The Flash S04E17 Review: Vampires!

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 17: Null and Annoyed

This episode... isn't that good, actually. It feels so much like another case-of-the-week, but there's really not that much that feels fresh or new. There are three extremely distinct sub-plots in this episode that don't intersect with each other, which I think really hurts this episode as a whole. The 'main' Flash plot features Barry and Ralph trying to get one of the two remaining metahumans, Null, while Barry has to deal with Ralph's lack of seriousness. Cisco has to deal with the return of the gruff Breacher, who's apparently losing his powers out of old age. And Marlize finally discovers that DeVoe is using Weeper's tears to keep her docile. And... and none of them really work, honestly.

The story that perhaps works the least for me is the main Flash/Elongated Man one. Nevermind the fact that the titular Null isn't particularly interesting of a villain, being a generic card-carrying thief with superpowers. It's the fact that the huge crux and conflict is Barry Allen learning to realize that Ralph's jokes are a way of coping, and that not everyone can become like Barry in terms of being a hero. It just feels so... exhaustive. Ralph has jumped back and forth between being a clown and a coward afraid of his life, but after the whole Izzy debacle and the fact that he's spent a couple of episodes scared shitless and actually complaining that they're not doing anything to save him, suddenly going all "I'm a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle guys, hyuck!" in a training session designed to take down the biggest threat feels absolutely off. I can buy Ralph cracking jokes in the heat of battle against Null or something like that, but his clowning in this episode actually makes me really unsympathetic of him, and of the writers who really are trying to do the 'reset Ralph back to dickery to tell a story about him'. It feels like Season One Barry and his failure to learn from the lesson-of-the-week, and I don't like it.

The Cisco/Breacher plot is an obvious allegory for age-induced erectile dysfunction, and Cisco has to be the quasi-son-in-law who has to break the bad news to Breacher. Hell, we even have a bit of a mix-up regarding blue pills that ostensibly allow Breacher to 'perform' again. And... and while it's not as poorly-told as the Barry/Ralph stuff, it's still pretty bland. The idea of an elderly superhero that's forced to retirement due to old age is interesting (albeit done before even in this show with Jay Garrick) but the way Breacher and Cisco's interactions here are played out feels like it's trying to be comedic, but none of the comedic beats really work. Cisco ends up looking way too much like a dick, and Breacher's sudden conflict resolution doesn't make particular sense.

There are two big takeaways from the Cisco/Breacher stuff. One is that Breacher's probably not going to appear in this show again since Danny Trejo's a big-name actor... and Cisco might also be leaving? Breacher offers Cisco a position as part of the Collectors, replacing him, which... yeah. I guess I'll have to wait until the next episode for the resolution, but if this is going to be a genesis to having Carlos Valdes leave the show, it's definitely a pretty piss-poor way to start it.

Oh, and vampires. Neat, I suppose, but it's not like Crucifer mattered at all in the grand scheme of the episode.

The DeVoes are, surprisingly, the storyline that I'm somewhat most interested in. Sure, the writing is still horrible. There's still no real rhyme or reason to the fact that DeVoe didn't actually keep track of the 11 or however many people essential to his plan. For someone so unbelievably smart, it's also hilariously stupid of DeVoe's multiple slip-ups in this episode, like wrongly numbering the amount of metahumans left (and anyway, it's not three with Weeper, it's five -- Ralph, Null, Weeper, Melting Point and Gauss). But the sequence of Marlize discovering that DeVoe has been doping her up with Weeper's mood-boosting tears, trying to make a 'New Lemonade Recipe' recording warning herself of DeVoe's tricks... my god that was harrowing. The revelation that Marlize has found out multiple times that DeVoe has her under his thumb is horrifyingly well done, even if as a whole I still think the Thinker storyline isn't particularly told well... in a capsule, I'll give this episode a thumbs-up for the DeVoe/Marlize sequence.

There's also Harry Wells, who's just frustrated throughout the entire episode (the Thinking Cap's just super-dumb eventually when the writers just kind of need to awkwardly shove it aside for the plot of the episode to work, doesn't it?) before the revelation shows up with him summoning the original Gideon that worked for Eobard Thawne. That's neat, but eh.

Also, what about Melting Point? Isn't he supposed to be Team Flash's newest member? Really doesn't instill me with no confidence that he's going to be anything more than a plot device with a name.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• We talked about Null, a minor Hawkman villain, last episode. Lord Crucifer, however, is actually an existing villain in the DC Comics, appearing as an antagonist of Wonder Woman and later the Justice League. Crucifer was part of a cult of vampires known as the Tenth Circle, and was banished into another dimension by the Amazons. After an attempt to summon the rest of his vampires into superheroes as hosts, Crucifer was defeated by the JLA. 
• Cisco calls Crucifer "From Dusk Till Dawn", a movie that features Breacher's actor Danny Trejo. 
• Ralph makes references to Marvel villain Docter Octopus (or "Doc Ock", a rendering of his name popularized by Spider-Man 2) and Master Splinter of TMNT fame. 
• When spitballing names for a comedic team, Ralph mentions DC Comics, which, of course, is the name of the publishing company where all of these characters come from. 
• The original Gideon -- the AI brought from the future by Eobard Thawne, as opposed to the other Gideon in Legends of Tomorrow -- appears since season 1.