It is hard to say what the most anticipated show of any television season is, even if you narrow it down to a network or genre, but while many were talking about FOX’s Gotham, lovers of the super-hero were also eagerly awaiting the arrival of the CW’s Flash.
Gotham was the subject of a great deal of conversation and buzz in large part because so little was truly known before the first episode was aired. Bruno Heller is a name in television, in so much as he is the man behind Patrick Jane and the Mentalist, but that is to the eyes of many a show of a different genre and thus could fans rely use that show to judge what they would be getting in Gotham?
The Flash on the other hand had several advantages. Not only is it coming from the same production team behind Arrow, but Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) appeared in two episodes of Arrow which laid the groundwork for The Flash. The episodes were not created to feel like a backdoor pilot, but rather introduced Barry Allen as a character that most of the audience knew, or suspected, would have a show of his own in the coming season and was worth paying that extra little bit of attention to.
Tonight in the season’s third episode, The Flash introduces Ronnie Raymond / Firestorm, played by Robbie Amell (real life cousin of Stephen Amell aka Arrow.) This is something fans have known about for quite some time and have been eagerly anticipating. Thus far The Flash has built it’s world, and helped the audience to understand the circumstances in which the characters are existing. S.T.A.R. Labs particle generator turned on, and for a while seemed to work — and then it didn’t. And with something like that, when things go wrong, they go very wrong. Then we take into account we are in the DC Universe, and when gamma radiation and magically scientific sounding things are flung out into the air — superheros are created! (Or so the non-science version goes.)
So far the audience has gotten to know Barry Allen’s work life, and Detective Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) who raised him and is now the cop he works with most often. His personal life, or what there is of it, in the form of his one true friend, and psuedo foster-sister, Iris West (Candice Patton) who is in College studying journalism, and the S.T.A.R. Labs team who stabilized Barry while he was in a coma and is now helping him to find other meta-humans and make sure the accidents consequences aren’t more than Central City can handle.
At S.T.A.R. Labs, the equivalent of The Flash’s Arrow Cave, Barry is working with Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker), Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes), and the hard to decipher and trust, Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) who was the director of S.T.A.R. Labs when everything went up in smoke.
With the introduction of Ronnie Raymond, not only are fans getting a glimpse of Caitlin Snow before the accident, but we are also getting our first addition to the show, a recurring character who will be introduced in a manner where it feels from the start that he is meant to be here, meant to be a part of the world and the audience is intended to want him to survive and recur. No offense to Chad Rook who played Clyde Mardon in the pilot, but his evil self was there for our hero to battle and conquer, much as Michael Smith’s Danton Black, aka Multiplex, was in the second episode for The Flash to discover the hero within and just what he was capable of. Neither of those characters felt like integral parts of The Flash’s world, but rather stepping stones the plot and characters needed to keep us moving forward.
Where some shows need an entire season to lay the foundation before they can start digging deep, it appears with episode three The Flash is ready to dive in and start giving fans the good, the bad, and the back-story.
The Flash airs Tuesdays on the CW at 8PM / 7 Central
Gotham features: Ben McKenzie as Detective James Gordon, Donal Logue as Detective Harvey Bullock, Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney, Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth, Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, Erin Richards as Barbara Kean, David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne, Camren Bicondova as Selina Kyle/the future Catwoman, Zabryna Guevara as Captain Sarah Essen, Cory Michael Smith as Edward Nygma/the future Riddler, Victoria Cartagena as Renee Montoya, Andrew Stewart Jones as Crispus Allen, and John Doman as Carmine Falcone.