Up To Speed: Why We Hope The Flash Hands The Wests A ‘Zeppo’ Episode

By Arturo R. García

Just eight episodes into its debut season, The Flash has established itself as a viable long-term investment for Warner Brothers and the CW Network — we just hope that the show does some investing of its own not just in Team Flash, but in Iris and Joe West.*

Coming off a satisfying crossover with its sister show, Arrow, there’s signs that Flash is ready to start tweaking its superhero-procedural formula. And one thing we’d love to see would be a “Zeppo” episode giving the Wests a bigger share of the spotlight as the show wraps up the first half of the season.

* Unless one of them gets killed off first.

SPOILERS under the cut

Fans of the Whedonverse will recognize the term Zeppo, of course, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This episode, which put perennial sidekick Xander at the forefront and relegated the Apocalypse of the Week to fleeting glimpses and side chatter, earned critical acclaim and fandom love.

Think of this, first of all, as a much-needed step in building an Irisverse. As the series’ female lead, Iris is, in theory, the show’s second-most important character. But thus far we’ve only seen her in connection with male characters: She’s Joe’s daughter, she’s Detective Eddie Thawne’s girlfriend, and she’s the object of Barry’s unrequited crush. But she’s still closer to an ideal than a fully-developed person at this point, and there’s every indication thus far to suspect that Candice Patton can rise to the occasion if she’s given a heartier story to develop.

This week’s episode of Flash, which saw her crush on Barry’s secret identity finally begin to falter after her encounter with a rage-induced Flash, opens the door for more moments of independence. Barry already has Joe as his own father figure, and his own support team in the STAR Labs gang; it would be nice to see Iris, even for a little while, with her own friends and interests other than her job and her Flash blog.

It was even more promising to see Oliver Queen advise Barry to move on from his infatuation with Iris this week, even if such a move can only last for so long in canon. Because, while it is a “classic” superhero trope that his love interest be attracted more to the mask than the man, it’s also painfully reactionary heading into 2015. Considering that Iris fell for blond-haired, blue-eyed stubbly Eddie and is attracted to blond-haired, blue-eyed and stubbly Oliver, a forensic scientist like Barry should be able to recognize the pattern here.

The show’s suggestion that Iris is only going out with Eddie because Barry never asked her out is also problematic, and not just because Joe has acted as Barry’s surrogate father in raising the two of them together. Forget Barry’s super-speed; the idea that Iris either never noticed his feelings or never discussed them with him over the course of two-plus decades is more sci-fi. This illustrates another benefit to giving Iris her own friends: you don’t think somebody would have tipped her off to this by now?

Meanwhile, Joe (the ever-reliable Jesse L. Martin) is in a slightly better position; his vow to find the man who really killed Barry’s mother gives him more of his own subplot, as we saw in his early attempt to wrest information from Barry’s other mentor, Harrison Wells (Joe Cavanaugh).

But, as is often the case in superhero stories, the arrival of not only The Flash, but superhuman criminals lands the man we presume is Central City’s top cop out of his depth more often than not. So the upside of a “Zeppo” here is that Joe can actually make his own collar without relying on his speedy friend to bail him out. A Joe/Iris team-up also has potential, since Iris has already done well enough for herself against not only Girder but the Clock King.

That Flash is apparently willing to both shed more light on the mysterious Man in Yellow who killed Barry’s mother and bring Mark Hamill in to play a new incarnation of the Trickster this soon is good. But fans should also encouraging the showrunners to step outside supertropes more often, not to mention making greater use of its rather diverse ensemble. Having a Black father and daughter tandem, a Latino character, and a gay South Asian-American captain is a heck of an asset for any TV show these days, let alone one aimed this directly at the fandomsphere. Since the show clearly isn’t in danger of going anywhere for a while, there’s plenty of opportunity for them all to be developed to the fullest, starting with the Wests.

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