Family of Rogues has everything I love from The Flash: Wentworth Miller acting the fuck out of every scene, awesome foreshadowing, Jesse L Martin being Best Dad and cute character interactions!

Speaking of, whose sailing the Caitlin/Jay ship because they’re doing a bang-up job. Danielle Panabaker and Teddy Sears have such an awesome chemistry, it almost rivals that of Panabaker/Gustin. With Jay sticking around for a while (He went and got a new haircut and everything) , hopefully we’ll get more of these guys being cute as hell week-to-week.

On the other ship, Cisco and Lisa Snart being cute is great. These two have a fun dynamic and this week sees them take a step closer to becoming a little more than frenemies. Loved it.

Oh, Joe… Bless your heart. I have no fucks to give about the Iris’s Mother plotline (though Iris continues to be pretty good compared to last season) but if Jesse L Martin cries, so will I. Something about that man crying really gets to me.

You’ve gotta feel sorry for Michael Ironside too. He’s a perfectly capable actor but he shares every scene with Miller and thus, is little more than set dressing.

Flash Fact: Michael Ironside and Peyton List previously played a father/daughter duo on Smallville.

What a bastard of a character, eh? If nothing else, this motivation lets Miller play with Cold’s emotions a little more and god damn, it’s a powerful performance. Cold’s humour, fear, cockiness and the implicit trust that he shares with Flash, despite being enemies is fantastic. Easily the highlight of the episode.

Running Gag Week 2: Professor Stein stroking out mid-sentence but this time with a twist! The Firestorm Matrix is going bandit and the good Prof needs another partner to stabilise it! We’ll be seeing more of that next time and before we wrap up…

Harrison Wells appears through the portal like the god damn Terminator. More as this develops.

Family of Rogues is a fantastic episode but then, I’m completely biased but I think every one will find something to dig in this episode. As cool as this episode was, next week will heat things up so come back next week for The Fury of Firestorm.

Plastique aka Bette Sans Souci is played by Kelly Frye; known for roles in The Mentalist, NCIS: Los Angeles and Rake. I’m not familiar with her work but her performance is pretty solid, playing Plastique as someone who believes she was betrayed by the country she laid her life on the line for and is now on the run. Just like every metahuman, she gained her abilities from the particle accelerator explosion, fusing the dark matter with bomb fragments left in her body because SCIENCE. Solid performance, it’s just unfortunate that she won’t be returning (especially after what the conniving Harrison Wells does!)

Clancy Brown kills it as General Eiling, being a veteran of the DC Universe’s various projects. He’s voiced Lex Luthor in a ton of DC animated series and various other DC characters in animated shows and movies and if there’s one thing he knows how to play, it’s bad guys! Eiling wants to use Plastique as a human weapon, something Wells knows all too well, having worked with him in the past on a project to give subjects telepathy. Brown plays Eiling as the smuggest jackass and it’s a delight to watch because you just love to hate him, another thing Clancy excels at.

Joe West is another highlight of the show, continuing to be the best side character for snark, emotional moments and being the best TV dad I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I want Jesse L. Martin to be my dad… Joe gets the best line in the show for me, expressing his total boredom with the concept of metahuman criminals now. It’s only five episodes in and Joe is DONE with this superpower BS, I love it!

A fair amount of screen time is taken up by Barry and Iris, arguing about her blog and the subtext of Barry’s feelings for her (which Joe knew about. Again, best dad.) and it’s pretty trite. This is the worst kind of Smallville faux-drama and I just wish Barry would get together with Caitlin or Felicity. I know Iris is the canon love interest but, frankly, she is the DUMBEST character on this show. Hop on the SnowBarry train, writers!

Stinger this week reveals the project Eiling and Wells worked on, the telepathy subject; a gorilla named Grodd. YOOOOOOOOO, gimme that monkey magic!

The Flash was brilliant and it gets more and more fun with every episode. Come back next week when the Scarlet Speedster makes a name for himself in The Flash is Born!

Fastest Man Alive is the second episode of the brand-new The Flash TV show on the CW network (and coming to Sky One in the UK) and to say this series hit the ground running would be both punny and an understatement.

This episode is pretty paint by numbers but the strong performances of the cast carry it through. Hero is doing well, has issues with powers, overcomes them, has issues with villain/personal life and quits, hero returns with new confidence, status quo restored. It’s your typical “Spiderman No More” but played in fast forward. The main plot focuses on the murderous intentions of bitter scientist Danton Black who developed the metahuman powers of cloning through the collider incident. He’s after Simon Stagg for stealing his research into cloning (irony~) and thanks to his doppelgangers, has all the muscle he needs to do it.

Flash Fact: Stagg Industries (and its CEO) is responsible for the origin of elemental hero, Metamorpho!

Michael Christopher Smith is playing Black AKA Multiplex and it’s cool to see them go for a D-lister after using a notable Rogue in the season premiere. Other than that, I found Smith’s performance to be lacking. He looked stiff at all times and for the love of the maker can he ever do an action scene with his mouth closed. His jaw hanging open all the time makes him look simple.

Barry’s fainting spells are caused by a glucose deficiency, and adverse side effect to his abilities but is soon fixed after some tests on THE COSMIC TREADMILL! It’s a nice little nod that I smirked at. Speaking of sly references, Caitlin’s ex-fiancé is revealed as “Ronnie”. In this kind of show (and because I’ve seen the casting) it’s safe to assume that this is Ronnie Raymond, one half of the hero Firestorm!

The real meat of the episode, in my opinion, comes from the relationship between Barry and his adoptive father Joe West. The dynamic between Grant Gustin and Jesse Martin is fantastic and you really feel invested in their relationship as you get a look into their shared past and the trials they both faced. Barry, dealing with the death of his mother and the loss of his father and Joe dealing with this boy who is seemingly delusional and hates him. There’s a fantastic scene towards the end that is pretty tear-jerking, both for the audience and for Jesse Martin.

Tom Cavanagh’s role as benefactor Harrison Wells continues to add mysteries to the long run of the show. As we saw last episode, he’s clearly a time traveller and in this episode he’ll clearly take any step to keep the Scarlet Speedster on his path, killing Simon Stagg while saying that he needs to be kept safe. Now, it should be pretty obvious that his name is assumed, given the time travel and Harrison Wells being really close to H. G. Wells. I’ll be interested to see his true identity revealed but early bets are him being Bart Allen, Barry’s speedster grandson from the future.

Another fantastic episode for The Flash and it’s showing a lot of promise. I’ll see you all next week because there are just some Things You Can’t Outrun.