FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 4×09- “Don’t Run”

Directed by:       Stefan
Pleszczynski

With the
Flash returning next week, what better way to catch back up than to catch back
up?

It’s the
winter finale which means two things: plenty of Christmas stuff and the villain
steps up his plan.  We open on Cisco and
Harry putting up the tree in the lab and bickering only for Ralph to arrive and
ratchet up the bickering before Caitlin settles everyone down but it seems that
in the last few weeks that Killer Frost has won the rest of the gang over to
the point of having inside jokes… bad ones.

After a
quick check in with for Iris and Barry going through their wedding gifts and
The DaVoes hinting at some sort of evil plan. 
Later, Harry finds Caitlin and tries to talk to her about her Killer
Frost issues (to be fair, if my evil split personality was more popular with my
friends than me I might be drowning my sorrows in something stronger than
coffee.) but wouldn’t you know it, Amunet shows up to beat up Harry and kidnap
Caitlin AND even better, The Thinker shows up and kidnaps Barry.

Caitlin is
brought to an abandoned hospital where Amunet has wounded one of the bus metas
she was intending to sell and she needs Caitlin to doctor up and save him and
her life as well.  Our bus-meta, Dominic,
is a telepath.  Awesome.

Meanwhile,
Barry wakes up in The Thinker’s lair behind a force field and after some
posturing The Thinker reveals why he’s kidnapped Barry. He’s going to teach him
the value of defeat.  DUN DUN DUH! But
their confrontation is cut show when Joe and Harry arrive at the DaVoes’ front
door looking for Barry but that’s not going to happen any time soon. Meanwhile,
Barry has a talk with Mrs. DaVoe and if you thought she might be the weak link
in the chain well as Judas Priest once sang “You’ve got another thing
coming.” She may, in fact, be the more aggressive of the two.

Back at STAR
Labs, things aren’t going well at all. 
Cisco’s satellites are overtaxed looking for Barry and Caitlin so he and
Ralph are at each other’s throats and Harry has a theory as to why that’s the
case.  Iris is not acting like a team
leader, she’s acting like a concerned Wife and Friend and that needs to stop.

At the
Hospital, Caitlin and Dominic try and fail to escape and Amunet and Caitlin
have some girl talk that ends in a restatement of her original threat: Help
Dominic or they both die.  Ralph and
Cisco manage to bury the hatchet before Iris comes in.  She’s made her decision: Find Caitlin then
worry about Barry.  We go back to the
Hospital where Caitlin is performing the surgery… and with some creative use of
anesthetic they make their escape as well with some help from Cisco and Ralph
in the end.

Back at the
Thinker’s lair, Barry uses some high speed vibrations to trick DaVoe into
shutting off the force field and the two end up in a fight over the City that
ends with DaVoe’s apparent death.

Well that
was anticlimactic.  I was expecting a big
plan, not painful death.  I guess all
that’s left is for the gang to have their Christmas party, and while Wally is
in Cambodia it seems like Dominic has arrived. 
He even gets his codename: Brainstorm. 
Meanwhile, Barry’s alarm system for the loft pings his phone and he
heads over to take a look.  When he
arrives he gets a call from Dominic and it turns out there was in fact a big
plan from The Thinker.  He used Dominic’s
abilities to transfer his consciousness into Dominic’s brain and as a bonus,
he’s killed his body and used it to frame Barry for his murder.

So with
perfect timing, Barry finds DaVoe’s body just as the cops arrive.  It’s fine though, he’s the Flash he can just…
stand there and allow himself to be arrested. 
I guess if you were watching this the night it first aired you’d
probably be thinking “Well Merry Christmas to you too!”

This was a
pretty solid mid-season finale, I’m really starting to get behind the direction
they’ve gone this season. It took a while to get used to but as things have
unfolded I’ve enjoyed it more and more and I’m really interested to see where
they’re going next and what “The Enlightenment” is. 

I liked
Iris’ storyline this week, this is the price of command and she’s going to have
to pay it more and more often unless she’s not careful.  Cisco, Ralph and Harry have developed a good
chemistry but I’m really noticing that Caitlin seems to be growing more and
more isolated from the group and I wonder where they’ll go with that.   There’s been some clunkers but I think I’m
more positive on this season through the Winter Break than I was Season Two at
the same point.

Lastly, I’ll
really miss Neil Sandilands. Not only did he bring a lot of menace to the role
but the man’s voice was as smooth as whipped butter.  Here’s hoping Kendrick Sampson is able to
keep up the pace.

Three Things We
Learned This Week: