"The Flash" recap: We shouldn"t fear the future

The Flash | Inside: The Man Who Saved Central City | The CW

Barry is speeding back to full force.(Photo: Dean Buscher)

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Tuesday night"s episode ofThe Flash.

The Flashis back after five long months, but it"s like it never left.Despite all the doom and gloom that Barry is struggling with in "The Man Who Saved Central City," he is still unequivocally the Flash, and the show is undeniably a happy, shiny comic book show. The season 2 premiere ran the gamut of comic book winks, joyful optimism for the heroism of the Flash itself and plenty of puppy-dog acting from Grant Gustin, who was just a pleasure to watch. Because when Barry cries, we cry. And I might have teared up once or twice in this episode.

Welcome backFlash. Looking forward to the future and even more comic book insanity.

Shinyhappy people

Professional scene-chewers Captain Cold and Heat Wave are back to battle Barry in a jarring opening to the episode, with Barry narrowly defeating them with the help of Firestorm. He"s applauded by Iris, Caitlyn, Cisco, Ronnie and Eddie (??) at the lab, but then Harrison Wells comes up and gives him the warmest compliment of all, and we cut back toBarry alonein the lab, imagining a parallel lifesix months after the "singularity" that almost destroyed Central City.

Lonelyand angsting (though Barry"s version of angsting is less broody and more wounded puppy)he might be --Barry"s still a hero and he"s working as the Flash by himself while Joe and Cisco work on an anti-metahuman task force with the police. For some reason, they and Iris talk openly about Barry"s identity in the middle of a police station, but all the people of Central City are apparently selectively deaf after the Flash saved their city, so it"s okay.

Iris tries to convince a dejected (butstill constructive) Barry to appear at Flash Day to accept his key to the city, but Barry"s having a severe case of guilt and won"t hear her reasoning. In a flashback to that fateful day, it turns out that Eddie wasn"t the only victim but Ronnie was as well -- dying after he merged with Martin as Firestorm to create a nuclear fission and stop the storm. So we can effectively call that the worst honeymoon ever.

Flash Day is adorable anda great callback to the comics and the city"s adulation of Flash. However, the festivities are mired in gloom as Barry is slightly late to accept the award and a withdrawnCaitlyn lingers on the fringes. Not to mention thehooded figure who ruinstheceremony with some flying debris, and who Barry spectacularly fails to defeat. We do get a hint ofCisco"sVibe powers as hegets flashes of the mysterious Bane lookalike.

Back in a Smash

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Looks like there"s a new big bad meta in...

Remember that dead guy from the beginning of the episode, Albert Rothstein? Well thank goodness for the powers of TV foreshadowing, because the new mysterious metahuman was this guy. Not so dead, but definitely radioactive, because after some sleuthing by the team that Barry refuses to recognize, they find out that Rothstein is nuclear, and is powered by absorbing radiation and morphing his own atomic structure. We get Iris being a pivotal part of the team (that X-ray reveal was important, guys!), Martin Stein naming Rothstein Atom Smasher, and Cisco hugging him out of the pure joy of having a partner-in-nicknaming. And Cisco even brings Caitlyn back to the team, despite her working at Mercury Labs and wanting to stay as far away from S.T.A.R. Labs as possible.

Speaking of S.T.A.R. Labs, if those unanswered bills weren"t sign enough, Barry is now the ownerof the labs after Harrison Wells passed it down to him. Barry gets a visit from an attorney who gives Barry Harrison"s living will, but before Barry can wrestle with the idea of watching it, he sees the team at the lab and rushes over.

They"ve solved the case but Barry is still unwilling to endanger them, going off to fight Atom Smasher on his own and nearly losing before Cisco taps into the alarms to distract Smasher and let Barry escape.Barry gets treated to another flashback and a pep talk from Joe, who puts on his protective father jacket and tries to help him move on. But it turns outthe only one who can help him truly move on isHarrison Wells himself, who records a confession to the murder of Barry"s mom, Nora Allen, thus freeing his dad from years of wrongful imprisonment.

Elated by the news,Barry finally assembles Team Flash toask them for help in defeating Atom Smasher. The plan is pretty simple -- lead Atom Smasher on a merry chase to a nuclear power plant and overload him with radiation to render him powerless -- but this plan offers us the best part of the episode: the Flash signal. (WhichCisco, our resident audience surrogate,apparently "saw in a comic book somewhere," and not in the newspapers of another embattled city.) But I don"t care, it was just another example of this show"s unadulterated joy in bringing its comic book vision to life -- besides, Batman can worry more aboutArrowstealing all of his villains rather thanFlashstealing his signature light show. But,in the midst of all our comic fan squealing, we do get a hint at our villain for the season: Zoom.

Moving forward

Barry would not have been able to move past his guilt if it weren"t for his visit toaskCaitlyn"sforgiveness and their watching of Harrison"s tape together -- they"ve long provided the emotional core of the team. But whileCaitlyn is easily forgiving,I feel like this could be sowing the seeds for Killer Frost, or at least laying the grounds for some animosity between Caitlyn and Barry. It"s too early to tell yet, but it would be a good way to shake up the dynamic of their already fractured team.

Of course, the waterworks really come during Henry and Barry"s entire reunion and the realization that they would have to ultimately live apart. Henry is the perfect self-sacrificial father who would let his son be the hero, while Barry is still not done growing up yet, despite Martin"s touchingly brief "graduation speech" on moving forward. At least we got that wonderfully meta moment when Henry told Barry, "I"ll race you."

Barry is stronger when he"s not alone though, and surrounded by his "family," he gets a new suit (the white crest, yes!)and a state-of-the-art security system that gets beaten by Jay Garrick two seconds later. Hello, Harrison 2.0.

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Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2015/10/07/flash-recap-man-who-saved-central-city-season-2-episode-1/73492572/