The Flash S1x11 “The Sound and the Fury”

WARNING! SPOILERS!

The Sound and the Fury is the second episode back after the Winter Premiere and despite the fact that this week’s episode may have found itself filled with plenty of clichés, such as the spurned former student of Wells coming back to haunt him in a villainous approach, but it still, as The Flash often does, presented it in an entertaining manner that never made the hour dull. In fact, it also saw the introduction of the comics villain the Pied Piper, who is the aforementioned former student. Andy Mintenus put in a pretty good show as the character and with the revelation that he actually knows what’s happened to Ronnie Raymond (whether it’s true or not yet, we don’t know) coming at the end of the episode, things have taken a very interesting turn for the series going forward. Will this be a problem addressed immediately or will the writers wait a few episodes to bring it to the forefront? Given how well they’ve handled everything so far, it should be interesting to see regardless of what happens next.

You can certainly say that the Flash isn’t afraid to introduce its comics villains fairly early on in the game, and unlike Green Arrow, he actually has a pretty well-established Rogue’s Gallery. We’ve already had the likes of Heat Wave and Captain Cold in the previous episode, the Man in the Yellow Suit (Professor Zoom) before that and hints of Gorilla Grodd to come. This show did rely on more than one cliché this episode to introduce the updated incarnation of the Pied Piper however, with him being good at chess used to show that he’s super smart isn’t really anything new, with the relationship between Rathaway and Wells being similar to that of Professor X and Magneto from the X-Men movies.

The episode also gave a lot more attention to Dr. Wells, putting Tom Cavanagh in the spotlight and showing just how awesome he is in the role. It looks as though we’ll see his secret out in the open by the end of Season 1, and we got to see a bit more attention paid to him here. It’s still not overly clear what his intentions are and as a result he remains very mysterious and enigmatic indeed. There’s plenty of good material to be had with this character, but one of my main worries is that, with Joe now enlisting Eddie to help investigate Wells, it isn’t going to end well for either of the two men. Whilst I couldn’t be particularly concerned about Eddie, Joe has quickly turned into one of my favourite characters of the series. Unfortunately, it looks like it may be setting the stage here for killing Joe off when Barry’s real father is eventually released from prison. I’m just speculating of course at this point, and hopefully that doesn’t happen. Because Jesse L. Martin is just too damn good.

So yes, whilst there were plenty of clichés, with the handling of the Pied Piper not having the strongest moments of the episode thanks to an unoriginal backstory and some poor special effects concerning his powers, but aside from that, there was enough good stuff here to keep the episode, like all of the ones before it, enjoyable. There hasn’t been a dull hour of The Flash yet, and long may that continue, with this shaping up to being an excellent first season for Barry Allen and company.