The Flash S05E04 Review: Fake News and Bad Parenting

The Flash, Season 5, Episode 4: News Flash

Honestly, this episode is... pretty simple. There's a huge revelation somewhere in between it all, but it's mostly just what feels pretty obviously like a filler episode. The episode tries its best to "feel" relevant with some half-assed allegory on Fake News, but it's honestly a minimal effort one. Basically, the twist is that the supposed metahuman of the week, super-blogger Spencer Young, has the ability to manipulate people's mind while writing news, some sort of insane reality-warping power that we've never really seen in The Flash before. She ends up doing it in order to write blog posts before the crisis in question happens, and then uses her powers to make said crisis happen. We get to see her frame a policeman in trying to blow up a baseball court, get Flash out of the way in order to give XS the spotlight, and, bizarrely, at the crux of this episode, she... decides to have XS kill the Flash in a stadium for...  for reasons?

Okay, Spencer is kind of a manipulative bitch and quite rude to Iris, but I really don't get why she suddenly went from generating her own crises in order to capitalize on the news to going straight-up murder-town on the Flash. The Flash didn't even wrong her! Honestly, Spencer Young's character, while initially introduced as this former rival to Iris's past life as a CCPN reporter (something I completely forgot was a thing) ends up not really having any real depth to her.

The big twist, of course, is that Spencer isn't a metahuman -- an actual plot point when Nora is trying to investigate her (and is flirting with her, making Nora the second future-child-of-a-CW-protagonist to be gay after William Queen last week) and found out that Spencer isn't a metahuman. Turns out the Thinker's plot device blowing up last season made "meta-tech".

The whole episode's payoff, of course, is the conflict between Nora and Iris, which is thankfully dealt with sooner rather than later, because it is annoying as all hell. After the Jitters encounter, Nora reveals her beef with Iris, because Future!Iiris apparently put a power-dampening chip inside Nora's body and kept her powers a secret from her, and Nora only discovered her powers six months ago. It's this huge, huge act of betrayal that made Nora really, really angry, and it's something that honestly ends up being way, way more interesting despite taking up a mere fraction of the screentime of this episode.

And Iris has every right to be frustrated about Nora not wanting to open up to her, because, after all, Iris can't fathom or understand the actions that she will take in the future. The thing is, though, the events of this episode has Spencer Young briefly take control of Nora's mind and basically use her like a puppet, and the way the crisis is saved is for Iris to use a tranquilizer gun to knock Nora out before she kills Barry.

The problem? As Nora points out, during the Spencer Young fight, Nora was mind-controlled and unaware of what she's doing, and trying to kill Barry. That's a whole different beast compared to implanting a power-dampening chip and hiding Nora's true nature from her. It's a legitimately shitty thing to do, and, yes, I have no doubt that Future Iris probably has some sort of good reason to do so. The thing that genuinely bothers me is the behaviour of present-day Iris and present-day Barry. Iris basically insists to Nora that, no, she is sure she's going to have a good reason to do so in the future, and Barry backs her up. Without knowing said reason, and without really trying to understand the huge feeling of betrayal that Nora would've felt. They could've asked Nora to try and understand, or to try and get Nora to realize that Present!Iris and Future!Iris may have different priorities, or something. But telling Nora with no room for argument that Future!Iris must have a very good reason? Believing that just because Iris puts family first, that she's ultimately infallible? That's not faith, that's an insane amount of arrogance.

Very understandably, Nora buggers off and crashes with Joe and Cecile -- that was utterly shit parenting, Barry and Iris. Good for some drama, though, and I can honestly conceivably see these two fuck up like that. I mean, it's not like either of them are parents yet.

Also, what's up with Iris being pissed that Barry brought Nora a phone? Is there... is there some logic to that?

The B-plots in this episode... are quite uninteresting and uneventful as well. We get confirmation that the-man-who-is-Cicada became Cicada because the trajectory of the Thinker meteor was altered by XS. Ralph and Sherloque Wells go around investigating Cicada's mask, and while it initially seems to be a dead end, turns out that Sherloque manages to put together Ralph's findings together and conclude that Cicada has a lung injury. It's a bit insipid, but it's well acted, at least. Oh, and while Cicada's lightning-bolt dagger does have powers, apparently the man himself has super-strength. Okay, then.

Overall, I actually find myself enjoying the wacky West/Allen family drama, even if I do think that Iris and Barry are pretty much being asses in this scene. The episode itself is pretty underwhelming, though, other than that brief twist regarding the meta-tech and the secret of Nora's beef with Barry. Oh well.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Spencer Young is loosely based on the minor Flash villain Spin, albeit gender-flipped and given a new name. In the comics, Spin (real name Auerbach) is a media mogul owning KN news, and he kidnapped a metahuman named Edwar Martinez, using Martinez's reality-warping powers to aid him in his crimes as well as to generate news in the media. Spin fought Wally West for a couple of issues.