Check out Josh’s recap of Season 3 Episode 13 of The Flash, titled Attack on Gorilla City, which features our favorite telepathic ape, Grodd! Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode.
- His thoughts on Attack On Gorilla City, Episode 313 of The Flash
- Her thoughts on The Flash, Season 3 Episode 13: Attack On Gorilla City
On this week’s episode of The Flash, the episode picked up pretty close to where the last one left off—with Jesse coming from Earth-2 asking for help to find her father. It looks like Grodd lured Wells from Earth-2 into a trap, and is holding him captive. Barry decides that he, Caitlin, and Cisco will go rescue Wells.
There’s one other person coming along as well. Barry had stopped by his work to ask Julian to cover for him, which Julian agrees to. But when it is time to head to Earth-2, Julian shows up in an Indiana Jones get-up, complete with a pistol sidearm, and fedora. He gets strange looks from Team Flash, and Barry asks about the whole covering for him at work. Apparently Julian told Singh that they both were going to a work conference.
Jesse, meanwhile, is staying behind on Earth-1 with Wally and HR, as apparently Jesse knows her father wouldn’t want her to be involved in the rescue mission.
Cisco vibes the rescue team over to Earth-2, and they land in the middle of a jungle. They look around for clues and find what looks like the site of where Earth-2 Wells was probably kidnapped. But things go sideways for Barry and the gang, as darts seemingly come out of nowhere, rendering the entire group unconscious.
When they wake up, Team Flash finds themselves in cages, and are greeted by Wells. Wells is not quite himself though, as they discover that Grodd is telepathically controlling Wells to speak to them. Team Flash also discovers that they are unable to use their powers—at least not Barry and Cisco, as Caitlin hasn’t tried yet…
Grodd then reveals his plan to Barry—kidnap Wells so that Jesse would get Barry to come to Earth-2. Grodd says he needs to have Barry fight another ape, Solovar, otherwise Solovar could take over as leader of the apes, and work on an assault to attack Earth-1. Barry refuses to kill Solovar, but after some discussion, agrees to fight him to save Earth-1.
In the arena, Solovar gives Barry a run for his money, but Flash is able to use the vibrating hand trick to take him down. Barry refuses to kill Solovar though, and as a result, Grodd orders the apes to dart him—again.
Barry wakes up in his cell again, and things are looking pretty grim. Grodd doesn’t seem to have a plan to let the group go, and Grodd has another chat with the group through Wells again. It turns out Grodd’s plan was get Solovar out of the way, so that he would rule Gorilla City without any rivals. Oh, and he plans on attacking Earth-1 with the help of Cisco opening a portal.
So the team tries to figure out what to do. Cisco’s plan is to have Caitlin see if her powers work, so that she can kill him, but the team is obviously against that idea.
Their other plan seemed to do the trick though, with Caitlin freezing Barry to death—or so it would seem. Grodd comes down and discovers a “dead” Barry, whom he takes him out of his holding cell, and puts him in the “discard” pile I guess?
Barry is then able to vibrate himself warm again, and opens up the cage. He swoops up everyone, and the group ends up back in the jungle again, with a gorilla brigade on their tail. Cisco manages to get a portal open though, and the team makes it back to Earth-1.
While all of this is going on in Earth-2, there’s some drama between Wally and Jesse. Wally talks to Jesse about his new abilities, and she seems to be a bit down about hearing it.
Wally isn’t sure what to make of it, and later in the episode Jesse reveals that now that Wally is a hero, they can never be together as he will be too busy to have any time for her.
After talking to HR about the situation, Wally decides to ask Jesse to stay on Earth-1 with him, but she isn’t very thrilled about that. They make up, but it doesn’t seem like anything has been decided regarding their relationship status.
But the good news is Wells is saved, and brought back to Earth-1. There is a big reunion, with HR and Wells meeting, and Wells perplexed why someone so…unintelligent has been a part of the team.
We then see that Grodd has captured Gypsy, and he plans to force her to open a portal to Earth-1 so that his ape army can come through and take over Central City. It looks like Barry won’t be able to stop that, unfortunately.
His Thoughts on The Flash, Season 3 Episode 13: Attack On Gorilla City
So, the first thing that come s to mine after seeing this episode—the CGI was pretty bad. The show seems to be ok with the increased usage of their mediocre CGI, and the more it is used the harder it is to look at.
But story-wise, I was not much happier. The ploy to get Barry to defeat Solovar was interesting, but the whole dart situation was bothersome given Barry should be able to sense these things, and react before these would get anywhere near him.
The whole fight with Solovar was cheesy too. This big ape should be no match for Barry, unless he also possesses telepathic abilities, which would sway the fight easily to Solovar. Either way, it should have been a one sided fight. I guess that would not be very interesting for TV, so they had to come up with something.
I really thought Caitlin was going to use her abilities to “freeze” the bards of the cell to make them brittle. I guess the writers went a different route though. I wasn’t quite sure how the abilities of Team Flash were dampened. They said it wasn’t the cell, so I thought maybe Grodd was doing it telepathically? I wasn’t really sure, but I also wasn’t sure why Grodd couldn’t figure out Barry was still alive. It seems like he would be able to pick up some sort of brain activity.
Finally, I don’t really understand what Grodd’s plan was. If he wanted to get to Earth-2, he could have just used Gypsy in the first place. I guess the problem might have been Solovar getting in the way. It seems like that is hinted in the episode, so we will go with that I guess. Next episode has this mini-story arc being wound up, so we will have to see what trouble Grodd causes in Central City.
Her Thoughts on The Flash, Season 3 Episode 13: Attack On Gorilla City
I was not really a fan of either of the storylines going on in this episode, either the Gorilla City storyline, or the Wally and Jesse drama storyline. Mainly because neither one of them made a lot of sense.
Grodd has this whole elaborate plan to get back to not only get Barry to kill off Solovar, but also to get Cisco to get him and his gorilla army into Central City. Some of it goes according to plan, but it looks like he’s going to Gypsy to get him through. Is this the same Gypsy we know, from Earth-19? Or is this a doppelganger of that Gypsy who happens to have the same powers? I guess we’ll find out soon. But anyway, the fight scene with Solovar seemed to inexplicably go too easily Solovar’s way. I suppose that’s called “suspense” but it just seemed a bit odd how Solovar could thwart Barry so easily. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the horrible CGI during this scene. There also wasn’t a very good explanation of why Barry and Cisco couldn’t use their powers in the cage, but Caitlin could use hers. Then when Barry was out of the cage, he suddenly could use his powers again.
I also didn’t realize that Wally and Jesse’s relationship was so serious. It doesn’t seem like they’ve spend much time together, but it becomes this huge big deal this episode. It feels like most of their time spent together has been Jesse moping. But, young love and whatever, I guess, right? Plus it wouldn’t be a CW show without some relationship drama. Even if there wasn’t much of a relationship for there to be drama about.
I think what I enjoyed most about this episode was seeing Indiana Malfoy again. That was amusing. Let’s hope that the second part of this Grodd storyline is better, both writing-wise and visually.
Scenes from The Flash, Season 3 Episode 14: Attack on Central City
Preview of Season 3 Episode 14 of The Flash
