The Flash S05E19 Review: Family Drama

The Flash, Season 5, Episode 19: Snow Pack

Season five of The Flash hasn't been the best season of The Flash. Sure, we've had worse outings before, but I haven't really been impressed with this season at all. Nora's got a great actress playing her and the earnestness of the scenes between her and her family are well-portrayed, but the writing behind her character is just so muddled that I really can't bring myself to care as much as the show wants me to. Like, the Nora/Eobard storyline isn't terrible, and on paper, neither is the Cicada one, but I really, really don't care all that much about anything that goes on in this season, if we're being honest. 

This episode, at least, strings up a pair of themes and makes family and a broken parent/child relationship as the biggest theme of the episode. The problem is that while the actors try their best, Flash is a show that really has lost any semblance of subtlety, and the way the theme is hammered home about how "family doesn't abandon family" or whatever the hell that cheesy line was is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. Throw in another one of my pet peeves, that this entire situation could've been avoided had Barry been a lot less randomly harsh last episode... and the fact that Barry's "I can detect people in the Speed Force" despite never showing any sort of ability in the past... it's honestly one of those ass-pulls that are done just to facilitate the plot of this episode. 

And honestly, I still hold onto the belief that Nora's a dumbass for still conferring with Eobard throughout all of these -- I really wished Eobard's mentoring was shown to be a bit more fatherly and not "yep he's definitely hiding something", because I literally can't think of just why Nora trusts Eobard so much and why the show insists to hammer it down our throat -- sure, in the flashback, she's alone and shit, but after meeting the rest of her family? I really kinda wished that her desperation and her emotions are explored a bit better before we go straight into "hey, channel the NEGATIVE Speed Force powered by your negative emotions". 

Which, by the way, is triggered when Iris -- fresh off of an argument with Barry -- gets Ralph to do a time hijinks heist with her and go into the future to try and talk to Nora, but it's too late as Nora ends up seeing her mother, and despite it being a different Iris, it's enough to cause Nora to go ballistic and channel the Negative Speed Force and be all glowing-eyes and time-travelly and shit. Again, it's a neat development, but not one I especially emotionally care about. It's neat to see Iris interact with Eobard, it's neat to see Nora developing new powers, and Ralph finally being allowed to do some funky Elongated Man tricks after being on-and-off absent from the show... it's neat. 

Meanwhile, in the present day, the rest of the dwindling cast has to deal with the return of Caitlin's father, Icicle, who attacks and kidnaps both Caitlin and her mother, Tannhauser, and apparently his grand plan is to turn them all into their ice-personas and recreate their family or some shit. Oh, and a generic "freeze the world" plan or some shit... and while Icicle's plans might be a little hilariously Golden Age-y, the emotions that we get from the scenes where Caitlin and Tannhauser are trapped in a room, as mother and daughter are forced to confront each other about their emotions and realize that they're both kind of shit... I do really love that it's not just Caitlin that's in the right and that Tannhauser is fully a shit mother, and Tannhauser herself calls out just how much Caitlin herself shut her own mother out. 

Without really going into details about describing their arguments, eventually Caitlin and Tannhauser realize that underneath all of their drama and their constant need to one-up each other (as proven earlier in the episode with them bullying poor Barry), family wins out, and Caitlin unleashes Killer Frost to attack Icicle just as he shoves Tannhauser inside the cryo-atomizer-thingamabob. We get a pretty neat scene of Icicle and Killer Frost fighting while creating these cool ice slides while Barry rescues Tannhauser. And in a pretty fun an dramatic moment, when Icicle gets Caitlin on the ropes, Thomas Snow ends up breaking through and expunging the Icicle persona, making the "Snow Pack" finally be reunited...

For all of twenty seconds, because motherfucking Cicada shows up and... and I just can't really bring myself to care about this protracted Cicada arc, y'know? She's kidnapped her younger self earlier in the episode, and shows up to steal the cryo-atomizer-plot-device, and in the process, when she attempts to kill Caitlin, Thomas Snow jumps in the way and takes the shot, sacrificing himself for his family. Thomas is dead, but at least Caitlin and Tannhauser manage to patch up their wounds, apologizing and going to a wine bar together (and, of course, completely missing that Tannhauser has been turned into an ice-metahuman herself). 

Oh yeah, there's a bizarre sub-plot with Sherloque about to leave after feeling under-appreciated, before deciding to stick around and help Barry and Joe. That was sort of unnecessary. Anyway, the huge clifhanger is that Cicada has a bunch of plot devices, Barry and Iris sort of vaguely patch up their argument, and Nora's got red lightning glowing eyes of doom. Ultimately... it's a relatively solid episode taken by itself, with lots of pretty superb acting, but both the Cicada and Nora plot has been stretched out so much that at this point I just really wished they'd get over it already. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• The "Negative Speed Force" is indeed from the comics, created by Reverse-Flash in the "Flash: Rebirth" storyline.