The Flash Review: “Infantino Street”

This episode brings us to the point we feared, and it’s great to see the excellent chemistry between Barry and Snart again. If the entire episode had been about the Flash and Captain Cold pulling off a robbery, I would have enjoyed it, thoroughly.

As it stands, I have, alas, very little else positive to say about “Infantino Street.”

I do note a caveat under “Story.”

Other CW DCU Shows will receive a discussion tomorrow.

Title: “Infantino Street”

Cast and Crew
Director: Michael A. Allowitz
Writers: Grainne Godfree, Andrew Kreisberg

Grant Gustin as Barry Allen / The Flash / Savitar
Candice Patton as Iris West
Wentworth Miller as Leonard Snart / Captain Cold
Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon / Vibe
Keiynan Lonsdale as Wally West / Kid Flash
Tom Cavanagh as H.R. Wells / Harrison Wells
Jesse L. Martin as Joe West
Audrey Marie as Lyla Michaels
Anne Dudek as Tracy Brand
Danielle Panabaker as Caitlin Snow / Killer Frost
Tobin Bell as Voice of Savitar
David Hayter as Voice of King Shark

Premise

Barry and the Team plan a heist to save Iris’s life, and recruit Leonard Snart to help.

High Point

Meta-jokes about the show’s effects budget notwithstanding, it is great to see Gustin and Miller together again as the Flash and Captain Cold. I hope they find a reboot card that will bring Cold back into the fold, because the two work so very well together as arch-frenemies.

If not, he gets a good farewell.

Low Points

Even for a Silver Agesque comic book show, the plot is idiotic. Indeed it is an Idiot Plot, in the sense that everyone, however brilliant, must act like an idiot for events to unfold. HR has to blab information that even Barry isn’t supposed to know, never mind the wrong Barry pulling off a deception (see “Plot” for one obvious caveat). Argus’s vaunted security involves a couple of tough hurdles, and then nothing at all. But that’s okay, because Argus decides to hand over the most dangerous and useful device in the world to a team of vigilantes to save one person’s life. No, really: they have a device which can either solve the energy problem or destroy the world, but they’re just going to hand it over to save Iris’s life. Then Barry, who has worried for months he isn’t fast enough to save Iris, stands around like a slack-jawed inbred while his adopted sister/fiancée is in Savitar’s clutches, running only at the last possible moment.

But none of this has to happen, because Argus has the technology, apparently, to dampen all metahuman powers and, specifically, Barry’s. Maybe they should be borrowing that technology instead, and using it on Savitar?

The Scores:

Originality: 3/6

Effects: 4/6

Acting: 5/6

Story: 1/6 I will give the episode one more retroactively if HR’s actions turn out to be part of the elaborate, planned twist. They do have that holographic technology, after all. Indeed, I may have to revisit this episode if the entire thing is a Con, but then, why go to all the trouble of disrupting the past, and so forth, and why wouldn’t Savitar know?

Emotional Response: 3/6 In terms of response, this ep is, literally, half-positive. Terrible plotting undercuts some excellent chemistry and a devastating death that may or may not be reversed next week or next season.

Production: 5/6 The show’s production values remain high.

Overall: 3/6

In total, “Infantino Street” receives 24/42

5 replies on “The Flash Review: “Infantino Street””

  1. Much of the Flash subreddit seems to think it’s a con, with HR the most likely candidate for being the person behind Iris’ face. It seems plausible, and of course they couldn’t tell Barry because then Savitar would remember. That said, it seems strange to me that Tom Felton’s character (whose name I forget again) wasn’t around. Perhaps he’s behind the mask, since he has some guilt for bringing Savitar into the world.

      • OK, so time travel is always wonky, but… If they actually defeat Savitar in the current timeline, without waiting the 4 years or whatever that it took in Savitar’s timeline, then anything they do after that is going to be from a different “past” than his, so the memory connection should get cut. I think. Maybe…

        • I think the best examples of time travel were ironically Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the original movie 12 monkeys. The future had already been set as the events caused by time travel had already occurred in the past. Just trying to comprehend that in English is making my head hurt.

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