Flashback Ep 1

The speaker is introducing a potential new podcast called Flashback, where they would rewatch episodes of the TV show The Flash. They mention that they don't want to hear the general public's opinions on the show and that they don't have a co-host. They discuss the pilot episode of The Flash, including the introduction of the main character Barry Allen and his childhood. They mention the murder of Barry's mother and the appearance of the Man in Yellow. They also discuss the CSI scenes in the episode and how they portray Barry as a forensic genius. They acknowledge that the show doesn't focus on this aspect later on. They mention some behind-the-scenes issues with the show's creators. Hello everyone, and welcome to what I am tentatively calling Flashback, a Flash rewatch podcast. I've vaguely been throwing the idea about this around on Tumblr recently because I have become such a podcast girly over the past couple of months, I basically listen to podcasts 24-7. Generally, like Doctor Who podcasts, but I've just got to the point where I've started listening to podcasts for shows I don't even watch. And then it occurred to me that it might actually be really fun to do a Flash rewatch podcast, with a couple of caveats, the first being that I actually do not wish to hear the general public's opinions on The CW's The Flash, and the second being that I do not actually have a co-host. I do have people in my life who I have forced to watch the show, but nobody who I think would be willing to commit to doing a podcast with me. So this is definitely going to be a more casual thing with just a single host of my good self. It may not even be a thing that I do long-term, it might be something that I get bored of incredibly quickly, so that is just your forewarning, but I thought it would be fun to revisit the show, and I always have loads of thoughts whenever I do a rewatch, so I thought it would actually be really fun to share those, in case you're all not sick of hearing my Flash-related opinions already. So without further ado, let's get stuck into Season 1, Episode 1 of The Flash, very imaginatively named Pilot. I'm lying, I do have a co-host, and her name is Valletta. Would you like to introduce yourself, my love? As you can see, she is very insightful, and has very important opinions, having probably sat through more of this show than many humans. So the first time we ever see Barry Allen, we see him flying around the city at super speed while a voiceover asks us to believe in the impossible, and explains that the blur and the streak that we see flying around the streets at impossible speeds is actually him. This opening always reminds me, irresistibly, of The Simpsons, because it's just the fact that we open in with, like, the shot of the clouds is the very first thing we see in the show, and it always just makes me think of The Simpsons, so the first time we see Barry, we see him very impressively running around the city as The Flash. The second time we see Barry Allen, we see him being chased by children, and then knocked over and having the shit beaten out of him by about five kids at once, which is extremely funny and definitely sets the tone for a lot of the first season, which is obviously Barry relentlessly getting his ass handed to him. And I will say that I do appreciate that they started the way they mean to go on, and that the show writers understand me on a deep spiritual level, because I personally love to see Barry getting the shit kicked out of him, and I say that with love, because he's just so good at it. They use this as kind of a shorthand way of showing us that even before Barry became The Flash, he was a hero, because he then returns home, and he's being patched up by his mum, and explaining to her that he was being beaten up because he tried to defend another child from being bullied, and his mum sort of tells him, you know, oh, Barry, it's better to have a good heart than fast legs, which is actually a really sweet sentiment, and it sure would be nice if he had internalised that at any point within the entire show, because as we know, it's very common for Barry to, upon losing his speed, to become completely despondent and convinced that he is worthless as a human being, and to forget all his many other incredible qualities. So I think it's interesting that they kind of, first of all, they floated this idea to begin with, but then also that they never refer back to it, like, you'd think that that line would be quite relevant, but they seem to forget that she said it. We get this quite sweet introduction to Nora and Henry in Barry's childhood family life, which I think does quite a lot of heavy lifting in terms of showing that it is this sort of idyllic kind of life that he had as a very young child, that his parents were very much in love, and, you know, he seems to be in quite a well-off living situation, his parents both are very affectionate with him, and he obviously has this really good bond with both of them. So then, of course, they immediately have to tear this loving family apart, because we immediately cut to the night of the murder, and it always shocks me at what a breakneck pace this show moves at, particularly the pilot. I know that, you know, pilots have to do a lot of heavy lifting, they have to really set up things very quickly and prove that they can carry a narrative for an entire season and give you enough reasons to get compelled, but they really do just go straight into it. You know, we've barely met these people, and then the next thing we see of them is the scene on the night of the murder where these mysterious, like, blurs are flying around the living room of Barry's home, and while his mother is kneeling in the middle of the room screaming and crying in terror. Obviously we now know, as viewers, that these mysterious blurs are Eobard Thorne and multiple versions of Barry all flying around at once. It's actually quite hard to keep track of how many there are. One thing I do find quite amusing is that it took them until season nine to remember that there was actually, I think, either a third or a fourth version of Barry running around at that crime scene that they'd totally forgotten about, and so they had to rush back in at the last minute and kind of round that off and send him back one last time to the night of the murder. You know, you can tell they changed showrunners. I want to say that whenever I praise Kreisberg as a showrunner, I say this in complete acknowledgement of the fact that he is a piece of shit person who was fired from all of the Arrowverse shows after numerous allegations of sexual harassment, and upon looking it up on Wikipedia, it turns out that he was actually arrested for sexual assault as recently as 2023, so clearly he is still a piece of shit. So fuck Andrew Kreisberg. It truly is a shame that Eric Wallace seems to be a far superior person and yet an absolutely terrible showrunner. You know, he made lots of improvements in terms of the on-set behaviour and treatment of the actors, particularly Candice Patton, however the show was also dogshit when he was at the helm, so it really does suck how you can't apparently be a good showrunner and a good person, but whatever. So obviously we have this huge fight which has huge repercussions throughout the entire rest of the show. We get to see callbacks to this fight so often, particularly within the first season, and it's hugely important. We get our first glimpse at the Man in Yellow, which is obviously, it's just a split second, but it's a moment that defines the next 15 years of Barry's life, is getting to see the Man in Yellow, the Man in the Lightning, and you know, obviously it gets blown past quite quickly because of how fast they're all moving, but it is really a huge moment for him. And then obviously his future self grabs him. I always wonder exactly how far he took him because it seemed to take Barry quite a while to get back to the house after he took himself away, but he obviously does this to prevent Thorne from murdering him, and Thorne then gets angry at being thwarted and kills Barry's mum instead. So Barry has been abandoned in the street all on his own while this, you know, terrifying thing is happening in his house. He immediately starts running back towards the house, and then we have this really interesting shot where it kind of cuts from him running as a child to him running towards the crime scene as an adult, and we get to see his first interactions with a few more characters that become really important. We meet Joe for the first time, we meet Captain Sing, we get to discover, you know, important things about Barry. We learn that he's a CSI, and the first crime scene is actually really interesting, and again, it was a pilot, they were still sorting things out and figuring out what they wanted to do with it. I do think it's very interesting that they were kind of going with like a Sherlock type thing. I think they were heavily leaning towards like the autistic savant stereotype, I, you know, I talk a lot about my headcanon that Barry has autism and ADHD, but I definitely think they were leaning into the TV stereotype of an autistic savant. It was very Sherlock in the way that they were putting like measurements on the screen, they show that he's somehow able to like know the tread depth of the tires without actually physically measuring anything, and we get Joe sort of shaking his head, looking very impressed with Barry's prowess, so again, this is all shorthand, I think, for showing us that he's some kind of forensics genius, which is something that they really don't focus on as much later on. I think they always, he's always portrayed as competent, but in this first scene, it's kind of implied that he's like almost preternaturally good at being a CSI, and that he's able to figure things out in a way that an ordinary CSI wouldn't necessarily be able to, and I think they probably, there's numerous reasons why they abandoned this, I think. I think it's the same line of thought of why they later kind of walked back on Len plotting all of his heists to the precise second, it's because it's a fucking pain in the ass as a writer to work out these kinds of details, and the amount of like in-depth research you'd have to do for that, like the CSI scenes I think are not really the focus of the show later on. They understandably do what they can to have to do as little actual scientific and CSI research as possible. The show is kind of renowned for its junk science and for sounding like quite good to a layperson, but then if you actually look any of it up, it's all complete bollocks. So, you know, I think it's understandable that they kind of deviated from this quite quickly. We also have the scene where he borrows a pen from Joe's partner, and this scene stands out to me in two ways. First of all, I somehow, Mandela-affected myself into thinking that it was Captain Singh's pen that he took in this scene. I think that's probably because Shire has absolutely no impact on the show in any way. He's literally just there to be killed in this episode so that Eddie can replace him as Joe's partner. And honestly, they don't really do much to build him as a character or make you care about him. Like literally the only thing you know about him is that he has a wife who gave him a pen that Barry uses to scoop up some shit. And then Barry then sniffs it, and it's like, oh, this is fecal matter. And I'm like, is that really the only way he could figure that out? You know, at first I thought this was just kind of shorthand for showing that he's a bit of a freak. But then I was like, oh no, like, it's kind of like, I read something recently about how apparently geologists will lick rocks as a form of identification, because there's like, I think it's like the difference between rock and bone. And if your tongue sticks to it, it's bone. And if it doesn't, it's rock. And obviously there's all kinds of actual scientific methods you can use to figure this out. But in the field, geologists will just lick the rock because it is the fastest and easiest way of determining whether it is a rock or whether it's a bone, which I think is really funny. So that's basically, I think, where Barry was at with the situation. He's like, well, I could take this back to the lab and test it, or I could just give it a big old sniff. I do think as well, this scene does also go a little bit towards, again, showing Barry's kind of social ineptitude, because he doesn't really have any friends at work among the department. He's not well liked. You know, there's a reason why he has his own lab, because he, like, I think it's heavily implied both here and elsewhere in the show that he doesn't play nice with the other CSIs. I think it might even be outright stated at some point that he doesn't get on with them. Later in the show, he seems to have a bit of a better relationship with other members of the department. But at this point, he basically doesn't have good interactions with anyone. And obviously Shire doesn't particularly like him, and there's some conflict with Captain Thing, because Barry's repeatedly been late for work, and he's a bit chaotic and things like that. Again, not to be on my, like, autistic Barry Allen bullshit, but it's almost like he has social deficits or something. We then cut to the crime lab, and we get to meet my girl, my wife, the love of my life, Miss Iris West. Oh, she makes me so happy. I think she's so different in the pilot, though. I think, like, the early, like, Season 1 Iris in general, she's a lot more, like, carefree. She's fun, she's flirty, she's out to have a good time, she doesn't take anything seriously, she kind of gives Barry a little bit of a hard time, she, like, bullies him a little bit, which is kind of funny. She's always like, oh, you're a sad little nerd, aww, like, she's a little bit, like, patronizing and, like, mean in, like, a hot way. I don't know, I kind of love it. Iris does a lot of growing up and maturing, and I'm so used to, like, obviously I know a lot of people kind of stopped around Season 4, but, like, I am up to almost, I'm, like, three or four episodes off finishing the final season, so, like, I'm used to Iris being sort of this very, like, calm, relaxing, chill, like, mature presence. So it's just weird seeing her in the pilot, and she's kind of a little bit of a party girl, she's having a good time. She fully tells Barry, like, hey, I don't give a fuck about your little particle accelerator, but I know it's, like, something you're interested in, so let's go, which, we love a supportive queen. She also has this really fun, like, thing where she's like, oh, like, I want to see some Atom Smasher smashing, which is a fun little Easter egg, because there obviously is a metahuman called Atom Smasher, who we meet later on, not until, like, Season 2, I think, but that was kind of fun. And then, like, Joe comes in, and Barry's like, hey, so I've done some CSI-ing, and the Marvin brothers are on a farm, here you go, here's the address, I found it, whoop whoop. And then Iris is like, Dad? Since Barry solved your poo problem, can we go see the particle accelerator switch on? Which I think, this is so cute for multiple reasons. First of all, like, you really kind of get reminded in that moment that her and Barry grew up together, and that Joe kind of is their, like, shared dad. I don't think the show ever really forgets that Joe is Barry's dad, but it does kind of forget, for good reason, that Barry and Iris did have this weird kind of sibling relationship growing up, and I, you know, I'm obviously glad that they kind of walk back on that. There are a few things in this episode where they're like, oh, he's like my brother, and I'm like, oh, is he though? But like, this moment in particular, where she's like, Dad, can we go see the particle accelerator? They really are like a couple of kids being like, Dad, can we go play out, please? Can Barry play out? Can he come round to my house? Can we have a sleepover? Like, it's so cute. And like, you know, again, they're so young in the pilot. You know what's actually disgusting? I'm pretty sure that I am now older than, like, pirate, pirate? Pilot Barry and Iris. Oh, no, I definitely am. I'm like season three Barry age, that's absolutely revolting. I would like the passage of time to stop, please and thank you very much. I don't like out-aging my fictional characters. When I was watching the first season for the first time, I was like, 2016, so I was probably like 17. And they felt like so mature to me. They felt like adults. And now I'm like, God, these are kids. They are children. And it's kind of insane. But it's just such a cute scene. I don't know how exactly Joe has the authority to tell Barry he can go home early. I feel like that should be up to, like, Barry's supervisor. Not that we ever see, like, any other CSI except from Julian. As far as we're concerned, Barry is the only CSI who works for CCPD. Obviously, we learn later that Barry becomes director of the Central City CSI Police Department. And I'm pretty sure that's because he's the only CSI, he's the only person who works there. We never see any of his co-workers except for Julian. From there, we move on to Dr. Wells's big particle accelerator speech and the big switch on and we got our first little glimpses of Cisco and Caitlin. But then obviously, the big thing that happens next is Iris's laptop gets stolen. This is the laptop which has her dissertation on it. Dissertation, I don't think they fully elaborated or mentioned what her dissertation was in. But this is a fact that I have mentioned before, that in the original concept for the series, Iris was supposed to be some kind of forensic criminologist or a forensic profiler or a criminal profiler or something along those lines, like, that was her chosen career path. And so her dissertation and her degree was actually in psychology. But her laptop gets stolen, Barry chases after the thief to try and get it back, gets the shit beaten out of him with a laptop, and then Eddie jumps in and saves the day and that's when we first meet him and then we have this fun exchange back at the precinct where Barry's like, oh, yeah, that's the new guy, Eddie Thorne and Iris is like, that's Detective Pretty Boy, because apparently that's what Joe calls him, which is really funny. I just would love to know, you know, where Joe, I mean, obviously, we know where Joe came up with this nickname, although Joe has bad taste in men, never trust a blonde man. We remain fortunate that the showrunner at the time managed to talk Grant out of bleaching his hair for the role because by the end of the ninth season, this man would have had no hair left. But yeah, we have this fun exchange because Iris is like, oh, that's Detective Pretty Boy. Yeah, he is pretty, though. We get our first glimpse of Bitchy Barry, he does a fantastic little eye roll because he's jealous. And as we know, Bitchy Barry is good for my soul. Like there's something about him that I just find so enjoyable to watch and it's a character trait, you know, that that like mean, petty streak is something that I really miss from the early seasons. It was just such a fun character trait. Barry then disappears off to the crime lab by himself and we get our first look at the infamous murder cork board where he has collected sort of years of information on his mom's murder. One thing that did strike me is that there's a newspaper clipping that specifically says Nora Allen murdered, which I thought was really funny because like, why would her name be in the headline? This woman was not like a prominent local figure. Anybody reading the headlines would be like, who the fuck is this woman? It would be far more effective to have a headline that was like, local woman murdered. They just, you know, didn't trust us to pick up on the context clues that she was murdered, I guess. And then obviously the particle accelerator explodes and Barry gets struck by lightning. We have all the quite harrowing hospital scenes. There's quite a fun bit where the doctors are like, oh, how did he survive? And again, I've looked this up for research purposes, but it's actually, you know, the vast majority of people who get struck by lightning do survive. But also, can you imagine like, Barry's look? Again, I'm sure I've joked about this before, but you know, on the night that an explosion levelled half a city, Barry gets struck by lightning. The doctors must have been like, what the fuck? Like, we don't have time to deal with this. All these people have been like, caught up in an explosion. This guy just happens to get hit by lightning on the same night. So Barry's in his coma. We see Joe and Iris sort of huddled, terrified and crying while he's being violently resuscitated repeatedly. And then we end up in Star Labs where Sisko and Caitlin are like watching over him and playing Lady Gaga. And I was like, man, if they were doing a reboot of the show and they were to remake this scene to scene, I feel like they would play a Taylor Swift song, assuming that the CW could afford Taylor Swift, which they definitely couldn't. Barry then immediately wakes up to, you know, Lady Gaga and Sisko and Caitlin have the most underwhelming reaction ever. Like, this guy has been in a complete unresponsive state for nine months. We're talking like no brain activity, no indication that he's ever going to wake up. And then he suddenly randomly wakes up one day and their reaction is, oh, he's awake and not, holy shit, he just woke up. What the fuck? Like, I feel like they should have had a little bit more of a intense reaction to him, like blasting out of bed, like, I don't want to, like, spend this whole time ragging on Danielle Panabaker's acting. But I do potentially think her acting isn't necessarily the strongest and it did kind of, like, ruin the show a little bit for me when I realized that her acting is not very good. And I think, to be fair to her, I don't think she's awful, but I think she stands out because the rest of the cast are absolutely fantastic. Carlos Valdez, in particular, his acting is really impressive because apparently this was his first role, which is truly incredible because, again, he's, like, right up there holding his own. But the cast is such, like, they're all such strong actors. So I do think that Danielle maybe stands out a little bit as not being the strongest. But yeah, her reaction was very underwhelming. Again, maybe she was being professional, maybe she was being a doctor, but she just kind of goes, oh, he's awake. I was like, yeah, he is. It's been nine months. Are you not a little bit more surprised? And then this is something funny that I've never noticed before, but we have the infamous Lightning Gave Me Abs scene, but I never actually realized that they don't show Grant's abs on him. They show, like, his reflection, but it's very pointedly cut off from, like, the neck down. I think they actually got an abs stunt double, which is really funny. I'm sorry, I'm just loving the idea. They were like, oh, he has to have abs for this one scene. And Grant Gustin was like, oh, well, I'm afraid I don't have those. So they were like, oh, we'll just get a stunt double. Because I'm looking back, I'm playing the clips back now, and their camera cuts are so strategic that you can't actually see his torso from the nips down. I feel like we see him later in the show and he does have abs. I know that he had them at one point because I remember watching a charity live stream, I think during 2020, during the lockdowns, and I remember Andy Mientus, who plays Hartley, was like, made a throwaway joke about, like, the last time I was this early, Grant Gustin had abs. And Grant was like, fuck off. Anyway, so then we meet Harrison Wells, or aka Eobard Thorne, spoilers. He gives Barry a little tour of the lab, and we get to see parts of the lab that we've never seen before and never see again. Like, there's a bit where they're having a conversation, and they're on, like, a balcony looking down on the particle accelerator tunnel. And I have never seen this part of the lab before. There's, like, fully, like, really nice-looking windows behind them and everything. That's actually a really good setting for a dramatic conversation and a fix, so catch me, like, using this. But this is an area of STAR Labs that we don't see again. We find out that Iris has been visiting Barry a lot, and then Caitlin makes this really bitchy and out-of-pocket comment that Iris talks a lot, and I'm like, fuck you, Caitlin. Who asked you? Don't be a bitch. And Caitlin is a bit of a bitch in this episode. Again, I don't want to spend all this time ragging on Danielle Panabaker's acting, but I have a behind-the-scenes book from, like, the making of the first couple of seasons, and there's a whole bit about the casting, and they talk about how they basically heavily reworked Caitlin as a character, because the original idea and concept that they had for her was quite different. And I think that it was because they were kind of laying the very, very early groundwork for Killer Frost by having her being cold and detached and mean, so they could later, like, slowly transition her into, you know, the Killer Frost persona. But then they liked Danielle so much for the role that they ended up reworking Caitlin's character to fit with more what Danielle is like as a person, and I'm like, okay, well, surely, you know, they wouldn't have to do that because she's just acting. The only not-very-kind conclusion that I can draw is that they didn't think that she could pull it off, and so they were like, oh, well, we want her for the character, so we'll have to make the character fit her, because she can't quite fit the character. And then we jump to jitters, because Barry goes to find Iris, and the first thing I notice is that they completely changed the design of the coffee cups. I know this purely because at one point I was really obsessed with collecting memorabilia from the show. I do own wardrobe cards, which are these, kind of these trading cards that they did at one point, where they literally put pieces of props into, like, they mounted them on these collectible cards you can get, and a lot of it is clothing, so I have bits of multiple screen-worn shirts, but I also have a piece of the Fire and Ice painting that Mick and Len steal. There's websites where you can buy props from TV. At one point they were selling the Operation board game that, like, Barry plays in an episode, but I was also looking at the screen-used jitters coffee mugs, because they were really good quality, but there were none available by the time I was looking, but they're a completely different design from the ones that they have in the pilot, which, again, is such a nitpicky thing for me to pick up on, but this is my rewatch podcast, and I can obsess over whatever minute detail I want. Aww, so the West Island reunion is so cute! Iris asking the important questions, because the first thing she says, pretty much, is should you even be on your feet? No, he should not. He should not be able to stand up, and I know he has accelerated healing, but I still feel like he shouldn't be able to stand up, but it's plot reasons, whatever. She's like, oh, I saw you die, Barry, your heart stops, and then he, like, he puts her hand on his chest so she can feel his heartbeat, and he's, like, still beating, and my heart stopped, let me tell you that. I am obsessed with them. I can't, I can't deal with them, they are so cute, and then this is when Barry gets his, like, first glimpses of, like, speed, like, the world, like, slows down, and I'm not saying that Iris putting her hand on his chest made the world slow down around him, but I'm not not saying that. Another kind of interesting thing is, like, the way they changed the effects. The effects that we see in the pilot are not the ones that we see later in the show, probably because, like, of financial stuff, and also just, they were still working stuff out, but, like, we get different kinds of effects that we don't see later, which are quite interesting. From there, we end up moving on to, sort of, actual plot stuff, because we get to see Clyde Marden robbing a bank. Clyde Marden, I've got to be honest, not a villain that I have literally ever thought about again. He was very much villain of the week. The villain of the week style plot is where this show was at its strongest, and I didn't even think about it, actually, until recently, but somebody did a really interesting post on Tumblr where they talked about the reason that shows tend to meander and fail is because they don't do, like, monster of the week, because that really gives, like, the episodes coherency, and particularly, you know, I'm actually kind of technically doing two rewatches at once, because me and my friend are still working our way very slowly and painfully through season eight. One thing that we've picked up on is that nothing happens, like, the characters are just standing around talking every episode and not doing anything, and the entire reason behind that is that there isn't a villain of the week for most episodes, and the odd episodes that are actually good, it's because there is that villain of the week, and they actually have something to do, so I do think that the strengths of the show lie in that, you know, predictable villain of the week format. They should have stuck with what worked, but in terms of villains, Clyde Marden, not particularly memorable, definitely the least memorable of the two Marden brothers. So he's robbing a bank, Joe gets called out to the robbery, having just reunited with Barry, he's like, shit, Barry, sorry, gotta go, somebody's robbing a bank, Barry's like, oh, do you need help, it's like, babes, what are you gonna do? Like, you're not a cop, you're a scientist, like, chill out, also, you literally just woke up from a cola, calm down. And then we have, like, a big sad moment where Barry finds out that Shia is dead. Is this supposed to be impactful? I know he's Joe's partner, but he just has no impact. It's actually really funny, because years later, there's, like, a scene where, like, a meta is, like, torturing Joe, and, like, getting him to remember, like, somebody he's lost in his past, and he's like, Shia, Shia, and I was like, oh, who's Shia, is that some girlfriend of his? Like, are we gonna get some kind of, like, Joe lore? I just forgot that this guy existed. And then somebody, like, a perpetrator who's just been brought in by the cops, like, tries to grab a gun and, like, shoot everyone, and Barry uses his powers for the first time, and, like, rushes over and disarms him, and then he has this moment where he's like, oh, what the hell's going on? He freaks out, leaves, and then kind of starts, like, realizing what he can do, and, you know, we get some fun scenes of him, like, running around. They really haven't, I don't know if it was, like, bare bones because they couldn't afford all the effects, or because they haven't settled on what the running effect would look like, but there's whole, like, scenes where he's running around, and there's no lightning when he runs at all, like, he's just running, and it looks really weird. He looks quite naked, not a big fan of it, it's really strange. He's like, oh, shit, I have superpowers, so he goes back to S.T.A.R. Labs, like, hey, guys, guess what? And then they take him out to the airfield to test his powers, and he wears that stupid little dorky outfit with the big helmet and the, like, bright red suit, and his hips are so grabbable in this outfit, can I just say? Like, not to be horny on main, but, like, those hips are just sticking out, just waiting to be grabbed onto. You have to, like, not look at the helmet, though, because it's extremely dorky. And to be fair, he probably should wear a Crush helmet at all times, because he gets injured constantly, but it's not a good look for him, I've got to say. And then there's also this quite, like, funny moment where he goes to Caitlyn, he's like, hey, you don't smile much, and she basically just trauma dumps on him, like, get him, girl. She's like, well, my career's fucked, my boss is in a wheelchair, and my fiance is dead, so fuck you, and Barry's like, yeah, all right, fair enough. And then Barry gets his first, like, proper run, and then he has a flashback, and suddenly he's like, oh, shit, maybe this has something to do with the night my mom died. And then he's so distracted by this that he falls down and breaks his arm. I didn't realize that he, like, started breaking bones this early on. Again, the man is just a liability to himself, and he probably should just be wearing a full-body, like, suit at all times, like, you know, shin pads or something. And then we find out about Eddie and Iris, and, like, Barry has this, like, huge moment of betrayal where he's really upset about the fact that she didn't tell him she was dating Eddie. I mean, first of all, when would she have had the time? He's literally been awake for, it's unclear how long, like, it almost seems like all this happens in a day, but there's no way. There is no way all of this could have happened in one day, surely, unless he woke up at, like, 6 a.m. But, yeah, they, like, him and Iris going off and have a little walk and a little heart to heart, and then Clyde Marden shows up, and there's a whole fight scene where Barry, you know, tries to take him on and doesn't really do a great job. They went crazy with this fight scene, like, they, you know, Barry was, like, jumping in and out of moving cars, they were blowing shit up, it was kind of wild, honestly. So then we have the aftermath of the fight, which is this very charged conversation between Barry and Joe, and I want to start by saying I adore Joe, genuinely a character that I have incredibly fond feelings for. He is the ultimate TV dad of all time. If I could pick any fictional dad to be my dad, it would be Joe West. That being said, he does definitely have some big character flaws, and I feel like this confrontation with Barry really makes that clear. Joe arrives on the scene where there's just been this incredibly dramatic, like, pile-up, you know, a car's exploded, a man has died, you know, it's a big old mess, and Barry and Iris were there and were caught up in it. Barry goes up to Joe and says, Joe, I saw everything that happened, I witnessed the whole thing, it was Clyde Marden, and I think he can control the weather. And Joe's reaction is so unfair and unreasonable to my mind, because we know this has been a point of contention between them for the past 15 years, where, you know, Joe's had a very hard time accepting that Barry can't accept, from Joe's perspective, Barry has created this sort of fictional villain in The Man in Yellow, and this is all part of his delusion, because his mind created this sort of made-up version of events to cope with the immense trauma of seeing his mother murdered in front of him by his own father. You would think that it would be in Joe's head, hey, I know that this is how his mind works when Barry witnesses an incredibly difficult and traumatic situation. His brain copes by creating delusions. And then another facet of this is something I learned recently, actually, when I was doing research for fanfiction purposes, is that it's actually incredibly common for coma patients to have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and to have delusions and hallucinations, and to not really understand what's real, because a coma is a type of traumatic brain injury, in most instances, and when you're waking up from even just a brief coma, it's really common for the brain to do really weird shit in order to cope with it, because your brain is damaged, essentially, it's a traumatic brain injury. And I read a really interesting blog post about someone who had been in only a very brief coma of, I think, maybe a couple of weeks. When they were coming out of it, they had no idea where they were, they were having conversations with a stranger on a beach, and it later turned out this stranger was their own father, and they'd had this entire conversation from their hospital bed, but they didn't know where they were, they genuinely thought that they were sitting on a beach talking to some random stranger. They were talking about their dad, to their dad. So that kind of goes to show just the kind of weird things that a brain can do in a coma. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting Joe to have known that, but you would think that common sense would give him some empathy in this situation and go, okay, well, I know that Barry has a history of his brain creates these delusions to cope with massive trauma. He has history of this from his childhood. He's just been through two more incredibly traumatic events, which to him are in very quick succession, because let us not forget, Barry has been in a coma, he got struck by lightning, he's been in a coma for nine months. He wakes up, and I think literally within a few hours of awaking from his coma, which is already a huge trauma, he then immediately gets involved in this incredibly traumatic incident where a man dies. So you would think that Joe would go, oh, hey, you know, maybe he should see a doctor, like maybe he needs help. But instead, Joe just gets incredibly aggressive with him and he's like, oh, your dad killed your mom, grow up. And he shouts this at Barry in the middle of the street, and it's so unfair and unreasonable. And it's just, oh, again, I know that they did this narratively to convey that this has been a point of contention between them, but this is something that they never really bring up again. And I've spoken about it so many times, it's something that I've been incredibly vocal about how they should not have dropped this plot point of Barry has been shouting about this thing that happened to him his whole life, and nobody has ever believed him. And this is a pattern that continues throughout the entire show, where Barry is constantly saying, hey, this is happening, I saw this, this person is bad news, and nobody ever believes him. And I think, you know, if the writers were a bit smarter, you know, no offense, but if they were had a bit more about them, they would make that a bigger point of contention, because this man should be incredibly triggered by this. Like, we know that he's quick to anger, you know, he flies off the handle so often within the first season. Oh, I love first season, angry Barry, he's so mad, he's constantly losing his temper with people. It's great. So why does he not have this huge complex about not being believed? This man should be losing his shit every time somebody questions him ever, because he's always right. Like, I, you know, not to bring Greek mythology into this, I, generally, I assign Barry the role of different mythological figures, if I'm making those comparisons. I do have, like, well over 100k of a Hades and Persephone called Westallon AU, that God knows if that'll ever see the light of day, I shall hope so. But, you know, so I do like to assign Barry as a little bit of a Persephone figure, I don't know why. But he's also a total Cassandra, because throughout the entire show, he is speaking the truth and everybody just thinks he's crazy and delusional, and I think he should have got to be angrier about it, and I think there should have been some kind of acknowledgement of that, outside of just this singular episode. I think they could have got some really interesting mileage, pun intended, and interesting content out of that, if they had built more on that, because, you know, I find it hard to believe that Barry would just be that quick to forgive 15 years of gaslighting, essentially. Not to misuse the term, because it's heavily misused online, and I'm not convinced entirely that I'm using it correctly, but for years, everybody's been telling Barry that his version of events is not what happened. I do think that he should have been angrier about that in the long term, and that they could have built something interesting in terms of his and Jo's relationship of, yeah, you believe me now, but I'm still angry about the many years that you didn't, even though I understand why. I don't know. I think there's some interesting character work to be had there, and Jo just does not handle this situation well. You would think that, you know, I'm pretty sure it's canon that he took Barry to therapists to try and help with this whole delusion, so you'd think maybe some of those therapists might have taught Jo some coping skills of, hey, here's how you handle your delusional, traumatised foster child. Top tip, Jo, don't scream at him about his trauma in the middle of the street when he almost got, like, killed in a massive, fiery explosion, you know, I mean, that's a good place to start. Barry, understandably, is upset at being spoken to this way when he's literally right, so he goes storming off, and then, of course, immediately, Eddie comes walking up to Jo like, oh, hey, Jo, look how funny this is, this eyewitness has drawn this sketch that looks suspiciously like Clyde Marden, but, you know, obviously, it can't be Clyde Marden because he's dead, which is not particularly subtle writing. They had already made it pretty clear from Jo repeatedly saying Clyde Marden is dead, but they really had to hammer that point home, and you see Jo looking like he sucked on a lemon. Meanwhile, Barry storms off to STAR Labs to take out his rage on Wells, go, baby girl, go. He's, like, fuming, and he immediately confronts Wells and is like, hey, I'm not the only person with powers, am I? Like, your particle accelerator explosion has caused consequences for lots of other people. Cisco gets very excited about the concept of, like, there being loads of matters and thinks it's really cool, and Barry's like, no, fuck off, it's ruined people's lives. Grow up. And then there's this whole interesting scene where Eobard, aka Wells, it's so confusing. I'll just call him Dr. Wells for now, because that's how we know him as. But Wells is telling Barry, what's important is you. You are the priority. And I think that was a really interesting point, because he obviously gives these fake reasons for why this is the case, but we know that this is Eobard Thorne, and he is obsessed with Barry, and obviously Barry is his priority, because he needs Barry and his speed, and he's orchestrated this entire thing to get Barry in the exact position where he is now. So when Barry shows this interest in stopping Marden and getting involved and using his powers to save people, which he's already done twice, by the way, like, he's already, well, I don't think he actually technically successfully saved anyone when he attempted to fight Clyde Marden, but he did save some police officers from getting shot at the precinct. But it is interesting that, you know, Thorne, Wells, whoever, obviously has a vested interest in keeping Barry out of the action, because can you imagine how devastating it would be? He's, like, lived a lie for 15 years, pretending to be Harris and Wells to get Barry in this position. And then Barry immediately goes off to try and fight a metahuman, woefully unprepared, and then gets killed instantly. Like, obviously, that's a fate that Thorne wants to avoid. So he does his best to put Barry off. And he actually appeals to him in a really interesting way, where he says, we need you because we want to use your biology, you heal really quickly, so we want to use your biology to try and help people. And I do think it's interesting that he knows Barry well enough to know that just telling him, don't be dumb, don't go and risk your life, isn't going to be enough of an appeal. So he tries to come up with an alternate way for Barry to help people, you know, which Barry doesn't listen to, obviously, why would he? But it is sort of, you know, there is this awareness and how well Thorne knows him. Barry would not be motivated to step back for his own interests, he wouldn't protect himself. You know, if it's just his own life at risk, he doesn't care, but the prospect of him needing to stay alive so they can study him for science is something that he could potentially be swayed by. And then Thorne tells him, you know, he has this very crushing line of, you're not a hero. And I'm like, want to bet? You want to bet, mate? You want to bet? And then we cut to another flashback back to the night of Barry's mum's murder, where we see him return to the house. And this has always driven me crazy, but he runs back to the house, somehow, like, runs past all the cops who were swarming the scene. I do want to know exactly how far, like, his future self took him, because it seems to take him a really long time to make his way back to the house. Long enough for the police to have been called and have set up all the crime scene and everything. But Barry runs back to the house, runs straight past all the officers and the police tape, charges into the middle of this active crime scene to where his mum is lying dead on the floor, and pulls back the sheet to view her, like, brutally murdered corpse. Why are these cops so bad at their jobs? This is an 11-year-old boy, and not one of them successfully managed to stop it. An 11-year-old boy that has canonically been described as, like, slow and clumsy. And yet not one of them managed to intervene in time to prevent him from seeing his mother's corpse. They all suck. They're bad at their jobs. They're terrible at their jobs. And I also, I know that, you know, the entire in-universe reason Barry became a CFI is so that he can prove that his dad is innocent and solve his mum's murder. However, I do also think that there's something very telling about this hugely traumatising event of him going to, like, his first crime scene was his mum's crime scene. It's obviously a hugely formative moment for him, like, that he, you know, every body is like his mum's body. If that makes sense, like, he's revisiting the same crime scene. Every crime scene is just the same crime scene for him. And it's obvious that there was something very formative about this moment, not just in the sense of, oh, I want to solve this, but it obviously fucked with something deep in his psyche to have seen his mother's dead body at such an early age and to have burst into the middle of this crime scene. And like, I think it's affected him in multiple ways that, you know, he's then sort of developed this interest in and affinity for death and the science of death. It's more macabre than just this, oh, I want to solve my mum's murder and I want to get justice for people. It's this fixation with death that he develops after seeing his mum's body at this very young age. Instead of shying away from it, he really embraces it. And I always think it's maybe a control thing, like, he becomes really interested in that side of, like, forensic science and understanding the science of crime scenes and a dead body and what it all means. Instead of shying away from it, he really embraces it. And I don't know, I think it's very interesting how he's sort of described as being someone who runs, but then when he sees this incredibly traumatising thing, he runs towards it and spends his whole life pursuing it and re-exposing himself to his trauma, which is really interesting. We return to the present day where Barry runs to Starling City or Star City, I can't remember what it was at this point, I don't know when they changed the name, but he runs to Starling City to have a conversation with Oliver about heroism, because Oliver's kind of a little bit of a mental figure to Barry at this point. I'm not going to go into this one massively purely because I don't really have much interest in Oliver as a character, honestly my feelings about Stephen Armel tend to cloud my judgement on the character, so I don't really care about Oliver. The main thing that stands out to me in this one is, there's a really funny moment where Barry says, what if I'm not a hero, what if I'm just some guy, which I thought was the funniest thing I've ever heard. And then there's also a moment where Oliver describes Barry as a guardian angel watching over Central City, which I thought was quite interesting for a couple of reasons. The first being that there is a little bit of religious imagery in this episode, not a lot, but when I say imagery I just mean references to religious iconography. Also because of the infamous Leonard Snart quote from that one episode of Legends where he's having the conversation with Mick and he says that angels want you to do the right thing and doing the right thing gets you killed, which I have always interpreted as a reference to Barry encouraging him to become a hero, which ultimately leads to his death. So my ears pricked up at hearing Barry described as an angel. Barry then runs back to Star Labs and basically tells them, hey, you guys suck because I immediately found all this evidence of metahuman activity that you totally missed, let's do the hero thing. Then Sisko reveals the Flash suit, the first ever Flash suit, which is so cute. And obviously we get the origin story where he says that he made it for firefighters. And it's really cute because he's like, oh, I thought that if we could make something good then people wouldn't hate Dr. Wells anymore. And first of all, it's so sweet that he was thinking about redeeming Dr. Wells and not about himself. His career was also very much ruined and it wasn't his fault. But then I also think it's very sort of sweet, naive, that he thinks that literally anybody would trust a device made by Star Labs. I think if Sisko had taken this suit to any actual firefighter and gone, hey, we made you this suit, they'd go, okay, but you guys blew up the city, so we're not going to wear that because we have no faith in your abilities at this point. It's a good suit. I love the suit. It's not my favourite suit. I think probably the season two or maybe three suit is my favourite. I do think the white emblem adds a little something. I'm not the biggest fan of the red emblem, but I just love the darker colour of it. I think it's so much nicer than the hideous red suit that we end up with in the later seasons that just looked so cheap and so just tacky and, I don't know, I don't know how we have such a glow down with the suits. I know they were trying to go more comic accurate, but they really did end up just looking cheap and itchy. They were probably more comfortable for Grant to wear, to be fair, because I believe that the, particularly the mask from the suit, which they had to glue down, were quite uncomfortable. And I remember seeing behind the scenes photos of him with like blue burns on his face. So sorry to this man, however, it does look far more nice, the old suit. And also Barry is wearing a very nice black shirt in this episode, which I don't think we ever see him wear, like a black college shirt again, but it's so hot. He looks so fucking good in it. I'm just, oh, it's a good look for him. Anyway, then we cut to Eddie and Joe confronting Clyde Marden at the farm and they have a little bit of a back and forth and Clyde Marden talks about believing that he's a god and, you know, again, we go back to the slight religious iconography. I do think, you know, I doubt that they meant anything this clever, but you could make a little bit of a argument about if Marden is a god and Barry is an angel, like Marden's a vengeful god, Barry is an angelic force, I don't know. Again, I sincerely doubt that they were thinking about it that hard, but it's my job to think about things that hard. So Marden has his little speech and Joe has the funniest moment where like, Marden's like, oh, I'm a god and Joe just goes, shut the hell up in the funniest, like, his attitude is so funny. It made me absolutely cackle. And then we have the little tornado and the effects look so fucking good. It's insane. I don't want to keep ragging on the later seasons, this is mostly about how much I love the early seasons, but how do the effects on, like, the pilot episode look so much fucking better than the effects from almost 10 years later that look absolutely like shit because they weren't paying their CGI artists properly and the budget had gone to shit because nobody was watching anymore. But they have this whole moment where Barry is trying to run fast enough to unravel the tornado and I think they said he has to run at 700 miles per hour. I was surprised he was clocking those kinds of speeds this early on. I really thought it took him longer to work up to that. But then Caitlin has the moment where she's like, oh, like, what if he can't take it? I'm like, oh, babes, he can take it. Trust me. We have the first E.O. Wells pep talk where Barry fails the first time he tries to unravel the tornado and then we have, like, the whole thing of, like, Wells, like, whispering in his ear and giving him this, like, motivational but strangely sinister speech in, like, a really hypnotic tone. And I just need Tom Cavanagh to be following me around, talking to me like that, and giving me these, like, serious pep talks because there's just something magical about it. And, like, whenever I think of season one and, like, these moments, they really give you chills. Like, there's just something about it. And, you know, Tom does a fantastic job with Erad Thorne. I love... I don't know if I was about to say I love all the Wellses. That would be a lie. I love some more than others. Mostly, I just love Wells Abad and Harry. But there's just something about E.O. Wells, Wells Abad, whatever we want to call him. He's just so sinister and creepy but oddly compelling and hypnotic and there's just something about this man that is just insane. We have the first ever Run, Barry, Run, which is a pivotal moment in the show's history. And it made me grin like an idiot because, you know, there's just something about it. It's just fun. It's a bit of fun. And then we also get to see Caitlin smile for the first time when she finds out that Barry has won and the day is saved, which is really cute as well. And then, obviously, we wind down, we're sort of getting to the end of the episode. Barry and Jo get to have a heart-to-heart where Jo apologises for not believing Barry for his entire life and it's nice to see them get that reconciliation. Jo eats some serious humble pie, as he should. I love him but I've definitely had a bone to pick with him in this episode in a lot of instances. Case in point, because he then immediately says, don't tell Iris, which I think is a bad decision and it's so unfair and quite frankly, a little bit sexist that they spend the, you know, all the men in her life spend the whole season lying to her and being like, oh, it's for her own good, we'll just protect this grown woman and therefore actually endanger her life by not letting her know all the facts and protect herself. But more on that later, I'm sure. I have to say, part of me wonders if maybe Barry was so willing to keep this from Iris because he was mad that she had not told him about Eddie. He did have a little bit of a bitter moment about that, so I do wonder if maybe his willingness to accept these terms was somewhat related to that, but I don't know. We have a little scene in the prison where Barry's talking to his dad and we get to see a little bit of their bond. I like Henry. I know he's a bit of a divisive figure, but I don't know, again, I like him. He's not really a character that I feel is that well developed. He's just dad, but he has this, like, nice, warm vibe. I don't know. And the conversation has some really, like, sweet, emotional moments where, like, Barry's like, oh, you know, you know I believe you're innocent, you know I've always felt that. I'm proud to be your son, and he has this moment where he says, you wanted me to change my name, and I always refuse to do that because I want people to know that you're my dad. And I was like, oh. But also, we could have had Barry West, which would have been cute. Here's another thing, right. I am always like, it should have been Barry West Allen. Like, if Iris was going to change her name, Barry should also have changed his name. You tell me this man would not have wanted to be Barry West Allen, I don't believe it. He basically is Barry West Allen because Joe is also his dad. Like, it would have just made sense, and I think the CW were cowards for not letting Barry also double-barrel his name. I also love this conversation because we get to see Barry cry for the first time, I think, which brings our cry count up to one. The last time I watched this, I was doing a count of how many times he cried, and I lost count, but I just, I love to see this man cry. It's just something that's so deeply personal to me. Grant is so good at crying, like, he does it so well and so, like, beautifully, and just, this man can cry on command, and it's genuinely impressive, and I love it. Again, part of the problem with the later seasons, they stopped making him cry and have breakdowns multiple times an episode. What exactly do they think I'm here for? And then finally, we conclude the episode by seeing Dr. Wells sort of going down the corridor looking super shady and suspicious. We see him enter the time vault, and then we get the big reveal that he, A, can walk, and B, that he is up to no good, essentially. This one always shocks me because I always forget how early they start revealing that there's something sinister with Dr. Wells. I always have it in my head that it takes them a little while to work up to it. The audience finds out that he's A, suspicious, and B, the reverse flash, way sooner than I always think in my head, and every single time I re-watch it, it shocks me how quickly they start getting to that. This scene is notable for several reasons, the first being that it does feature the disabled villain trope. This one is, obviously, he's faking his disability, which is a pretty common ableist trope of, like, the untrustworthy person who, like, disabled person who isn't actually disabled and is, like, conning people. The CW and The Flash, in particular, they do love an ableist, like, trope and disabled villains. It's a pattern that they really love to fall back on, and it's a big old yikes, to be honest with you, and I think they should interrogate how they portray disability in the show. I don't love how, like, they play it as, like, this big gotcha of, aha, he's evil and sinister and he can walk, and I don't know, but, like, him being the villain, it is a good reveal because you kind of, like, I don't know, he's giving off vibes the whole episode, but there is just something satisfying about the reveal that he is up to no good, but it does obviously have these ableist undertones, which aren't great. And then we close out the episode with our first look at the future newspaper article with the Flash missing vanishes in crisis headline, which, as of now, is officially in the past, which is extremely fucked up and rude, and I'm not happy about it. The first time I was watching the show, 2024 seemed so far away, it genuinely, I don't think I even really picked up on the fact that it was 2024, like, I genuinely thought it was, like, 50 years away, so it's incredibly fucked that we have now officially got to the point where this future headline that they spend a significant amount of the show building up to is now in the past, and it's super fucked up and I don't know how to feel about it. Very complicated feelings, and even more complicated when you consider that they completely fucked up that plotline and totally squandered it, and I'm still incredibly mad about it. I'm glad that they didn't save it for season 9 slash 10 because they probably would have done an even worse job of it and it would have been just horrific, so, you know, in my head, that plotline went somewhere and was very good. Like, I remember when me and my friend were watching it and she was so excited to get to the crisis and I was like, I'm so sorry, I have to tell you, it sucks balls, and then she didn't even end up getting to see it because we didn't watch the crossovers when we were doing our rewatch because she just wasn't interested in watching, like, five other shows, which I can completely sympathize with, so she never actually got to see what happened and I just had to vaguely explain, and it was a big disappointment, so. Not gonna lie, I kind of have no idea how to round this out. Some, like, deep hell and lore is I was a YouTuber for, like, five or six years, and when I say I was a YouTuber, I definitely mean, like, a very small hobbyist YouTuber. I never broke, like, 3,000 subs, but my entire brain is just telling me to do my YouTube outro. This whole thing has been, like, a really weird trip down memory lane in terms of, like, I've been using the same editing software that I used to use to edit my YouTube videos to edit this podcast audio, and it's really weird how quickly I fell back into it. So basically, that was the pilot. I hope that you all enjoyed listening and that it was vaguely entertaining listening to my ramblings. I do not intend to post this on a regular schedule or anything like that. Like I said, it's not going to be a proper, like, professional podcasting situation, it's literally just going to be episodes will go up as and when I feel like it, because I have so much shit going on in my life, and quite frankly, one of the reasons I quit YouTube is because it was so time-consuming to do all the, like, recording and editing. The benefit of podcasting is I can do it in my pyjamas, so, you know, it has that go for it. That's it! So, thanks for listening, I'll see you for the next one. Bye!