Hats off to the writers of The Flash for having a lot more tolerance for the leadership style of Barry Allen than this reviewer is able to muster. It might be an exaggeration to say I end up throwing my pen and notepad in the air at least once a week as Barry pursues some wrongheaded course of action, but it definitely happens more often than not. This fascination with his stubbornness is lost on me, but you can’t say the show isn’t consistent on this point.
So what’s the plan tonight, Barry? You need Fuerza on your side to stop Nora, and therefore you need to teach Alexa how to control the force within. You pay no attention to Alexa’s extreme reluctance to bring forth this power she can’t control, and when she’s not learning fast enough for your liking, you decide to force the issue by, well, literally forcing the force out of her. You proceed with this plan despite Alexa’s firm objection, and, Barry, it’s more than a little disturbing that you haven’t learned “no means no” by now.
All of this goes predictably badly, with Fuerza emerging and Hulk-smashing Cisco. Caitlin manages to get Barry to back off for a minute while she tries the more sensible approach they should have taken in the first place: giving Alexa the mental activity dampener that first allowed her to communicate with Frost back when they were sharing the same body. (Seven years into reviewing this show, I still find myself typing sentences that have never been typed before.) It’s fortunate timing, as the other forces are still at large and wreaking havoc in Central City.
There’s Alexa’s “brother” Psyche, also known as Bashir Malik, a former rich kid who was abandoned by his parents when they fled the country after losing their fortune. Bashir is tracking down his fellow former members of the League of Lions who are all now billionaires he blames for abandoning him as well. When the Flash tries to stop him alone, he learns Psyche has developed a new power Cisco aptly dubs “magenticals.” Team Citizen figures out who Bashir’s final target will be, setting up a showdown between Psyche and Fuerza, now fused with Alexa’s mind. This is notable for being one of the few real super-battles in this stripped-down season, but it ends not with a knockout, but with the voice of reason. Iris’s research has revealed that Bashir’s old pals really did try to help him out after his parents disappeared, and Alexa convinces him to give his new “family” a try.
Their sibling squabbling is a highlight of the episode, but their other brother and sister have teamed up as well, following up on last week’s confrontation between Nora and Dion. Rather than killing him instantly with a vibrating heart-smash, Nora convinces Dion to join her cause against their mutual foe: bad father Barry Allen. When they crash STAR Labs, however, Barry is the only one left standing after Nora zaps the others with multi-colored lightning. The result of that will have to wait for “Family Matters, Part 2.”
Elsewhere in Central City, Kristen Kramer is still hanging around CCPD. Her vendetta against metahuman criminals continues, as Joe discovers a new weapon in the arms locker capable of firing bullets loaded with the cure. This strikes Joe as highly unethical (and again, let’s not let Cisco off the hook here, as all of this should have been foreseeable once he created the stuff), but Kramer assures him that she has the governor’s blessing to proceed with her plan. That leaves Joe no choice but to leave his gun and badge on his desk, which is probably a good thing, since Jesse L. Martin hasn’t had much to do since Joe got his promotion.
Whether this storyline will be resolved in “Part 2” or instead form the basis of the second half of this season remains to be seen, but I do have a suggestion for Joe before he starts searching the want ads. Maybe take over the leadership of Team Flash? Because the guy in charge now rarely seems like the best man for the job.
Stray observations
- Kamilla is moving ahead with her plans to leave town, applying for a job in Miami and encouraging Cisco to do the same. Cisco doesn’t seem so sure about his future plans, however, so his departure from the show may not be as imminent as it seemed last week.
- Cisco gets a message from ARGUS Agent Cooper, but whatever it is will have to wait for next week.
52 Comments
The show is certainly consistent about Barry being an idiot & not listening to anyone, but that does not make it less frustrating. I like that Alexa was appropriately both freaked out & impressed by how Caitlin managed to become friends with her other self Frost So while Cisco is dicking around about what to do, Joe is confronted with a fork in his road and makes a decision, like a grown-up. It really might be for the best for him to be stepping down as captain, so he has more time to parent his idiot surrogate children on Team Flash
It’s not that a hero with severe and consistent flaws can’t be enjoyable; Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow have often been at their best when leaning into their leads’ tendency to make horrible decisions.The trouble is they don’t really commit to Barry-as-flawed. Instead, each episode ends with Barry realizing he was wrong, changing his approach, and everything turns out fine … until the next episode, when Barry goes right back to his stupid ways.It’s like, each time Barry starts making poor choices, we’re meant to see this as an aberration, our normally stalwart hero going astray amid desperate circumstances, but by episode’s end everything is set to rights. They don’t seem to realize just how often they go to this well, or how frustrating it is to see Barry learn the same lesson over and over.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know if Legends is a good example because they are actually pretty similar to Flash in this regard. Yes, it leans on the main characters making bad decisions, but it never really holds them responsible for the consequences or has them truly change as a result of those choices. It became so infuriating that I personally kind of gave up on the show.Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that Legends hasn’t been successful as can be seen with the love it gets, but rather that it has managed to successfully strike this weird bargain with the audience that I don’t know could be replicated.
For me Legends actually held people responsible until season 4. Season 2 and 3 of legends was great with the villains and comedy. It had the right balance. However in season 4 was when consequences stopped existing like Nora Darkh who was a honest bad guy who probably killed some people was given a redemption arc and Ray went along with it for some reason. Like Nate’s father who was kidnapping monsters for a theme park which is still illegal and messed up getting a sympathetic character moment even though he doesn’t regret the kidnappings at all.
I would actually claim that those issues with responsibility were there already in Season 2 and 3, but it is rather that they slowly amassed and became such a part of the actual show that by Season 4 it became more difficult to ignore them. Those examples are true, but at the same time the show had shrugged horrendous actions before that, so why not continue to escalate.
Legends has the characters’ bad decisions lead to fun outcomes, I think that’s key to the audience forgiving them.
I would claim that is a little bit of a different argument. My point isn’t that should the Legends be forgiven for their mistakes, but rather that the show itself never holds any accountable. Actually quite the opposite and more than once tried to present their incredibly selfish actions as somehow noble or admirable. Partially because it rejects the concept of consequences or answering for your own actions.Again, I’m not stating that the people should dislike Legends, but rather that I don’t know if it should be used a positive example as the balance it has hit is kind of a weird one.
Partly it’s that the Legends’s mistakes are character-driven (see my reply above about how Barry’s aren’t). Rory does a lot of stupid things, but they’re stupid in a consistent way, not just whatever suits the plot.But also a big part of it is that the Legends, right from the first season, have always emphasised that they’re not heroes, just legends. They make mistakes, and they know it, and they acknowledge it, and they hope it works out in the end, and while they don’t object to some thanks, they know they don’t necessarily deserve praise. Whereas Barry is constantly being held up as superhumanly wonderful – the Paragon of Love – the one shining example that everyone else should look to, the guy who changes villains into heroes just by meeting them, this beacon of ethics, of honour, of integrity, and even of intellect. We’re constantly told: Barry Allen is the greatest man alive. And that creates a frustrating dissonance with what we’re shown, which is that he’s a narcissistic idiot.
While I think there is more to the Legends side of the argument, I think that is very well capturing the problem with Barry.
I think the big difference is that Legends acknowledges its characters are idiots and frequently mocks them for that fact, but builds up sympathy for them because they are TRYING to do better, and most of the stupid stuff they do is played for laughs.With Barry, after each misstep, they keep trying to sell us that he’s learned and grown and won’t make a mistake like this again, but then they go and have him make that mistake all over again.
I think it’s also that there’s no consistency in Barry’s idiocy. I actually welcomed his idiocy this week, because he was being idiotically serious and ruthless about the problem, which is only, like 1/5 of the times he’s an idiot. Usually, he’s being idiotically naive and idealistic.So it’s not that he has a continuous character flaw: it’s that the format is “whatever Barry does first is wrong, and he’ll change his mind by the end of the episode; so whatever the writers want to happen eventually, they make Barry insist on the opposite course of action to begin with”. His beliefs and mood swings are entirely driven by plot, not character.
Curious timing that both Joe and Sophie quit their jobs in law enforcement in the same week. I think that means aside from Barry the Idiot there aren’t any cops left in the CWVerse?
Is Gary still technically a time-cop? I can’t remember…
They directly referenced Rainbow Raider is still at large!
I’m more of a B on this one. You know behind the scenes, the cast and crew reading this script were all like, “Oh God, here goes Barry again!” But the pleasant surprise in both this episode and last was that Barry realized his fuck-up on his own, fairly quickly. These are Barry Baby Steps! I hope anyway.I really like Alexa, Bashir, and Dion. The actors were well cast, they have well developed backstories. Or at least the actors are selling them really well. Bashir in particular has a great sarcastic personality. I like where this dynamic is going. Iris is involved. How does a bitchy guy specializing in conjuring nightmares become a good guy? Idk … call Dreamer over from SG for a consultation.
Yeah, Bashir proved surprisingly likeable once the mask came off. Team Flash needs at least one full-time snark to mix up the formula a bit. In hindsight I wish they’d set up Allegra as Fuerza – I think she’s supposed to be some other DC character but she really gets nothing to do.Is Kramer’s question about the missing metas supposed to be an inference towards the STAR Labs not-so-legal pipeline prison? Is that still a thing? Is that finally going to come back to haunt Team Flash? Bonus mention of Patty and Julian.Good: Joe turns in his gun and badge. Bad: Joe walks out with a bankers box of belongings like some 9-5 office schlub in case you didn’t realize what was going on.Was that Cisco saying he was worried about remaining at STAR Labs while everyone else had moved on, or Carlos Valdes?
Was that Cisco saying he was worried about remaining at STAR Labs while everyone else had moved on, or Carlos Valdes?
It’s meta!
>Good: Joe turns in his gun and badge. Dang, I went that’s a TERRIBLE idea. You’re basically handing over the cops to the anti-meta psychotic. Sure, she went over your head once but walking away means giving her entirely free reign to do even worse.
Should’ve clarified, I meant Good/Bad in terms of depicting Joe’s resignation. Both are cliched, and resigning is clearly not as simple as putting your gun/badge down, but at least it had some gravitas and they could’ve stopped there. Joe walking out with the banker’s box felt like overkill.Plot-wise…ehhh. True probably not the best idea, but I’m intrigued if they’re really shaking up Joe’s status quo.
At least when Kirsten asked him, “Do you realise what you’re doing?” Joe didn’t reply “something I should’ve done a long time ago”. I was bracing myself for that cliché line but fortunately the show didn’t go there.Good seeing Becca Butcher one more time. She had great chemistry with Gustin on the show until she was unceremoniously shuffled off. Draco Malfoy guy, maybe not so much.
“Joe walks out with a bankers box of belongings like some 9-5 office schlub in case you didn’t realize what was going on.”I liked that in that it showed that this wasn’t some spur of the moment decision Joe had made because of his conversation with Kramer?Joe: “You’re not going to change your mind about metas?”
Kramer: “Nope.”
Joe: “Well, I’ll show you”
Kramer: “What are you going to do?”
Joe: “I’ll … I’ll … I’ll quit the force!”
Kramer: “Sure you will.”
Joe: “I’ll do it! I really will!”
Kramer: “Yeah, right.”
Joe: “I mean it! This is me, walking about the door. Last chance to stop me!”
Kramer: “Bye!”
When actually, Joe had made this decision earlier in day, long enough ago to box up his personal belongings. I can’t remember if Kramer just happened to come see him at that time, or if he had asked her to come see him.
I liked this episode but felt that Deon helping Nora was to quick and not explained well. Psyche was my favorite because out of all the forces he was a legit villain for the most part. When they expanded on his character it worked and I liked Bashir. What I don’t like is the writers taking the whole father, mother, brother, and sister concept so literally. Like it got kind of stupid. Barry being dumb with Fuerza was grating but it made some sense since Barry can’t seem to beat the forces alone and he knows it. Joe you probably shouldn’t have quit and try to keep things from going out of control in your precinct. overall 7.7/10
I *think* I might be done with The Flash after this episode. I’ve been pretty forgiving of Barry’s idiocy up to this point, shruging a lot of it off as “well that’s not REALLY his fault”, or “well he had to at least do SOMETHING”. But his handling of Alexis was my straw. He ran full speed into that blunder completely ignoring anyone that actually knows better telling him this was a bad idea. I know that’s been the running theme, but I feel this time it was especially inane.
Barry didn’t want the Speed Force to go homocidal & kill the dangerously unstable S-Force avatars. He did the homework to make sure undoing his mistake wouldn’t bork the timestream, but changes his mind because colors are pretty. So the homicidal Speed Force still kills Fuerza, Psych, & Iris. I’m confused why we’re supposed to think Barry’s plan that would’ve averted all this was bad?
For the first several seasons, The Flash was one of my few “must see” TV programs to be watched when it originally aired. It’s now one that I DVR and watch whenever I get around to it or check out later on the CW app. I’ve kind of stopped trying to make sense of any plot lines as, I suspect, the writers have as well.
My cable cut off like 20 minutes into the episode, only to return for the last 5 minutes and I swear it made no difference.
This episode was kinda meh. The whole mommy/daddy/sibling thing just came off as a weird role playing exercise that made me uncomfortable.I don’t know if there are any other Blindspot fans in the house, but how jarring is it for you to see Rich Dotcom as an evil mentalist? Because I can’t yet make it compute in my brain that he’s no longer a lovable wacky hacker.The saving grace this season is that all the actors playing the forces are good. Especially Evil Hot Mom Speed Force, making me swoon ‘til June since season 1!Joe needs a job, and Star Labs has an opening for “Senior Pseudoscientist”, so that’s sorted. Also, Cisco could make a KILLING opening a “Vibe portal from Miami to the Florida Keys” service for people who don’t want to make the 4 hour drive down the Overseas Highway. People don’t want to be wasting away again on the drive to Margaritaville, they just wanna get there.Do you think Kramer and Chief Lopez in Freeland would do a collab? They seem to have similar goals.
Rich Dotcom was the best thing about Blindspot in its final seasons IMHO. I am just happy that they finally let Ennis Esmer take his stupid mask off and show off his insane hair. Maybe he can also become the best thing about The Flash in its *fingers crossed* final seasons.
Oh yeah, as soon as they made him part of the FBI Scooby gang, the show went from merely ridiculous to fun and ridiculous. If the forces stick around for longer than this season, it would be great to have him be a fun banter guy again.
I’ve never seen Blindspot, so I was just baffled by how he’d finally made the move out of Hawthorn Heights, yet had become so bitter in the process. What happened to his wife, Junior Tech Assistant Woman from Continuum/Future Tech Genius from Travellers*? At least his experience with all that throuple confusion explains why the weird vibe at Star Labs doesn’t phase him.But no, actually I was thinking that he seemed a lot like he was going to turn into his loveable-space-pirate-rogue from Dark Matter…
*shit, has anyone made this the basis of a Continuum/Travellers shared universe timeline!?
Well, this is a show about a guy who married his sister, so weird family-member roleplay is kind of in their wheelhouse…
I think Flash (and Supergirl if it wasn’t on its final season) really need to go back to basics. Get rid of the season long big bad. Focus on the actual characters instead of adding new ones or giving/taking away powers.
Barry Allen is a CSI. Use his Flash skills to solve some actual crimes.
I do miss meta of the week eps. So many minor DC villains who could come on, be fun for 45 minutes, and then go away again.
Kind of hard for Flash to go “back to basics” as you describe when its first season was all about “the season long big bad”.
But in-between the season plot, Barry fought meta villains and stopped crime every week as a CSI. These days he spends all of his time worrying about the season’s villain at Star Labs and barely shows up to the precinct. Joe and Cecile spend more time in his office than he does!I think part of this is down to the overstuffed ensemble cast that the show’s wound up with. In the first season, the tight team of Barry, Cisco, Caitlyn and Wells, with Joe and Iris supporting, worked really well. I presumed that they’d brought Chester and Allegra on board last season to allow Cisco, Caitlyn or Wells to bow out and still have a support team for Barry – Wells has gone, but the other two are hanging on in there, which means every episode they have to bounce between the adventures of people who aren’t Barry, and leave a few of them out entirely.
This “family” angle is moronic, and weird, and sounds terrible as dialogue. Just atrocious. There’s also no way what Kramer is doing is legal–Joe just accepting it makes no sense either. I miss Season 1.
Thank you for the C+ rating.Right now I hate Barry, I hate Iris, I don’t like Cisco….I love Frost and Katie and Joe and everyone else is okay to decent but man this season so far and the end last year is a drag.Jesus I don’t need to hear more about how these forces are their kids. Yeah we get it their real kids are coming soon but how about you don’t beat us over the head with this shit and have people their own age call them Mom and Dad.I wanted the Speed force to really kill everyone by the end of this episode including herself….. Can Thawne come back and kill everyone?
This show is…REALLY not good right now. The mommy and daddy stuff is just weird AF, the speed force motivations are unclear, Cisco has become useless in the field and his leaving plotline is pretty meh. The whole care bear ending to the mirrorverse stuff was goofy enough- this stuff is just bad. At one time this show as appointment viewing for me- I hated to even DVR it. The first season and first half of the second season were gripping. Not so anymoreI say they need to announce next season is the shows last and throw everything they have at it- bring back missing friends, previous villains, etc. Cross it over with all the remaining CWverse shows and let it end if this is what the show is going to be.
This show is so garbage now. Psych looks 20 years older than Barry and he’s calling him Dad? These force people are his kids? Seriously?
Not literally, no. They’re speaking metaphorically, because the other Forces were “birthed” from Barry and Iris along with the ASF.
No sh*t lol
I mean, stranger things have happened on this show, so it could be a legit question.
Show used to be so good
I’ve probably said this before: it weren’t hemmed in by the CW of it all, this show might have been able to ask some good questions about superheroes and their support staff and how that evolves as a career and a workplace. By all rights Cisco should be considered an expert in that field at this point but he’s apparently still listlessly surfing LinkedIn.
This week, I thought, Joe leaving the CCPD should’ve been the A-plot. His story has earned that kind of standing and I don’t think anybody could doubt Jesse L. Martin’s ability to carry an episode in that fashion. This whole “Force Family” mess strikes me as increasingly creepy, despite Ennis Esmer and Sara García’s best efforts.
As someone who more-or-less stopped reading Flash comics after “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” I have never understood what in the heck the Speed Force is supposed to be. I initially thought it was some fundamental law of nature, or perhaps something akin to the “The Source” that was the foundation of the DC Comics multiverse.But on the TV show, the Speed Force has agency, and a personality. It chooses its champions, and can revoke its power if it wants. It punishes those who it sees as transgressors. It can die, and be rebirthed.What really confuses me with the current storyline is that recreating the Speed Force doesn’t seem to have restored whatever cosmic power/alternate dimension it originally took the form of, but rather created an Earth-bound avatar that for whatever reason looks like Nora Allen. Yet the other Forces (really? Sage Force? Still Force?) are actual people who have been imbued with powers? Even by comic book logic, none of this makes sense to me.
Every time they said Bashir, I couldn’t stop thinking of Martin Bashir :/
I’ll chime in here with: The Flash was never a leader, in comic book canon, or in the Arrowverse. Team Flash in the show was at its best when it was a Pit Crew: keep your racer racing. Barry shouldn’t have to think about anything but driving the damn car, or, in this case, running and defeating the bad guy. The character isn’t capable of much else, is he? Barry is good at his wheelhouses; speed, forensics, and simping for his wife. Stick to that, showrunners, because there’s nothing in Grant Gustin’s portrayal or in the show that justifies Barry leading a group of people who are seriously smarter and don’t need any hand-holding emotionally or intellectually.tl;dr, I am getting tired of Barry’s face and his epic stupid decisions. He’s always surprised when his ideas go south…like, DUDE WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR 7 YEARS. Can we change his name to THE YEET?
I’ll chime in here with: The Flash was never a leader, in comic book canon, or in the Arrowverse. Team Flash in the show was at its best when it was a Pit Crew: keep your racer racing.Barry shouldn’t have to think about anything but driving the damn car, or, in this case, running and defeating the bad guy. The character isn’t capable of much else, is he? Barry is good at his wheelhouses; speed, forensics, and simping for his wife. Stick to that, showrunners, because there’s nothing in Grant Gustin’s portrayal or in the show that justifies Barry leading a group of people who are seriously smarter and don’t need any hand-holding emotionally or intellectually.tl;dr, I am getting tired of Barry’s face and his epic stupid decisions. He’s always surprised when his ideas go south…like, DUDE WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR 7 YEARS. Can we change his name to THE YEET?
I now feel inclined to tune in next week not to see how Now Evil Nora (check out the dark makeup and tattered clothes!) proceeds with her nebulous plan, but instead to see just how awful Barry can be. Grant Gustin must look at the script, sigh, and think “I remember when I was the ‘fun one’.”
The thing that drives me bonkers about this show is the confusing and slapdash was they tend to progress the main arc/Big Bad(s) over the course of any given season.
Mainly, and this is by no means a problem limited to the Flash, the Arrowverse, or the CW, it never sits right with me to have characters quickly accept a concept that is paper thin.
When Nora/XS showed up years ago, to have Barry and Iris go full on parental despite having not ever raised this child or having any EXPERIENCED connection to her was suspect. I do think they put the work in by the end of the season to ESTABLISH a relationship, but this idea that two young newlyweds who have NEVER been parents would suddenly feel like a family with the appearance of their grown daughter was tough to swallow.
Multiply that by a thousand this year. The sentient aspect of the Speed Force, which has ALWAYS been a nebulous concept, takes on the form of the elder Nora Allen, and then, everybody starts CALLING her Nora and even worse, TREATING her like Nora, even though “she” is a cosmic force that could assume any appearance, with ZERO connection aside from superficial to the soul of Barry’s mother? Anytime she tried to call Barry, “My beautiful boy” (a line that worked with emotional punch on FX’s Legion but definitively does NOT here), everyone in earshot should have been all, “YOU’RE NOT HIS FUCKING MOM OR EVEN HUMAN.”
Over on Legends, we know Charlie is not Amaya even though they share a face. We know that Zari 2.0 is not Zari 1.0 even though they share DNA. We know that Ava’s clones are not Ava. On Arrow, we knew that not-Laurel was…not Laurel, even if that got wobbly at times. And yet, on this show, where we have known that Thawne-as-Wells was not Wells, and indeed, that the Wellses were distinct personae, WHY THE HELL IS EVERYONE SO CREDULOUS ABOUT CALLING AN UNSETTLINGLY OMNIPOTENT FORCE OF NATURE “NORA” BECAUSE IT HAS ASSUME THAT PHYSICAL FORM?
Which brings me to the NEXT issue of in-universe credibility: this idea that the Forces are somehow Barry and Iris’s children. There seems to be no consistency from the Speed Force to the others. The Speed Force has not taken on the soul of a living Nora Allen; merely her appearance. The personality is 100% a sentient cosmic force. And yet, the other forces seem to lack such sentience. All three have merely augmented human beings who had – and continue to have – lives and wills of their own. Hence Deon and Bashir using their powers to grind their own axes, not having their personalities subsumed by sentient forces. Fuerza is the closest to being a distinct personality, but only inasmuch as Alexa is unable to control her powers. In none of the three do the forces seem to be the sentient actor, as is the case with the Speed Force. To claim that they are sentient, let alone should be treated as Barry and Iris’s “children,” seems like nonsense to me, EVEN in a comic book reality. Believe me, I’ll tolerate a lot of bullshit. And the three people who had their own lives prior to being imbued with lightning-based powers are CERTAINLY not Barry and Iris’s “children.” They seems just like Barry. Not avatars of the Forces themselves, but USERS of the Forces. I don’t see the moral dilemma that would have resulted from not allowing these people to be possessed of their powers which they gained through an intervention beyond their control in the first place.
Anyway, I’m still along for the ride, but this is still an awful lot of incredulous storytelling, in my opinion. Am I the only one?
I think that Carlos Valdes deserves a better send-off than a kill-off, and it would be yet another dark turn on a show that goes dark too often for its supposedly optimistic tone, BUT it would be and interesting nod to the fact that Vibe was the very first Justice Leaguer canonically killed in the line of duty. If handled properly, a grand sacrifice by Cisco could be an emotional high point. However, I can’t think of an elegant way for the show to handle it in their current arc, so perhaps this incarnation of Mr. Ramon deserves his happy ride off into the sunset.
I saw the message to Cisco from Agent Cooper, and I thought, the nerve of them to name a Character after Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks. Then I noticed his name was Chip Cooper and Twin Peaks’ agent was Dale Cooper and oh god damn it Chip & Dale.