The Flash S05E07 Review: Daughter Day

The Flash, Season 5, Episode 7: O Come, All Ye Thankful

A bit of an underwhelming episode. A good chunk of this episode deals with explaining Cicada's backstory and motivations... and, well, to the show's credit, it at least handles it far better than what they did with Thinker last season (too little, too late, basically). Basically, Orlin Dwyer is a deadbeat dude who refused to take care of her orphaned niece, but eventually the kid won his heart over and turned him into a proper, responsible adult and parent. It is done relatively well, even if it is admittedly pretty obvious where the show's going -- the slow change from Orlin not caring about Grace and giving him days-old Chinese takeout for breakfast, to his realization that he's being a shit human being during the 'rat bastard' argument, his eventual putting his life together and even getting a house... and the subsequent night of the Enlightenment, where Thinker's dumb satellite stabbed him in the chest and put Gracie into a coma. It's not the most intricate origin story out there, but it's done relatively well. This also leads to the admittedly pretty anti-climactic revelation that, hey, Cisco tapped the hospital's cameras, and now they know who Cicada's identity is.

The rest of the episode deals with multiple other Father/Daughter pairs with the subtlety of a brick, and I'm honestly not sure if it really works out all that well. Nora has made peace with Iris and they are going on mani-pedi treatments and doing ancient instagram selfie bits (oh, the sheer lack of respect for the timeline!), so this time around, she ends up having an argument with Barry. In a fight against metahuman-of-the-week Weather Witch (illegitimate daughter of Weather Wizard), Barry straight-up gets himself killed by a lightning bolt, freaking Nora the fuck out. It's hard to blame Nora for this freak out, because, after all, Barry's still her dad and she has severe abandonment issues, but her storyline in this episode honestly just feels like a retread of the same Nora storylines we've been having throughout this season.

Interestingly, the Flash Museum of the future has really painted a rose-tinted version of the Flash, leaving out all of his failures and defeats -- notably, leaving out Ronnie's death at the end of the first season, or the Flash being trapped in the speed force prison at the end of the third season. Ultimately this leads to honestly a pretty generic 'what it means to be a hero' speech, which... yeah, I guess it could've been worse. The Nora/Barry storyline isn't bad (unlike the Nora/Iris bits, which I actively dislike), it's just... underwhelming.

Meanwhile, Joslyn Jackam, the Weather Witch, has her own beef with her dad Weather Wizard, angry enough to drop a truck on his head for abandoning her. I am so thankful that they didn't actually kill off Weather Wizard, by the way -- I am still holding out hope for a proper Rogues gallery deal going on in the future that features most of Flash's classic Rogues (pretty sure Heatwave and Captain Cold are just out of the question now). Weather Witch is... she's pretty fun, and I do like how her powers come from her wand. I'm also surprised how little Mark Mardon does in this episode, though, because after that monologue about his daughter he sort of disappears.

The action scenes are sufficiently neat, and we do get a bunch of fun gags between Caitlin, Cisco and Sherloque about how "Thanksgiving is evil", but ultimately this episode is one that's just... kind of underwhelming. It does most of its points well, but it also won't be memorable in any way.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Weather Witch, a.k.a. Joselyn Jackam, is very loosely based on the comic-book Weather Wizard's child, Joshua Jackam. Who was an illegitimate child. Unlike Joselyn, Josh Jackam was a baby, kidnapped by the supervillain Libra when the Rogues refused to join the Secret Society, and subsequently killed by Libra. 
• Weather Witch wields a powerful wand/staff that is affected by the Enlightenment, which is a reference to how Weather Wizard was initially portrayed in the comics -- it's not until late after his introduction that his powers changed from coming from the wand, to coming from metahuman abilities. 
• Weather Wizard/Mark Mardon was last seen on the show on -checks wiki- Season 2, Episode 9, "Running to Stand Still". He's got a lot of mentions and a non-speaking cameo in the animated Vixen series, as well as a deleted scene from the previous episode, but this is his proper return in the flesh.