Sorry guys, I was a little busy this past week and just got to seeing the Premiere (cuz I guess it’s not a Pilot?) to The Flash Yesterday. So let’s discuss the CW’s new show about CW’s version of The Flash… On CW! And you’ll know why I say that in a minute.

Also this review will contain some minor spoilers from the Premiere of The Flash, nothing that will ruin it if you haven’t seen the episode, but chances are if you’re reading this you already have seen the show. Anyhow, let’s discuss!

So I’ll start with what I like about this show, and it may seem a little scrambled, but work with me here. The kid who plays Barry Allen, The Flash himself, Grant Gustin, he’s good in the show. He’s not fantastic, but he is what I would have liked to see in a kid playing Flash. I’ll discuss later how everyone’s really teenager-esque in this show, but for Barry Allen it works, he’s supposed to be a bit younger and I like that take a lot. Some critics said he lacks the charisma of a leading-guy, but I think it works really well. Another thing that works: his backstory. When Barry Allen is a kid, his mother is killed mysteriously and his father is incarcerated for it (which sounds like the Pilot to Supernatural so ugh already…), but by the end of the first episode you do feel sympathetic towards this character’s backstory. At first it was kinda meh, but there’s a scene that turns that around, which I won’t give away. The final thing that is really effective in this show is the action. I was indecisive on the show until the last 20 minutes, but then the action and Barry Allen’s action thoughts really changed my mind. In all honesty: the show is on a TV series’ budget and the effects aren’t great, but they do work well enough.

But now I’ll say what I didn’t like, because there were more of those. My main problem with the show is going to get its own paragraph here, because it’s what needs to be fixed for me to entirely lock into The Flash going forward.

My main issue with The Flash is that the focus is split up 3 different ways: (1) its trying to be a Flash origin story, which the last twenty minutes did well; (2) It’s trying to be a dumb cop show with the two detectives working their cases; (3) Lastly, and most frustratingly, it’s trying to be a hip and retro teen show on the CW! You guys know what I mean by that last one, it seems like every actor is a teenager (even the adults) and they’re caught up in all their stupid middle-school drama. Example: the girl who plays Iris West (Barry’s best friend) is trying to hide her romance from her father cuz her father’s partner is her boyfriend. Did that sound as stupid just know, me saying it as it was? Probably. The first twenty minutes of the show are just showing Barry’s relationships with his friends, which could be cool if I cared about any of them. Iris’s dad on the show is a cop and I couldn’t tell you his name after watching this premiere episode, defeating the whole “cop show” element to the series to. So that means 2/3 parts of the show were just boring and annoying. There is kind of a fourth tone that falls underneath the origin story, and that is the science undertone. I was initially annoyed by how involved S.T.A.R. Labs was in the show, but after a while they became more interesting than the police force and stupid side characters. I think that the last 15-20 minutes of the show were solid, when he first suits up, but until then it feels like all irrelevant crap. And I get it, it’s the first episode, but it felt like 25-30 minutes of filler, and you aren’t allowed to do that until you hit maybe episode seven. (Or episode three…)

I mean, the screenwriting on the show isn’t particularly good either, it feels (again) like there were three writers and each wanted their chunk of the show to be the most important, so we ended up with this tone-mixed weirdness. The dialogue isn’t great either, but for a CW show it works enough. And not only Iris and her father, but it seems like all of the supporting characters are just phoning it in. Example: there’s this one chick in the show who’s supposed to be damaged after losing her fiancée, or something, and she doesn’t seem damaged, she just seems like a bad actress phoning it in.

And OF COURSE there’s the scene. Yup, you know what scene I’m talking about. The one where they literally stop the show for Oliver Queen aka Arrow to show up. I’ve heard that Flash was in an Arrow episode too, but this felt like the show stopped for his guest appearance.

I haven’t seen much Arrow, only about the first five episodes of the show, but they seemed a lot better than this. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention or something but those first few episodes of Arrow seemed dark and gripping, despite being episodic. Example: the Pilot of Arrow had this mystery regarding Queen’s stay on an island after being shipwrecked, and you were really intrigued as to what was happening. In this, I’ve almost already forgotten about what happened to Barry Allen’s mom. (I should really watch the rest of Arrow sometime…)

I’m not trying to complain about The Flash, in fact I did like a third of the episode and I do think it has a lot of promise. It’s just that so many people have been crapping their pants over this show and proclaiming it as the Defining Show of 2014 or something, and it really isn’t. I like Grant Gustin and I like the Flash world that is being set up, but the focus is way too off and needs to be centralized. If the writers can do that, then I have no problem saying I’ll watch another episode of the episode, but until then, I can’t give The Flash a positive review.

2.5/5

I want to call out that final shot though, I think it was really intriguing but this show better not go on for 10 years…

***

So guys, those are my thoughts on the Premiere episode of The Flash on the CW. I’m continuing my review of this fall’s new pilots and should be finished by next weekend. So what’s your favorite new show so far and do you agree with my thoughts on The Flash? Let me know down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.