Hello BagoNation! I’ll have the pleasure of bringing you reviews of various television shows this season. My goal is to bring you sincere and thoughtful reviews of some of the most interesting shows around. Reviews will be published the day after the episode airs (barring extraordinary circumstances). Join me as we explore these stories together and give tv shows numerical ratings!!
“Fast Lane” proved to be another solid week for The Flash, a show that has consistently found ways to balance action and effects with truthful characters and emotion. Zoom made his return for the first time since the mid-season finale, Tar Pit played villain of the week (with some pretty effective special effects stealing some scenes); and the relationships between Joe, Iris, and Wally took precedence this week.
One of the highlights (and also, unfortunately, one of the lower points) of “Fast Lane” was Harrison Wells secretly stealing Barry’s speed. Tom Cavanagh has consistently been one of The Flash’s best assets, and that remains ever true here. Multiple scenes between him and a now-single Barry (Grant Gustin) shine light on a growing mentor, and even a father/son relationship between the two. However, his story arc this season has been sub-par on many occasions. Stealing Barry’s speed to give to Zoom in order to save his daughter could have been a more fleshed out and larger subplot through the rest of the season. But Harrison gave up the act by the end of the episode, undermining the weight of his motivation in the first place.
The plot device did do its job this week, however, stealing just enough of Barry’s speed to stop him from saving Iris during a Tar Pit attack. These types of accidents are necessary to keep The Flash feeling grounded and real. The Flash, as a show, has always found strength in leaning into the absurd nature of its content, treating superheroes and villains with a comedic seriousness. Iris becoming (semi-) seriously injured in the same episode as Cisco makes jokes about an app to track meta-humans is exactly why The Flash is still a joy to watch week after week.
Speaking of Iris, Candice Patton got some nice moments to shine in “Fast Lane.” Iris has not always had the best scenes or character development throughout the series thus far, but this week, Patton took on the hard-hitting detective role as Iris dove into the world of underground racing. Finally giving audiences a reason to cheer for Iris made that injury scene that much more credible. Joe (Jesse L. Martin) became the badass following Iris’ hospitalization, punching multiple people in the faces and threatening to kill them. Here again, the writing team walked the wire between comedy and reality to great success.
As mentioned earlier, Zoom did reappear briefly this week, taking a hit of Barry’s speed from Wells. Zoom (Tony Todd) is a pretty terrifying villain when he wants to be, but stealing Barry’s speed is just an underwhelming motivation for a main season antagonist. The show has many, many great points, but it needs to give audiences something to pull the show into the next level of cohesive greatness.
The episode ended with Barry convincing the team to let Harrison Wells stay on Earth 1 and help him get his daughter back. This, in essence, just reverts us back to where we were a few episodes ago, which may be frustrating for some viewers. But the important take away of this week’s episode is that the show is not taking the fast lane (get it?) towards the season finale, but is instead working to build towards another major change for these beloved characters.
Catch new episodes of The Flash, Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW