Last night The Flash was just nonsense

After spending the better part of the season building up to Zoom's miraculous unmasking, it took The Flash less than one hour to completely torpedo my faith in the show. Titled "Versus Zoom," the hour-long disaster was the most nonsensical thing I've seen on television since the third season of Heroes.

In doing these recaps I usually don't bother with the spoiler warnings, but so much is revealed below that I'm compelled to give anyone who stumbles over this post a heads up.

Spoilers ahead.

With the tachyon technology wrestled from the soon-to-be-non-existent hands of past-Dr. Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawn, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) is able to run faster than he's ever run before — four times faster than his fastest.

How fast is that? Real fast. Jimmy John's fast? Maybe.

The important part is, Earth 2's Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) says, Allen is finally faster than Zoom.

But how to defeat him? It's all fine and good to run faster than Zoom, the team at STAR Labs finally realizes, but they actually need a strategy for bringing him down.

It's at that moment that Dr. Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) reveals to the team that once upon a time ago Jay Garrick revealed to her his name was actually Hunter Zolomon. Wells is shocked — shocked, I tell you! — to hear that name. Why? Because Earth 2 Zolomon is a serial killer who, in the midst of his barbaric electroshock therapies, was ensorceled by Wells' own metahuman-making experiment and turned into a speedster.

So it has taken this long for Wells to recall the fact that a) there was another as yet unaccounted for speedster roaming Earth 2 and b) that he's a dead ringer for actor Teddy Sears.

Now that the team finally has the last piece of this ridiculous puzzle they have Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) put on Reverb's stolen goggles, reach through space and time and open up a portal to Earth 2.

Bang, out pops a Zoom. The footrace is on, leading the evildoer into a cunning trap which is ... wait for it ... cardboard cutouts of his dead parents rigged, shooting gallery style, to pop out at just the right moment for the Flash to get a few punches in before shooting him with the ole' metahuman leg iron and locking him in place.

And that, my friends, is that. Problem solved.

Except it isn't. Zoom just phases through the leg iron and rushes off to grab Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) and lock him up in his mountain hideout on Earth 2.

How did Zoom manage to get back to Earth 2? Stop asking questions.

At that point pretty much everyone on Earth 1 rolls over and gives up. Zoom comes back to Earth 1 (stop asking) to return Wally. In exchange STAR Labs drains Allen's speed force and hands it over to Zoom.

Not content with being the fastest being alive and reducing Allen to a heaving sack of meat on the floor, Zoom proceeds to kidnap Dr. Snow.

If you're keeping score at home, that's her second time being damseled just this season.

What else happened... Oh yeah, Cisco has a crises of conscience at one point about about coming into his Reverb-like powers and turning to the proverbial Dark Side.

"It's like right now I'm Anakin Skywalker," he actually said. "What if this is how I become Vader?"

Also, Iris is in love with the Flash now. Why? Because it looked like so much fun to make out with her adopted brother during her visit to Earth 2.

Really.

I guess that's slightly better than being in love with her creepy editor.

So yeah. That's what's happening on The Flash. Five more episodes to go, including one directed by your favorite comics-adjacent writer/producer/director/podcaster/game maker Kevin Smith.

My only hope is that all of them are monster-of-the-week flicks. More King Shark please, and less Zoom. For everyone's sake.