The Flash: The Complete Fifth Season - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Flash: The Complete Fifth Season



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
“My name is Barry Allen, and I’m the fastest man alive!"

Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) has had a lot of villains in his time, and especially in the CW show. He’s fought his most dangerous enemy, The Reverse Flash, he’s fought the super powered speedster Zoom, and he’s even fought a future version of himself. Last season threw things for a loop when they decided to choose a NON speedster for his nemesis in the for of The Thinker. The Thinker storyline was absolutely fabulous for what it was, and while the season itself wasn’t THE greatest of The Flash years, it was nice to see the inclusion of The Elongated Man (Ralph Dibney, played by Hartley Sawyer) added to the team. However, there were elements of the same old same old showing up as well, with Team Flash getting bigger and more bloated ala Arrow, and Iris West (Candice Patton) still grating on your nerves.

Season 5 shakes things up even more, and shoots us in a whole new direction for the series in some ways (one of the ways I’ll explain in more detail later in the review), but in many ways staying the same. After the crew defeated The Thinker last season, they ended up destroying his dark matter satellite of doom and spraying said dark matter all over the city, effectively creating a whole new slew of meta humans with potential for becoming criminals with their powers. Yup, that means that Barry has to go around and clean up the mess. HOWEVER, there’s a bit of a wrench in this situation. You see, Barry wasn’t the ONLY one who helped him destroy the satellite. Out of the corner of his eye he saw another speedster with him. A speedster who reveals herself to be his daughter Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy), who has traveled back in time to help her father out, although the real reason is revealed to be because she wants to see her father and know him. Something that was stolen from her as the future “missing” Barry Allen has NOT been corrected like they previous though (hint hint)

To make matters worse, A meta human code named Cicada has started killing off meta humans left and right. This mysterious serial killer is (according to Nora) one of The Flash’s biggest villains, but because of her time jumping he has appeared years too early, and is slaughtering at random. Upon confronting the villain, Barry, Ralph and Cisco realize that their powers won’t work on him. Cicada is in possession of a dark matter infused dagger that drains the powers of anyone who comes close to him except his own. Meaning that they’re up against a super powered Meta WITHOUT any of their own meta powers to even the playing field. Now it’s a game of cat and mouse as Cicada mysteriously evades them as Team Flash tries to figure out ways to negate his powers and capture him before he becomes the 150+ kill serial killer that he supposedly becomes.

The Flash Season 5 is a LOT of fun this year. Cicada makes for a wicked villain, and him being almost the exact OPPOSITE of The Thinker also throws a few monkey wrenchs into the plan. The team is so used to fighting speedsters, or metas that are one step ahead of them due to their brilliance that the sheer neanderthal raw hatred and fighting style of Cicada throws them completely for a loop. His dagger makes him nearly invulnerable, but because he’s so focused on hatred and killing metas they’re not sure how to out think him. He’s a wrecking force of human nature and something they’ve not encountered before except in less powered metas. If I have any complaints in the show, it’s Nora. Nora was a cute character and a nice addition for a short while, but she seriously over stayed her welcome and the wrap up with her big mystery is not handled the best in the season. Tom Cavanaugh has also done the same thing. He was incredible as Dr. Wells/Reverse Flash in the first season, and even Earth 2 Harrison Wells was good, but he should have exited the show by season 3 at the LATEST in my opinion. He’s stuck around because Tom Cavanaugh is such a good actor and he became such a fan favorite that the show runners kept finding alternate reality versions of himself to bring back. As such he’s kind of worn thin, and almost a liability to the show’s value anymore.

Now, onto the BIG reveal that Arrow, The Flash and Supergirl made with their Elseworlds crossover. I didn’t talk about it MUCH in my review of Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season, because it has been teased about and hinted about for the first several seasons of The Flash more than any of the other DC live action Arrowverse shows. That is, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Crisis is one of those big “Thanos” level comic series that is legendary in the DC universe. Also it was hinted about in the first few seasons of The Flash in the form of Gideon. If you remember, Gideon kept showing a news blurb years in the future about The Flash gone missing, and Barry and his team doing everything to fix the timeline to make sure that doesn’t happen. Most of us comic nerds immediately recognized that as paying homage to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but very few of us ever thought we’d see that happen on the TV screen. Well, there have been hints, little drops throughout all the Arrowverse series that have winked and nodded about “something coming” and now Greg Berlanti and his crew have laid it out on the table. We’re going to get a Crisis on Infinite Earths sometime in the next year or so. The Elseworlds episodes literally introduced the monitor and set it all up, and with Oliver Queen going with The Monitor at the end of Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season we can only guess that it will happen in next years crossover, or maybe a massive special after next year (we don’t know at this point). This season brings back that realization of “Barry’s gone!” from the future with Nora, and it all starts to come together. Whether it be next years crossover event, or whether it be a special AFTER next year (season 8 of Arrow is supposedly it’s final season, but with Oliver going into the Multiverse with the Monitor it’s hard to say what will transpire next year). All that to say, The Arrowverse is going to finally bring this fan favorite comic series to fruition, and all those hints and homages to Crisis on Infinite Earths has not just been fan service. So there’s MUCH more to come in the future!




Rating:

Rated TV-14




Video:

As I've said with previous seasons, if you've seen one season of The Flash you've seen them all visually speaking. Again, that's a positive note as the 5 seasons of the show have all been remarkably good looking and pristine on Blu-ray for the most part. Once again we have the same 4 discs for all 24 episodes (22 episodes + the two crossover eps from Arrow and Supergirl ...sadly no crossover with DC's Legends of Tomorrow this year), and the image is sharp and brightly colored. The Flash has always been the brighter and shinier of the Arrowverse shows by a goodly margin, and the bright reds of Barry's new suit, and the flashes of purple and yellow from Nora's lightening and Reverse Flash's little cameo, combined with all the cheery brightness of Central City make for one colorful landscape. Fine details are exquisite (sometimes a bit TOO good looking due to the shows limited CGI budget), and the only real issue that I see crop up repeatably is banding. It's not massively egregious banding, but it is common to see a dark warehouse or the night sky show color banding pretty regularly. Otherwise this is a spotless transfer with great details and amazing clarity.






Audio:

The show's singular 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is excellent as always, showcasing the wooshing and swooshing of Barry's super powers more than ever, especially with the addition of Nora to the speedster complement this year. The show itself is very action intensive and this really adds to the flavor of the series, as the constant battles and use of the Flash score for the more intense scenes creates an immersive and exciting experience. Dialog is always spot on (never had an issue with the dialog for any of the 5 seasons). Bass is tight and punchy, and with the rumble of the Flash's super speed or the slam when Cicada slams his dagger into the floor all creating some serious low end activity to complement the whizzing and zooming super heroes. The Show has a low enough budget that it's never going to be PERFECT in the audio front, but the CW has made good use of the budget and always made sure that their main super hero shows have a WELL above average sounding mix for home video.






Extras:

• ALL 22 ONE-HOUR EPISODES + 2 FULL CROSSOVER EPISODES
• The Best of DC TV's Comic-Con Panel San Diego 2018
• The Evolution of Killer Frost
• Inside the Crossover: Elseworlds
• Villains: Modes of Persuasion
• Gag Reel
• Deleted Scenes

Final Score: ​

The Flash: The Complete Fifth Season is a nice change of pace for Team Flash, but still much more of the same thing as well. It’s nice that after the first 3 seasons of having a speedster as the main villain they have branched out with some of The Flash’s OTHER rogues from his gallery of villains. The Thinker was a great concept last year, but slightly mishandled, and Cicada makes for a rather visceral and scary villain. Their powers are completely negated against a man built of pure rage and meta fueled hatred, and that’s something that’s hard to combat when they’re so used to relying on their powers to win. The show kind of buckles under the weight of Team Flash at times, and the Nora storyline is one that really could have been completely cut out (or toned WAY down) and left the season better in the long run. Still, this is a fun show and Cicada made for a great villain this year, not to mention the VERY obvious hints that the Arrowverse shows are going to culminate with Crisis on Infinite Earths after this many years has my nerd excitement tingling at full power. Very Fun Watch if you’re a The Flash fan.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Tom Cavanagh
Created by: Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti, Geoff Johns
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: TV-14
Runtime: 1096 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 27th, 2019

Recommendation: Fun Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Will need to check out the entire series.