Barry: Imma go get John Diggle and ask him.
Cisco: Quick, grab a bucket.
See? Someone's paying attention.
"I always knew that working with you guys was going to blow up in my face, but it's about to get literal!" —Deke Shaw
Wherein Anissa Pierce discovers that it's not so easy to just step into being the next The Hood without first being forged into someone else, something else, by, for example, spending five years in hell...
I agree with some of the comments about Killer Frost's seeming use as a plot foil more than anything else lately. C'mon, writers, she's stronger and smarter than that.
I really like the development that Ralph is going through, from his sudden acerbic (and acidic) mortality-check right through to the do-what's-right-anyway realizations, although I really do wish that parts of it weren't so bluntly presented -- like most of the crisis-in-the-toy-factory development and resolution, which had way too much sloppy in it (and not just from the axcid).
That Beebo appearance was outright hilarious. Great cross-reference there. And, given that (in the Earth 1 Universe) Beebo was a gigantic toy sensation around the time a much younger Martin was buying presents for his little daughter, where else would you find some Beebos today but in an old toy factory. Nice touch, that.
Is anyone else picking up on what almost have to be intentional Shawshank Redemption references? The wall-carving of "Henry was here" at the end of last episode kinda suggested it already, but then appending his own "So was Barry" to it seemed just too neat to be accidental. And throw in a little "everyone's innocent in here" and... Fun side-references without being overly forced or heavy about them. Niiice. (And I have to wonder if they'll continue like some sort of running side-joke. I wouldn't mind. Really.)
Oh, and while I like Ralph's new Elongated Man outfit, that mask doesn't do a damn thing for identity concealment. Especially with that signature dopey grin of his. Really? Oh, well. At least it's a little more than a mere pair of glasses. ;-)
Lots o' great stuff in this one from nearly all directions, except... is some sort of Force of Idiocy growing inside of Roger's brain this season?
My only real gripe this episode: Why does Barry suddenly start to have flashes (yes, I said that) of incompetence whenever a apprentice-in-training is around to step in and assist (or fail to do so and earn a lesson)? (E.g., Barry can't speed-blast the armor-suit and then blaze off after Black Bison; Barry's leg is hurt so that he can't save the girl, but seconds later he can streak over to check on her injuries.) C'mon, writers, it shouldn't take that much more effort to write the scene in which the noobs earn those experiences, right?
Oh, and does Flash really have to stand there defiantly waiting for Black Bison to animate something? Every. Single. Time? (Dammit, writers!)
But, other than that... so many amusements in so little time...
"That belongs in a museum!" And before I could even say "So do you!" and look around for Indy and the Panama Hat guy, here comes Night at the Museum, immediately followed by Ralph's multiple Jurassic Park references -- Ralph and Cisco really should hang out long enough to compare pop-culture references -- ...
Also, that brief what-did-I-just-say look right after Cisco heard himself pronounce "you're a wizard, Harry"... Yeah, in this the writers are constantly on fire.
I can only imagine what we'd see if The Flash's writers put the same detailed effort into plotting as they do into the weaving in of pop-culture references...
It does seem as though every time I see Adrian Pasdar, he's playing a bigger eviller jerk than last time, and increasingly convincingly so. Nathan Petrelli (Heroes), Glenn Talbot (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Nolan Burgess (Colony), Morgan Edge (Supergirl). Almost like he's refining... something...
Like many others, I had fun watching the return of Team Kid Flash-- no, Team Vibe-- no, Team... oh, nevermind.
But...
Barry's return and recovery really should have taken at least three episodes. This way it feels much too... simple. Disrespected, even.
It took an entire season to figure out and defeat Savitar, but just toss one Samaroid into the city and--poof--Cisco extracts scatter-brained Barry and Iris puts herself in immediate danger and--poof--Barry quickly descatters and saves her. Clearly, Barry's six months in Speed Force Prison was a piece of cake compares to the Savitar Crisis...
I hope, at least, that we haven't simply poofed all the effects of the six-month Speed Force Solitary away like that, that we'll be seeing interesting effects pop up for awhile. Even if they have to be prodded along by our new Thinker...
So, aside from all the questions about whether this show is leaning more crisis-of-the-week than the original story that gave it life...
The whole trail that Agent Wells is compelling down has found some quirky developments that beg the question of what the heck Lloyd was setting them after -- is he simply setting up for a Presidential scandal to toss the White House into turmoil again? what's the point now? -- but even then... Who the hell set that bomb in the medical records facility, and shouldn't Agent Wells and the others be all over where the hell that weirdly coincident explosion came from? Feels a little too much like "Oh, damm; guess we can't search for those records, what else have we got?" Uhhh... Hopefully that'll come back around in future episodes. It just feels like it could have used a line in there somewhere recognizing the WTFness of that explosion...
Hmm. I have to wonder if Omar will now be redirecting his seemingly endless supply of ready-to-die morons.
Overall, the core of this was typical Stitchers fun. The whole murder-for-barter ring isn't terribly original, but it works, and falls apart pretty quickly when the NSA can stitch into the victims. Maybe a little too quickly, but...
But if I may nitpick for a moment:
* Tor is an anonymizer used by lots of people who like their internet privacy; nothing inherently evil about it. But automatically assuming that use of a Tor browser means dark web and evil intentions? Ooookay.
* The "dark web" consists of websites that support Tor-like encryption and anonymization to further support people who like their internet privacy. Some of those sites do support illegal and worse activities, but many of them do not -- news site ProPublica, for example. So Tor means Dark Web means evil? Sigh.
* Suddenly Detective Fisher is all ninja assassin? Where'd that come from?
* Drawing out that pointless pizza-guy suspense? And not even well, like a few-seconds of undisguised yeah-we're-just-messing-with-you. Really?
* Someone must have been pretty unstable to begin with to go all if-I-can't-have-All-In-any-more-instead-of-just-starting-over-with-a-new-site-I'll-just-go-end-it-all-Kamikaze-on-Maggie.
Stitchers overall is a cool idea and a mostly-fun show with mostly-entertaining characters, but I feel the story-writing has grown increasingly careless, glossing over development and details like pesky annoyances, as though the writers/producers don't really care enough to spend the time to build something as well as I'm sure they could if they tried. Scorpion has suffered terribly from that sort of affliction, and the newer MacGyver to some extent, as well. TV series can only survive so long under such carelessness...
After all that, I now have to wonder... Did Flynn lie to Wyatt about who killed Jessica (and Gilliam was just taking an opportunity to mess with Wyatt), or was Flynn trying to show Wyatt something more insidious (and very not-yet-obvious) about Rittenhouse's machinations, or...
Or perhaps Time just doesn't like to be forced into a paradox -- such as Wyatt going back in time to erase the event that formed his motivation to go back in time -- and so has a tendency to Nudge Things in ways that will keep paradoxes from forming, like the barrage of occurrences repeatedly getting in Wyatt's way of distracting Claire and Joel, something else killing Jessica that night to take the place of Gilliam doing so, etc..
And Lucy getting over her own personal "Nooooo! That's not True! That's impossible!" moment and confronting her father like that...
Fun, and good to see the gang back, but...
Did it feel like a rather lot was resolved awfully quickly and simply? Almost feels like the writers changed their minds about where they wanted to go between the end of season two and the beginning of season three, and so [a little too] quickly wiped things clean so as to redirect. Maybe not, maybe it's just plain old sloppy writing. Either way, hope the season's plot improves from there...
Redd just keeps unfolding new ways to mess up his own world, doesn't he?
(Knew that was coming back to him in some form; looks like it ain't gonna be a small one.)
So much depth of portrayal, all to support and frame the core realizations of the episode which can be summed up with:
"We fucked up with Nora.
and
"Take this thing out of me." "Why?" So that we can never come back to this place again."
This seemed more like a final redemption and righting of Kevin himself than it did of the world-threat Dad believed was coming. (I suppose the implication afterwards is that there was no eventful significance to the seven-year anniversary after all.)
In that sense, this episode also bookends very nicely with the next...
[after watching a short film depicting the newly supercharged I'm-a-real-girl-now Aida learning that Fitz still isn't that into her and having the mother of all meltdown tantrums turning her onto her new everyone-will-burn path]
And this, kids, is why we never allow inhuman children to go through the Terrigen Mist process before they have accumulated significant formative experience learning to deal with the ups and downs of life. Ever. Right, Agent May?
Oh, and, after Cat's rousing fight-back speech to the whole of National City, did anyone else feel flashes of last year's fight-back speech in Star City that led to the taking down of Damien Darhk?
There were definitely some weak plot-connectors in this one, arguably sloppily pasted together bits that felt like someone belatedly realized that the season is almost over and we're running out of time and we have to jam the President in there and this and that and...
The whole Air Force One sequence, the duh-what-did-you-think-was-going-to-happen shooting down of its escorts and then it. Sigh.
I appreciate that Kara wants to give Mon-El's mother a chance to surrender rather than die, but... This is Rhea. Stop seeing her as Mon-El's mother. She's not going to surrender or fight fair or do anything but Evil her Evillest Evil, more like a humanity-threatening disease than anything else, and reeaaally needs to be treated accordingly.
On the other hand...
Note to self: Whenever telling Alex Danvers to meet me outside, be sure to be very clear about what I mean by that. (And that parting shot... #like.)
And... "Do your thing, Artoo." Niiice.
"Uh, anyway, listen, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go find Rene and remove his head from his ass." —Quentin Lance
It would seem that one calls Oswald a "freak" very much at one's own risk.
Why do I feel that Sylvia is going to exemplify why the Poison Room is so carefully guarded?
We all thought we'd seen and understood so much about Oliver and his darkenss, but this episode delved deeper than ever into Oliver's dark relationship with his Капюшон. Something else, indeed. One hood, two shadows.
I did like almost everything about this episode -- except maybe for the "I built the control-Z gun, even though I have no idea why I did or what it does" enormo plot-shortcut. I get that they'd written themselves into a spot from which the Legends had an awful lot to recover from in two mere episodes, but... really?
And... even the pre-Legends Leonard, roguish thief that he was, happy to mess you up any number of ways while he's stealing from you, was never a killer. He actually specifically avoided killing. So I, of course, found myself rather disappointed in this new depth of cold. Makes me wonder what sort of madness Eobard fed Leonard while recruiting him -- or if the writers just forgot who Leonard was while shoehorning him in here.
But, other than those... lots of packed-in fun, from Mad Baking Chef Hunter to Unappreciated Savior Rory. And I even find myself agreeing with Malcolm: Damien is always good for pretty entertaining bad-guy monologue,
Wow. So much in this one. So much already well-said. I'll just add that...
Up 'til now, I was actually almost convinced that Adrian, after basically steering Mayor Queen into the cornered position of declaring The Green Arrow to be shoot-on-sight Public Enemy #1, was trying to get Oliver to confess publicly that he is The Green Arrow. A sort of long and twisted version of making him dig his own grave.
But, now, it seems that Adrian doesn't care about that at all. It was all more about breaking Oliver and his Monster. At least... it seems so... so far...
I am curious though: did they say clearly which block the Bowmans were headed into? San Fernando was mentioned, but that's because that's to where everyone else was purported to be evacuating to. I didn't necessarily get the impression that that's where the Bowmans were headed. Was it? Or...? (As long as it's not Santa Monica, right?)
Wow. Quentin driving home that vanquishing the big bad Beast doesn't necessarily make everybody's everything go right back to happily-ever-after normal.
Well, Quentin, and what's floating in the Wellspring, that is.
Wally starts having taunting Savitar visions, so the team thinks Savitar might be able to spy on them through Wally, so the team cuts Wally out of the planning loop, so Wally doesn't know that the team has figured out that the remaining Stone sliver is the last piece that Savitar needs, so Wally tries to get rid of it by throwing it into the Speed Force (where Savitar is), so... oops.
Savitar's detailed planning around his deep knowledge of his enemies is not only freaky, but a little too very much like Prometheus's. If Savitar turns out to be Adrian Chase...
Gypsy's "Are you trying to Luke Starkiller me?" was such a little throwaway line, but I guess that's part of why I had to flail for the pause button while I was laughing so hard at it.
"Well, take care of yourself Gypsy. I guess that's what your best as, isn't it?" ;-)
I'm a little annoyed at Talia for being so simplistic with her own you-killed-my-father contribution, like she couldn't know the whole story behind dad-Ra's al Ghul's obsession with Oliver as the prophesied next-Ra's al Ghul and all the wild implications and complications that that inflicts on everyone. I'm still hoping that some spark of sense will flicker in there somewhere.
Or maybe Señor Inigo Montoya can show up out of nowhere and tell the both of them to just shut the hell up. ;-)
But other than that... wow. This ep was dense with holy-crap moments, just getting worse by the moment. More than once I've thought that they should just tank Adrian any way they can (preferably permanently) and depend on the team (and Felicity's new friends) to find Susan, but at least it's reasonably believable that they might worry about the risk and hold on just a little longer... just a little longer... just a litt--OH, CRAP.
Did anyone else wonder just a bit if Martin's odd musical moment -- besides just being plain funny (complete with Mick's expression and join-in) -- might also have been a little yes-he-can-damn-well-sing-too nod to another very musically talented Arrowverse actor who won't happen to be included in the upcoming big Music Meister-driven The Flash and Supergirl musical crossover? (Or will he...?)
