1.12 - "Crazy For You"
Directed by Rob Hardy
Written by Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing
Reviewed by Gavin Hetherington
Hey, Gavin here. Filling in for Christopher DeBono (the regular reviewer) this week as he's extremely busy at the minute and didn't have time to write a review of this episode. He'll be back next week. Anyway, hope you all enjoy my review.
'Crazy For You' Recap and Commentary
Holding Out for a Hero
We start the episode inside a car that's crashed with a couple inside. The fire brigade are on their way but we see The Flash is on the job. The car hit a utility pole that's raining sparks over the car and as Barry is saving them, it causes a fire to start. The fire heads to the car and BOOM! It blows up. Fortunately, our fastest man alive has saved the woman in the car. The couple reunite and thank the Flash which was such a sweet moment. It shows the people know who he is and have gratitude for what he is doing. At the lab, Cisco and Barry debate over whose suit it is when Caitlin reveals that night was the fastest Barry has ever run. Cisco offers to go out for a drink but Barry has movie night with Joe and Caitlin passes on the offer. She has seen Cisco's tablet with F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. on it. "I know you said we should stop looking for Ronnie so I... didn't stop looking for Ronnie." Cisco reveals Hartley told him he knew what happened to Ronnie. Caitlin seems fine with moving on, but maybe she isn't really.
A woman (who I recognise from
Ravenswood) pulls up outside a prison and pulls out a telescope. As she's looking, she disappears and rematerialises inside the building. She dodges a security officer and starts knocking out security cameras. She's seen though but she's a woman on a mission. She goes inside a cell with an inmate who knows her and she materialises him out and back into her car. The woman is called Shawna, as we find out, and she just broke her lover out. I'm very interested to know what he did to get put in there. The next day Barry is investigating the cell and finds a residual that leads to outside. Barry's father shows and is allowed a moment with his son. He shows how much he believes in his son and it's so great to see that happy little interaction. Turns out the guard owed Joe a favour, resulting in that brief but beautiful moment.
In an undisclosed location, Shawna and Clay are talking. We find out she can jump to wherever she wants to as long as she can see where she's going. She wants to leave the city with him but Clay reveals he owes too much money with Marcus. Clay sees potential to get out of the debt with Shawna's ability and I can see she doesn't really want to, it's peer pressure. She's not the bad guy. At the lab, Caitlin is analysing the residue and reveals the cells move faster than Barry's. They think Clay is the metahuman until Harrison informs them there's DNA of a woman there too. The find Shawna's information and decide to go after her. Caitlin and Harrison go to see how the particulates work while Cisco visits the Pied Piper. I don't know if I like the Pied Piper very much. I know I'm not supposed to because he's a villain but I usually like villains. I think it's because he smirks too much and is annoyingly cryptic. Cisco asks about Ronnie but the Pied Piper needs to show him but Cisco won't let him out.
Don't Mess With the Cisco, Sister!
At the coffee shop, Barry and Iris discuss Barry's meeting with his father and how happy it's made Barry. Iris asks about the breakout as it's a big story but she's not allowed it as she is only allowed to write about the Flash. Iris wants to do more than just the Flash as she feels her job is in the line and needs a story. Barry comforts her, "you know I'm always here for you", and we get a very comfortable Iris and Barry again. I was so worried they would always be awkward together but one of the things I love about
The Flash is the Iris-Barry relationship. Even if it doesn't turn romantic (I'm neither for nor against it), I love their friendship and how much they mean to each other and that Barry has Iris who is sort of removed from his usual daily business of being his alter-ego. There's a fine line there but sometimes I feel Barry needs those moments with Iris to be Barry. They share a nice moment here.
Back at the Lab, Cisco has decided to let the Pied Piper out. Barry and Joe visit Barry's father and they find out about Marcus and Clay was a runner for him. Clay lost him a lot of money. Barry's father found out from the other inmates and Barry wants him to stop playing cop. Very protective of his father. The Pied Piper takes Cisco outside and tells him to look around. "How can you speak in six different languages and sound like a dick in every one of them?" We all want to know the answer to that. We see a bomb shadow that belonged to Martin Stine but the Pied Piper is still coy about what's going on. He tries to escape and we have a very sweet little fight between them. I didn't realise Cisco could hold his own like that, who needs Barry?! Cisco is, of course, smart enough to see this coming and stops the Piper by using his vibration device against him. The Piper agrees to comply though he has a devilish look before asking for the cuffs to be taken off.
Caitlin catches Barry up on what she found out about the particulates and reveals Clay's cells adopt Shawna's properties when they come into contact. Barry notices something is bothering Caitlin as she bites her lower lip and she admits Cisco thinks she doesn't have a life. Barry agrees and also thinks he doesn't have a life either. "My social life consists of running at superhuman speed and Netflix." "We are quite the pair, Mr. Allan." "Yes we are, Dr. Snow." Nice. They're interrupted by an armed robbery in progress - Shawna and Clay aka Bonnie and Clyde. Time for Barry to meet Shawna.
Forever In the Friend Zone
Clay has a couple of guys on their knees with a gun to their backs while Shawna is robbing the truck. The Flash arrives and Shawna reveals she's read about him and challenges him to catch her. He does, so she keeps on materialising in other places. Barry grabs onto her while she does so and disappears and reappears with her but he ends up hanging from a railing. He chases her back to square one where Clay shoots Barry in the neck. Honestly, I was squeezing my chair when this happened, seeing it slowly go into the seat as Barry's fingers try to stop it. He does but it was still pretty excrutiating to watch. We see that it broke Barry's skin when Caitlin examines him. Harrison reveals her to be a teleporter and Caitlin wants to call her
Peek-a-Boo. "What can't I name one?" Of course you can Caitlin, it's not entirely terrible.
Barry runs to the Police Station where Iris and Eddie are leaving. Barry wanted to help Iris with writing her article but Iris is going to have dinner with Eddie's mother. They have a raincheck but Barry looks pretty sad about it. He phones Caitlin and asks about the bars Shawna and Clay frequented. Caitlin tells him and Barry goes to check out the bars and Caitlin offers to join him. It's pretty great actually considering they both apparently don't have lives and they're finding they're both in the same boat. They're both coming out of their shells a bit and feel a lot more comfortable with each other. I'm looking forward to this.
It's Karaoke Night, of course. Caitlin walks in looking amazingly stunning, which takes Barry by surprise a little. She brings up getting back out there which leads Barry to talking about Iris and Caitlin about Ronnie. They're both condemned to the friend zone, Barry mostly. I know he won't get over his feelings about Iris so easily but I was hoping he'd be able to see her as his childhood friend again. Caitlin necks down a drink and asks a waitress to "start a tab" and I cracked up. She's so cute when she's trying to be cool. Hartley shows Cisco security camera footage of Ronnie in action and Professor Stine merging together. That's why he hasn't been himself as he's Martin Stine. Hartley pulls out his earpiece and the noise deafens Cisco. He breaks his device then leaves.
Well-a, Well-a, Well-a, Uuh!
Back at the bar, Caitlin has gotten up on the stage and gets Barry to come up on stage with her. She's obviously drunk and it's so damn hilarious. "So fast, oh shhhhh". The music for Summer Nights from
Grease starts and Caitlin starts singing. Oh my. People are obviously laughing at how not-so-great she is, I do feel pretty sorry for her. Love that she's having fun though. Haha as soon as Barry starts singing, Caitlin is so confused at where that voice came from. The way she sings "I met a boy" like it's a question killed me. Maybe she wasn't a fan of
Glee back in the day when Barry was a Warbler. Good job too, because Barry was a dick on that show. We don't see the full song unfortunately but when Caitlin goes to the bathroom, a girl named Linda comes up to the bar. The bartender seemed to be ignoring Barry but does what Linda says. She praises Barry's singing (and so she should, he's awesome) and it's obvious she is flirting with him. She shows him an app that lets them share contact info by just touching their phones (that's so amazing I don't know if that's real or not but take my money!) and she leaves before Caitlin comes back, not feeling so good. Bless her. Can't handle her drink.
Shawna and Clay meet Marcus and give him the money Clay owed him. They're not even though and he pulls a gun out on Shawna but she teleports behind him. He's impressed and suggests putting their resources together so they can work together. The warehouse is raided by police and there's a shootout. Clay is shot and she teleports them out. Barry flashes Caitlin to her apartment (which is very nice by the way) and she asks if Barry is going to call Linda, but he's not sure. Caitlin points out that he won't while getting undressed in front of him. She needs him to help get undressed and he goes the extra mile by getting her pyjamas on. She asks if he "peeked" at her goods and he was totally a gentleman. He puts her to bed and stays with her until she falls asleep. Damn, this is so cute. So fluffy.
The next morning, Caitlin comes into the lab very hungover. She doesn't remember much about the night before however she does remember
Grease. Harrison gets Cisco to reveal Hartley is gone and he explains why. He was doing it for himself because he sealed Ronnie into the room with the accelerator after waiting 2 minutes like he asked. The guilt had been killing him but Caitlin knows he isn't to blame. They move on to catching Shawna and realise if she can't see, she can't teleport. Barry gets a call about his father being stabbed. Barry asks his father what happened and he confesses he didn't listen to Barry to stop digging. It helped get the police to the warehouse Marcus was at before with Clay and Shawna. He and Joe had been working together to help Barry. He doesn't feel useful and he wants to help Barry and be there for him. Another great father-son bonding moment, it's so nice but why do I get the feeling this will be short-lived?
Barry speeds Julius, the guy who stabbed Barry's father, outside the prison. If they catch him, he'll get ten more years but Barry wants to know where Marcus's next job will be. Julius tells him about a truck delivery around eight. Barry leaves him outside to get caught. I knew he wouldn't take him back inside.
Dawn of the Sewers of the Apes
Shawna teleports inside the truck to get some of the money and then back into the car Clay is driving. What I don't understand here is that Shawna couldn't see the car behind the truck to teleport to it, so how did she? Barry runs after the car and stops in front of it. Shawna teleports out and confronts him. She starts to beat Barry as she teleports around him. They keep fighting and it's such an interesting fight. So much going on at once. Clay drives forward, stopping the fight, and Shawna returns to the car. Harrison tells Barry to limit her field of vision and he grabs a spanner. He starts smashing all the lights in the tunnel and the lights on the car. Defeated, when Barry opens the car door, Clay has abandoned Shawna.
They lock Shawna in a cell with one-way glass that's mirrored so there's no way she can teleport out of it. Cisco vows no one dangerous is ever getting out again. Barry talks to Shawna about Clay and she says she still loves him even though Cisco is still out there. "Some people are worth being crazy for". Caitlin and Barry admit they had fun the other night and also that they've been hung up on people for too long. It's time to move on. Caitlin knows Ronnie is not Ronnie anymore and she needs someone new to be crazy about. I hope they stick by this new revelation and they don't go pining over people they can't have right now. Time for some progression there.
Barry, as the Flash, visits Iris and gives her a file about the breakout of Clay. Barry is sticking by his word by helping her out. Oh but Iris is a little sneaky and manages to get a pretty great photo of him running. Inside the newspaper offices, Barry, as himself, is there for a lunch date instead of seeing Iris. Linda comes out and it's revealed they actually work together-ish. Linda does sports. Iris asks how they met but Barry pulls Linda away before she can answer. Iris seems confused. I don't know if this means she's feeling some kind of jealousy, probably not I may be reading too much into it but I hope it isn't.
Back at the prison's hospital, Barry is telling his father about his date. The conversation turns to the Flash who has made the front of the papers with the first photo of him. His father reveals he saw the Flash once to save Joe's life and it's weird how the Flash broke him out of prison to get a longer sentence. He plays coy about being lucky. Barry says if he was the Flash, wouldn't his father be the first to know? Pfft, no. But his father says he would tell him a few things if he was his son, like "it's a dangerous world so be careful. Then I'd tell him he's a hero and he's saving a lot of lives. But the most important thing for him to know, I feel, is that his father's proud of him." Wow. Just wow. He knows. He definitely knows. And Barry knows he knows. This moment was just so touching and you can see that in Barry's eyes. In both of their eyes. They need each other.
We end the episode in the sewers where two men go to check something out. They hear noises, growling. Okay, the last thing I expected was a fucking gorilla. I haven't read the comic books so I didn't know about Gorilla Grodd until looking him up just now, but wow, what a way to end an episode.
Episode Verdict
Okay, a lot of great stuff happened in this episode. I knew Cisco taking Hartley out on a field trip would end badly but I'm glad Cisco held his own in that fight against him. I adored the Barry and Caitlin scenes in this episode, especially the Summer Nights segment. Iris was a very sneaky girl for getting that photo but I have to admire her gumption. I loved the case-of-the-week with the teleporter. Are we offically calling her peek-a-boo? Harrison and Eddie weren't very prominent in this episode, and Eddie hasn't been very useful for the past number of episodes now. I wonder when he'll actually do something again other than be Iris's boyfriend. I was very touched by the moments between Barry and his father and I hope we get more of that in the episodes to come because I'm predicting this happiness will be short-lived. (
A lot of my thoughts are in more detail in the recap and commentary section). I really enjoyed this episode like I have with almost every episode of
The Flash so far so this is actually a very terrific first season for the show already. I see great things on the horizon.
What did you guys think of 'Crazy For You'? Let me know in the comments and be sure to watch the next new episode of The Flash on February 10th on The CW!
About the Author - Gavin Hetherington
Award-winning author of 'Abyssal Sanctuary: Remnants of the Damned'. Gavin joined SpoilerTV on August 9, 2014 and will be reviewing 2 Broke Girls, Mistresses, Orange is the New Black, Pretty Little Liars, Salem and Sleepy Hollow in the 2014-15 season. Gavin's favourite shows include Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Desperate Housewives, The Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time, Revenge, Scandal and much more. You can contact him at gavin@spoilertv.com.
