The Flash Season 2 Episode 19 Review: “Back to Normal”

Check out Our Review [WITH SPOILERS] of The Flash Season 2 Episode 19: “Back to Normal.”

You have to admire the dedication of this week’s episode of The Flash. We’ve seen powerless episodes before, but to stick to the whole no power thing for an entire episode, and still make the episode heroic and engaging, that’s pretty impressive. Too bad that Barry’s reasons for sacrificing his speed are still semi-coherent.

Not to beat a dead horse, but there was never a solid reason given for Barry Allen to give his speed to Zoom. Last week, in exchange for Wally West’s safe return, Barry agreed to give his speed to the Earth-2 villain. Except that once Wally was safe, Barry did not have to complete his end of the bargain. Yeah, I get Barry is a hero and a deal is a deal, but I don’t know, I don’t think giving super powers to a deranged multi-dimensional serial killer as a matter of choice is a very good idea – or a very heroic one. It is all just the worst kind of plot convenience.

But sometimes, out of straw comes gold and that’s exactly what we got this week as a powerless Barry takes on Griffin Grey (a villain created by the brain trust of the original 1991 Flash TV series, Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo in the bygone era of 2005) without his speed powers. Grey kidnaps Harrison Wells to cure him of the powers that are killing Grey. You see, Grey has super strength, but every time he uses it, he gets older. Grey is a tragic villain of the week with a little more to his backstory than just being a greedy skel. Flash must find Wells and defeat Grey without his powers. Thanks to Team Flash, Barry gets the job done (basically, he just takes a pounding while Grey goes from old to really old), and Wells is safe. This trauma to Wells also reunites him with his estranged daughter Jesse in a very nice scene. Yeah, I teared up when he whispered her nickname Jesse Quick. Shut up!

The episode also made me fall in love with the character of Wally West even more. Wally requests to meet with the Flash to thank him for saving him from Zoom. It seems the earnest Wally is getting closer and closer to his heroic path, and the fact that by episode’s end, Wells has decided to recreate the particle accelerator explosion to give Barry his speed back has some intriguing repercussions to some potential new speedsters- namely Wally and Jesse.

There are some shocks this week as well as the Zoom-napped Kaitlin Snow meets her Earth-2 counterpart, Killer Frost. The two Snows devise an escape plan, but just as Kaitlin is about to free the man in the mask (and no, we still don’t know who he is), Frost betrays Snow and tries to kill her. Zoom intervenes and impales Frost on her own icicle. So now we have two dead Snows on TV (you know nothing). Now Kaitlin is alone with Zoom and it’s interesting that Zoom cares so much for her. Could Kaitlin be Zoom’s Achilles heel?

So Killer Frost is dead, Barry is powerless, and Earth-2 Wells is about to get Flash his speed back. Even though the path here has been pitted with plot convenience and inconsistencies, the destination is a very exciting place.