Kevin and Bixby stop monkeying around and really get into the heart of this week’s episode. Grab a latte and note the nearest exits, because it’s time to take a look at CW’s The Flash.

KEVIN

Expectation and obligation.

Everyone feels it. It’s an intrinsic part of being, for us as well as superheroes. It surrounds us, binds us all together, and it’s a force that really just kind of sucks.

There’s a lot that can be said about expectation in this week’s episode, and that’s what I’m going to do – it comes directly into play for pretty much everyone, in ways that we may not have even considered.

Oh, and a giant gorilla attacks, too.

Though this episode is old, spoiler warnings are in effect after the cut.
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We can talk and talk until we’re black and blue, but this week’s episode has us at the edge. Get ready to have a blast, because it’s time to take a look at CW’s The Flash.

BIXBY

I work with two other women at my level of management. Our boss is a man, and often our complaints are dismissed out of hand, or inadequate excuses for them are given. Recently, his boss discovered that we were all in the process of leaving and decided to have a manager meeting, whereupon we all discussed why we were leaving.

Here’s some background: None of us are amateurs. Two of us have been with the store for a while – me for well over a year, the other for longer than the store manager. One of us has been here for less time, but she is much older and more experienced with management. We are all smart women and I, personally, have more experience in pizza than anybody else in the store, period. I’m not exaggerating here. Any outsider can look at this situation – three of us all looking to leave, and soon – as a basic problem with the store itself and the way it’s being run.

The “emergency managers’ meeting” we had in order to address the issue made it clear that our boss’s boss was under the impression we were all in some sort of interpersonal conflict. I would not be surprised if, behind closed doors, my boss and his boss didn’t mutter about us all being on our periods together or something.

There was no trust given. At no point did I feel like either my boss or his direct supervisor believed there was a real issue.

Trust is important, even in very small jobs like mine.

It is, in fact, even more important when your job involves being armed and capturing dangerous metahumans who shoot light beams out of their hands.

Spoilers under the cut.
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This week, Kevin and Bixbyy are looking at the bright side of life. Grab a coffee and make it a double, because it’s time to take a look at CW’s The Flash.

KEVIN

Everybody has secrets.

This isn’t necessarily malicious, of course. Secrets can range from “hasn’t come up in conversation yet” to “actively hiding”, and everything in between. There are extenuating circumstances, or sometimes omissions that simply happen because they may have just slipped your mind.

Part of this is because everyone has different sides of themselves that not everyone sees all at once. We act differently to different people, or sometimes we just wish we were someone else.

We all have a face, essentially, that we hide away forever, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.¹

In comics, of course, and the DCTV Arrowverse, it’s taken a bit more literally than that. Secret identities of heroes and villains are part and parcel of the experience, but even the civilians and bridge bunnies get in on the action now and again.

We all fall in love, after all, and we disregard the danger. And though we share so many secrets, there are some we never tell.²

Though this episode is older, spoiler warnings are in effect after the cut.
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Tensions really flare up in this week’s episode. Have a seat and bond with your friends, because it’s time to take a look at CW’s The Flash.

BIXBY

What does family mean to you?

This show asks this question a lot, in a lot of different ways. We probably all have different faces we picture in our heads when we think about our family. Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, even close friends who aren’t related by blood. It varies from person to person, as do the shape and size.

Here’s something I don’t talk about a whole lot. If you follow me on Twitter, you may already know, but not all of y’all do, so here it is: I don’t talk to my mom. In the last, oh…four? Five years? I think I’ve sent her one email. I cut her out of my life. My reasons are…well, they’re pretty personal, and it’s not just about me, so it’s not my story to tell. One of the reasons my Twitter was marked private for so long is that my mother Twitter-creeps on me, and I’ve heard about it third-hand once or twice. It used to make me uneasy, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.

So when I refer to “my parents”, I’m talking about my dad and my stepmom.

That’s not unusual. Not even the way I’ve cut my mother out of my life is unusual – a lot of us have had to remove toxic people from our lives. It makes me a little…sensitive about some things, though.

Spoilers occur under the cut.
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This week’s episode has us seeing double. Get ready for a big shock, because it’s time to take a look at CW’s The Flash.

BIXBY

Parallel worlds are just…really cool. I’ve always found the idea of a multiverse (not just in fiction, but for real) fascinating. And obviously, this idea has captivated comic writers. It’s hard to find a comic character who doesn’t have some parallel version in an alternate universe. It’s actually something of a common idea these days, though it was fairly new to pop culture when I first heard of it. (Back in the day, before cell phones and the internet, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth…)

For example: the Berenstain Bears.

There’s this theory that those of us who remember Berenstain being spelled as Berenstein are (among other possibilities) from a parallel world, and we slipped into the Stain universe on accident or due to a glitch in the Matrix or because Mars is retrograde or something. Other notable theories include one which states this is an alternate timeline due to someone going back into the past and fucking with something (dammit, Barry!).

Now, in truth, these theories are most likely the result of confabulation on a wide scale (known in some circles as the Mandela Effect. It’s relatively common to have a confabulated memory which is specific to you (for example, for a few years I was convinced that my great-uncle, whom I knew as Uncle Leonard, was dead, and then I ran into him at a family thing. Awkward, lemme tell you), but it’s really an interesting phenomenon that we get them en masse like this. The universe is a weird and wonderful place, but it’s probably not evidence that some of us are from a parallel earth/alternate timeline.

Still, it’s fun to think about, no?

Anyway, spoilers under the cut.
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Kevin and Bixby return to Central City with the start of Season Two. Start up the band and prepare a ticker-tape parade, because it’s time to take a look at CW’s The Flash.

KEVIN

Welcome back, friends! Hope you enjoyed your holidays. I know I did – I have the first collected volume of Mark Waid’s Flash comics and I’m eagerly awaiting Volume Two to be released. Until then, we’ve got the next season of The Flash to get through, and gosh, is it a doozy.

Where did we leave off, again? Ah, yes. Black hole, Jay Garrick’s helmet, sacrifice, cliffhanger.

Let’s get started.

Though this episode is old, spoiler warnings are in full effect under the cut.
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