The Flash S05E03 Review: Kinder Flash

The Flash, Season 5, Episode 3: The Death of Vibe

This is an... interesting episode. It's honestly kind of a running gag at this point that every season of The Flash is going to have a new alternate-universe Harrison Wells, allowing Tom Cavanagh to stay as a regular while having a rotating cast... but it's honestly kind of played its part, in my opinion, around the time of H.R. Wells. It's became something that you expect as a running gag, and honestly doesn't quite have the same oomph of Harrison Wells appearing from Earth-2 back in the second season. And after a brief gag with returning minor character Herr Wells (who is a huge, huge Flash fanboy and is hilariously polite to everyone), we get the real new Wells of this season -- Harrison Sherloque Wells, a French detective. And he's... kind of a one-note joke? Don't get me wrong, Cavanagh is fantastic as always, but this thinly-veiled Sherlock Holmes caricature seem to be pretty one-note in joke delivery.

Sherloque Wells is at least a dick, just like most other Wells-es out there, and at least his Sherlockian moniker isn't just for show as he displays in some Batcomputer-level deduction skills at the climax of the episode. I do really feel like this joke well (heh heh, well) is kind of played out, though. Also, apparently Sherloque Wells is... a Cicada expert? Who has went to 37 different Earths and found 37 different David Hersch-es as the alternate identities of Cicada? It's kind of a subtle meta-joke to all of us who expected Adrian Chase to be Vigilante two seasons ago in Arrow, I suppose, but it does end up as part of a "god damn it, time travel" bit, because Nora's time-travel has completely fucked up the timeline and David Hersch is... just a regular dude (fine, a potential criminal) and not Cicada.

We do get some buildup on Cicada, delivered in an actually awesome monologue by Nora, noting that among the villains in the Flash Museum, Cicada is the only one that the Flash never captured nor defeated, and the only thing known about him is the buggy sound he makes -- and not even the Green Arrow or Supergirl or the League (!!!) managed to capture Cicada. And that Nora's manipulation of the timeline seems to have caused him to appear several years early.

Cicada, interestingly, continues to be a major player throughout the episode, attacking Joe West in his house in a pretty tense sequence, demanding that Joe bring out Vibe. This leads to the crux of the episode, that Cicada is obsessed with killing Vibe, while Barry tells Nora the lesson-of-the-week of thinking before you act, causing Nora to basically think up of a plan to fake Vibe's death by teleporting him elsewhere, inspired by Sherloque's initial attempt to run back to Earth-12 by faking his death. It's simple, although it's not flat-out bad. And that's... that's okay. It's some neat buildup for both Cicada and Nora's characters, while introducing what I'm assuming is a new regular character for the show.

I'm not sure if this means that the show will retire Vibe temporarily, which honestly just sounds kind of stupid if they're going to keep Cisco from helping out in the field for the vague reason of "Cicada will think he's alive", but whatever. We also get a brief glimpse of Cicada's true goal, which seems to revolve around a sick, comatose daughter -- which they keep enigmatic, of course. Sherloque also drops a bit of a bombshell, asking Nora why he chose that very moment -- stopping DeVoe's satellite -- to act, instead of any of the other huge moments, and from Nora's expression, it seems that she's actually deliberate in altering that particular part of history. We'll see.

The B-plot in this episode is actually interesting. Ralph, embarrassed when his attempt to stop a silly super-environmentalist robber (who goes unnamed) ends up with the crowd photographing him transformed into a gigantic blob and posting it on the interwebs, and despite being a fellow detective, Sherloque completely showed him up.

Caitlin takes advantage of Ralph's sullenness (something that, interestingly enough, Caitlin herself admits and apologizes for later) to get him to help her in investigating the matter of her dad. I'm actually somewhat invested in this plotline, due to how consistently it's been built up and each episode seems to progress this slightly. This time around, Nora's mom denies all knowledge of the death, and a little break-in ends up with Ralph and Caitlin breaking into her mom's files, finding... a suicide note.

And you'd think that that's it, because that'd actually be an interesting thing and a plausible excuse for Carla to hide it from her daughter, but on the other hand, after a bit of talk with Ralph, Caitlin discovers that apparently his dad coded "come find me Caitlin", a code that can only be broken if you understand the little daughter-daddy-made fake periodic table that only Caitlin understands. It's an interesting mystery, I guess. We'll see. Caitlin Snow has been one of the most problematic characters in this show since the writers clearly have no idea what to do with her (see: seasons two through four), so I really, really hope this season does her character some justice with a proper plotline.  

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Flash Museum is a thing from the comics, of course, first appearing in the future (and where future villains like Abra Kadabra and Eobard Thawne learned all about the Flash). And naturally, it's filled with a whole ton of funky gear. We've got Reverse-Flash and Savitar's costumes, Heatwave's flamethrower and Weather Wizard's wand, among others. 
• Among the superheroes that Nora notes were unable to capture Cicada is "the League",  which, I think, is the first outright reference to the Justice League in the CW-verse. 
• Cicada's first victim is a metahuman named Floyd Belkin, which is the civilian name of minor Legion of Super-Heroes character Arm-Fall-Off Boy. No, I'm not making that up, and yes, that name is exactly what that character can do. 
• David Hersch, of course, is Cicada's comic-book counterpart's real identity. Also, just like in the comics, Cicada's goal seems to bring a loved one out of a coma -- his wife in the comics, and his daughter here.