In fairness, we do still think he’s telling the truth about how he’s currently dying in yet another body that can’t quite take it, right? And we know that meta after meta (such as, oh, for example, Ralph) wound up with a body that can withstand a whole lot of punishment? In which case, it’s not that he’d have to give a crap about metas in general; it’s just that, whatever his plan is, he’d have to get himself full use of a meta just to live long enough to do anything else.
This episode took the stupidities of this show to new heights.
So:
(1) Super genius Harrison Wells, wearing a super-genius thinking hat, comes up with the plan of… “put the handcuffs on her so fast that she can’t see you coming and using her powers”. In other words, exactly what Barry should do for every villain ever in every encounter.
(2) So their super-fancy power-dampening cuffs, built by Cisco, who is such a genius that he makes super-suits for everyone on every show… are easily lockpicked
(3) Barry, who is fast enough that a few weeks ago he was having entire adventures and conversations during the detonation of a nuclear device, isn’t fast enough to grab Null, run her to somewhere contained (or tie her up with rope) (or any of a billion other things), and then still rescue the guy in the car
(4) How did Null know to have her backup car available at that exact moment precisely during that heist?
(5) So you’re sending Barry into action against someone whose power is to float things into the air… how about providing him with, say, a parachute? Or any of a zillion other potential safety devices? Or having Cisco ready to vibe him out of there immediately if he starts floating upward? Or… jesus… I can’t even begin to enumerate the number of other ways this could have been avoided
(6) So Danny Trejo comes from a society in which there’s an entire profession of people whose job is to travel through breaches and stop other people from travelling through breaches… but his society doesn’t know about old-age-related loss-of-powers?
(7) Sure it’s funny that Cisco is scared of him. So instead he sends him to a nearly-guaranteed death. Well, THAT is certainly going to endear you to your girlfriend, dumbass
Some of this sort of suspension of disbelief is acceptable. But dear lord are they pushing it.
I can handwave this one with “Usually, people die way before old age; their job is dangerous. Time travel accidents, breach accidents, and bad guys get the better of people even in their prime. Danny Trejo is just so awesome that he’s lived significantly longer than the usual breacher.”
But as to the other 6 things - yeah.
It should be pointed out that:
a) Breacher’s breach powers clearly still worked, even though his vibe blasts didn’t, so they obviously don’t fail as early.
b) They don’t have ‘an entire profession’ of vibe-breachers. We know they have an organization that deals with interdimensional travel, but we know they use at least 2 different forms of breach - Breacher and Gypsy use vibe abilities, but Accelerated Man uses speed. It’s also likely they have technology to breach, since interdimensional travel is enough of an issue that they need the Collection Agency, but the ability is uncommon enough that they can have that kind of control over it.
The episode started out as a fairly standard “we must save another bus meta” plot, with Ralph doing Ralph-like things and Barry trying to rein him in. Any suspense as to the final outcome of the episode was mitigated by seeing Neil Sandilands’ name in the opening credits. I’m glad they finally got done with this phase of the overarching plot, as these episodes were getting rather predictable. Still, the confrontation with the Devoes was fairly well done, with enough unpredictable Dibny-esque elements to keep it interesting.
So Devoe has finally assimilated all the bus metas, including Ralph. Harry Wells seems to have burned out his brain on dark matter. (The return of HR?) Killer Frost may be gone for good. And we still don’t know what Devoe’s ultimate plan is.
You know, when you’re dealing with an opponent who can out-think you maybe the best thing to do is to stop thinking. Start making decisions through roll of the dice or card cutting. If you don’t know what you’re doing, neither can your adversary.
That comes up in a novel by Niven when the main characters are faced with a character with superhuman intelligence - they roll dice when deciding between strategies.
I don’t think Ralph is dead. Somehow, there’s a part of him still alive in that body, even if unconscious. And I suspect Frost is still alive too, somehow. (But that moment when Caitlin turns to look at the row of notes she’d left…so sad.)
I liked his line: “Are you kidding? Everybody I fight is smarter than I am!”
Seems to me that Supergirl has killed people on her show. Wonder if Barry knows that.
I wonder if they’re bringing in Snart because his low cunning has beaten arguably more “intelligent” people before.
And MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — with a hired killer who doesn’t always play explosives expert, and doesn’t even usually play explosives expert given this or that scenario; but who only does it if he didn’t happen to randomly come up with “shoot the guy” or “pump the guy full of drugs” or whatever. (And there are advantages as well as drawbacks to staying in one type of hotel instead of another, which you’re free to ponder the tactics of; he just shrugs and flips open a phone book.)
…not quite the same, but on Leverage they came up against Greg ‘The Mako’ Sherman, direct descendent of the Yellow Kid, the greatest grifter of all time.
He see’s through all the Leverage Team’s to “con him”: but in the end it turns out that its all an act: they never tried to con him at all. It was all a diversion to hide the fact they had simply stolen 30 million dollars from his bank accounts.
Would that make Ralph the dancing bear?
I’d suggest Elongated Man is too longstanding and semi important to be killed off, but he wouldn’t be the first to prove me wrong in the CWverse.
I hope it’s the real Cap. Cold and not the one from EarthNazi.
I suspect the very thing that made Ralph useful to Devoe - the pliability of his brain - will prove his salvation. (Unless, of course, they do decide to kill Ralph off…which I would be less annoyed by than the other bus metas, to be honest…I love Ralph, but at least they didn’t completely squander him.) Seems like it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch* to have him sequester a bit of brain for himself while letting Devoe think he’s won, so he can learn his plan.
- Sorry, not sorry.
Poor Marlize. She just wants a little nookie with her husband but Clifford seems to moved past all notion of human emotion. There’s enough foreshadowing to see that the Thinker’s eventual defeat will somehow come about through her, which should be a satisfying comeuppance. What the Thinker’s evil plan is with the Enlightenment is still unclear.
Damn it was naziearth Cold, though I did laugh at how Devoe kept calling him Mr. SNOT rather than Snart due to his accent.
Well, the “Enlightenment” isn’t quite what I predicted a while back (I wrote: " Based on some hints Thinker has dropped, his plot involves brainwashing of the whole world (he refers to something upcoming called “The Enlightment” which given his personality mean “that glorious day when everyone agrees with me!”) - maybe metas are immune to his planned technique, leading to his desire to subdue them in some other way. ") but pretty close. I think “the Thinker” intends to be immune, leaving himself the natural leader of the newly less-smart world. I can’t help thinking that 90% of the human population will die in the aftermath of “the Enlightenment” - I’m glad Marlize has come to her senses. Dendarii Dame suggested to me that Marlize might be the season-long villain next season.
So why did/does the Thinker need those 12 specific powers.? Has there been any hint as to why?
- allows his body to be strong
- allows him to open portals without assistance
- allows him to control others minds (
- allows him a weapon of noise
- allows him to control others hearts
- allows him to fly/float without assistance
- allows him to control electronics
- allows him to shrink/grow stuff (thats just cool)
- allows him to control luck
- allows him to take other metas power(s) away and redistribute them (if desired)
Finally, Marlize comes to her senses. Good job using Devoe’s chair against him. She probably invented it in the first place.
Mild spoilers for Infinity War, comparing main villains:
Devoe’s scheme is similar to Thanos’, doing something atrociously evil ostensibly for the common good. Arguably, Devoe’s evil plan would be more effective since he’s taking away something fundamental to humanity from which we probably couldn’t recover. Whereas the population could easily bounce back under Thanos, plus he wasn’t looking to set himself up as overlord.
Uh, Team Flash? Maybe it’s not such a great idea accepting a gift at the baby shower from an unknown source? They lucked out that it wasn’t from DeVoe. I thought Barry should have zapped it with a lightning bolt.
And I also expected somebody to recognize (Barry and Iris’ daughter? Their descendant from the future?) as someone who keeps showing up and Barry to grab her, assuming she was a villain, maybe working for DeVoe. Or even DeVoe himself–he is a shape shifter now.
Wonder where Marlize has gone. I still think that she’s going to be next season’s big bad.