The Flash Episode 1x15 - Out of Time

Yup. Actually it's been totally predictable since the moment Linda appeared on-screen and hit it off with Barry.

Iris looks at Barry as nothing more than brother/friend. Check.
Barry confesses feelings. Check.
Iris thinks, "Ew, brother/friend only!" Check.
Barry starts to move on from Iris, finds another girl. Check.
Iris sees Barry with other girl, thinks, "Wait, Barry's over me?" Starts to get jealous. Check.
Iris makes leap from jealous to wants-Barry. Check.
"Aww, we have tru luvvvv." Check. Well, almost.

PUAs will tell you that girls wanting guys they suddenly can't have is ludicrously common.

I don't think Candice has helped matters. She's hot but kind of a bland performer. It also doesn't help that she & Grant have very little chemistry, whereas we've seen Grant have good-to-great chemistry with both Malese (Linda) and Emily (Felicity).

 

Barry has way more chemistry with Iris than with Linda or Felicity (imho).

 

The moment Barry popped up in the past, I thought, 'reset'. Pity, I thought the writers were going to show some major balls.

 

Yeah. I pretty knew there was gonna be a love quadrangle from the pilot. Iris suddenly getting jealous and staking her claim is pretty common , especially given that Barry declared his feelings and then suddenly moved on. Plus its standard a standard plot device in tv, movies, books, culture, etc, since the beginning of time. That's why I never thought it was that unrealistic.

I think Grant and Candice have more of a buddy or sidekicks kinda chemistry than a romantic one. In that sense casting them as friends works, but with Rickards and Malese there are clearly sparks.

 

I totally agree, it is so damn annoying that they go back to status quo like that. I understand that they need that for how they want to tell the story but it is still such a cheap cope-out.

I mean they present us with things like Cisco dying, Central City about to be destroyed by a giant wave, Barry FINALLY telling Irisabout being the Flash, even Signs being paralyzed, and then they just take it all back again.

I mean, we already saw in the trailers that Cisco isn't dead, yeah, but they still could have gotten so much more out of this.

 

Especially since Barry didn't even know that Cisco died; leading me to wonder what the point was with that scene.

 

Exactly. I do get it that they put it in there to get some emotional reaction from the audience, which they certainly did, but I think they could have handled it bett.

 

Reveal the real name of Wells, what he want, what he is capable of doing for his goal, (stop the weird theories t: )

 

Those people make money with those weird theories, though. You can see in this forum alone how invested some can get due to that and it is a clever way to keep the viewers interested that way.

No, I still think it was partly just lazy or unoriginal writing because they wanted to introduce Barry being able to travel through time and couldn't come up with a better story to do so.

 

For me this episode was approaching Game of Thrones in that, all bets are off and no one is safe and therefore it is impossible to predict what happens and so is the most compelling TV ever. I spent the entire episode being on the edge of my seat going, no way, NO WAY, NO WAY!! But the reset button is going to be pressed. I still give the episode 10/10 because in the moment I was truly moved by what I saw and reset wont change that...but I do feel slightly cheated.

 

It shows that Wells is capable of easily killing anyone at S.T.A.R. labs with 0 hesitation if he felt he had to. Despite how fond he has become of them while having them under his wing. Like a true unadulterated sociopath.

Which adds serious tension to what surely will be the next few weeks of suspicion from those characters regarding Wells. It's solid character development which adds a new layer to the dynamics of those relationships before we see the season come to a close. Also provided a forum for a very interesting reveal; that he originally went back in time to kill Barry Allen.

There are still more episodes to go including them finding out who Wells is and the episode from Wells/Thawne's perspective during the events of episode 9. So the events of this episode will add even more layers to revelations in those episodes even though the timeline will be changed in story.

We the audience still very much saw those scenes and know just how evil Wells could truly be now without them having him twirl his mustache and betray anything we've seen from him before.

 

The thing about Barry going back in time makes so much sense with the story as a whole. I don't understand how people are interpreting it as lazy or bad writing.

 

I don't know why but I'm not that bothered by the time travel "cop out." I suppose I should be and maybe in the future I will be but right now I am not.

 

Normally you would say lazy writing but time travel is such a staple of Flash.
Spider-Man - Romance
Flash - Time Travel

 

I'm quite sure there's a reason for the trip, other than just showing Barry's first trip back thru time and him eventually "ret-conning" everything. All the events that happened prior to that point happened for a reason. It's not sloppy or contrived, it has a purpose within the storyline which has yet to be revealed.

 

Once everything is reset.

Barry will still KNOW Iris has feelings for him.
The audience will KNOW Wells is capable of killing anyone from Team Flash.

 

I agree with you completely. I just find it strange that viewers think they used the whole time travel trick as an easy solution to undo all the events that just happened.

 

I think it gives some people Smallville flashbacks , given that they would use similar type of devices to resolve things that weren't working or to do one off episodes. In this case though, time travel is a big part of the Flash myths so i'm totally down with it. The only way I could see it being a problem is if it becomes a crutch and a means to resolve bold or unpopular creative decisions or as a way of getting out of writing characters into corners.

I would caution however, that the writers don't do it all the time just because you start to take away the high stakes and real consequences when they can be resolved simply by traveling back and fixing things. Superman has very much the same issue with his power level and his tv shows have often run into the problem of making your the hero so powerful that their is no real sense of danger.

That said, I love the time travel aspect of Flash and if the writers handle it sparingly and well , and it doesn't become what Kryptonite was to Smallville, it can work.

 

Eh,I don't get the bellyaching over the Time Reverse Solution.It's the same thing with the ending to S:TM. It's not a cop-out as much as it gives the opportunity for some great dramatic moments while still retaining the status quo.(How else are you going to see a dramatic Lois or in this case Cisco death scene?) It's been a useful tool in fiction for ages. I gave this week a 9 btw.

 

I'm thinking this episode is a setup for future (no pun intended) episodes where we will see what effect Barry's ability to travel thru time has on his universe, and what consequences, good or bad, can come from it. I'm very curious to see exactly how Berlanti et al handle it.

 

I wonder if....Barry traveling through time is the reason Sara is revived in Arrow. Like maybe at the end of the season Barry travels back to the past, changes some things and as a result it not only affects his show but Arrow as well.

 

If we could erase the events of Season 3, that'd be just gravy.

 

This is how I prefer my time travel storylines. I mean, people hate when movies turn out to be nothing but a dream sequence, and time travel tends to lead down that path at times. But I like when someone goes to the past and realizes that by changing one thing, they changed a lot of others things and how it can't always be positive like Back to the Future was. You can't really go back to the past to fix things.

 

I'm interested to see if this will turn out to be a predestination paradox or if history really can be changed. I don't think I can resolve the former with Barry apparently taking the place of his past self though. I tend to appreciate the 'closed-loop' fictional approach to time travel over other variants, because it does to some degree remove the reset button from the writers' bag of tricks.

It's been a few days and the Wells / Cisco scene is still staying with me. It packed one hell of a punch.

 

Barry will know that he also will be the only one that has suspisions about wells. However He won't know that Wells killed Cisco.