immortalfrieza

If I were Barry I might ultimately get along with this Speed Force, but they are NOT Nora and the first thing I would ask it to do is at least have the decency to pick their own unique form rather than wearing my dead mother's face all the time. A dead mother who the SF is basically responsible for allowing the my greatest enemy to kill and change the entire course of my life and did nothing, then deliberately allowed the next Speedster I encountered after to murder her husband and my father on top of that in order to test my resolve. The Speed Force has burned way too many bridges in Barry's life for him to enjoy that they are around. Honestly Chester reminds me of Curtis over on Arrow: the guy who might have been enjoyable to watch at first because he was amusing, but who doesn't know when to knock it off and makes ridiculous jokes at the most inappropriate times when things are supposed to be serious, and not in the "I'm making jokes to distract everybody from how horrible things are" al la Spider-Man way, more the "I actually think I should be making jokes and trying to funny despite the fact that a brain dead chimpanzee could tell this is not the time" way. The funny thing is, considering Frost didn't exist until 4 years ago yeah, she pretty much is 4 years old. Not that you'd be able to tell. The one time he actually does seem to take issue with it was when he was being brainwashed by a supervillain, but I get the impression that he's always been pretty weirded out by the whole thing.

Yes! The fact that A. Ryan was stupid enough to leave that remote control thing in the car when it would've taken her all of 2 seconds to get it, and B. said remote control thing was apparently recording everything Luke and Ryan said for... no apparent reason was the only way Sophie managed to figure it out was nonsensical. Making Sophie smart and competent is apparently just too much to ask. I wouldn't say this is the first time Batwoman has probably left blood at the crime scene, but it's definitely the first time they've ever emphasized the fact that she left blood at the crime scene. Either something is going to get in the way of Agent Whatshisname finding out who Batwoman is or he will find out, he'll not get the chance to actually tell anyone before dying to keep it a secret, because those always happen. I was confused by that too. I was expecting or at least hoping that Alice had something arranged to ensure that Enigma couldn't just hypnotize her into leaving her alone or killing herself or whatever but apparently she had nothing? Even Alice having one of her mooks stand outside the room and keep an eye on things would've been better than being left completely at the woman's mercy. I was also confused by how Enigma brainwashed Alice and Ocean and then Julia when apparently all she can do is standard hypnosis. I was expecting her to have some psychic powers or super hypnosis device or something to justify the fact that they can't just refuse to play along. Hypnosis like that only works if you want it to.

This episode is probably one of the best they've had in a long time... so figures it's next to last. Probably precisely because it had no MacDesi or MacRiley crap in it whatsoever and just focused on Mac and Co. getting into a dangerous situation and solving it, like the show should be. I have never in my life ever seen a show where putting in relationship drama halfway through has ever actually done anything besides make the show worse. Relationship drama tends to gimp shows even when the show is based around it from the start, and MacGyver definitely is not one of those shows. I watch this show to see Mac and Co. get into crazy dangerous situations then watch Mac build his way out of it while monologing what he's doing. I did not get into this show to watch Mac try to date his coworkers. I definitely did not get into this show to watch Mac try to date his coworkers in a manner forced by writers who couldn't write an actual relationship to save their lives.

Like... I don't know, the keys? There's no way the guy could've had the time to hotwire the thing in the few seconds he was sitting in it, so that means that these secret agents drove this million euro car to a car show where they expected this bad guy to show up... and left the keys in the car. You would think that putting an extremely gaudy road sign's paper onto a very distinctively shaped car to turn it into an extremely gaudy looking car would just make the thing a hundred times more noticeable, but apparently not.

And the other NCIS agents being incompetent enough that SecNav would be dead had Gibbs' team not gone around them was a plot contrivance to make our team look "right" about what they do. It's the old "we don't follow the rules but we GET THINGS DONE and that's all that matters" trope. That's also why Sawyer was as big of dick as possible, because anyone who gets in the way of the protagonists doing whatever they want without consequences is either evil, incompetent, a dick, or all three. Exactly. I half expected Gibbs to be working the case behind the scenes because there's no way in hell the team would be competent enough on their own to actually accomplish anything. However, no, for once they were actually competent enough on their own to get the job done and that's precisely because Gibbs wasn't there. When Gibbs is actually heading the team 9 times out of 10 they fail to take the initiative instead having to have Gibbs tell them what to do and when to do it or miss things that Gibbs picks up on instead. The writers do this to keep Gibbs from becoming redundant on his own team given that the rest of the team can fulfill just about any role he can as well or even better or at least should be able to. Especially since said "gut feelings" were really just how the Musician's suicide and everything tying everything up into a neat little bow didn't make sense, for reasons that Gibbs' Team even outright explains when asked, only to be brushed off. Again, making the guys getting in the way of the protagonists look like incompetent dicks because they are getting in the way of the protagonists. It's not like Sawyer and whats her name aren't special agents too who should be more than capable of recognizing this stuff or anything.

...and that would rather conveniently get Lex out of the way so he doesn't show up on Superman and Lois either. You know that if he wasn't so laser focused on Supergirl that he'd be in Metropolis trying to kill Superman right now. Anyone else thinking that Kara's dad Zor-El isn't real? A product of Kara's Phantom induced psychosis, a shapeshifting phantom, etc? It just seems SO convenient Kara runs into her suddenly not dead father in the infiniteness of the Phantom Zone that I just can't suspend my disbelief if they actually make him real.

Honestly it makes sense. If Deon does anything to prevent himself from getting powers (like something that would make him a football star that thus likely wouldn't even be in Central City when these Forces were unleashed) then he can't use his powers to stop himself from doing something to prevent himself from getting powers and ohlordI'vegonecrossed. The problem is that between Flash and Legends the rules of time travel are basically suggestions at best and never make sense, so the idea that there's "fixed points" is as much a plot contrivance as anything else. Especially since only the "Strength Force's" name actually seemed to actually make sense from what we've seen of these forces so far, being a mindless but inhumanly strong monster. Psych I would expect to be the "Fear Force" or "Terror Force" or something like that while Deon would be the "Time Force". Come on Cisco! You're really slipping with those names. Now THIS is what I was talking about a couple episodes ago with the rest of the cast. Cisco and Chester were blocked off from the rest of the team and had to deal with a threat, while Iris had to play minder with the Speed Force, while Barry was incapacitated and unable to help. This show should've had a lot more episodes like this, ones where most if not all of the supporting cast gets to deal with their own problems of the episode and Barry himself is either too busy or out of action to interfere at the time. The Flash needs a supporting cast, but it doesn't have to extend to said cast existing to prop up Barry in some way. Please Iris, look at your husband. He has his "screaming internally" face on. We need a gif of that BTW

Or they'll arbitrarily suddenly start destabilizing or something and have to remerge them together to save them, making the whole splitting storyline pointless to have ever happened. I'd honestly prefer that Frost stay because I've found KF far more interesting of a character than Caitlin despite the constant writing fumbles for the whole concept. Especially now that Caitlin is really just "there" and never actually does anything but show up for 10 seconds to spout off some medical jargon before vanishing again, with KF taking the fore in nearly all of Danielle's scenes if she has any at all. Having said that, I would say that Frost has done more than enough at this point to have made up for anything she did... if she didn't just stand there and let the villains get away or get taken out with a wave of their hand every time she actually tries to do something.

Honestly? This is probably the first Flash episode that I felt no real desire to comment on. Which for me means nothing particularly interesting or much more likely contradictory and/or stupid happened in this episode. It is sad that that's what's comment worthy. Oh, I suppose Fuerza being the worst supervillain name ever counts. Serious Cisco? You couldn't have come up with something better? Anything would've been better.

I spent the whole episode questioning why they couldn't have just had Sebastian stay at NCIS headquarters, a nice little secure building where he could still be able to do his work instead of being sent to some safehouse in the middle of nowhere. Then the episode got to the end and I realized "Oh, that's why, so they could have the whole Sebastian and Gregorio try to get to each other before the bad guy kills one of them" drama happen. Carter of course is a self centered dick, but what else is new? Carter, if you don't want a profiler to say nothing but bad things about you how about trying to be a better person and thus actually having something good to say about you?

The show has always treated the Crows as functionally the GCPD, with the actual GCPD barely making cameos at best. In fact, having the commissioner appear and then get gunned down in the space of about a minute of total screentime is the most significant thing that the GCPD has actually done the entire run of the show up to this point. Honestly I was between last ep and this one trying to think of a way that they could bring Kate back and recast her and the idea of Kate having plastic surgery, brainwashing, and maybe some cybernetic enhancements (she was supposed to have lost entire limbs wasn't she?) to turn her into a supervillain for Ryan to have to deal with popped into my head. Then she could go around killing people for a season or so before snapping out of it and angsting about what she's become on and off for the rest of the show. With Enigma it seems like they might be going something like that direction. Yes! I spent this whole time thinking... "...Really? This is what these women think Gotham needs? A FREAKING COMMUNITY CENTER!?!" But of course that's what Ryan and Sophie's little sis from nowhere are going to think is important, because if they actually tackled the issues that were plaguing Gotham City (like a complete lack of competent mental health facilities) at the source there quickly wouldn't be any show. In fact, considering how many shows/movies seem to think a community center is such a big deal that they're always fighting to get one or save one I'm surprised there isn't one across the street from every Mcdonalds in fictionland.

I really wish they had simply had Cisco have issues with his powers or they suddenly going out of whack or just SOMETHING to justify why he'd even want to get rid of his powers. Cisco's powers did nothing but benefit him, they weren't difficult to control or anything else that could possibly give Cisco any reason to want them gone. He got rid of them because he wanted a "normal" life, as though "normal" means anything in this universe, but if he wanted that he could've easily just not used them. It's not like Cisco actually used his powers for much even when he did have them. As for the mech suit replicating his powers, if they're going to do that they should just have him get his powers back somehow and be done with it instead of having him wear this suit that just simulated the powers he's already got. At least give him like flame projectors and lighting blasts or whatever if you're going to go that route, something different from what he was. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Barry used his powers remotely intelligently and at the level he should be capable of by now, nobody short of another Speedster would be able to literally last a second against The Flash. Funny enough, they actually DID have Flash do what he should always do and just superspeed slap dampening cuffs on Abra right off the bat as Flash hit the scene, THEN have Barry stand there and quip. Though of course they ended up being useless but points for that at least. I'm not surprised they're doing this. Joe is bog standard human, no superpowers, no genius level intellect, nothing of actual importance whatsoever that he's got. There is not really anything Joe can actually DO in any given episode since nearly everything Team Flash ever faces each week is way way out of his league. Except maybe give pep talks to Barry but Iris has that much covered already. Might as well sideline him, he's useless and I don't think the writers are good enough to be able to find something useful for Joe to do. The writers have never given a crap about continuity when it comes to Killer Frost and Caitlyn in any way whatsoever. On that note, you would think ARGUS would've had the warrant dropped by now.

Of course not. Whether it's the comic books, tv shows like this one, or whatever, If the heroes used even 1/10th of the marvelous medicines, cure alls, sci fi tech, and so on that keep popping up, the DC/Marvel Earth would be a utopia and thus boring, so of course that can't happen. Speaking of marvelous medicines, so Alice sets fire to this orchard of Desert Rose, so Sophie and Ryan just sit there and watch instead of running down there to see if they could actually find some that haven't burned up yet. The whole orchard is going to take quite a while for every last flower to be destroyed. It's not like Ryan isn't about to die anyway so might as well at least TRY to do something. Should've at had some of Safiyah's people running around trying to stop the fire or something so trying to do that would've ended up being too risky, then there would actually be a reason.. Shows have this need to put up this false drama all the time. We all knew Ryan was never going to die and that Kate wasn't on that island from the start, even if one didn't hear about Kate's actress it wasn't hard to guess latter. However, the show acts like both of these things are big revelations instead of simply not putting in those plots in the first place and putting in something we actually don't expect. Drama only works when the audience doesn't already know what's going to happen. And Alice doesn't even want to kill Kate anymore, so she has no reason to go along with Safiyah and kill Ocean anyway. On that note, so Safiyah, as much as I hate to defend Alice you decided to screw with Alice's head to turn her into a remorseless monster and it's Alice's fault she's willing to kill her boyfriend to get her sister back? Uh huh. More specifically, Wayne tower has really lax security. It seems like anyone just walks straight into it without even so much as an alert like "hey guys, intruder here!" At least this time it was a supposed master assassin... who can't subdue and kill two completely untrained civilians somehow but hey, at least this time it's someone who is supposed to be capable of stealth. Considering Safiyah apparently had the secret to curing countless if not every disease on the planet plus cancer and who knows what else on hand her whole life and did absolutely nothing with it not to mention distributing it around the globe I'd say she's definitely the most twisted. The only way I could see this working is if they took a page from Batgirl/Barbra Gordon's book and have "Kate" be too badly injuried to fight anymore, so she stays at the Batcave on coms with Luke while he does R&D. Then again, they've been handed a cure all so... there that goes. Really, the only way they could've resolved this well at all is simply state Kate was dead and stick with it. Considering that Safiyah apparently has no intention of ever doing anything with this magical cure all except making more Desert Roses and then sitting on it for the rest of eternity, why not destroy them? They functionally don't exist anyway. All I could think of was this: "a dagger that stabs people in the heart and sends them into suspended animation until it's pulled out... now where have I seen that before..." (Cue Vampire Diaries flashbacks.) Actually, it would've been interesting if the Kryptonite poisoning was also giving Ryan superpowers. They could've easily tied it into why Ryan wasn't telling anybody about it for several episodes: She didn't want to risk losing the powers and thus becoming less effective, until the poisoning starts winning out, THEN she collapses and the "save Ryan" storyline starts. Still really stupid for Ryan not to tell Mary and Luke about it for so long, but at least she'd have an actual reason not to.

That was more my thought. Does DC have an equivalent? I don't recall if I've ever seen one. That has been a constant problem with Superman. Sure, a villain might have Superman on the ropes with Kryptonite or whatever but 9 times out of 10 all of sudden he gets a second wind, waves his hand or uses super speed or whatever, and the villain is done. They make it look like Superman could've just THUNDERCLAPed Kilgrave at any time but decided to be all dramatic about it until his kids needed him. That, and considering it's a SONIC weapon he shouldn't have been able to hear the emergency beacon while getting blasted anyway. They should've had Clark come up with something in the environment he could use to neutralize the weapon instead of just using a power he always had. Give the guy some intelligence instead of making the classic Superman writer mistake of just making him dumb muscle who brute forces everything. Yep. It sounds to me more like he just wants Superman to fly when he says fly, even if it's just to resolve his own screw ups.

Oh, you see Iris' superpower is to give Barry pep talks so he can go superhero. Iris isn't a superhero who could fight to beat a villain, a tech genius like Cisco who could build helpful gadgets and figure out how to beat a villain, a doctor like Kate who can help Flash and others medically, a cop like Joe who can actually arrest people... Iris isn't allowed to have any other superpowers because then she'd have the ability to actually be USEFUL for once. They can't have Iris be useful, because then they wouldn't have to do things like trap her in another dimension for most of a season just so she would be out of the way. Let's be honest here, the whole reason Iris spent the whole season in the Mirrorverse was because they couldn't think of anything to actually do with her besides give sappy speeches to Barry. God I liked Iris so much better in season 4 when she was at least team leader. Case in point: I was rolling my eyes so much they drilled their way out of my head at that utterly ridiculous explanation. It was basically "Eva took my powers away when she left!" and I was just like... WHAT?!? So they gave Iris superpowers, let her use them all of once (and not even to beat the villain at that!) and then just took them away? At least have her beat the villain to justify ever actually having them before taking them away or just don't give her superpowers in the first place. Every time a character starts moaning about wanting to be normal it always leads to stupid stuff like this. Characters who do this tend to live in universes that are filled with abnormal people and as such having superpowers it's a boon rather than a curse. Being "normal" just means being an extra vulnerable piece of meat waiting for the next supervillain to come along and wipe them out with a wave of their hand. Besides, like Tennisgurl pointed out, it's not like Cisco isn't constantly up against superpowered threats all the time anyway, he just doesn't have powers to bring it up to his level now. This IS normal not just for Cisco but for everyone in Central City and probably beyond. And now they've got a bunch of gauntlets that just do the same thing as his powers used to! Just make Cisco Vibe again already.

To be fair to Gibbs he HAS flipped out when members of his team die, family murdered, and lovers killed before. What's different about this one is that Gibbs always knew definitively that whoever did it did it before he went ballistic on them. This time he just walks up to a suspect on the word of a woman he doesn't know and doesn't just rough him up a little trying to arrest him, Gibbs beat the holy hell out of him without yet even having any proof that the guy had even done it!

They should just go and full on lampshade it. "I can't believe that bitch f***ing HAN SOLOED me!" should be one of the first things he says when he gets out. It also reminds me of Oswald doing the same thing to Ed over on Gotham. I am hoping Gambi is going to use the retinal scan for something else other than Tech Lady's secret Unobtainium stash. That would put a big "I DID THIS!!!" sign on him and Gambi isn't supposed to be that stupid. Unless he's already planning to do it right before he ditches the company anyway. This show always has been unsubtle about it's allusions to the treatment of black people by police in particular since season 1, but this one was particularly blatant.

During the police raid, the only thing I could think was: "Dude, check who you're shooting. See the POLICE in big white letters on the front? That's a clue." Then: "Drop the gun already!" Then finally: "Get down flat on the ground both of you!" If that had actually happened instead of being a what-if, I wouldn't have pitied the couple for a second. The couple basically did everything possible to justify the cops shooting at them and then ensure someone ended up dead. I get the intended parallel between that scene and cases of police brutality against black people, but recast the couple as white instead and doing the same thing as those two did and the exact same thing would happen. If you're trying to comment on something, it helps if you're actually accurate about it.

My reaction to the revelation that Alice and Ocean were hypnotized was simply dread. Please tell me they aren't going there. A redemption arc with Alice of all people? That would be like doing a redemption arc with The Joker! Alice has no redeeming qualities, she has never been anything other than a remorseless villain since the show started and now they're going to be like "oh, Alice was hypnotized, so it wasn't really her." At least Ryan had a decent reason not to kill her this time thanks to putting a tracker in her. That's probably the smartest thing Ryan has done since becoming Batwoman.

Not to mention they could have storylines where Iris, Joe, and everybody in STAR Labs works together to take down some villains every so often with Barry having minimal if any involvement probably because he's dealing with some bigger supervillains at the time. Not only is Barry only useful when Team Flash is around to tell him how to superhero, but Team Flash is only useful when Barry need someone to tell him how to superhero. That's why almost the entirety of Team Flash had superpowers at one point but barely used them and then just got their butts royally kicked in the rare occasions when they did whenever Barry wasn't around. The rest of the cast has no other purpose but to prop up Barry in some way. Why else would they be utterly incapable of stopping Barry now that he went full supervillain?

It's not that The Flash doesn't need a cast to bounce off of and to do storylines with. Batman for instance typically has Robin, Alfred, Commisioner Gordon, Batgirl... but it's usually actually Batman who figures out how to and then actually saves the day without any real assistance from anyone else, maybe occasionally getting saved by the others. If a Batman show were to do things like this show does Robin would save Batman every week, possibly multiple times until Alfred tells Batman how to actually beat the villain, then he finally beats the villain. Barry could still have a cast and still be effective. Hell, he could still have Cisco and Caitlyn tell him how to beat a villain... every once in a blue moon. The fact that Barry is chronically incapable of succeeding at anything without Team Flash is the problem.

"But but but but CRISIS!!!" is probably going to be their answer to that, if they even address it at all. It's interesting that OG Wells was the only Wells we knew of that we never saw in the Council of Well even though HR was also dead and yet somehow showed up. The only reason Barry even needs a team at all is because the writers keep making him into a colossal moron of a screw up who can't seem to do jack as a superhero unless he has "the team" around to actually tell him how to superhero in nearly any given situation. It was made clear from the word jump when Barry started showing the speed thinking that he was quickly rendering the entire Team redundant. That's why they got rid of his speed thinking so quickly and made it turn him bad rather than just making him super smart, if Barry was smart and effective Team Flash wouldn't actually have a reason to exist. I don't mind the fact that they keep bringing in Tom, I mind the fact that for some reason they JUST. WON'T. STOP. switching to different versions of Wells over and over and OVER again. Instead we get Reverse Flash Wells, then Harry, then this useless sack of a screw up HR, then Harry again, a Sherlock Wells, Nash, and now apparently OG Wells back from the dead. I'd much rather they had just picked one and stuck with it. Hell, they had used the same Wells twice in two seasons (Harry) and even when he wasn't a Team Flash member made frequent appearances probably because he was the most popular one bar none. They should've just gone with Harry and called it a day if they were going to pick any of them.

I think I heard China wanted to leave the series for a while now, not sure where. That's probably why this recasting went so smoothly storywise since China was all for letting it happen instead of having to just write around Jen just up and vanishing for no apparent reason when China just quit all of a sudden and thus could write it into the story effectively.

The writers have had an obsession throughout the show of making Barry do EVERYTHING even when it makes more sense for someone else to do it. This means that even if the rest of the cast gets powers and thus can at least contribute in some way, they tend to end up almost never actually being effective with their powers. It's no surprise that the whole team got their asses handed to them by ThinkerBarry since Barry is the only one allowed to actually beat anyone, ever.

Oh come on writers! You had the perfect opportunity to have everybody give Barry a Reason You Suck speech comparing him to Devoe and you missed it! On that note: That was the same issue Devoe had and why he ultimately lost. He was so intelligent but for some reason had the inability to even recognize the emotions of others much less plan for them. It's TV logic: Emotionlessness=Intelligence=Disregarding emotion entirely=Stupidity. The idea that someone could be really really intelligent and still emotional or at least able to account for emotion seems lost when trying to depict that someone is intelligent. So... with Barry destroying the ASF does that mean Nash died for... precisely jack diddly at least so far?