“My name is Barry Allen, I am the fastest man alive”….but are you though?
When the Cw network started to develop a live action adaptation for speed star, ‘The flash’ I was excited and a but skeptical. The earlier season of their first show Arrow was decent. The story, character development and dialogue wasn’t wooden and “cartoony” as one would expect.
So I decided to give The flash a chance. The first episode was without a doubt, solid. In fact the entire season won all DC fans over, with the character interaction, the clever twist and most importantly the CGI. Given that the show requires a heavy use of special effects, the creative team behind these specials did a very good job.
However, as the show progressed, it started suffering from what most TV shows suffer from. Repetition, illogical plots and most annoyingly, the dialogue. God, the dialogue got so bad. Although, the characters do their best to work with the material which the script writers give to them it just isn’t enough to save the flash from some God awful errors and mistakes.
1. His Speed
After being doused in chemicals struck by lightning, Barry Allen gained superhuman abilities by being able to run faster than the speed of light. With his new found abilities, he devotes himself to fighting crime and finding other meta humans like himself. If you read the flash comics religiously, you would know how fast Barry Allen truly is. This is the same speedster who was able to save five hundred thousand people from a nuclear explosion in a matter of seconds. In theory, Barry should be impossible to hit but this theory would make you wonder why in several episodes of CW’s the flash you see a lot a villains who are way slower than him take him. Really? Captain Colds gun take down the flash? Even when he has an ample amount of time to dodge the attack. In the comics, Flash has indeed been taken down by some of his non speedster adversaries but when he is distracted or when they perform a melee move on him. This is quite understandable because he’s the flash and not Spiderman. Sensing impending danger probably isn’t one of his strengths.
2. Iris West
Iris west is Barry Allen ‘s adoptive step-sister and eventual love interest in the flash TV show. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Iris West ends up being on the top list of the most hated characters of all time right next to “Ted Mosby” and “Skylar White”. TV viewers all around the world have aired the dislike for Candice Patton’s portrayal of the character on CW’s The Flash. The first and most glaring problem here is the obvious lack of chemistry between the characters. The romantic scenes between Barry and Iris which are supposed to be cute all end up being cringe worthy. Again, you can’t blame the actress, all the hate Candice Patton receives as Iris West can be blamed on the writers of the show.
3. Time Travel Shenanigans
From the first season of The flash, one rule was always emphasized or overemphasized.. “Time can have ripple effects through all of history, and that’s why speedsters shouldn’t change the timeline” bla bla bla. The show runners respected and held this rule together through seasons 1 & 2. However, everything fell apart in the subsequent seasons.
Barry and other members of the team began to bend the rules as they liked. While some of these indeed had negative effects on the timeline, others didn’t. And the show runners didn’t think it was necessary to explain any of it. Well, I have two words for you: “plot” and “convenience”.
