Review 635: The Flash (Season 6)

 

Given that I haven’t been keeping up with The Flash since Season 2/the aborted Flashpoint arc of Season 3, but given that the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover is on the horizon, I decided that now was as good a time to get back on The Flash hype train.

Reeling from the loss of Nora, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) throws himself into work, defeating a record number of metas over the summer, while the rest of Team Flash deals with changes of their own - Cisco (Carlos Valdes), having taken the metahuman cure, is no longer Vibe, Joe (Jesse L. Martin) is now Captain of the C.C.P.D., D.A. Cecile Horton (Danielle Nicolet) is now considering leaving the district attorney's office and Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) is now searching for a missing heiress named Sue Dearbon (Natalie Dreyfuss). But all of that is put on hold when Dr. Ramsey Rosso (Heroes’ Sendhil Ramamurthy), intent on curing death, is overtaken by his own desperation and ambition giving birth to a new villain, Bloodwork. 

Firstly, I do think that the decision to split the season into two halves or “Graphic Novels” as showrunner Eric Wallace put it was definitely a smart move to better pace out the overall season. Each with its own separate Big Bad. It was definitely an improvement over the prolonged Savitar, Thinker and Cicada conflicts of Seasons 3,4 & 5.  Both in the form of Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork and Eva McCulloch/Mirror Monarch (Efrat Dor) 

I was particularly surprised by the choice of Bloodwork as the main antagonist for the Blood and Truth arc of the season; In the comics he’s a very recent addition to The Flash’s rogues gallery of villains. His story is juxtaposed to Barry’s arc pre-crisis. Both are brilliant scientists who lost their mothers and are now facing their impending deaths. The difference is that while Barry learns to accept his fate and is willing to die in the Crisis if it means saving his loved ones and the rest of the world, Rosso hopes to prevent his death and his inability to find a cure leads him to be willing to kill anyone to save his own skin,

And as tight as "Graphic Novel" format made the season, they still made time for fun stuff such as Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) confronting an evil doppelganger in Ep. 5: Kiss Kiss Breach Breach; The following episode, "License to Elongate" proved to be a fun throwback/tribute to the James Bond movies and was a showcase for the fun dynamic between Barry and Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) and served as a welcome reminder that Barry is every bit as valuable to the team (and Central City as a whole) when he’s out of costume and using his brain instead of his powers, while also giving Ralph a chance to shine as a capable leader and strategist in his own right.

The Reflections and Lies half of the season was no short of Post-Crisis shananigans; The midseason premire, "Marathon" did a great job of pivoting from the events of the Crisis and establishing the emmerging threat of Mirror Monarch. One episode later, "Love is a Battlefield" offered a welcome deviation into romantic drama and more lighthearted hero/villain conflicts by pitting Barry and Iris against a returning Amunet Black (Katee Sackhoff). The season also delivered another thrilling Gorilla Grodd adventure in "Grodd Friended Me". The following episode after that, Death of the Speed Force further explored the ramifications of Crisis showing that in an attempt to save the Multiverse, Barry has poisoned the Speed Force whilist also delivering a fun team up between Barry and Wally West/Kid Flash (welcome back Keiynan Lonsdale). It wasn't too much of surprise that Barry the Speed Force, it felt like an inveitability than anything else. Given that Barry has lost his speed before over the course of this show, it feels more like a roadblock that they'll have to overcome than anything else.

One aspect where The Flash improved vastly in its sixth Season is the tone. Previous season struggled alternating between "too dark" (Season 3) or "too goofy" (Season 4), the new direction under Eric Wallace  not so much being lighter or darker but more evolved, more confident, more, consistent, more sure footed in the way it strikes a balance of humor and compeling drama; it's dark when it needs to be dark, particularly in the first half with Barry approaching his impending death, but it's also careful to balance the dramatic storylines with moments of levity.

That’s not to say Season 6 was completely void of problems; The show is still struggling to balance too many characters between Barry dealing with the possibility of his imminent sacrifice,   there was just never enough room to juggle subplots such as Ralph’s search for missing heiress Sue Dearbon (Natalie Dreyfus). The show is also struggling to figure what to do with Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) and her icy alter ego “Frost” a creative choice which will never make sense to me. As well as telepathic metahuman district attorney Cecile Horton (an otherwise lovely Danielle Nicolet) and whilst the latest Wells doppelgänger “Nash” Wells (Tom Cavanagh), basically a Multiverse hopping Indiana Jones, was definately a improvement over last season's Sherloque Wells he never quite found his place as easily as his predecessors and while he did more or less come into his own when dealing with the post Crisis ramifications on his doppelgängers, it wasn’t enough to make him click in the long run. Too often, he felt like an attempt to recapture the loveable insufferable genius persona of Harry Wells from Seasons 2 & 4 but without his charm. I don't know if there was any real reason to kill off Nash and the other Well's (I assume Tom Cavanagh was just ready to move on), but his farewell was well handled and 

Relative unknown, Kayla Compton also recurred throughout the season as Allegra Garcia, an ex-con with ultraviolet light powers  ultimately though, the character felt rather bland even with her own storyline of Iris taking her under her wing and confronting her evil cousin.

Not helping matters was how Ralph along with Cisco and Joe would disappear for several episodes at a time.

Directors Gregory Smith, Chris Peppe, Sarah Boyd, Marcus Stokes, Menhaj Huda, Michael Nankin, Stefan Pleszczynski, Sudz Sutherland, Brent Corwell, Eric Dean Seaton, Alexandra LaRouche, the score by Blake Neely and Nathanial Blume is 

A combination of entertaining villains and a gripping lead up to the Crisis on Infinite Earth's crossover result in The Flash's best season in a while, 4/5.

The Anonymous Critic.