‘The Flash’ episode 3 review: ‘Things You Can’t Outrun’

You can’t run away from your problems. Sometimes you cannot be fast enough no matter what powers you have. These were the sort of hokey lessons that were handed down on Tuesday night’s new episode of “The Flash,” which feels like one half of an awesome superhero show right now, and one half of a hokey children’s story that doesn’t seem to understand the intelligence of the story.

Let’s start with what “Things You Can’t Outrun” continues to do effectively: The characters themselves. Barry Allen is still a capable lead, and we’re loving Jesse L. Martin as Joe West. Cisco Roman and Harrison Wells get more interesting by the episode, and as far as possible love interests go, Iris is solid.

Action-wise, you also have to appreciate the show that the stunt team and those in post-production are putting on. The Mist proved himself to once again be a worthwhile foe, and unlike other superhero shows, Barry really had to use his brain to determine how to really go about killing him.

Now,, the negatives. This episode gave us some further insight into Dr. Caitlin Snow, which was fairly nice given that she was one of the weaker people in the first two outings. She’s probably given the least-fun dialogue to say here, and in this episode in particular, the show did no favors with her relationship with Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell). How many reminders did we need that the two were going to get married? They were like the TV equivalent of that couple that wants to scream “fiance” from the rafters every time that they could.

Overall, the biggest thing that is keeping us from really buying into “The Flash” completely is the general hokey feeling that comes from some of the lines, including constant speed puns, heavy-handed messages, and obvious comic-book references. (Caitlin already has “snow” has her last name; do we really need a “fire and ice” line, as well?) It feels almost like the show thinks that they are telling us a new, hip joke, when really it’s one that we’ve heard a million times and their wink-and-a-nudge is useless.

We sound negative about this episode even though we enjoyed most of it; we just want to see what is starting to become a troubling trend end so that we don’t continue to have such superficial work that thinks that everything has to tie back to superpowers. Grade: B-.

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