Review 552: The Flash (Season 1)

To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first. You need to belive in the impossible. Can you do that? Good.

Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) was 11 years old when his mother Nora (Michelle Harrison) was killed in a bizarre and terrifying incendent and his father Henry (John Wesley Shipp) was falsely convicted of the murder. With his life changed forever by the tradgedy, Barry is taken in and raised by Det. Joe West (Jesse L. Martin), the father of Barry's best friend Iris (Candice Patton). Now over 14 years later, Barry has become a brilliant, driven and endearingly geeky CSi investigator, whose determination to uncover the truth about his mother's strange death leads him to follow up on every unexplaned urband legend and scientific advencement that comes along.
Barry's latest obsession is a cutting edge particule accelerator, created by visionary physiscist Harrison Wells and his S.T.A.R. Labs team, who claim that this invention will bring about unimaginable advances in power and medicine. However, something goes horribly wrong during the public unveiling and when the devastating explosion causes a freak storm, many lives are lost and Barry is struck by lighting and falls into a coma for nine months.
Barry then awakens to find his life has changed once again-the accident has gicen him the power of super speed, granting him the ability to move through Central City like an unseen guardian angel.
Though initially excited by his newfound powers, Barry is shocked to discover he's not the only "metahuman" who was created in the wake of the accelerator explosion - and not everyone is using their new powers for good. In the months since the accident, the city has seen a sharp increase in missing people, unexplained deaths and other strange phenomena. Barry now has a renewed purpose - using his gift of speed to protect the innocent, while never giving up on his quest to solve his mother's murder and clear his father's name. For now, only a few close friends and associates know that Barry is literally the fastest man alive, but it won't be long before the world learns what Barry Allen has become...  The Flash.

Over the course of the season, Barry and his friends at S.T.A.R. Labs come into conflict with several classic Flash villains including Leonard Snart/Captain Cold (Prison Break's Wentworth Miller), Mick Rory/Heat Wave (Miller's Prison Break co-star Dominic Purcell), Mark Mardon/Weather Wizard (Liam McIntyre), Gorilla Grodd (David Sobolov) and James Jesse/The Trickster (Mark Hamill reprising his role from the 90's TV series).
The "villains of the week" themselves varied in quality for much of the first half of the season (seriously, how many of you reading this remember villains such as "The Mist", Multiplex or Girder). For the most part, they felt primarily defined by their powers and little else. In particular, Danton Black/Multiplex' wife dying of a degenerative coronary disease is mentioned in a last-minute throwaway line

 

Ep. 17: All Star Team Up was another entertaining Crossover episode featuring Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) and Ray Palmer/Atom (Brandon Routh). 

Directors David Nutter, Jesse Warn, Glen Winter, Dermott Downs, Millicent Shelton, Larry Shaw, Ralph Hemecker, Nick Copus, John F. Showalter, Rob Hardy, Stephen Surjik, Thor Fredenthal, John Behring, Kevin Tancharoen, Wendey Stanzler, Steve Shill and Doug Aarniokoski's direction is  all lighting up the small screen
The cinematography is colourful and captures the bright,  of Central City. The production design is terrific, the settings that the characters inhabit on a weekly basis ranging from S.T.A.R. Labs to the coffee shop CC Jitters to the CCPD precinct to the West family household are briming with life and activity adding texture and detail to this version of Central City. The score by Blake Neely is

Tom Cavanagh and Jesse L. Martin are eaisly the MVPs of this show playing Dr. Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash
Outwardly, Harrison Wells is a rock star in the world of physics as well as the mind and the money behind Central City's S.T.A.R. Labs Particle Accelerator. He's dedicated his life's work to making this dream a reality and subsequently becomes a pariah after his lab explodes. But he redeems himself when he discovers that his failed experiment accidently created The Fastest Man Alive.
As Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash he has a reason for doing what he's doing and has has an agenda and he thinks of himself as the hero.

And then, there's the subject of Iris West (Candice Patton), Barry's love interest and Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett), Iris' love interest, Joe's partner and Barry's romantic rival/foil. They were a lot more uneven
Thankfully, Eddie's charactirisation improved substantially during the later half of the season and