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The Flash Review – Season 1, Episode 11: The Sound And The Fury

By Nick Tylwalk

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Not-So-Fast Recap: Barry says it’s easy to believe in heroes, but hard when our heroes stop believing in us. Keep that in mind; I have a feeling it’ll be applicable later.

When Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow have trouble helping the Flash stop a gang of motorcycle-riding crooks, Harrison Wells steps in with a plan to round them all up. The Royal Flush Gang (yes!) is no match for Wells’ brain, and when the doctor remarks that it felt pretty good to be the hero, Barry remarks that he’s pretty good at it.

Iris West stops by the West house but turns down a spaghetti dinner because she’s supposed to help Eddie Thawne paint. She did, however, get an exciting call from the Central City newspaper.

Later, we see Harrison relaxing sans wheelchair and glasses. He gets a threatening phone call, which causes him to grab a gun. Suddenly, the glass ceiling overhead shatters, sending shards raining down. Good thing he can just super-speed out of the way … um, oh yeah, he’s Reverse-Flash.

Both the cops and the S.T.A.R. Labs crew show up, worried for his health, and of course, he’s back in his chair. Caitlin and Cisco reveal that they’ve never seen the doctor’s swanky place before, because he keeps his private life private.

We flash back to two years earlier, when Harrison is playing chess with a young man he calls Hartley. Cisco Ramon enters for his first day on the job, and it’s clear Hartley is no fan. Wells reassures him that “nothing and no one is going to change” the fact that Hartley is his guy.

In the present, Joe and Eddie remark that there were no scratches on Wells despite the damage to his pad. Barry reveals that it’s almost like the glass shattered itself. Under some questioning, Wells says he already knows who did this: it’s Hartley Rathaway, who he calls the prodigal son, now returned.

As it turns out, Hartley comes from a rich family, albeit one that disowned him after he came out. It’s clear that Cisco remembers him less than fondly, though both he and Caitlin say he was the chosen one. Harrison tells Joe that Hartley left after a disagreement, but declines to go into more detail.

Another flashback shows Cisco and Hartley having some words, and Cisco likes Caitlin a lot more than Hartley. Can’t say I blame him!

Iris has a rough first day on the job as a Real Journalist (patent pending), getting award-winning but grumpy Mason Bridge as a mentor. He’s not thrilled about it. Elsewhere, Barry and Joe have fun with science, as the former tells the latter that sonics must have been used in the attack on Wells’ house. Joe says he thinks Harrison is hiding something, which, of course, he is.

An attack on Rathaway Industries brings Hartley out into the open. He’s got nifty gloves that can fire waves of sonic energy. Flash is able to defeat and disarm him fairly easily, though he does pause when Rathaway says he knows Wells’ secret.

Taken in to S.T.A.R. Labs, Rathaway reveals he was going to call himself Pied Piper, which Ramon admits is not a bad nickname. Wells asks for a moment with his former pupil, discovering that Hartley was able to track the Flash back to the building after working some of his missions. Hartley taunts the Flash, claiming that Wells would turn on him someday, and if he was lucky, he’d only be dead instead of stuck with crazy ringing in his ears.

Spurred on by Rathaway’s insistent ranting, Wells admits that he’s been hiding something. No, not that he’s the Reverse-Flash, but that Rathaway warned that the particle accelerator was not ready, and he went on to activate it anyway. As you might expect, Caitlin does not take the news well, and Barry delivers a well-deserved lecture about how the doctor betrayed their trust.

Still trying to find her way, Iris is assigned a Flash story. Mason kicks it up a notch with some ageist and sexist remarks. After work, Iris decides to complain to Barry, who remarks that sometimes the people they look up to aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. At S.T.A.R. Labs, Cisco discovers to his horror that maybe Hartley wanted to be caught. Using some pretty sweet hearing aids, Rathaway not only escapes his cell, he blows up the door to the Pipeline just as Cisco unfortunately arrives on the scene. After knocking out Caitlin, Pied Piper messes with some of the computers. Wells tries running tot he rescue, but his speed appears to abandon him. He calls Barry, who arrives on the scene just as Rathaway bugs out. Cisco and Caitlin turn out to be more or less okay, and Wells says he’s going off to regain everyone’s trust.

We do another flashback to find out why that’s necessary. Hartley did indeed warn Harrison about the safety of the particle accelerator, but Wells simply fires him for his attempt at being a whistle-blower. #ColdBlooded

Wells is true to his word. He calls a press conference to admit to the world that a friend warned him about the integrity of the accelerator, but he ignored it and went on with the activation. Though he dodges a question about whether he plans on rebuilding it, Iris asks him again, and he replies, “Of course not.” Even Mason looked impressed by that.

One thing is still bothering Cisco, who is driven to find out what Hartley was up to after his escape. Harrison compliments him, saying there was never a second or third-favorite. Ah, but the battle isn’t over. Pied Piper calls the lab to challenge Wells to one final game of chess, one that also involves the Flash. So go ahead and send yor Scarlet knight while I take out a few pawns. That’s Hartley’s way of saying he’s using his sonic powers to menace some cars atop a dam.

Flash rushes to the scene, and we’ve got this week’s super-battle. Alas, the thing that Pied Piper stole was Barry’s exact frequency meaning his gauntlets and the speakers in Flash’s own costume start emitting his personal equivalent of the sound wave that broke that glass. Piper mocks Flash for falling into his trap, and Wells is forced to think fast. Realizing that the dam is full of cars, he figures they can use those speakers and the magic of satellite radio to broadcast the opposite frequency, or something like that. Science. It works, KOing Piper and stopping the attack on the Flash. So, battle won without any help from the Fastest Man Alive, it seems.

Barry thanks his teammates, and when Wells admits that it is difficult to admit that he was wrong, he hopes he’ll earn back Barry’s trust and faith. Our hero says Wells already did, giving him the super-speed group selfie he took earlier.

The Barry voiceover says that he learned to be a hero from all of the people in his life. That includes Joe, who gives Wells some props for having the guts to call the presser. After Barry leaves, Eddie asks if Joe really wants to keep investigating Harrison. Joe is 100 percent sure that he does.

Rathaway wakes up in the Pipeline, and Cisco can’t help but pay him a visit. The smile leaves Ramon’s face, however, when the Pied Piper says Cisco will be letting him out of there soon: because he knows where Ronnie Raymond it, he knows what really happened to him, and most importantly, he knows how to save Ronnie.

That’s bombshell number one, but there’s another one coming. In his future room, Wells hears Gideon tell him that further use of the tachyon device is unwise, as the Speed Force absorption is failing, and he’s endangering himself. Harrison replies that the tachyon device was only intended as a temporary fix, and that the real endgame is approaching.

Favorite moment: For pure comic book goodness, both the Royal Flush Gang and the first mention of the Speed Force were highlights. Still, Cisco wins overall with this description of Hartley: “He was mostly a jerk, but every once in a while, he could be a dick.” 

Final thought: In the comics, Pied Piper has a change of heart later in his career and becomes an ally rather than an enemy. Everything on the TV show happens on a much quicker timeline, so it’s natural to wonder if he’ll really help out. If he can help Ronnie, the Flash and his team might not have any choice but to trust him. It also bears mentioning that he’s not wrong about Wells, who really is a bad guy. Lots to ponder here.

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