The Flash, Season 5, Episode 2: Blocked
Can I just say how fucking refreshing it is for one of the first scenes in the episode to be Barry and Nora sitting down with the entire team, and then telling them about how Nora is here by choice, and that they're trying to stop Barry dying and/or disappearing during the Red Skies Crisis? And that it's just revealed to everyone in that scene? After so many moments of keeping secrets from the rest of the cast, leading to a huge fallout being a running theme and honestly kind of a sad gag in Arrow and Flash, it's very, very fucking cathartic to get that scene.
The rest of the episode is... it's a standard episode, I guess. Our villain-of-the-week, Vanessa "Block" Jansen (seemingly an original villain for the show) is a metahuman who is able to compress air into a jelly-like block around people that she uses to turn people into super-dense meat cubes. They tried to give her a wee bit of a backstory by showing her as getting revenge and raiding the gun stores of a group of gangsters, the Moretti brothers... but it sort of goes nowhere and Block's more an obstacle than anything, a vehicle for the Barry-and-Nora plot of the episode.
In their first encounter, Nora gets 'blocked' and thrown into the air, forcing Barry to save her and for the bad guy to get away. After a bit of a couple of bonding moments which includes an attempted physics lecture, Nora disguising herself as a junior CSI intern and Nora hilariously tripping and zapping Barry with lightning, Barry ends up going to Joe and ask him about parenting, especially about how excitable Nora is and how impulsive she is. Joe basically tells Barry how to parent 101, especially when the child is actively trying to impress Barry, bringing up how Barry wanted to impress Joe for adopting him originally, as well as the fact that Nora's exposure to Barry is mostly from a goddamned museum.
It's a goddamn fine speech from Joe West, and kudos for the show writers for tying it to a small subplot about Cecile being worried about losing her mind-reading powers and how it'll make her a worse parent for their little baby. It's not a particularly complex or elaborate storyline, but it's one that's resolved neatly.
Anyway, Barry shows Nora recordings of how he's fucked up before, and basically tells her a simple "there are no shortcuts to greatness" moral story, telling her that it's okay to be human and even being a superhero isn't just about running fast and throwing thunderbolts. And then, of course, in their next encounter with Block, Barry gets trapped while Nora's the one to take down Block by zipping around and snapping some cuffs on her. It's simple enough, although, of course, Block gets immediately murdered by our main villain, Cicada, who gets name-dropped by Nora. Love this faster pacing, by the way, compared to how the respective big bads of the previous seasons have been handled before.
We get to glimpse Cicada's civilian life earlier in the episode, and Iris goes around investigating Cicada (the show remembers she's a reporter!) and finds a recording of his weird bug-Darth-Vader voice... but I certainly didn't expect him to show up and fight our heroes at the end of the episode. Cicada's powers seem to be using that weird lightning-shaped dagger to absorb the powers of other metahumans, causing him to nullify Flash, Vibe and Elongated Man's powers in one go. It's temporary, as they come back later, and thankfully I don't think we're getting a repeat of power-assimilation as we did with Thinker.
The B-plots of the episode are pretty neat and are well-merged with the Barry/Nora parts. There's the Cecile one I mentioned before, and Iris's little news reporter deal is well done even if it's slow-paced. The Cisco and Caitlin subplots are merged together into a satisfying little side-story with Caitlin and Ralph trying to get Cisco out of his funk over being dumped by Gypsy, which includes "Ralph Dibny's 27 Steps To Getting Over The Love Of Your Life", a hilarious annotated list. Which involves Cisco getting a makeover by some dude named Bruce, Cisco being so depressed that the only thing that can get him out of the funk is whispering "Han shot second" into his ears, and him dismissively giving the villain-of-the-week the very unimpressive name of Block. Of course, we get a scene where Cisco basically accepts that Gypsy isn't "the one", and while it's not the best-written scene, Carlos Valdez's performance is earnest enough that I totally buy his speech about how Caitlin needs to grab onto this chance to make things right. Of course, though, when Cisco finally vibes the death certificate, they find out that it's... Caitlin's mom that forged it? Huh.
Overall, though, while not particularly groundbreaking or unique (Nora's storyline is basically a rehash of Kid Flash's, only hopefully the character's given more focus instead of being treated as a disposable sidekick) is still perfectly solid and entertaining 40 minutes of television. Not much complaints from me.
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