#flash ep 5

there was definitely something going on with lights here. there are red lightbulbs set up all along the jitters rooftop. and then that one huge bright light.

it reminds me of amelie, actually, which also had a palette made of dark greens and blues and reds, like the flash.

plastique begins with iris, barry, cisco, eddie, and cait hanging out at a bar together. barry is lying to iris (and eddie), but they are all able to hang out together and have fun. barry asks her what she thinks of cisco and caitlin, and iris tells him she thinks they’re the greatest people in the world because they saved his life.

the opening voice over has barry saying:

How often do you think about why your friends came into your life? Was it random, by design, or maybe a little of both? Regardless of the reason, some friends you just know are gonna be by your side for a while. Others, you're not so sure. And then there's that one friend who, well, you hope, someday becomes something more. But “€œfriend” will have to do for now.

it actually has light shades of the fuckboy tendencies we saw in barry in ep 12, where he whined about ~picking iris up~: he says “‘friend’ will have to do...for now.” a more generous reading of that line could see it as him being his no chill self. but the thing about the voiceover in terms of team flash is that it situates where each of the people he’s hanging out with are in his life. 

“some friends are gonna be by your side for a while”--cisco and cait

“others...you’re not so sure”--eddie; and YIKES considering what happens. oh eddie! barry was always such an ass to you!)

“and then there’s that one friend...”--iris

for everyone here save iris, their place in barry’s life is self evident and clear; it’s only iris who isn’t aware he’s in love with her.

soon after this voiceover some shit goes down and everyone runs out to take care of it, all while lying to each other (except eddie, who remains clueless). they separate. barry and cisco and cait go together to catch bette, eddie does his cop at the scene thing along with joe, and iris secretly goes after the flash herself. and so at the scene all of them are present. at the scene iris is there, and she’s the only one who faces the flash.

the next time iris and the flash meet, it’s barry who comes to her, at jitters (her place, which she later christens as their place). it’s only the two of them who are there. no one else knows about it. 

after that meeting iris and barry meet twice more in the episode, both times with barry trying to dissuade her from writing about the flash, and both times with iris pushing back and telling him she believes in the flash and that what the flash does for the city and her writing about it are important. and in the last meeting barry says he and iris should spend some time apart, and iris lets him have his way. then he returns to the bar all of them were at at the beginning of the episode, only it’s just him and then cisco and cait join him. his ending voiceover is 

For a guy who has experienced his fair share of mysteries, one mystery I still can't figure out is why some people come into our lives. Why some people go, and others become a part of you. Some friendships feel like they'll last forever. Not every friendship is meant to last a lifetime. What does last forever is the pain when that person is gone.

i think the entire thing is about bette (his first metahuman friend), but the only part that is immediately visually linked to a character is the “others end far too soon” as the camera pans over iris.

so, iris is out and it’s the super speshul secret exclusionary nerd club, right? (and maybe barry’s being in love with her is implicated in her being left out?) nope. because as barry says “and others end far too soon” what we see is iris isolated (though not alone since liar dad is behind her)--but with her laptop open in front of her and a tab open to her blog. the relationship between her and the flash that was established throughout the episode is kept through to the very end, so that when barry pulls away from her and when formally (as in the form of the episode, not as in officially) she’s excluded, she’s still connected to the flash. and it’s a connection she maintains, because she’s the one who is actively creating it--she runs the blog and she initiated contact with the flash. (which is what we see again in ep 21, when she’s the one who walks into star labs.) that connection is immediately picked up in the next episode, which opens with iris having the exact same voiceover that barry had in the pilot about belief in the impossible, which is essentially a conversation that the two are having with one another because barry comes and swoops her up right when she finishes typing. she was speaking to the city, but he was listening, a reciprocation that was also present in the pilot, when barry said to “believe in the impossible,” which is what iris does. (ooooo, since barry, iris, and eobard are the only ones with voiceovers, what if they aren’t just a conceit for the audience, but like a conversation the three of them are having with one another???? someone fic it.)

basically, this is how the show set up from the very beginning the whole “without you there wouldn’t be the flash.” i feel like the same formal (structural) storytelling can probably be found in subsequent episodes. 

a subtler way the show establishes iris as part of “team flash” is through the thematic connections she has to bette. bette is of course fridged for barry’s emotional whatever, and he uses her death in a story to try and get iris to stop writing about the flash. but the other way iris and bette are connected is that they are both women who throughout the episode face the control of men. eiling and eobard both try to constrain and control bette and she fights against it, just as barry and joe try to constrain and control iris and she fights against it. when bette is left alone with eobard he influences her, just as he does barry and cisco and cait--he gets her to go after eiling by herself and basically gets her killed, without implicating himself in any way. it’s a micro version of the power he exerts over barry’s life--controlling it like some kind of puppeteer. it’s bette’s isolation that leaves her vulnerable to his machinations. she had to be alone for wells to be able to influence her. now, we have barry using bette’s murder to try to get iris to stop blogging, but he ends up distancing himself from her--he ends up isolating her. and so the irony (the real irony, haha) is that in trying to protect her, he places her in the same danger bette was placed in--he leaves her isolated. the difference between iris and bette is that iris doesn’t fall for barry and joe’s persuasion, and by continuing to write about the flash she works against that isolation. 

I am not stopping until the rest of the world believes in him.

I am not leaving you!

one of the most prominent things about iris and barry’s romance is how iris is his anchor. there are lots of different ways this trait manifests: she powers the flash, both inspiring barry to run faster and literally triggering him to do so (two similar but distinct things; there’s a difference between the scene in ep 8 when he sees her smile and he runs faster, and the moments when he breaks his previous speed in direct relation to something having to do with iris–one is reflective of how iris simply inspires barry and the other is more a literal causation); she guides barry back to himself, reorients him when he’s lost, like in the pilot and in grodd lives; and she explains what the flash is while helping to create what the flash is. all these are like a variation on a theme. the thing about them is that they highlight her importance to barry, how she is intimately and indelibly woven into how he functions both in his regular life and as a superhero. none of these are why he loves her, though, they’re examples of how their romance works.  

but with this gifset and the juxtaposition of the two quotes what we get is a shift in perspective; we get what barry means to iris. he’s her anchor, too, and while scenes like when she goes to him for help when she’s afraid for her father or eddie and when he tells her he thinks she’s a good journalist are more obvious examples, i think these two quotes/scenes reveal a quality about how he’s an anchor for her that the other scenes don’t. with these quotes we see how barry inspires iris, we see how important he is to her. he inspires passion in her, in him she finds something to fight for and protect. iris is unwavering, whether (in her lack of knowledge) she’s talking about the flash or about barry, and this matters–her not knowing barry is the flash in the first gif and her speaking directly to barry in the second one matters–because what it shows is that when she supports the flash and when she supports barry she’s not doing so only for the sake of the person in front of her, she’s doing so because of something else, because of a recognition she experiences, and that recognition is of something that is both in barry and the flash–probably what joe called “the light” barry brought to their family. i think this is the quality of her love for barry that comes out when she has expectations of him. like, she doesn’t just take anything and everything barry does, just because he’s barry and just because she loves him. she has a selfhood, and she has a certain…standpoint.

from felicityholysmoak

she looks at him OVER HER SHOULDER the way she looked at the flash OVER HER SHOULDER

from booasaur