The Flash - 'Welcome to Earth-2'

"It's like looking in a mirror... only not."

Harry, Barry and Cisco head for Earth-2 to rescue Harry's daughter. They have a simple plan: Cisco vibes Zoom's base, Flash rescues Jesse and they head home for jelly and ice cream.

Phase 1 - closing all but one of the breaches - goes well enough, and the dimensionauts step through the final breach, only for the speed cannon to explode, giving Jay two days to repair it before Barry and Cisco are due to return. Meanwhile in Earth-2, Cisco's vibe ability fails to function, as his glasses are set to the wrong frequency. D'oh! Fortunately, Barry has a cunning plan which involves impersonating his alternate, also a police CSI, which leads us into a series of encounters with people's alternates.

In Earth-2, Iris is a detective, partnered with the well-meaning but clumsy Floyd Lawton. David Singh is a petty criminal rather than a police captain, and Joseph West is a lounge singer at 'Jitterbugs'. Iris is also married to Barry Allen (and where the hell was that chemistry in Season 1?) and Barry's willingness to continue his impersonation is frankly shameless. I don't know where the US courts - let alone the courts of the equivalent territory in Earth-2 - stand on vitiation of consent by reason of mistaken identity, but it's damn creepy. Shame on you, Barry Allen; SHAME ON YOU.

"This is my one chance to be the baddy and I plan to enjoy it!"

Less comedically/creepily, two of Zoom's minions are charged with tracking down the breachers: Deathstorm - Earth-2's version of the Ronnie Raymond Firestorm - and the ice-powered Caitlin Snow, Killer Frost. They've been teasing Frost since the start of the season and I'm glad they haven't thrown Earth-1 Caitlin into a heel turn just to get her in. They track Barry to Jitterbugs and, while he handily defeats them, Joseph is mortally wounded.

Back on Earth-1, Joe faces off against a metahuman with earthquake powers whom Jay recognises, although the Earth-2 version was defeated, suggesting this is an unusually close parallel. With the Flash out of town and Joe outmatched, Jay agrees to let Caitlin develop and administer a superior version of Velocity-7, admitting that his genetic damage and loss of speed may be related to his attempt to use V6 to increase his own speed. V7 is still imperfect, but allows Jay and Joe to at least repel 'Geomancer'.

Harry and Barry clash on Earth-2, as Barry insists he needs to help Iris. Harry encourages him to think of them as meaningless reflections, which isn't really the way to talk Barry out of anything; it might have been more effective to point out that his ineffective intel gathering expedition failed to achieve anything except getting Joseph killed, although doubtless he'd just have gone off on a guilt mission. So, Barry gets Cisco to bring an anti-Frost weapon to Iris - and even Cisco is pointing out that they ought to be helping Harry, but Barry basically doesn't seem to have fixed on Jesse as a real person in real danger yet - and Iris, Cisco and Lawton confront Killer Frost, Deathstorm and their immediate boss, Reverb, the evil Earth-2 Cisco, who can also shoot shockbeams from his hands.

Frost is neutralised by Cisco's weapon, but Deathstorm and Reverb take our Iris and Lawton (the latter looked like he might be dead) and put the smackdown on Flash when he comes in to help. Frost yells at them to stop, but too late, and Zoom shows up, enraged that they would disobey his orders not to harm any speedster they found, killing Deathstorm and Reverb with the ol' vibrating hand trick. Then he zooms off with Barry and imprisons him alongside Jesse and a guy in an iron mask.

'Welcome to Earth-2' is an oddity. It's a lot of fun, but in having fun with Earth-2 it has to go off task to the point that Barry looks like a complete asshole for leaving Harry and Jesse hanging and Zoom's appearance at the end is a rude and brutal wake up call. It does however tease the possibility of Cisco getting a level in badass in the future, as well as some hints of future crossover, with 'Bruce' and 'Hal' appearing in Earth-2 Barry's speeddials and Supergirl showing up during the transit.