For many TV shows, determining when to dole out certain bits of information and how to structure certain plot developments can be challenge. The Flash has struggled on that front as of late, with Hartley's appearance a few weeks ago reading very much as a way to connect some dots and pay off the mystery of why Ronnie Raymond was on fire and wanted nothing to do with with Caitlin, which is why Hartley didn't have an interesting agenda in his own right. I swear, I'll stop beating up on how The Flash used Hartley sooner or later, but it's become such an instructive misstep of what not to do on a show that generally avoids missteps (aside from how it writes Iris, of course) that I can't help but bring it up when it's useful to do so.
And it's useful to do so with regard to "Fallout," an episode that was as low-key as the hour that preceded it, and sometimes felt divided in the same way that Ronnie and Martin often were throughout its runtime. That division served to wrap up the Firestorm story—for now, of course!—and also to lay more of a foundation for what's to come: time travel and the ongoing preparation for the eventual return of the Reverse Flash.
Hartley nudged things along on the Firestorm track, a font of knowledge that saved The Flash's regular characters (and the show's writers) from having to do a too much work themselves. There's nothing wrong with that, but given that he just showed up one day and appeared to know more than seemed likely, it was difficult not to see him as a delivery system for information about Ronnie first, and that week's villain second.
"Fallout" mixed things up a little bit with Martin Stein. We heard about Stein in a few different episodes before we finally met the man in the flesh. We learned about his scientific reputation and started to get a sense of his personality, and some of it was even filtered through Robbie Amell doing a sort-of-kind-of Victor Garber-as-Martin-Stein impression. By the time "Fallout" arrived, Stein was at least something of a known quantity to us. So when Barry dropped by to talk about the feasibility of time travel with him, it wasn't as if Stein existed solely for the purpose of that conversation. Yes, that was part of it, but it was mostly organic—I don't think anyone had mentioned Stein doing any work on time travel prior to "Fallout," but I loved the effort The Flash put into it by mentioning a paper for Oxford University Press and revealing Stein's room full of time-travel chalkboards to sell us on the idea, and it was nice that those details were incorporated into the larger story of Firestorm.
This type of difference makes all the difference when it comes setting up and/or making progress on larger plot points in a way that doesn't feel like a show is bending over backwards to do so. Of course, it certainly helped that Garber killed it as Stein, nailing everything from "massive jerk" to "physicist giddy at the notion of traveling back in time just to argue with Tesla." If it hadn't been for Garber, the whole thing might've just been a bit of a wash.
And yet... I still felt like the time travel and Barry's-old-house stuff brought the episode to a grinding halt in some ways. It was all entertaining—I loved watching Cisco break down various time travel theories for Joe with help from some time travel movies—and it was nicely done as any scene with Barry and Joe is going to be at this point, but it wasn't the episode's most interesting story thread, or even potential story thread. Yes, it was better than Mason (Roger Howarth) and Iris deciding to investigate S.T.A.R. Labs (I guess Iris is ready to stir up trouble for Barry and his friends because... she's Iris?), but that's a low bar to clear. I appreciate that Joe brought Barry into the loop immediately as opposed to waiting and building more of a case before presenting it, and it was narratively necessary as the show approaches the homestretch of the season; I just didn't think it really fit into this episode.
Maybe this is because I was expecting/hoping for a lot more of Caitlin and Ronnie working things out than we got. Part of that hope was that we had spent a good deal of time on the search for Ronnie, and to have their reunion reduced to Caitlin catching up Ronnie on the events of the past year at Jitters and an understanding farewell at S.T.A.R. and the Stein house just felt like a real letdown after all that buildup. I wanted more of the two of them being reunited lovers and less "Okay, moving onto time travel!"
It was doubly frustrating because there were good threads dangling in those scenes that deserved more than what they got. Of course Caitlin was never going to leave Central City, but her realization and statement of her newfound purpose through the work she does with Barry, Cisco, and Harrison was a pretty big deal for the character. This was Caitlin moving on from Ronnie more so than her getting drunk at karaoke with Barry, and it was decidedly underdeveloped for a moment that has been at the core of this character since the start of the show.
Another thread that could've been tugged by the episode, and related to Ronnie's desire to leave and his iffiness on the whole metahuman hunting thing, was the new mission of S.T.A.R. Labs itself. Play up the fact that Ronnie's startled by the fact that there's a guy who turns himself into a poisonous mist in the basement, and that the trio at S.T.A.R. are holding him, and have held others, there without any sort of due process. It would've given The Flash the opportunity to interrogate that logistical and ethical elephant that's been in the room all season that it hasn't even addressed through Joe.
Exploring either, or both, of those threads would've left less time for setting up time travel, but it would've given Ronnie leaving Caitlin a bit more resonance than it otherwise had, that some real shift had occurred in the character rather than Caitlin just telling us that the shift had occurred after the fact. "Fallout" was just serving one too many functions as a conclusion to one storyline and making a bridge to larger storylines when it really might've been better served as just the former.
LEFT IN THE DUST
– I know it would be weird, but who wouldn't want Victor Garber's voice in their head?
– "My destiny is to fail." Yes, Barry, it is. Because if you don't fail, how will you become the Flash to save yourself in the past and put yourself on the path of getting struck by lightning when the particle accelerator explodes? If Nora is saved, all sorts of bad things could happen.
– "'Doc Brown!' Tremendous film."
– "You guys are like 10 seasons of Ross and Rachel but smooshed into one year."
– "Not God. Grodd." Poor Eiling.
– Very cool to see Harrison in the Reverse-Flash outfit.
– I am shocked and appalled that Sherry wasn't there to chat up Barry and Joe and offer them cocktails.
– The Flash is taking the next few weeks off, so I'll see you all on March 17!
What'd you think of "Fallout"?