The Flash, Season 4, Episode 19: Fury Rogue
Yeah, another pretty bleh episode of the Flash. It's very welcome that we're getting Wenworth Miller and Katie Cassidy in as guest stars, but honestly? It's ultimately just sort of unimportant. Miller's a very interesting actor, but I'm not sure I'm a big fan of Earth-X's Leo Snart just showing up and playing therapist for all of his post-Crisis-on-Earth-X appearances. (Also, it really makes me sad that we never actually got a properly villainous-rival Captain Cold) And as much as the guest stars are welcome and are entertaining, it really feels egregious and unnecessary. Throw in the fact that the script really hammers in the theme of 'emotions good, emotionless bad!' something fierce, and it really ends up feeling like a bit of a trainwreck.
Basically, Leo Snart is brought on to Earth-1 because Killer Frost is temporarily gone, and they need another dude with freezing powers in order to help transport Fallout to an ARGUS site, but it really is weird -- they have a spare freeze gun lying around, so it's clearly just an excuse to bring Leo in for a cameo. And Leo's biggest contributions is telling Barry that he needs to grieve for Ralph's death, which honestly feels way, way over-stretched. Especially considering Barry actually froze in place and just stared as Siren-X screams her way in the Central City police department. Again, as welcome as Siren-X and Leo-X's guest stars are -- and Grant Gustin delivers a great performance as usual -- it doesn't really help to cover up the very flimsy script. Siren-X is particularly odd to me because a major plot point in Arrow right now is a different alternate-universe Laurel Lance doppelganger. She also has some weird sonic-radar echolocation-eavesdropping ability? Eh.
Add that to the B-plots. Harry Wells is growing dumber because of the silly accident with the Thinking Cap, and is trying to get Cisco to stop falling into the same mistakes that he is, but at the same time he isn't ready to tell the rest of the team yet. Oh, and Cisco notes that it's Harry's EMOTIONS that helped to raise Jesse Quick into the woman she is. Yeah, they are going all-in with hammering this theme down.
And the Thinker storyline is particularly grating, because apparently the Thinker didn't calculate for Barry to freeze while fighting Siren-X, but he calculates Siren-X's appearance... how? Plus, y'know, Thinker, you've got the superpowers of like 12 people in your body. Really? You can't take down Siren-X yourself? Throw that in with the big hammer that "your super-smart brain cannot comprehend emotions!" with Thinker consistently ignoring Marlize's attempts to regain his affections, and it's absolutely bizarre and even clashes with Thinker's earlier portrayal as a loving husband. We're dumbing down the already-problematic character into a one-dimensional emotionless machine caricature and I'm not a big fan of it. I'm not sure if it's meant to be intentional -- that Thinker's newly acquired powers and enhanced intelligence is doing this -- but the show doesn't really do anything to inform us that the Thinker is being a dick is anything beyond him being, well, a dick.
Overall, despite the fun campy guest stars (and both Miller and Cassidy are fun) it's ultimately a bleh episode as a whole.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Since Crisis on Earth-X, apparently the Nazi regime there has completely crumbled. Oh, and Leo and Ray are set to get married.
- Leo lampshades why Ralph wasn't around during the Crisis on Earth-X events, something that most fans noted, and Barry simply notes that he 'wasn't ready'.
- Neil "Fallout" Borman returns since "The Trial of the Flash", and apparently is another bus meta that DeVoe forgot about last episode. Tracy Brand, who has been MIA since season 3, is briefly mentioned as the ally holding onto Borman prior to this episode.
- Cisco mentions Pikachu!
No comments:
Post a Comment