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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 7 Episode 7: Growing Pains

April 14th, 2021 by Todd Black Comments

After an episode that I’d honestly rather forget, it was going to be interesting to see how The Flash bounced back in a more “standard” way and for the most part “Growing Pains” did a good job of getting things back to normal in a good way aside from some hiccups that did weigh the episode down.

In short, the episode was about a new cold-based meta (of which there are many) who arrived in Central City and due to their icy escapade Sergeant Kramer believes 110% that Killer Frost is on the rampage again.

For the most part I liked this storyline as we got to see the growth of Frost in certain ways and unlike last episode, we got more than one scene of depth. Such as when she prepares to break Caitlin out of jail after she was mistakenly arrested (ironically enough) and feels almost powerless to change what is going on. Danielle Panabaker has done a great job of playing both sides of this coin and it really came off here. And Frost turning herself in creates plenty of interesting storylines going forward.

The problem though was that the new character of Chillblaine (which as even The Flash noted was a terrible name) was insanely over the top and the show didn’t try and hide that. From how the actor played the character, to him basically stripping for Frost (complete with “It’s Getting Hot In Here” playing) and the way he talked scientifically you knew that he was the villain from the moment you met him. And his “origin story” and the reason for what he did was so insanely comic-y it was kind of cringe.

What’s more, Sergeant Kramer has come off as nothing more than a vindictive cop in that it’s clear she has a grudge with Frost and is willing to ignore police procedure in order to bring her down. Her lecturing Joe was the peak of hubris and she better have a worthy explanation for all of this else she’ll just be a plot point and we have plenty of those out there.

Meanwhile, Barry entered his new sitcom life with via “Flash and the Speed Force” and it was just as hilarious as you might expect as “Nora” didn’t understand how she was affecting Barry and I’m honestly surprised by the reasoning behind Barry’s discomfort. I thought for sure he was not happy about her being around because of her choice of visual avatar, aka Nora. But instead, he’s not used to the Speed Force acting like a person instead of a primordial entity. In short, he doesn’t know how to deal with her.

Naturally, he came around in the end and that’s good, because I like having the Speed Force around and with the other forces coming they’re going to need all the help they can get because don’t forget…we still haven’t met the big bad yet.

Some small notes. I liked how Allegra went to bat for Frost and even tried to save her from prison multiple times so that Frost didn’t suffer as she did once. It’s a nice touch and it’s good to see Allegra growing more with the other characters now that Nash is gone.

Also…Chester is so annoying. I just…I just can’t with him. Also, he quoted the wrong John Wick movie, that’s inexcusable.

In the end, “Growing Pains” did bounce back a little from the last episode and the developments with Caitlin and Frost were strong. But there still needs to be a lot of adjusting to get back to full strength.

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!