The Flash S04E14 Review: Fiddle Me A Tune

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 14: Subject 9

Oh, okay, this one's actually quite a decent episode. Part of it is because the TV adaptation of the Fiddler has so much fun and energy put into her that it genuinely puts every single non-Ralph bus metahuman before her to shame, but the retooling of her character from her source  material to a younger lady country singer is such a well-done update that it's impossible not to like her, honestly. And while I'm not the biggest fan of the previous episode, it does give Team Flash at least something interesting to do.  Prevent the Thinker from capturing all of the other bus metahumans and continue his spree of body-jumping and presumably killing other metahumans to obtain their powers. Jury's still out if Dwarfstar, Bison and Killgore actually died in the previous episode. The fact that Hazard and Fiddler, the only other metas we care about, are under the Thinker's thumb, does probably mean that we're going to have "oh, no, they're alive all along", but it does bring a sense of urgency to the happenings that Team Flash will have to rescue these metahumans from the Thinker's hunt -- if not so for the still-mysterious three metahumans, then because we care for Ralph Dibny.

In the short single episode, they manage to inject a huge amount of characterization to Izzy Bowin as an up-and-coming country singer that plays the violin, who ends up being zapped with the metahuman powers to manifest... well, Black Canary powers, basically. Between Fiddler and Purity over in Supergirl, they really manage to milk the sonic scream animation for a lot of characters in the CW-verse, huh? 

Team Flash hunts down Izzy Bowin, and after an altercation with Hazard!Thinker where Fiddler manages to actually hurt Thinker with a violin blast, Barry is very much convinced that his next step is to train the Fiddler as the newest superheroing member of Team Flash... and Barry ends up pushing Fiddler a bit too hard, driving her away because she doesn't have time for any of this shit, getting plates thrown at her and all that jazz. I really wished the show thought that its audience was smart enough to figure this out instead of having characters quite literally stand around saying "you pushed too hard, and pushed her out of the door".

But meanwhile, Ralph plays the other side of the coin on this part, befriending Izzy Bowin not in the whole creepy lecherous way, but because he understands what it feels like to be an up-and-coming metahuman with the asterisk that some insane nutjob in a chair is trying to murder you some time down the line. Ralph's connection with Izzy ends up being enough of an emotional anchor that when the Thinker actually do shows up to murder-steal Izzy, Ralph and Barry banging on Thinker's Plot Device Force Field is genuinely touching. 

Of course, it does really pull me out of the episode that Barry doesn't feel guiltier about indirectly causing Izzy's presumed death. Sure, he's all sad and morose about it, but it feels like he's a bit more sad that he "pushed too hard" as opposed to the fact that, y'know, Izzy's dead. Still, we're only three metahumans left to the finale, and DeVoe's now played by Miranda MacDougall, and apparently he needs to jump bodies a bit more quickly because Hazard's body can't handle the strain of having multiple powers at once? Oookay? 

The thing about the Thinker that really makes me sure that the writers don't really have a proper long-term plan for the character? The fact that this super-genius guy that previous episodes implied that he even set up the coincidence that one of the metahumans is the dude whose Barry's cellmate ends up getting framed for? That uber-smart chessmaster? Yeah, he apparently didn't bother putting trackers or keeping tabs on three of the metahumans that he needs for his grand plan. 

Meanwhile, Barry gets kicked out of his  job due to the bad reputation surrounding him, and also because in a city full of metahumans ("faking someone's death is so easy in this city" was the argument Cecile went with, after all) it's so easy to, y'know, fake someone being alive. I'm geniunely not sure why they didn't do a DNA test because surely Ralph can't fake their DNA, but at the same time I don't care at all about any of the trial subplot... but now Barry's hanging out with Ralph as his PI sidekick. That's actually somewhat neat. 

The Harry/Cecile storyline is hilarious, though, and another great moment for the episode. From how Cecile notes that "Joe keeps me awake at night" and Harry's "umm" face until Cecile clarifies that it's because of her new psychic powers, and Harry's constant attempts to try and be nice and build a big-ass heavy science helmet to block out Cecile's powers, and then thinking that they could use that against DeVoe because of something that Savitar name-dropped in the previous season, was particularly clever... and makes the subversion that, hey, the goobledeygonk was used against DeVoe. it didn't beat DeVoe. Regardless, though, Harry's frustration and Cecile being a perfectly good friend are really well delivered, and I'm a big fan of this wacky friendship. 

Overall, despite the  downer ending and the still-poorly written Barry, it's actually an episode that ends up being pretty decent and well-done, both in the episode-of-the-week portion and as a piece to an overarching serialized story. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:       

• The Fiddler in the comics is actually an older man called Isaac Bowin, a thief who learned musical hypnotism powers from an Indian snake charmer (later stories would retcon this to actually being a demon, explaining the Fiddler's borderline-magical powers), and eventually uses a combination of these skills and technology to construct a powerful violin that allowed him to unleash powerful shockwaves and create sonic force bubbles. The Fiddler would go on to menace the first Flash, Jay Garrick, and later his successor Barry Allen. 
• A blink-and-miss it part in Izzy's website, but Izzy mentions a 'starfish situation', a reference to episode 7 of this season, where Wally mentions off-handedly that he fought an alien starfish (likely Starro) in Blue Valley. 
• The name "DeVoe" was name-dropped in the third season by Savitar, and the scene where Savitar-Barry notes that this was where they would develop a cerebral inhibitor to use against DeVoe was replayed here. 
• Ralph suggests the name "Soundwave" for Izzy, before throwing the name out of the window, noting that there's a Transformer with that name -- and in the various times that the Transformers franchise has been rebooted, Soundwave has been one of the more enduring characters.