Spoilers The Flash - Season 4

[Christopher]

Literally could have stopped about 45 minutes into the season and claimed success. They crashed a train, stole an override device that could make nuclear power plants melt down all over the country. Mission Accomplished! Nope, after like a dozen OTHER distractions (like kidnapping the SecDef, setting off an EMP in LA, stealing a fighter jet, shooting down Air Force One and gravely injuring the POTUS, firefight in the Chinese Embassy), the end goal was to fire a nuclear missile at LA. Success in every previous plan was required for that one to work, and it would have been less devastating than just focusing on having success with the meltdown device in the first place. *sigh*

And they did all that in 24 hours? Sheesh.

I gave up on 24 after less than 3 episodes due to the violence and torture porn, but I think that, in principle, it could've worked well if they'd done it as a seasonal anthology. Instead of having the same guy improbably deal with multiple different 24-hour nonstop terrorism crises in the course of his life, focus each season on a different lead in a different profession, dealing with a different 24-hour crisis. One season is about a federal agent stopping a terror plot; the next is maybe about cops trying to find a kidnap victim with a 24-hour deadline; the next is maybe 24 hours in the ER after a train wreck or natural disaster; and maybe the next is a lawyer dealing with the old standby plot of having 24 hours to save their wrongly convicted client from execution. (The '90 Flash series did an episode like that, except it was only one hour, naturally.) And so on like that.

 

[Romulan_spy]

And they did all that in 24 hours? Sheesh.

I gave up on 24 after less than 3 episodes due to the violence and torture porn, but I think that, in principle, it could've worked well if they'd done it as a seasonal anthology. Instead of having the same guy improbably deal with multiple different 24-hour nonstop terrorism crises in the course of his life, focus each season on a different lead in a different profession, dealing with a different 24-hour crisis. One season is about a federal agent stopping a terror plot; the next is maybe about cops trying to find a kidnap victim with a 24-hour deadline; the next is maybe 24 hours in the ER after a train wreck or natural disaster; and maybe the next is a lawyer dealing with the old standby plot of having 24 hours to save their wrongly convicted client from execution. And so on like that.

I like your idea a lot. Season 2 is still my all-time favorite. The show definitely jumped the shark big time afterwards. The terrorist plots just became way too over the top and having the same guy always be the one to save the day in 24 hours became completely ridiculous. And the writers were losing steam too I think because the last seasons just recycled the same tropes and plot points from previous seasons, just in a different order.

 

[Scout101]

It was tentatively going to work like that, but kinda like Heroes, the characters get popular, you bring them back even if it doesn't really fit, etc. At least 24 spaced out the timeline so that he only got into nutso situations every couple years...

They started much better, with smaller, more personal situations. As the seasons went on, they kept trying to outdo the previous one, and it got dumb. Entertaining enough to watch, but melts your brain if you try and lay out what happened at the end, and imagine the bad guy plotting that out ahead of time without getting laughed out of the cave.

 

[Romulan_spy]

They started much better, with smaller, more personal situations. As the seasons went on, they kept trying to outdo the previous one, and it got dumb.

Yeah, season 1's threat was a presidential candidate's assassination if I am remembering correctly. More low key and personal but still a real threat to be sure. Then, season 2's threat was a nuke going off, starting WW3. That is as big a threat as they come. How do you go bigger than that? You can't. So the plots got silly trying to be a bigger threat.

I think writers of all shows, whether it is 24, The Flash, or Star Trek, need to learn that not every threat needs to be world ending in order to be compelling.

 

[Jayson1]

I was thinking about the Thinker. Could everything that is happening be one big distraction from some plan that isn't connected to what we see going on? Have everyone tying to solve a puzzle that isn't even the puzzle while he is secretly working on something else? Maybe he is trying to secretly control the speed force or travel to future which ties into that girl who has popped up from time to time to ask questions.

Jason

 

[Romulan_spy]

I was thinking about the Thinker. Could everything that is happening be one big distraction from some plan that isn't connected to what we see going on? Have everyone tying to solve a puzzle that isn't even the puzzle while he is secretly working on something else? Maybe he is trying to secretly control the speed force or travel to future which ties into that girl who has popped up from time to time to ask questions.

Jason

At this point, anything is possible.

 

[Christopher]

It was tentatively going to work like that, but kinda like Heroes, the characters get popular, you bring them back even if it doesn't really fit, etc.

Yeah. Some ideas work better as a single, finite story than as an ongoing, open-ended series. Unfortunately, network execs will want anything successful to be an ongoing series continuing to do the same thing.

I was thinking about the Thinker. Could everything that is happening be one big distraction from some plan that isn't connected to what we see going on? Have everyone tying to solve a puzzle that isn't even the puzzle while he is secretly working on something else?

Interesting thought. Basically the same as Moriarty's plan in 1939's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the second Basil Rathbone Holmes film. Moriarty concocted a convoluted mystery as a "toy" to distract Holmes from his real crime.

 

[dahj]

PROFIT!!!

No underpants, no profit.

 

[The Old Mixer]

What really gets me about this episode is that Barry, who's only in his current situation because he wouldn't lie under oath about his secret identity, has no problem busting somebody else out and putting them in another country.

 

[Christopher]

What really gets me about this episode is that Barry, who's only in his current situation because he wouldn't lie under oath about his secret identity, has no problem busting somebody else out and putting them in another country.

Lying about his secret would've been to help himself. Breaking Big Sir out of jail was to help someone else. That's the difference.

Besides, he still has faith that his friends will help him clear his name and restore justice. His attempt to get justice for Big Sir by legal means failed, and he figured the guy had endured enough, so he achieved justice (as he saw it) in another way.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Still, refusing to go under oath because it would mean having to lie under oath was ultimately about not being willing to break the law. It doesn't matter if he's breaking the law to help himself or help someone else, it's still breaking the law.

 

[Christopher]

Still, refusing to go under oath because it would mean having to lie under oath was ultimately about not being willing to break the law. It doesn't matter if he's breaking the law to help himself or help someone else, it's still breaking the law.

There's following the law, and there's doing what's right. Barry isn't Judge Dredd; he doesn't limit his moral judgment to simply what's legal. There are times when violating the law is the more ethical thing to do, but doing it to help others is more ethical than doing it to help yourself.

And who says that not willing to lie under oath was just about following the law? Maybe it had more to do with the fact that the act of swearing an oath, making a promise, means something to Barry -- something personal, not just legalistic. If Barry swore to tell the truth and then lied, he'd be breaking his word, and he didn't want to do that for personal gain. In this case, though, Barry promised to help Dave -- and he did. So he acted to keep his word.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Fair point, but maybe Barry should have thought of all the people he wouldn't be able to help as the Flash because he let himself be put in jail.

 

[Christopher]

Fair point, but maybe Barry should have thought of all the people he wouldn't be able to help as the Flash because he let himself be put in jail.

That's the Flash. He's also Barry Allen, forensic scientist, and that means the integrity of what he states under oath in court is essential to his work. If he'd lied under oath to get acquitted and gone back to work as a CSI, then his knowledge that he'd lied would taint his work for him from then on. He wasn't willing to compromise himself like that.

 

[Jayson1]

Besides I think Barry Allen has enough trust in Team Flash that they can help protect the city while he is in jail and if something comes up that is so important they need him he can easily get out and make a difference. Well that was before he was put in that special cell in the last episode so he can be sold to Starbuck.

Jason

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe DeVoe's plan is to make Barry emmigrate to the 31st century to save the future?

Young Thawne could have easily mentioned that if Barry doesn't leave by mid 2018, that a Suneater will end all life on Earth by mid 3018.

 

[The Old Mixer]

That's the Flash. He's also Barry Allen, forensic scientist, and that means the integrity of what he states under oath in court is essential to his work. If he'd lied under oath to get acquitted and gone back to work as a CSI, then his knowledge that he'd lied would taint his work for him from then on. He wasn't willing to compromise himself like that.

Barry Allen, forensic scientist, should be against busting people out of jail. Never mind using his Flash powers to do it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

1. Barry broke his daddy out, years ago, and Hank said Put me back in now.

2. Barry also ran his own private and illegal prison, where he decided who got locked up forever and who did not.

 

[Christopher]

Barry Allen, forensic scientist, should be against busting people out of jail. Never mind using his Flash powers to do it.

You're speaking in facile generalities, and that's the problem. I've already given you the key twice now: To any moral person, there's a fundamental difference between what you do for yourself and what you do for others. Even if the action is the same, the motive is what determines whether it's acceptable or not. As long as you're thinking in categorical rather than situational terms, you'll never get a handle on this.

 

[Marc]

Barry Allen, forensic scientist, should be against busting people out of jail. Never mind using his Flash powers to do it.

did Barry end up leaving Bigsir in China or is was it some mythical Shangri-La out of DC comics?