining, and emotional in the moment. The moments when the heroes of S.T.A.R labs first encounter Gorilla Grodd, lives up to Cisco’s comparison’s to Jurassic Park. Considering this is a CW TV show the portrayal of Grodd, and his interactions with other characters are quite impressive. At the best moments the Grodd CGI looks as compelling as anything seen in the opening action sequence of Avengers: Age of Ultron, never taking the television audience completely out of the action.
This episodes best moment, also provided it’s weakest one. 95% of the Barry and Iris stuff feels organic and heartfelt as Iris tries to accept that her adopted brother and true love is the Flash. However near the episode’s climax as Iris tries to help Barry break Grodd’s telepathic hold before he meets the front end of a train, Flash is able to break free only by focusing on the voice of Iris. This attempt at emotion came across as very tropish, and provided a somewhat groan worthy final few minutes.
The flash show runners should be applauded for the amount they accomplished here. In an episode that could have just felt like pure set-up they are able to: further flesh out the Barry and Iris relationship, establish the Grodd character, and show the natural growth of the S.T.A.R Labs team as they begin to realize maybe they don’t need Harrison Wells to accomplish great things.