At the risk of sounding like a member of The CW’s PR team, once again I am amazed at The Flash’s fast found consistency. It’s normal for a new show to waver, to have ups and downs, but The Flash has been steadfast in its approach from the beginning. It’s unabashedly a comic book show, reveling in the otherworldly exploits it’s allowed to explore each week, but it’s also extremely inclusive. This is not a show I recommend to fellow lovers of capes, but to fellow lovers of television. Each week it delivers genuinely creative stories and characters worth caring about—and an explosion or two.
Last week saw The Flash go public, which took him out of the realm of myth in Central City, but also put the police on his side. More importantly, though, it saw Barry and Joe become roommates. I would have been fine with 42 minutes of Barry and Joe shenanigans this week, but sadly there were none. Instead, “The Sound and the Fury” brought a deeper understanding (sort of) to Harrison Wells, and a classic Flash villain.
As has become customary, the story in “The Sound and the Fury” was tight and focused, leading to a well-paced hour of television with more than a few surprises. Episode 11 brought Hartley Rathaway, better known as Pied Piper, a longtime Flash adversary and sometime ally who is an expert in sonic technology and wields a flute with hypnotic powers. This iteration of character smartly did away with the flute, which is a filmic nightmare. I can’t imagine many things more difficult than making a flautist seem sinister, and not merely hokey. Instead, Rathaway wielded gloves that emit sonic blasts at various degrees of strength, and some nice eyeglasses.
The most important aspect of the television version of Rathaway, though, is his connection to Harrison Wells. In a handful of flashbacks, we learned that Rathaway was a former employee of S.T.A.R. Labs, one thought highly of by Harrison and one who let that thought go to his head. Both Caitlin and Cisco had their fair share of run-ins with Rathaway while he worked for the lab, until he eventually left after he and Harrison had a falling out. That falling out wasn’t your average quibble, but involved the particle accelerator that would explode and give Barry his speed. Rathaway discovered that there was a possibility for a catastrophic failure once the accelerator was turned on, a fact that he parlayed to Harrison who, expectedly, did not care. Add in years of feeling under-appreciated, being injured in the accelerator explosion and Pied Piper is born. Andy Mientus (Smash) inhabited Hartley Rathaway and did so successfully. It wasn’t a magnificent performance, but Mientus showed a knack for the seedier side of things.