The Flash (2014 Series) Review

The first season is a small miracle of network television. Grant Gustin plays Barry Allen as an open, delighted young man rather than a brooder, the science team dynamic is genuinely likeable, and Tom Cavanagh's Harrison Wells is a magnificent long con, a mentor who is revealed to be the man who murdered the hero's mother and who has spent fifteen years pretending to help him in order to get home. The reveal is properly seeded and properly devastating.

Jesse L. Martin gives every scene a warmth the budget cannot buy. Then it never changes. Season after season introduces a faster antagonist with a secret identity, a plan that requires the hero to become stronger, and a finale in a particle accelerator, and each iteration is a little more tired than the last. Time travel is invoked so often that consequences stop existing. The visual effects, decent in short bursts, are asked to carry far too much. Nine seasons in, the pleasure of the first year is genuinely hard to remember.