The Flash, Season 4, Episode 13: True Colors
Well, at least a couple of good things came from this rather messy episode -- the first being the fact that the dreary, ill-conceived and goes-nowhere Barry in prison subplot is over. As someone who watched this episodes in bulk as opposed to weekly like how it was initially broadcasted, I'm already sick of the silly koan-filled prison stuff, so I'm definitely happy to leave it behind. The second part is that the Thinker main plot, as tiresome as it is, is progressing forwards. We get to see a glimpse of the Thinker's master plan, which is to use the bus metahumans, which presumably he put there "for a reason", to body-jump and suck all their powers and become the ultimate metahuman or something.
Of course, as much as the show likes to tell us that the Thinker is oh-so-awesome, this episode also has the Thinker and the Mechanic be flabbergasted that they totally didn't anticipate Warden Wolfe figuring out Barry's identity and try to sell the metahumans to metahuman trafficker Amunet Black. And apparently he doesn't think it's important to keep an eye on Iron Heights Prison prior to this episode? What?
The episode ends up with Amunet Black and Warden Wolfe teaming up to basically sell off previous supervillains Black Bison, Dwarfstar, Killg%re and Hazard off to the highest bidder, and Barry ends up befriending them and leading their escape. It's... it's very slow-paced, and none of the other villains extend more beyond "grr angry jackass", and the whole plotline of Barry teaming up with his villains never really extends to its full potential. Also, how the hell did no one realize that this cop speedster is the Flash until Wolfe tells them that?
Hazard's the only one to get a proper storyline, because she's the only one there who's not at all evil and just wants to live her life normally, so of course Barry befriends her. I mean, we have to care when Thinker swoops in to apparently kill everyone present, after all. Which is exactly what happens. Warden Wolfe reveals Barry's identity to the four villains, but the Thinker swoops in, kills Bison, Dwarfstar, Killg%re and Warden Wolfe, drains their powers (somehow?) and then body jumps from Brainstorm's body into Hazard. And Marlise thinks that Thinker killing Warden Wolfe is some huge deal? Causing her to not be as receptive to DeVoe's speeches about how he's still the same person and everything, causing DeVoe to slip her... a love drug or whatever to cause her to be jubilant and dance around with DeVoe-in-Hazard's-body? What?
The body-jumping aspect of the Thinker, and the ability for him to jump from one body to the next is interesting, as we get to see Sugar Lyn Beard show off some acting chops as she has to quite literally transform from the plucky, perky happy Becky Sharpe into, well, Thinker, and presumably once Thinker eventually obtains Ralph's stretchy powers, he's going to transform into the original body played by Neil Sandilands.
Which brings us to the other good part of this episode... Ralph. One thing that makes me not care about Barry all that much is that he's re-treading old character arcs, or going through some new ones that doesn't really gel with what we already know about Barry. It's the problem when a show's been running for a significant amount of time and you still want to keep the original main protagonist, something that Oliver Queen over at Arrow is suffering from, but Ralph? Ralph's problems is fresh, and him being confronted by some Irish jackass friend who tells Ralph that everyone will eventually abandon him since he's a shitty friend throws in a bunch of new doubts in Ralph's mind, something that, y'know what? I definitely buy. And having Killer Frost, the #1 poster girl for disappointing Team Flash, give a pep talk to Ralph, is actually not a bad idea. I'm still pissed off at everything surrounding how they handle Killer Frost, though.
And apparently Ralph ends up getting new shapeshifting powers (something that his comic-book counterpart doesn't actually have... although the short, funny-speaking sidekick seems to imply that this is part of CW!Ralph's role as being a composite character of Plastic Man and Elongated Man) that allows him to impersonate Warden Wolfe here, leading to an insanely fun scene as Wolfe's actor Richard Brooke gets to try and mimic Ralph Dibny's wacky mannerisms.
And at the end of the episode, Ralph mimics DeVoe's original body to show up in the trial and handwave everything away with "metahuman stuff, your honour". It's a stupid ass conclusion to this particular storyline, but at the same time Barry's original trial episode arc was particularly stupid, so it's not like we're losing anything by reverting everything back to status quo. Oh, and let's throw "Ralph shows up disguised as DeVoe" as yet another thing that the supposedly infallible Thinker fails to predict, yeah?
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Because I've never really paid attention to Gregory Wolfe before this episode... Warden Wolfe is also the warden at Iron Heights, and is evil from a different standpoint -- using his own powers of inducing muscle spasms, Wolfe delights in torturing the villains that is imprisoned under his care.
- Ralph orders Gingold on the bar, which, of course, is the magical serum that gives comic-book Ralph Dibny his powers.
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