The Flash S04E07 Review: I Think

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 7: Therefore I Am

I'm trying to get through all of the CW shows before 'Crisis on Earth-X' drops. And, well, episode 7 of Flash's fourth season finally gives some context to the Thinker, the overarching bad guy that's been oh-so-mysteriously showing up at the end of every other episode.

And this episode adopts the Arrow strategy of flashing back to how Clifford DeVoe and his wife, Marlize, became who they are during the huge particle accelerator explosion caused by Eobard "Harrison Wells" Thawne in season one. It's a pretty well-done, if slightly introdump-y, flashback, though one that I enjoyed. It's clear that we're giving the Thinker a more original origin story than what is traditional, though compared to Zoom or Savitar, Thinker's far more faithful to his comic-book counterpart.

And it's actually pretty cool. Thinker's a neat character with a backstory that's almost sympathetic. While the motivation to make people become smarter after being disillusioned by his unappreciated role as a university teacher, he gets inspired by Eobarrison Thawells' words and decides to put an invention created by his wife, the Mechanic, called the thinking cap, to increase his intellect during the metahuman storm. And he did become smarter, but this comes at the cost of having a fatal case of ALS, which puts him in his current form.

And all the Thinker backstory stuff, while expository, was serviceable. The thing is... the rest of the episode is kind of shit, since it revolves around Barry's headstorng and honestly pretty stupid insistence that, yes, good old harmless teacher Clifford DeVoe is a super-smart villain that's involved in all these conspiracies. And as the audience, we know Barry's right. Of course we do. But the execution of the episode makes Barry's attempts to prove it, in spite of all of his allies finding objective evidence that, no, DeVoe is nothing more than a regular teacher... it's pretty annoyingly obtuse, and the feeling that the entire episode is nothing but stringing Barry along isn't helped by the fact that DeVoe just... reveals his secret identity to Barry quite randomly at the end of the episode (which all of Barry's allies just... accepts?). The writing is sloppy, and there's literally no motivation for Barry to be so bull-headed. It would be something if Barry's bullheadedness actually put him in odds against Team Flash as part of some master plan by DeVoe, but it's not even that.

A particularly stupid piece of writing is Barry realizing that DeVoe bugged STAR labs with a camera, then acting like it's such a huge revelation that DeVoe knew his secret identity.

And while the DeVoe's love story clearly is supposed to be some kind of obvious parallel to Barry and Iris, I can't help but to honestly be overwhelmed by all the present-day scenes in this episode. The flashbacks were fine, as they help to contextualize the Thinker and the Mechanic, but everything in the present-day took a huge, major hit.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• DeVoe and his wife show up in the particle accelerator scene from the first season, but we see Barry and Iris leaving to catch the purse snatcher, explaining why none of the characters present saw them in season one.
• Wally returns from Blue Valley, after 'fighting a giant starfish', which is sadly not a scene from any of CW's other shows. The giant starfish isn't named, but likely a reference to longtime DC supervillain, the alien starfish, the original threat that the Justice League was assembled to fight against.
• The Thinker's 'thinking cap' was the cap he designed to give himself superpowers in the comics, and how the Thinker looked (just a regular dude with a sci-fi hat) when he fought Jay Garrick. When he returned to fight Wally West, he's a robotic being as seen above. 
• Barry mentions that his 'Spidey-Sense' is tingling, a barely-disguised shout-out to Marvel Comics' friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.