’52 breaches in Central City and the biggest one just happens to be in our basement.’ Didn’t see that one coming…
[dropcap size=small]C[/dropcap]omfortably the best episode of the season so far, The Flash is beginning to find its feet after a pretty slow start. Aside from a few storylines (*cough* Iris’s mother *cough*), ‘Family of Rogues’ is exciting from start to finish.
We open on Iris being shot at by some dudes who will never show up again. Apparently Iris will do whatever it takes to land a story, even if that means dying on the top floor of some abandoned building.
Luckily, she is able to call Barry, who is in his lab doing some science, and he tells her to jump out of the window. Like all friends do. Anyway, he catches her and we all move on with our lives.
Back at S.T.A.R., the gang is trying to work out how Zoom is able to travel through the portal conveniently sitting in their basement. After his collapse last week, Stein joins them and he’s totally fine because he’s got to go be Firestorm on his own show next year.
Jay suggests that all they need to do is stabilise the door of the portal, as that will stabilise the tunnel (or, ‘speed cannon’) that connects the two worlds. While the rest of the team leaves to ‘cherish the gift of youth,’ or in Stein’s case, ‘nap,’ Jay sticks around to figure this thing out, because without his speed, all he has is his science.
Iris’s mother is also sticking around. She visits Joe at a bar, where he offers her some money to leave town and never come back, but she won’t leave her daughter. If she cared so much about Iris, you’d think she’d have come back a while ago, but, you know, plot.
Francine won’t leave, and after some solid advice from Barry, Joe opens up to Iris. He tells her that Francine was a drug addict, and when she was sent to rehab (again), he let Iris think that she was dead to keep her from the truth. It’s pretty dark stuff, but nothing that Jesse Martin says could possibly make Joe unlikeable. It doesn’t matter what’s going on between Joe and Iris, he and Candice Patton just nail it every time.
Now, on to some less stable father-daughter relationships. I’m talking of course about Lewis Snart, who literally puts a bomb in his daughter Lisa (Golden Glider) to persuade his son Leonard (Captain Cold) to work with him. Talk about messed up – but hey, Captain Cold’s back!
Lisa seeks out the Flash because she thinks Leonard was kidnapped during one of their bank robberies. Barry finds out the hard way that he is working with his father, and when serial criminal Lisa calls Lewis ‘a bad guy,’ you know that they should be worried. Barry tries to reason with Leonard at a diner, but Leonard only makes him pay for dinner because he’s a really bad guy.
Right after Lewis decapitates his tech guy, Cisco and Caitlin find out about the bomb inside Lisa, and Barry’s only option is to become the new tech guy. He introduces himself to Lewis as ‘Sam’, and says ‘sup,’ like, 12 times, and he’s in. But once he gets the Snarts into the building, Lewis shoots him dead. Except not really because Barry’s the Flash.
He confronts Lewis as he is about to escape. Lewis threatens to blow Lisa up if Leonard doesn’t shoot Barry right there, but Cisco is able to extract the bomb in time, so Leonard turns the cold gun on his father. Of course, he ends up in Iron Heights, where Barry gives him the Darth Vader speech (‘There’s good in you. I can feel it.’ etc.)
Lisa takes off, but not before she kisses Cisco, and thanks him for being her first real friend. Cisco asks if any of it is true, but she gets out of there because she hates feelings.
Barry runs into Patty at Jitters, where the most awkward conversation ever ends with Patty giving him her number for ‘efficiency’ reasons. The Flash is at its best when it takes Barry out of his comfort zone, like here, or earlier in the episode when he infiltrates a building for Lewis.
There are just a few signs in this episode that the show is returning to something like its best following an impossible-to-top first season, and as for Patty, I mentioned last week that she and Barry already have more chemistry than he and Iris have ever had, and I stand by that. I’m rooting for Batty.
Meanwhile, Jay has figured out how to work the portal in the S.T.A.R. basement, and he is about to return home, but Caitlin doesn’t want him to because of last week’s abs show, and he stays to help fight Zoom. Even though Zoom is in Earth 2. The other side of the portal. But whatever.
The episode then ends exactly the same as last week’s; Stein collapses, but not before he channels Blue Firestorm, and Harrison Wells steals the post-credits scene, appearing in this Earth, through the conveniently-placed portal.
Whatever’s going on with Stein will presumably be explained soon, as next week’s episode is called ‘The Fury of Firestorm’. After last season, I’m assuming the Wells storyline will be another slow burner, which is fine with me. There’s no such thing as too much mysterious Tom Cavanagh.
The Flash returns to The CW next Tuesday.
