First Thoughts on 'The Flash' Season 4 (Episode 2)
Firstly, this week's episode of The Flash for some reason became a soppy relationship drama: Barry and Iris go to couples' therapy, and Cisco and Gypsy have their own relationship troubles - both brokered by Caitlin telling stories about her and Ronnie. Yeah...these are the two main through-lines of this week's episode, and I can't help but wonder if the writers have completely misjudged their audience here. Arrow very much had this problem in its own third and fourth seasons, and Legends of Tomorrow with the last episode (although to a much smaller degree), but here in The Flash, I'm just a bit bored of it all. The Flash has always put some focus into the romantic relationships between characters, but this episode just focused far too much on it for no apparent reason.
The whole episode felt really tacky in places as the characters spout quick one-liners at each other, constantly grinning and doing "quirky" things. Barry and Cisco's slightly eccentric personalities were dialed-up to eleven, with the latter's interactions with Gypsy coming across as cringe-worthy. While Cisco has never exactly been shy, he becomes so self-centered and over-confident around Gypsy that he just gets irritating. It's not that I dislike their relationship, I just dislike the way Cisco acts around her. It doesn't quite fit with his character to be so self-centered, regardless of whether the writers choose to push this or not.
Not that I'm saying I have anything against actor Carlos Valdes, or even that I had the exact same problem with Grant Gustin's Barry in this episode; Barry wasn't annoying at all, but he just came across as too "hyper-happy" and eccentric when compared to the usual. Regrettably though, despite Barry being trapped in a torture chamber for six months, the writers manage to twist it around so that it's Iris' problem that Barry left. Um...didn't he return in the last episode driven out of his mind from being trapped for the equivalent of thousands of years in the speed force? Isn't that a bit unfair? Given how much the focus has been on Iris, it's odd that the main character never actually turns around and points out that no, Barry didn't just leave Iris - he went into the speed force to save the bloody planet! Again, I don't hate Iris, but her whole "you're not the Flash, Barry, we are" attitude in this episode just irritated me. She's basically become the new Felicity - and heck, even Felicity has managed to get over all that.
Now, this being said, when the episode doesn't just focus on these relationship dramas, we actually have a really cool meta-human-of-the-week story here in Ramsey Deacon, who can control technology. It's a cool ability to use, especially against a more tech-based Flash suit, but...this is coming a bit too early on in the season. The writers had to bend over backwards to get Cisco to re-introduce the new suit to list off its technological functions to set-up Deacon's abilities in the first place. Had we already known and seen all this stuff prior to this episode, the episode wouldn't have needed to do that. It just comes across as lazy writing.
And that's all I have to say about 'Mixed Signals'. Wally and Joe get nothing to do, the meta-human story is good, the relationship drama isn't and takes too much focus away, and The Flash's fourth season feels like it's going more in the Arrow season 4 direction than season 5.
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