REVIEW: ‘The Flash,’ Season Six, Episode Thirteen – Grodd Friended Me

The latest episode of The Flash, “Grodd Friended Me” aired this week on the CW Network. In the previous episode, Ralph (Hartley Sawyer) finally has a lead on Sue Dearbon’s (Natalie Dreyfuss) whereabouts after having spent six months searching for her. In the spirit of a true private investigator, he never gave up looking for her since the day her parents hired him to find her. Ralph eventually meets with Sue face to face but has a hard time bringing her home. Sue insists that Ralph accompany her on a daring adventure, fully unaware of what awaits him. Meanwhile, Iris’ (Candice Patton) mirror clone makes a request to Barry (Grant Gustin) that could bring about great danger. Also, Iris meets Eva McCulloch (Efrat Dor) inside the mirror dimension.

In “Grodd Friended Me,” Barry is still dealing with the many changes that came from Crisis. It gets worse when Barry can’t find his parents’ graves since they have been moved somewhere else. To try and figure out the exact number of changes, Barry conducts an experiment that will help him deal with them. Chester (Brandon McKnight) attempts to help Barry but it causes the experiment to go awry. After regaining consciousness, Barry realizes he’s in some sort of dreamscape and trapped inside a cage. It’s soon revealed that Gorilla Grodd (voiced by David Sobolov) is the one who brought him there with full intent on asking Barry for help. Meanwhile, Iris and Eva make a plan to escape the Mirror Dimension.

I always enjoy any episode that features Gorilla Grodd. If you had told me back during the show’s first season that they would not only be able to feature him in an episode but also make a giant gorilla seem realistic, I wouldn’t have believed it. The visual effects used to have him in an episode only get better each season. Seeing Grodd and Barry team up for the first time was quite special, especially with the history that they have. I’ve always enjoyed the few episodes where Barry has to align himself with members of his Rouge’s Gallery. However, Grodd’s appearance in this episode destroys my theory that he is behind the Black Hole organization (which was the case in Joshua Williamson’s current run of The Flash comics).

Another character that made a return to the show was Chester. His character was introduced in the first episode of the current season and was saved by Team Flash. Since then, he had been under surveillance in S.T.A.R. Labs as a way to control his powers. I was surprised to see his character return since it seemed like he would have a small role. However, I don’t fully know how to feel about him sticking around and becoming a full member of the team. This is all just speculation, but could his return mean that he would replace Cisco (Carlos Valdes) as the tech genius. Chester just doesn’t seem like he’d fit well with the team, even after having bonded with Barry.

I wasn’t sure if The Flash would continue to focus on the changes created by Crisis, but I’m glad that they are. Seeing Barry looking for his parents’ grave in the cold open of “Grodd Friended Me” set the tone for the entire episode. While heartbreaking, it also serves as motivation for Barry to be more thorough in his investigation of the ramifications of such a cataclysmic event. I wouldn’t mind seeing an episode where Team Flash deals with multiple changes caused by Crisis. I get that it would act as a filler episode, but given how big of an impact Crisis made, it would make sense to have at least one episode dedicated to that.

There are nine episodes left of the current season, which leaves an appropriate amount of time for the Mirror Dimension to be shown. From what we’ve seen so far, I’m not impressed. I get that the show has mainly decided to focus on Eva’s lab, but I was hoping there would be a lot more shown already. I’m thinking back to the battles that The Flash and Mirror Master had in the Mirror Dimension and still get goosebumps. It’s understandable that it would be expensive to pull something off like those fights, but just focusing on the lab gets repetitive.

Overall, I quite enjoyed watching “Grodd Friended Me.” It brought back memories of reading the Black Hole storyline from The DC Rebirth line of The Flash comics. The team dynamic between Grodd and Barry is something that I hope will come back in future episodes. The next episode, which is titled “Death of the Speedforce,” marks the return of Keiynan Lonsdale as Wally West. With a title like that, I am hoping that the episode will elevate an already incredible season.

The Flash will be back with a brand new episode on Tuesday, March 10th on the CW Network.

Nicolas Soto

Nicolas is a pop culture critic, focusing primarily on film, tv. anime, and manga. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University, which shapes the way he analyzes his work.

Twitter and Instagram: @brainstormer609