Welcome back to Flashcaps, where we review previous seasons of the CW’s The Flash.
written by George Hatch
This week, Barry has to help all the villains he’s captured this season escape from prison or they all get sold to Amunet Black.
Spoilers under the cut.
The Plot: Uh…huh. Pretty much nailed it in my first sentence. We do get a little more than that, though, like the gang discovering Ralph can perfectly imitate a person, including their voice. Or – thanks to Cecille – they figure out that Warden Wolfe is selling metas to crime bosses. Or that the DeVoes’ marriage is not as solid as it seems and Clifford is fast becoming an abuser. Or that Clifford fucking murders everybody and ends up in Hazard’s body. Or that Ralph pulls off a convincing enough imitation of Clifford in his old body that he gets Barry released from jail. Okay, so maybe there were a few more things that happened.
The Good: As usual, Katee Sackhoff is wonderful as Amunet Black. I haven’t mentioned Richard Brooks before this season, because he hasn’t really done a lot until this arc, but I’m always happy to see him. He’s a great character actor who I have loved since Law & Order and his appearances in Firefly and Good vs. Evil, he genuinely got me too laugh while playing Ralph playing Wolfe. Sugar Lyn Beard is tremendous as both Hazard and as the vessel for the Thinker, and I felt so sad that after her grand heroic moment it all was discarded.
The Bad: So…um…did Clifford rape Marlize? In his new body (even though he’s in Becky Sharpe’s/Hazard’s body, he still identifies as male so that’s what I’ll refer to him as), Clifford drugs his wife with the euphoria tears after they argue about the killing of Warden Wolfe. Then they dance sensuously, singing a tune that Marlize has kept on her mind in order to block out Clifford’s increasingly invasive telepathy. Obviously they’re not going to show anything on-screen (hell, I doubt they even bring it up next episode), but he roofied her, yes? Up until this point I was okay with the episode. I didn’t think it was great, but it was borderline good. Ralph wasn’t too annoying or sexist (although that makes twice now where a white man imitates a black man and it’s really making me uncomfortable), and then this happens and I just…it’s subtle enough to say “no, that didn’t happen,” but it’s also not that hard to make the jump from subtext to text and I have no idea how to react to this. Like, I was going to make a light-hearted tribute to the end of the Flashstache Barry has been sporting, complete with Sarah McLachlan lyrics in the alt-text, but that seems wildly inappropriate now.
*sigh*
We’ll be back next week when Team Flash goes to clean the asbestos out of an abandoned mental hospital in Massachusetts…wait, no, that’s Session 9. Totally different; never mind.
Seasons 1-5 of The Flash are available now on Netflix. George Hatch can be found on Twitter in his own original body, thank you very much, at @Raeseti.