Barry has a bad day at the “office”

As if Barry doesn’t have enough problems to deal with, a foe he thought was gone forever pops up in “The Reverse-Flash Returns.”  Flash speeds through the city, to a voice-over about reasons to run, especially ironic from a speedster. He checks in with Cisco, who tells him he’s handled everything in Central City already. Barry ignores Cisco’s suggestion to take a break. Wells and Cisco, meanwhile, get into a humorous bickering match over coffee. 

Barry finally gets a call to action when Cisco picks up a report about an out of control truck. Flash easily catches up, only to find out that the truck has been rigged with minimal steering and no brakes. He gets clever and manages to stop it, but we see what caused the incident and it doesn’t bode well for Central City’s speedster.

Cisco has a short-lived bout of optimism about using Turtle’s power to stop Zoom. This is crushed by Jay and Caitlin walking in, announcing that he’s dead. Of course, we saw how that happened. The fact that the STAR Labs crew doesn’t know seems to indicate that they don’t have security cameras for the cells that hold their metahuman prisoners. That can’t be a good plan.

There are two big emotional subplots running this week. In one of them, Patty is acting a bit out of character in my opinion. She broke up with Barry, told him she was moving to Midway City, and now is surprised he’s not happy about it? She also keeps doing things which seem to be, “Hey, I’m leaving. Really. I’m leaving now. Walking away. See? I’m going…. Aren’t you going to stop me?” This seems weak and manipulative and not at all like she’s been acting in the series.

The other plot revolves around Francine dying. Iris and Joe visit her, and then most of the rest of the dama is about Wally. He’s not going to see her. As far as we get on that, after an emotional scene from Iris about Eddie’s death, is more or less, “I’m not going to see her because reasons.” In the comics Wally is one of my favorite characters. So far on the show, I’d be happy to see the last of him.

Wells comes up with an interesting, and amusing, way to get Cisco’s powers working more reliably. They use his powers to track down the kidnapped Dr. Tina McGee. Weirdly, Cisco seems surprised to learn he can see into the future, which I swear he’s done on the show before. This leads to a big fight between Flash and his opposite number which is nicely done. Reverse-Flash isn’t supposed to be in the here and now, since they’ve already seen his… death? Disintegration? End? Whatever you want to call it. But these are the perils of time travel. His presence leads to a lot of complications with some serious side effects on some of the STAR crew. In a few really out of character scenes, both Barry and Cisco visit Reverse-Flash to gloat, giving him information he shouldn’t have. Did they both take stupid pills that day?

Eventually, Barry is forced to make a really hard choice about the Reverse-Flash. No one is happy about it, but it’s the only way to save one of their own. Reverse-Flash smirks when things seem to go his way, ranting that he now knows what time period Flash is from. This makes no sense. Flash has been all over the news and various police reports. All that has been lost by his time?

In another subplot, Caitlin is trying to find a way to help Jay. His DNA was changed when he got his powers, and now that Zoom has stolen them, he’s dying. They get one idea about a way to help him- track down his Earth 1 doppleganger. This gets really weird when Barry and Cisco can’t find him, but Jay himself eventually shows him to Caitlin. His doppleganger was adopted and moved around a lot as a child, and is now going by the name Hunter Zoloman. That’s a name that’s familiar to DC Comics fans, and possibly is a bad sign for down the road.

The wrap scenes are both high on drama and low on plot. Wally comes to visit Iris (why is she always at Joe’s place? Doesn’t she have an apartment somewhere? Are she, Joe, and Barry all living there now?). He’s finally decided to visit Francine, and wants Iris for moral support. Patty continues working hard to make sure no one is going to miss her (at this point, I sure won’t) by calling in a false alarm of a man with a gun so she can say goodbye to the Flash. That’s brilliant. Scare the crap out of Barry, make her fellow passengers on the train worry when a freaked-out looking superhero turns up, and show to many, many witnesses there’s some kind of connection between Patty and Flash. Gee, how could that possibly go wrong later?

What I liked: The Flash/Reverse-Flash fight was nicely done. It was good to see Tina McGee again. The Hunter Zoloman name is interesting, at bare minimum another nod to the comics. The Wells/Cisco scenes were funny.

What I didn’t: Patty went form a great character to a flaky drama queen I’m happy to see go. The Wally/Iris scenes were a bit too soap opera for me, and never really told us what the heck was going on with Wally. If it was Francine keeping secrets, that was kind of unclear. The gloating scenes were ridiculously out of character. As I’ve heard from writing professionals who are far more experienced that I am, “If your plot relies on your characters doing something stupid, find a better way to do it.”

This was a very uneven show, and I hate to say that. Of all the hero shows currently on the air, Flash is my favorite. But not this episode. I’m giving this one a low 2.5 out of 5.