The Flash, Season 5, Episode 11: Seeing Red
A pretty... solid episode, I guess? It's one that really doesn't feel like it's got a whole ton going on, but maybe that's because I'm just really not into Cicada at all, feeling that he's both simultaneously been pretty one-dimensional and played out, and has a combination of ass-pulling random powers with his magic meta-dagger while at the same time being protected with a lot of plot armour.
That said, though, the actual character development that Barry goes through is pretty neat. Sure, it's sort of a repeat of a character arc we've seen some variations of in The Flash (and definitely multiple times in Arrow). During the episode's first battle with Cicada, the supervillain basically breaks Nora's back and cripples her in a particularly brutal scene. And yes, super-healing is a thing and I never really bought that Nora was ever going to be crippled for more than maybe a couple of episodes, but while narrative wise it's not particularly interesting and just a contrivance of the week, it does lead Barry to become particularly bloodthirsty as he was fully ready to end Cicada and murder him during the climax of the episode, until Nora snaps him out of it. It's... it's pretty interesting, and while not the most groundbreaking of superhero stories, it's still a pretty solid one.
Cicada himself really feels like a pretty flat villain, and... yes, we get it, he's fighting out of a desire of revenge for his little girl, and is a super-racist, but that's honestly all there is to him. He gets some random new powers like energy domes and controllable boomerang dagger things, which I just kind of shrug at. We get some neat scenes of him brutally killing some dude called Bork, and we get him fighting against Flash and XS, leading to the aforementioned crippling. Turns out he's working with Officer Jones, a minor character that got mind-controlled by Spin in that episode, which is a neat call-back. We get Flash, Killer Frost and Elongated Man team up with minor recurring character Norvok to gather the other meta-humans and basically it's Norvok's speech that gets them to believe Team Flash, which is kinda neat.
Along the way, we learn that Norvok was a nice zookeeper that was pulling an escaped snake off from a kid when the particle accelerator explosion turned him into a snake-using metahuman. It's basically some sort of metaphor to get Killer Frost to accept that some people do need the cure, although it's Ralph's speech about how Caitlin loves Frost like a sister that ends up causing her to realize she's being an ass. Frost's story is nice mostly because it gives both her and Ralph something neat to do, but I genuinely feel this is something that probably could've been combined with last week's Caitlin/Cisco moment.
Speaking of which, Cisco and Joe are both MIA in this episode with handwaved excuses. I know Jesse L. Martin has been having some health problems, but it's interesting that Carlos Valdez has been in and out of the show somewhat. Cisco in particular is interestingly egregious, because they really could've just used him to Vibe every one of the metahumans out of that warehouse without the need of an FBI convoy, and 'he's researching in the Icicle Base' isn't a good enough reason.
What else? We've got a neat little sub-plot with Cecile working with Captain Singh and getting the support of the police. We get a brief, short scene with season one villain Peek-a-boo as one of the more reluctant metahumans. We've got the defied death flag on Norvok thanks to Elongated Man being pretty awesome. We've got Sherloque continuing to investigate Nora's time journal. Overall, though, not really a whole ton to talk about -- it's a pretty solid episode as far as these things go, but not the most exciting episode of Flash out there.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:- Carl Bork, or just "Bork", is a minor Flash enemy. Originally a seafaring criminal that saved a young native boy on a remote island from drowning, Bork was blessed with the power to transform into a monstrous, invulnerable monster.
- Dwayne Geist is based on a member of the Blood Pack team, a minor group of superheroes. Dwayne Geyer, a.k.a. "Geist", was a metahuman with the ability to turn invisible after being bitten by an alien. He started off his career helping the then-current Batman (Azrael) to fight the same aliens that gave him his power.
- Not sure who "Kira May" is, though.
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