The Flash, Season 6, Episode 16: So Long and Goodnight
Okay, so I kind of fucked up! One of my complaints in episode 17 of this season is how there appears to be a bit of a jarring bit of Mirror David Singh appearing with no real foreshadowing, and the reason why that is... is because I completely missed an episode! That's what happens with sudden mid-season hiatuses, sometimes you just completely forget what episode you're on and you just tune in on a number that feels right. Mea culpa.
And... this episode is honestly mostly set-up and also a villain-of-the-week one, starring the return of Ragdoll, but considering I jumped from 15 to 17 with literally no problems, suffice to say that this episode is certainly not exactly required viewing. It does help to fix some of the problems I had with the pacing of some plot points in episodes 17-19, in that it foreshadows the whole Mirror-Singh situation, explains Joe's absence (which I sort of thought just happened off-screen, and is something that isn't acutely felt considering Flash's cast has a record of having random absent characters in random episodes this season), has some Sue/Ralph scenes with the diamond (also something that could've happened off-screen) and gives Joseph Carver an unambiguously label of 'villain' (something the season finale does pretty well itself). Again, none of these are necessary and it's unfortunate that it's all extra-clear because I accidentally skipped the episode.
Perhaps the big reveal that I wasn't quite super-clear on before watching this episode is that Carver and Eva sort of... talk to each other? Carver's basically set up as a complete douchebag throughout the episode, attempting to get Joe assassinated via the creepy Rag Doll, being a smug smarmy ass and at the end of the episode reveal that he's aware of Eva existing in the mirror instead of just giving up his search and actually be misunderstood. Eh.
The main conflict of the episode focuses on Joe, but at the same time it also makes Joe look particularly dumb. And in light of this length of the season focusing on how the Flash isn't super-fast and can barely do bursts of speed without clutching his chest in pain, it's particularly stupid for Joe to just intently march into Carver's building goading incriminating evidence and also showing it off immediately to him so he can activate his handy-dandy EMP gimmick. Also, y'know, Rag Doll is after him, and he's sort of been retooled from a creepy bone-crackly contortionist into basically Evil Elongated Man with stretchy limbs. Also, because his motivation is gone, he now wants to inflict pain and somehow this makes him subservient to Carver's directions to tell him to murder Joe? Okay, sure. There's a hostage situation with Cecile and ultimately after Barry and Joe narrowly make it out with Barry's nerfed speed, Joe decides to go into witness protection, infuriating Mirror Iris. Again, it's an 'okay, sure' situation and part of it sort of stems from knowing that none of these really ends up amounting to anything in the season.
Ralph and Cisco get a brief bit of B-plot tracking down Sue Dibny, which is a lot of fun and apparently Sue's got some super-awesome Batwoman face-masks because she impersonates January Galore from that inexplicable James Bond parody episode earlier in the series in order to investigate Black Hole. It's a neat sequence of Ralph and Sue sort of getting brief one-ups on each other before forming sort of a not-team-up.
Ultimately, though... a very slow episode, and not even one that works particularly well as a standalone 'filler' episode. It's not particularly exciting, the villains Rag Doll (who loses all the creepy factor that made him so effective the first couple of times he shows up) and Carver are very vanilla and none of the Mirrorverse plotlines really are all that interesting. Again, I don't have a whole ton to say here, it's kind of an episode that's just there.
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