The Flash Plastique Review

On the heels of episode four’s first human villain in Captain Cold, the writers go back to the meta human ‘monster of the week’ in episode five but this time at least she is not stone cold evil. In fact, thanks to her and her power we learn a little bit more on how truly diabolical Dr. Harrison can truly be. (Really though, at this point no one should be that surprised)

The episode starts off with a strange robbery, an explosion, The Flash showing off some new moves and a great joke involving the road runner. Barry and his team at S.T.A.R. labs soon discover the robber is a meta human named Bette Sans Souci (Kelly Frye) who has a military background and is on a mission of revenge against those who did this to her, specifically General Wade Eiling (Clancy Brown).

Once she is brought into the fold, Souci ( or Plastique, thank you again Cisco) soon discovers that her powers to make things go boom did not come from some genetic tampering by the General but as it turns out he is still quite a threat for other reasons, including having a history with the not so good Dr. Harrison.

While this is going on, we are dragged back in to the boring world of Iris and her blogging about the ‘Streak’. Something happens that forces both The Flash and Barry Allen to confront her to try and get her to stop but at this point that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

Overall, I would have to say this episode was by far the weakest of the season and would go so far to say it was out right bad. The usual cute plot holes that get shrugged off as ‘a comic thing’ were too glaring to ignore, and the continued attempt to make the character of Iris relevant is falling flat on its proverbial face.

The episode had that feel of repetitiveness, like one of those clip shows that series do to waste time in between new episodes. Problem is, we are only at episode five here and it’s far too early to have that feeling like this was a throwaway episode.

Okay, that is probably being a little harsh as there was some good thing here that should also be mentioned. General Eiling makes it perfectly clear he is nobody’s fool and that he could be a pain in the ass to the team at S.T.A.R. labs, especially Dr. Harrison. Also Plastique, while no Captain Cold, did a fair job in her role and provided some interesting issues that could pop up for Barry later in the season.

Besides the roadrunner joke there was some fun had with Barry’s newest discovery, that being his tolerance for alcohol. While obviously still a superhero it does provide a link for him and his friends that manages to keep him grounded (at least for the time being)

Then of course, there was the ending of this episode. While Dr. Harrison once again gets some of the spotlight to leave the viewers with till next week, he shares it with someone who will make many comic fans giddy with anticipation. It was a great ending and left a decent taste in my mouth, until of course I had to go through the episode again and relive some of its awful moments.

As I have mentioned in other episode reviews, they must decide what they are going to do with Iris. She is just not working and the obvious solution to change up the dynamic of her character was even discussed in this episode but to no avail.

I also trust that the writers are still building towards something bigger and obviously can’t just jump right into it without some character and plot development along the way. However, there really should be no more episodes like this that had me counting the minutes to the end when I should have been just sitting back and enjoying the show.