The Flash S04E06 Review: The Council of Ricks

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 6: When Harry Met Harry

So this episode was... not that good, to be honest. It had some great ideas, and there were some decent performances by the actors involved, but I really feel that the episode ended up being a relatively weak one.

PAJAMAS

The attempt to develop Ralph Dibny -- combining his shtick as being somewhat of an atoner and being the group's resident douchebag -- in my opinion works really well. His constant referring to women by their measurements is pretty fucking hilarious, and gets some equally hilarious 'DID YOU JUST' reactions from everyone involved, but it's clear that it's not going to be the most popular decisions around considering the current socio-political climate. But I really liked Elongated Man's character development in this episode, how his straightforward and bull-headed approach to crimefighting -- capture the perp -- contrasts to Barry's own priorities of saving the civilians. Ralph gets some people hurt on the street and there's a lot of great emotional work being done in the hospital as he is filled with shame, self-loathing and anger as he pushes everyone away while blaming himself. Barry gives him a pep-talk, and while it does a feel a bit too cheesy I felt that it worked in the context of the episode. Oh, and he also returns the Sioux artifacts to the Sioux people.

Oh, and he spends most of this episode dressed in a fucking stupid-looking excuse of a prototype costume. What's there not to love?

(Side-note: I watched the episode and reviewed it without being aware of the whole sexual harassment scandal that revolved around one of the CW show-runners around the time this episode was released... but I dunno. Would the episode have been received differently if such scandal hadn't popped up? Should it?)


Of course, while the Elongated Man stuff was done pretty well... pretty much the rest of the episode ended up sort of falling flat for me. The villain of the week was a weak one, and while those have been a problem that Flash has had over the years for its episodic villains, Black Bison perhaps takes the cake for being really, really poorly done in my opinion. There's the attempt at making her somewhat sympathetic by how she's motivated about returning important Sioux artifacts back to her people, and that subplot ended up feeling sort of half-baked. Her powers are at least pretty damn cool, with the smash-cut to the panther statue killing the security guard, the activation of the police armour puppet and the skeletal T-Rex all working as cool scenes.

The thing that perhaps fails the most is the Council of Wells. Trying not too hard for me to go into a rant about how it copies from the Council of Ricks from Rick and Morty, which in turn copies it from the Council of Reeds from Marvel Comics... it's not particularly well done. I'm not complaining about Tom Cavanagh, who splits his acting roles between hamming it up as the jackass Harry Wells to the wacky evil-German Herr Volvgang Vells to the grr-grr badass cyborg Wells 2.0 to the careless playboy Lothario Wells, and a brief Wels-the-Grey Gandalf comedy bit...

But in the end, it really feels more suited to a stand-up comedy routine. It's funny as all hell, but a combination of the poor effects (particularly on Wells 2.0) and the painfully obvious "you're just hating your own flaws" speech from Cisco made the whole affair feel so much weaker than it could've been, and while Tom Cavanagh's acting and comedic tones were spot-on, a combination of weak dialogue and the hilariously childish "we just need to put all our weird science goobledeygonk which is simpler than we think it sounds TOGETHER!"And as a result, randomly finding out the Thinker's address felt far less of an accomplishment than it probably should be.

I dunno. This episode felt more like a parody of a Flash episode than a properly good Flash episode. I did enjoy the Elongated Man/Flash stuff if nothing else, but didn't really like most of everything else.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Black Bison is a Firestorm enemy, with his real name in the comics being 'Black Cloud in Morning', or John Ravenhair once he became an adult, initially being disillusioned with his family traditions. John's body was taken over by the ghost of his ancestor, Bison-Black-as-Midnight-Sky, who used a mystical ritual to bind his spirit to Black Bison's body. He would menace New York until he was stopped by Firestorm. In the comics, he had weather magic and controls members of his Black Bison Cult. Obviously, the Black Bison has been heavily retooled for his live-action adaptation. 
• Ralph references Indiana Jones with "it belongs in a museum!" and Jurassic Park during his initial dealings with the robot T-Rex.