Super Visions: He peels out like ‘The Flash’
I’ll be trying to keep up with the Fastest Man Alive
- Courtesy CW
- NEED FOR SPEED: Grant Gustin plays Barry “the Flash” Allen
My own lowered expectations may have lent CW’s pilot for “The Flash” a bit of tailwind. An example of what I meant in that earlier blog is among the few failings of the animated “Justice League” series, namely its occasional inability to dramatize the powers of the so-called “Fastest Man Alive.” I’m thinking of an early ep in which he has an extended chase scene with a panel truck. Not a rocket-powered panel truck: A. Panel. Truck.
If you had the pleasure of seeing X-Men: Days of Future Past, you’ll get what I mean in pointing out the godlike ability that is superhuman speed. And how tough it would be to defend against the attacks of someone who can break Mach 1. Therefore, coming up with challenges for such a creature is a bit of a feat.
So, yeah, this spinoff of the sputtering, just-entering-season-three-and-almost-out-of-creative-gas “Arrow” stands (well, runs) in refreshing contrast to its progenitor show. I wasn’t sold on this show’s star, Grant Gustin, during his appearances on “Arrow” last season. He often seemed annoyingly dweebish in context, and indeed, the two shows co-exist uncomfortably in part because the superhuman Flash has the power, narratively and otherwise, to unhinge the martial arts/conventional weaponry world of vigilante archer Oliver Queen and company. But the actor is just right in his own, slightly more fantasticated setting 600 miles from Starling City.
The strongest element of “The Flash” is easily its casting. Jesse L. Martin (“Law & Order”), always at ease in whatever role he lands, brings conscience and gravitas to Joe West, who in this telling is the foster father to Gustin’s Barry Allen. And yes, he is related to Iris West (Candice Patton), which means the romantic aspects of this Flash’s life promise to be complicated in ways unlike any comics version I’ve read, never mind its inter-racial component. Also welcome is TV’s ’90s-era Flash, John Wesley Shipp, as actual-but-incarcerated dad to this show’s Barry Allen. Nice intertextuality there, folks. And some lovely interplay, too: The prison visit scene between Barry and Henry Allen moved me beyond all expectations.
The show’s visualization of its title character moving is also impressive. The Flash is more like “the Blur,” as he would be, and the integration of the occasional freeze frame brings a faux-athletic charge to the show. What’s the downside, you ask? The truck-stop version of Weather Wizard, Barry’s antagonist in ep 1, failed to persuade me with his pat gestures to conjure artificial storms. And a deeply predictable second episode has me a little worried that the pilot’s otherwise superior mix of humor, pathos, and smarts may prove tough to reproduce.
For now, though, I’ll be trying to keep up with the Fastest Man Alive.