The Flash: Potential Energy

January 23, 2016 8:32 AM - Season 2, Episode 10

Team Flash is hot on the trail of a serial thief called the Turtle, with hopes that his powers could give them an advantage against Zoom. Barry's relationship with Patty reaches a turning point, and Joe and Iris try to bring Wally into their family.

Oh yeah, and EOBARD THAWNE'S BACK. Choke on that, causality!

posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish (17 comments total)

That's got to be Earth-2 Thawne.

I was really happy to see Patty just up and leave Wally at the end of this episode. He didn't learn from the "not telling Iris" debacle of last season and she TOLD him to tell Patty, and he wouldn't. And finally Patty got tired of his crap and dumped him. I know they're working toward endgame Barry/Iris, which squicks me, but this is such a good development in terms of the story overall that I can't be sorry it happened.
posted by immlass at 9:21 AM on January 23, 2016

I really liked the Patty/Barry chemistry, and am not looking forward to Iris/Barry (maybe they're not feeling the Westermarck effect, but I am), but having to go through the whole "nobody tell her about Barry's secret identity" dance all over again was a drag, so, yeah, if that's the end of the arc, I'm ok with it.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:30 AM on January 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Barry:...I have not been honest.
Patty: Barry...I'm leaving central city

What did patty think he wasn't being honest about?...
Barry:...I haven't been honest, I've been sleeping with Iris.
Barry:...I haven't been honest, I'm gay. Cisco is more than just my friend.
Barry:...I haven't been honest, I've been taking bribes from criminals
Barry:...I haven't been honest, I haven't been working. I spend maybe one minute a week in the office.
Barry:...I haven't been honest, I'm the flash and I've been purposely been putting you in danger by not telling you I'm the flash so that when you died Iris would feel sorry for me, and I could leverage that into a relationship.


Didn't we get over keeping secrets?...
posted by FallowKing at 9:38 AM on January 23, 2016

Barry:...I maintain a secret prison for metahumans with no bathroom facilities.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:34 AM on January 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

Just a question here for anybody with a better memory than mine. What happened to Gideon? Is it still around. Does Team Flash still have access to it? I honestly don't remember. And now with a Gideon appearing on LoT, I (of course) started wondering about time paradoxes and all of the problems that come with multiple versions of things existing at the same point in the time stream. Unless Gideon is just a more advanced version of Siri.
posted by sardonyx at 6:06 PM on January 23, 2016

Maaaan, I honestly hated this episode, and I can put up with a lot of nonsense from an episode of Flash.

But they literally built an episode around turning a woman into an object so that a man could experience manpain, and they flat out said that was what they were doing. I wanted to punch at least three members of the writing staff to work out my feelings about that.

And then everyone did every stupid thing ever, and we were so far past when he should have told Patty, and he was ready to tell her, but not fight for her now that she was leaving? Or something? I don't know, what a mess. They failed to convince me of anything. Not that I blame Patty for leaving, I mean, everyone lies at her and yells at her, and as far as I can tell she still doesn't know what happened to that dead guy she shot who wasn't dead, and honestly, JUST A MESS.

And great, now they are sticking people in tiny cells again!

(What did Wells pull out of Turtle's nose? Part of his brain? Is the guy dead now?)

The preview looked promising, but that episode, what the hell did we spend half a season building Patty up for, just THAT? USELESS. WASTE. OF. TIME.
posted by instead of three wishes at 6:22 PM on January 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Re: Gideon, in season 1 it was shown to live in Thawne!Wells' secret future room, and after Team Flash took over Star Labs and found said room Gideon told Barry that it would follow his every command because he was its creator. So naturally they never used or spoke of Gideon ever again.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:40 PM on January 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

All I want is Jay to get his speed back, so that we can see that very cool Earth - 2 Flash costume again. Is that too much to ask?
posted by wittgenstein at 5:04 AM on January 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Thanks HZSF. That's kind of what I thought happened, but then I thought something might have slipped my mind, and that they might have resolved that story line somewhat.
posted by sardonyx at 8:23 AM on January 24, 2016

So naturally they never used or spoke of Gideon ever again.

I assumed he was destroyed/unmade when Eddie killed himself and the timeline rewrote itself. Also there's a spoiler that I won't repeat from elsewhere in the DCTV universe that suggests what might have happened to Gideon.
posted by immlass at 9:27 AM on January 24, 2016

I assumed he was destroyed/unmade when Eddie killed himself and the timeline rewrote itself.

Except the timeline didn't rewrite itself - Barry's mother was still murdered by Thawne!Wells, the particle accelerator still exploded... the only thing that changed was Thawne!Wells vanished. So Gideon should still be in the basement.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:59 PM on January 24, 2016

Something must be different, since in the previous season Thawne asks "where am I?" of Gideon, not himself. I got the impression that Gideon was mobile in some way and Thawne carried it around, not that it was in that room.

Also, my recall was that they encountered Gideon in that room and then rushed out to try to pretend they hadn't found it, leaving some subsequent moment for Wells to relocate it. I don't think we ever saw them in that room subsequent to Wells going on the run (heh), did we? Not that that isn't goofy, but my only recall of it was while they were still pretending not to know.
posted by phearlez at 7:35 AM on January 25, 2016

Does Jay have an apartment somewhere? Or a job?
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 12:30 PM on January 27, 2016

Or any sort of Earth-1-valid identification?
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 12:32 PM on January 27, 2016

He does science stuff on black market for cash, which will come back to bite him in the ass and complicates his relationship with Caitlin.
posted by numaner at 5:21 PM on January 27, 2016

I'm assuming after Earth-1 Thawne!Wells disappeared because of Eddie's death, he was never alive to bring Gideon back from the future.
posted by numaner at 5:23 PM on January 27, 2016

Other than the convenience of the anti-speed Turtle as a use against Zoom....yeah, not a good episode.

Also, so far Wally is flatter than flat and I have no interest in him even if he speed-races.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:06 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]