the flash tv show

Welcome back to Up To Speed, home of the the Flashest Recaps Alive. Here we’ll recap the latest episode of The Flash, dispense some Flash Facts and talk about what works, what doesn’t and where the series might be headed, as we try and keep up with the adventures of Central City’s finest hero, Barry Allen: aka the Red Blur, aka Funkmaster Flash, aka The Flash. This week, we’re looking at the fourth episode episode of the first season, wherein we’re introduced to a pretty cooooool guy. (This is clever wordplay because the villain is a guy named Captain Cold who has an ice-gun.) Let’s get started on, “Going Rogue”!

Welcome back to Up To Speed, home of the the Flashest Recaps Alive. Here we’ll recap the episodes, dispense some Flash Facts and talk about what works, what doesn't and where the series might be headed, as we try and keep up with the adventures of Central City’s finest hero, Barry Allen: aka the Red Blur, aka The Flash. This week, we’re looking at the third episode episode of the first season, which finds The Flash squaring off against a man who can turn into a cloud. You will believe a man can cloud in this week’s episode, “Things You Can’t Outrun”!

To understand what I’m about to tell you, you need to do something first. You need to believe that I have merely a basic working knowledge of the character of the Flash, The Fastest Man Alive and the star of the CW’s latest small-screen superhero adaptation. But for some reason, when ComicsAlliance Editor In Chief Andy Khouri was looking for volunteers to recap The Flash, my hand shot up. Maybe it’s because I had a huge fondness for the 1990, John Wesley Shipp-fronted live action series. Maybe it’s because I just like the character of the Flash in the (realtively) few instances I’ve read his comics or seen him on the Justice League cartoons. Maybe it’s just because in every promo image of the lead character I’d seen, the dude was smiling. Maybe it’s all of those things. Maybe it’s some other reason entirely. My name is Dylan Todd. I’m the Flashest Recapper Alive. Welcome to the inaugural installment of our weekly Flash recaps, titled Up To Speed. (Get it? Because he runs fast and also we catch you up on what happened in the show.) Here we’ll recap the episodes, dispense some Flash Facts and talk about what works, what doesn’t and where the series might be headed, as we try and keep up with the adventures of Central City’s finest hero, Barry Allen: The Flash.

Since the launch of the New 52 reboot in 2011, DC Comics has seemingly gone out of its way to find new ways to make its superhero darker. Its current Futures End weekly comics event is one in which everything has become even more dour and depressing in the span of five (narrative) years, for example. But there's one character that DC writer Geoff Johns simply can't view as dark, however: The Flash. In an interview with Nerdist, former Flash comics writer Johns answered a question about the lighter tone of the new The Flash TV series by saying that Barry Allen simply can't be a gloomy character.

If you've read my recaps of The CW's Arrow, then you likely know I've been pretty hard on it. Yet I ultimately think the show accomplishes what it has brazenly set out to do since it started: be a television version of the Christopher Nolan Batman films. The CW's new series The Flash, which spun off from Arrow and even features a guest appearance from Arrow star Stephen Amell in its pilot episode, takes much the same approach, but the movies it attempts to emulate aren't the dark, brooding Batman films. It's chasing after the Spider-Man franchise. And for both better and worse, it nails it.