THE FLASH “Attack on Gorilla City” Review

By Justin Carter

It’s about damn time that The Flash got to their yearly Gorilla Grodd episode. Jesse’s appearance at the end of the last episode gave us plenty to be excited about, and the fact that this is a two-parter means that the show gets the extra time for this to build up to the crazy.

Our first half is standard table setting that comes with multi-part episodes. Gorillas have kidnapped Harry, prompting Barry to bring Cisco and Caitlin along to rescue the not so good doppelganger. (Julian is also on the expedition, because he’s into Caitlin and is delightfully blatant about it.) Once there, they’re immediately captured, but things aren’t as they seem. Grodd has actually not taken over Gorilla City, but the current leader Solovar has his eyes on Earth-1 and wants to take it over.

Grodd promises to stop the Gorillas from conquering their world if Barry can kill Solovar in combat. Of course, Barry doesn’t do that, but it doesn’t matter, because Grodd was lying about Solovar and just duped Team Flash to get access to Cisco for his dimension hopping powers. What a shock. You can pretty much tell he’s lying because this guy is too much a Big Deal to let anyone tell him what to do for long, and months away in a city of gorillas with similar abilities wouldn’t change that. Solovar slapping the hell out of him was also a good tip off, because no way would Grodd take that lying down.

When the Gorilla City two-parter was announced, there was a natural worry about the quality of the CG. One gorilla is enough, but more than that–and an entire city filled with them–was going to mean that corners had to be cut. Sure enough, that’s what we get here; barring the arena where Barry and Solovar fight it out, the CG beasts are covered in shadow, given wide, sweeping shots, or “presented” in the scene by taking over a human character. For Grodd, it means that he takes over Harry’s body, and while it’s a bit silly to hear the normally eloquent Tom Cavanaugh speak with a guttural speech pattern, he makes it feel like someone is using Harry as a meat puppet. Cisco doing it is less impressive, but still creepy.

The true tension comes from the Gorilla City story, so it comes as no surprise that the stuff on Earth-1 is very low key, even without comparing the two. Wally and Jesse are left to defend Central City from threats, which amount to….bank robbers, basically, and even that only requires Wally. (With Dish, the description for the episode said that they would have to contend with a metahuman with gravity control, which was bizarrely incorrect.) Their real struggle comes from the romance that’s been slowly brewing over the last season and a half, with Jesse wondering if he’s really into her or just her speed. She’s never really made the effort to visit him, and it’s not like he ever really seemed to mention still being into her before this, but whatever, they’re young. This whole ordeal is cute and the actors have chemistry, plus it also allows HR to give both kids advice that their respective dads can’t (Joe’s scenes are largely spent eavesdropping on someone, to hilarious effect).

“Attack on Gorilla City” is a fun episode that does what it needs to do, and makes for an entertaining episode all around. Now that everyone’s reunited, it’s time for the Gorillas to come to Earth-1 and cause some havoc!

Additional Notes

• There was a huge lack of commercials for Kong: Skull Island during this episode. If it’s not in next week’s episode, they’ve got much more self restraint than me.
• If Grodd has had Gypsy all this time, what was the point of using Cisco? How’d he even get Gypsy?
• Harry: “He probably doesn’t even know his credit card pin.” HR: “There’s so many numbers!” H: “There’s four digits–why is he here?!”
• Julian’s absolute giddiness at the idea of Gorilla City was delightful, and he had the most logical reaction I’ve seen from him thus far.
• Speaking of, he and Caitlin are now on the train to becoming a thing. This is definitely going to not end well by the end of the season.
• Are we at the point to where we could get Tom Cavanaugh to just carry a show as different versions of himself? Better yet, can we just put all his versions of Harrison Wells on Orphan Black?
• See you next week for part two!