Plot
As Iris and Eva McCullouch continue to find a way to escape Mirror World, Barry turns his attention to trying to rebuild Giden. Unfortunately, STAR Labs' newest employee, Chester P. Runk, gets in the way trying to impress Barry and winds up setting the stage for Grodd to force himself into The Flash's mind. But Grodd isn't out for revenge... he needs help!
Influences
The Flash comics of Joshua Williamson (Grodd with super-speed and a lightning bolt emblem in his first), God Friended Me (the title is the pun on another series produced by Greg Berlanti) and The Fly (Camilla makes reference to the movie)
Performances
After being a non-entity in most of her appearances, Victoria Park gives her best performance as Kamilla Hwang in this episode - probably because this is the first episode to give her anything to do beyond being a hostage or the supportive girlfriend.
Goofs
Once again, The Flash contradicts itself as to what the heroes remember about the pre-Crisis universe, with Barry having no idea where his parents are buried now and not remembering that Pied Piper is a metahuman rather than a tech-based criminal.(Presumably, even as a Paragon, Barry has trouble keeping two contradictory sets of information straight in his head as the human brain can only recall so much and his brain has shut down his memory to protect him from the trauma.)
Why can't The Flash run around or phase through the train?
Artistry
The CGI for the gorillas is quite good.
Flash Facts
The address Chester tracks Pied Piper to is the corner of 52nd and Palm. This is yet another nod to the number 52 and its significance in DC Comics.
The idea of Grodd gaining super-speed and the design where he gets a lightning bolt in his fur while merged with Barry - is taken from the most recent run of The Flash comics written by Joshua Williamson.
Technobabble
The Metahuman-Detectors developed by Harry Wells apparently still exist on Earth-Prime, as Barry is wearing one, which alerts him to Pied Piper being close by.
Chester is able to track the Pied Piper by scanning for the same wavelength of the frequency generated by the sonic boom he generates while flying.
Gideon determines that there have been 3.725 trillion changes between the Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis realities.
Barry describes Gideon as a mobile interactive artificial intelligence unit.
Chester attempts to alter Gideon by flipping the positronic solenoid.
Eva was running R-CEM tests when she became trapped in the mirror dimension.
Nash assembles a residual particle catcher, which can detect and detain the molecular afterglow of things.
Frost determines that Barry is in telepathic contact with someone based on his pulse, his rapid eye movement, his vitals and two distinct brainwaves patterns.
In a mindscape, the host transmits neural signals to the guest's primary motor cortex. It the Memory Machine can be made to synch up with those neural transmitters, it can be used as a communicator to reach the host and guest.
The neural-inhibiting capabilities of Grodd's telepathic crown can only handle the strain of two minds for so long. Eventually the mindscape created by Barry and Grodd's minds will collapse. This will kill both of them.
If you die in a mindscape, you die in the real world.
Removing the crown from Grodd would leave Barry trapped inside Grodd's head.
Sedatives have no effect on speedsters.
Grodd is the only being Frost has encountered whose neurons fire at hyper-neural speeds comparable to Barry's.
It is determined that Chester is responsible for enabling Grodd to take over Barry's mind. When he tweaked the positronic solenoid, he adjusted its hypothalamic connection by a factor of 900%. This was more than enough to boost the signal to allow it to be piggy-backed by Grodd's telepathy.
The subatomic particles emitted by Eva McCulloch's machine can penetrate the mirror's surface, but it won't pierce the barrier between the worlds.
Eva burns her arms and hands trying to reach through the mirror after Iris asks why she's so sure the machine won't work.
For some reason, Grodd's mind was not effected by the merging of the multiverse and he still recalls the Pre-Crisis reality.
Barry describes the process by which he and Grodd merge their minds as the mindscape version of the Firestorm Matrix.
Exiting the mindscape while merge would ultimately kill Grodd and Barry, as their bodies would forcibly merge despite being separated in the real world. Kamilla compares this to the process that created the monster in the movie The Fly.
Chester figures out that he can sync Gideon's quantum intelligence network to Barry and Grodd's bio-analytics and let her perfectly time the neural de-splicing as they exit the mindscape
ARGUS injects Grodd with a tracking polymer and agree to release him on probation so long as he can be tracked.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Barry has just lost it with Chester and kicked him out of his lab.)
Kamilla: He's just trying to help.
Barry: Oh, I know. I know. It's... So much has changed after Crisis, and... You know, this morning, when I got the meta alert, I was trying to find my parents' graves. There's not even a cemetery there anymore. I...I searched every graveyard in Central City. I still can't find them. Just feel like a piece of me is missing. And friends like Hartley Rathaway are enemies now. Just everything is so different.
Kamilla: I'll bet hearing different voices on comms doesn't help, either. You want something familiar. That's not us.
Barry: Hey, I didn't mean it like that.
Kamilla: It's okay, Barry. I understand. Just maybe take it easy on Chester.
Barry: So, what, the cage is payback? What, you want vengeance?
Grodd: Not vengeance. Understanding. Grodd wants Barry Allen to see what it's like to have nothing. No powers, no freedom. Only captivity. Caitlin used a neural inhibitor to shut down Grodd's cerebrum. Caitlin betrayed Grodd. But you gave her the authority. This is your doing, Flash.
Barry: I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Your mind is a weapon.
Grodd: You take a weapon from a man, he's still a man. You took Grodd's mind. Grodd's greatest gift. That is not punishment. That is cruelty.
Chester: I am so sorry. I- I never should've came here. This is all my fault.
(Chester leaves the lab. Frost goes chasing after him.)
Frost: Hey. How's you running away gonna help us get Barry out of Grodd's mind?
Chester: Because if I'm not around, at least I can't make things worse.
Frost: Look, I hate to break it to you, but accidentally putting Barry's life in danger is kind of a rite of passage around here. We've all done it: Cisco, me, Ralph, even the janitor. He put too much wax on the floor. But then, after we put his life in danger, we figure out a plan to get him out of it. So now it's your turn.
Chester: You know, in the sixth grade, I got into the science fair with a Millennium Falcon that I built out of used vacuum parts. I mean, it it flew and everything, like a drone. But on the day of the fair, it didn't fly. Uh, rust in the intake manifold was preventing air from getting into the combustion, which was then causing it to...
(Frost looks impatient and gives Chester a "get to the point" look.)
Chester: Sorry. Anyway, I had begged my teacher to let me fix it and then fly again the next day. He said no. You know why? He was an old school brother. And he said that in the real world, people like us we don't get a second chance.
(Chester turns around again and starts to walk to the elevator.)
Frost: Hold on.
(Chester stops and looks back at her.)
Frost: I'm not gonna pretend like I have any idea what your life has been like, and I know that some of the stuff we do in here has nothing to do with the real world. But I'm offering you a second chance. Because you deserve one. 'Cause we all do.
Continuity
As this episode opens, the only people at STAR Labs to help Barry are Chester P. Runk and Kamilla.
Isis is away working on astory.
Frost is said to be at ARGUS checking on Bloodwork.
Cisco is said to be off the grid charting differences between the Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis realities.
Ralph is still searching for Sue Dearbon.
Pied Piper has not been seen since 217.
In the Post-Crisis reality, Pied-Piper is a metahuman criminal with sonic control powers, who backs his powers up with technology that enhances his natural abilities.
Pied Piper is able to fly using his sonic blasts as a means of propulsion.
Chester tracks Pied Piper to 52nd and Palm Street. However, he is able to get away because the route Barry too to try to get to him was blocked by a train.
Chester learns that Barry Allen is The Flash.
Barry is trying to upgrade Gideon.
Barry is unable to remember where his parents are buried. He can't even remember the cemetery.
Eva and Iris decide to try and rebuild the machine Eva was working on when she was trapped in Mirror World.
Nash and Allegra assemble a residual particle catcher.
Nash is now hallucinating Sherloque Wells talking to him.
Allegra finds the picture of Nash and her doppelganger from his world. She is creeped out.
Barry suddenly finds himself in a cage, where he is talked to by Eobard Thawne in Harrison Wells' body and Caitlin Snow. Eventually he figures out that he is in one of Gorilla Grodd's memories.
Fake Iris gets into a fight with Joe over accessing a police file on Joseph Carver. She apologizes and makes lunch plans with him for later that day.
When Chester was 11, he drowned his grandmother's car while trying to convert it into a hovercraft.
Grodd is still locked in a coma in a cell in ARGUS, as he was when he was last seen in 515.
Grodd says he wanted Barry to understand what his life was like and that he truly has changed.
Frost uses Sherloque Wells' memory machine from 512 to make contact with Barry inside Grodd's mindscape.
Nash denies that the Allegra Garcia of his Earth was his daughter, describing her as an ex-employee who made a bad call.
Fake Iris misses her lunch appointment with Joe, because she snuck into his office and is stealing the file she asked for earlier.
Eva burns her arms trying to reach through the mirror in her office.
For some reason, Grodd's mind was not effected by the merging of the multiverse and he still recalls the Pre-Crisis reality. He was also able to sense that Gorilla City now exists on Earth-Prime and wishes to go there and live out his life in peace there.
ARGUS agrees to release Grodd on probation after injecting him with a tracking polymer.
Cisco calls Kamilla and tells her he is coming home.
Chester finds the cemetery where Barry's parents are burried.
Barry apologizes for losing his cool with Chester because of everything in his life that is changing.
As the episode closes, STAR Labs satellites detect Pied Piper attempting another robbery.
Nash is once again confronted by a hallucination of Sherloque Wells, whose eyes glow red and features begin to vibrate like the Reverse Flash.
In the final scene, Eva is revealed to be controlling the Fake Iris, who received the same wounds Eva developed after being burned. Eva is able to heal the wounds on the Fake Iris with a wave of her hand, however.
Untelevised Adventures
It is said that Team Flash did something to Pied Piper in the past, but Barry has no memory of what.
STAR Labs employs a never before seen janitor, who nearly killed Barry by over-waxing the floors.
The episode ends before we can see Barry and Chester catch the Pied Piper.
The Boomerang Factor
Barry acts like a judgemental jackass, which is not entirely out of character for him. Its just amusing that for as much store as Barry puts in the idea of people like Leonard Snart being basically good deep down and as much as he preaches the idea that people can be redeemed like his friend Oliver Queen, Barry is totally unwilling to believe that Grodd has changed in the face of everything else in the world that is different.
The Bottom Line
A bit of a mixed bag, overall. On the one hand, the episode does give some much-needed definition to the new supporting cast members that haven't gotten much, like Kamilla and Chester. On the other hand, this episode underscores how much the show has been suffering without supporting cast members like Cisco and Ralph around and how utterly crowded the show has become.
It doesn't help that Barry is unusually pig-headed to justify his grudge with Grodd and Iris spends her limited screen-time once again trying to tell a traumatized genius how to do her job. It's a good thing that Eva has an agenda and has been faking being crazy because otherwise Iris would just look horrible.
At any rate, the effects for Grodd are improved and we get to see the gorilla fight in broad daylight which would have been unthinkable years ago. Ultimately this episode is filler but we get a few good character moments out of it.
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