The Flash, Season 4, Episode 22: Think Fast
This episode is a pretty decent buildup to a possibly-satisfying finale... and it's honestly just a shame what a trainwreck The Flash has been all season. While the other CW series has had their stumbles over the years, Arrow at least had some neat story beats. Everything about the Thinker this season has been one disappointment after the next.
Although, to be fair, that cold open where Thinker disguises himself as John Diggle, before letting loose in a way that only someone with around a half-dozen superpowers can as he massacres everyone in the ARGUS base is pretty amazingly awesome. From shrinking and stepping a dude to sonic beams to raising a hallway full of corpses to cancelling out gravity to reflecting bullets with his rubber body it's easily the most legitimately impressive the Thinker has been throughout the season without help from the plot.
Unfortunately, though, it seems that Thinker's plan is reduced to a pretty generic doomsday device, with his rant at the end of this episode about how resetting everyone to zero will... eliminate all poverty, warfare and... disease? I mean, the Thinker's plan never really made sense in the first place, but this is just pretty embarrassing, with the ham-fisted "The Thinker knows no feelings, ESPECIALLY LOVE" speeches. Neil Sandilands tries his best with a storyline better suited for a Saturday morning cartoon, but the script and direction with the Thinker all season long has been so bad it borders on parody. But at least we get the whole picture about the Thinker instead of the weird nebulousness and half-stories we've got all season, so it's something, right?
Meanwhile, every single person in the rest of the cast actually got moments to shine. Joe and Cecile are in a weird little B-plot involving Cecile's powers causing her to incorporate aspects of other people's personalities into herself thanks to pregnancy hormones, and are mostly just there to provide laughs and some little sage advice to Caitlin.
And Caitlin, interestingly enough, has a bit of a unexpected focus where throughout a bunch of flashbacks and Cecile's help, has apparently been repressing something -- a memory that Killer Frost has actually surfaced prior to the particle accelerator explosion. I'm not quite sure how deep into the retcons this is -- was this before or after the Flashpoint rewrote chunks of reality? Did anything that the show established in the previous season contradict this? But it's certainly interesting, and surprising, to get a huge chunk of Caitlin backstory here.
Meanwhile, Barry is forced to come to terms with having to lead, while, as Cisco points out, he's being too easy to give up because of repressed guilt surrounding failing Ralph. It's a pretty neat little confrontation between Barry and Cisco, combined with a neat bit of super-speed sharing, and we get a neatly cinematic moment where Caitlin, Cisco and Barry are able to save the ARGUS agents suspended above electrical trap-panels.
Meanwhile, Iris and Harry work through their frustrations (and Tom Cavanagh is as always a great source of fun comedy -- "Apartment Four!" being the highlight). The two of them don't really have much of a development beyond Iris going through a 'work with dumb Harry' bit before they realize that Marlize has retreated into the first home that she and Clifford lived in. It's obviously leading up to an honestly predictable and eye-rolling 'love saves the day ' climax, but this episode's propped up in no small part by the strength of its actors and that awesome, awesome opening action sequence. We'll see if the season manages to at least salvage the landing.
Meanwhile, Barry is forced to come to terms with having to lead, while, as Cisco points out, he's being too easy to give up because of repressed guilt surrounding failing Ralph. It's a pretty neat little confrontation between Barry and Cisco, combined with a neat bit of super-speed sharing, and we get a neatly cinematic moment where Caitlin, Cisco and Barry are able to save the ARGUS agents suspended above electrical trap-panels.
Meanwhile, Iris and Harry work through their frustrations (and Tom Cavanagh is as always a great source of fun comedy -- "Apartment Four!" being the highlight). The two of them don't really have much of a development beyond Iris going through a 'work with dumb Harry' bit before they realize that Marlize has retreated into the first home that she and Clifford lived in. It's obviously leading up to an honestly predictable and eye-rolling 'love saves the day ' climax, but this episode's propped up in no small part by the strength of its actors and that awesome, awesome opening action sequence. We'll see if the season manages to at least salvage the landing.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The whole idea of the Flash lending his speed temporarily to others is a power unique to Wally West in the comics.
- John Diggle pops in over from Arrow, of course, as is his customary super-speed-induced nausea. The ARGUS guards note an infiltration attempt that happened "around the same time last year", which is a reference to the penultimate episode of season 3, "Infantino Street", in which it was Team Flash that infiltrated an ARGUS base.
- Among the many locations that could house satellite launches, Barry rattles off Blackhawk Island, which, in the comics, is the base of the WWII military freedom fighters the Blackhawks.
- We get a Legion of Doom/Super-Friends in-joke between Cisco and Barry right after that conversation.
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