'The Flash' Season 1, Episode 21 Review: 'Grodd Lives'

The Flash : Plot

At 11, Barry Allen's life changed completely when his mother died in a freak accident and his innocent father was convicted of her murder. Now a crime-scene investigator, his dedication to learn the truth about his mother's death drives him to follow up on every new scientific advancement and urban legend. When his latest obsession -- a particle accelerator heralded as a world-changing invention -- causes an explosion, it creates a freak storm and Barry is struck by lightning. He awakes from a coma nine months later with the power of superspeed. When he learns that others who have gained powers use them for evil, he dedicates himself to protecting the innocent, while still trying to solve the older mystery.

Review : 'Grodd Lives'

While the giant, telepathic gorilla might get all of the attention from this week’s The Flash - and he should obviously get some of it - Grodd Lives is also full of great Iris stuff. That’s right, everyone – great Iris stuff. Miracles can happen, I guess. Because it addresses almost all of our frustrations with the character, simply by including her in the same show as everyone else. It’s so straightforward and so easy that it makes the rest of Iris’ treatment in this first season all the more irritating but, now she knows, and Barry knows that she knows, and she’s about 100 times better than she was before. My concern is whether it’s too little, too late. Comparing her to Laurel Lance on Arrow, which it’s all too easy to do, fans have never really gotten over her initial characterisation. The romance didn’t work, the character didn’t work, and by the second season she had become someone completely divorced from what was going on with the show’s hero. The same has been happening to Iris and, now, even though she proved that she could be a wonderful, Chloe Sullivan-esque addition to the STAR Labs team if The Flash so chooses, I wonder if the audience will ever accept her as anything other than the clueless love interest she’s been boiled down to for so long. But at least we had this episode, because this episode was wonderful. A balance of the show’s genuine, absolute revelry in the comics world with the first real introduction of Grodd and the humanity that’s also consistently been weaved through the show from the start, Grodd Lives was a pretty great example of all the things The Flash does brilliantly. We had an Iris voiceover to start – a statement of intent if ever there was one – and, just as I was readying myself for an hour of passive-aggressive questioning, she goes right ahead and strides into STAR Labs. That’s the first thing the episode gets right. The second and third things are the dressing down of everyone who's lied to her over 20 episodes, and the believably organic, remaining obstacle between her and Barry getting together. Sticking with Eddie at least until they rescue him gives her a sliver of integrity, and her words to both Barry and Joe were a perfect summation of everything the fans have been saying all year. The reason she gets to help at all, though, is down to the presence of the show’s most anticipated villain – Grodd. It’s a miracle The Flash has been able to pull this off - giant gorillas not usually coming across well on a television budget - but it did, and it’s great. One criticism you could level against the episode, of course, is that it was essentially filler on the way to a bigger showdown with Thawne, but we can’t have everything. For his first episode, Grodd really needed to act solo because, as filled with comic-booky aspects as The Flash undoubtedly is, a telepathic ape sharing the screen with Captain Cold may have been a little too much to handle right away. As it stood, the episode revelled just enough in the lunacy of its very existence and that, of course, is why so many of us love this show so much. And the Wells stuff is still going on in the background, ready to become the main thrust of the season finale in two weeks' time. Thawne spent much of the episode reminding Eddie of his inadequacy and, if that’s not a recipe for a super-villain origin story, I don’t know what is. It’s an embarrassment of riches though, because, one week after Grodd was brought to life in a believable way on screen, we’re getting a huge crossover event in next week’s penultimate adventure. With one of the show’s biggest, most commented-upon issues now being addressed, I can’t see why the next two episodes won’t live up to everything The Flash has promised thus far.

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