Television

FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 5×05- “All Doll’d Up”

All Doll'd Up preview image

The Flash (5×05)- “All Doll’d Up”

Written by:         Tony Pound & Sterling Gates

Directed by:       Philip Chipera

Well what a time.  I’ve been without a computer for pretty much the whole winter break and without a computer I can’t write reviews.  (I have a phone but I’m not tapping out a review on that with my old man hands.)

So, in short my big plan to clean up the episodes I missed was pretty much nuked and it’s scramble time.  Anyways…

For once those “Previously on the Flash…” Montages helped me out to remind of exactly what’s been going on going into this episode because I wasn’t watching too closely as it aired as I was both packing and live tweeting.

Ragdoll!

This episode is proof that something that’s kinda goofy in a comic book or cartoon is absolutely disgusting in live action.  Our villain was super gross with all the popping and crushing noises that accompanied his contortions.

Meanwhile, this another one of these CW Universe episodes where every plotline has the same core.  And as usual, when one of these episodes comes along that issue is parental problems (seriously Flash writer’s room your parents were most likely not that bad and you were almost certainly being completely unreasonable.)

Iris and Nora are fighting because of how Iris treats her daughter in the future which leads to some pretty typical CW family drama with Barry trying to help Iris realize that despite her future daughter being around, the future isn’t set.  Meanwhile Cecile is trying to do the same with Nora by telling her about Iris growing up.

Caitlin’s trying to find her father and figure out why he abandoned her…

And our villain is stealing stuff because his mother was never there for him which is pretty standard and feels like a C-plot at best.  Though it did give Ralph some time to shine as Elongated Man (Ralph is quietly stacking up some cool moments this season both in and out of uniform) with a little Spider-Man homage.

The only plotline that’s free of this is Cisco’s ongoing recovery from the first fight with Cicada with the added bonus of his powers now slowly killing him and what that’s doing to him.  Really, the Cisco and Caitlin plot was the best part of this episode, both of them show some vulnerability with each other and the way they hold each other up does a lot to remind you how long they’ve been as close as family to each other.

End of the day, despite a very creepy villain this was a pretty standard episode. Some things to note from this episode (and I’m doing my best not to use the things we learn in future episodes to color this) are: Something is definitely wrong with Iris in the future and I think it’s beyond Barry disappearing.  I’d like to think that she wouldn’t pull away so much from her daughter knowing what having a mother that bails on you as a child can do to you both first hand and from watching Barry grow up.

Next, there’s a definite ticking clock aspect to Cisco’s injuries that they are going to have to address as usually the injury that kills you when you use your powers becomes the injury that’s killing you all the time in comics.

Lastly, I was a bit disappointed that they gave the team a new satellite system as I thought they this was a good obstacle for the team to learn to go around and now we’re back to the magic satellite acting like the deflector dish did on Star Trek (reverse polarity on the main deflector dish was the go-to solution for Picard and crew after a while and Voyager too.)

I guess that just about wraps it up which means score time:

Things We Learned in “All Doll’d Up”:

  1. Cisco’s powers are killing him.
  2. The team has use of the satellites left behind from the Enlightenment.
  3. Cecile is remarkably good at manipulating people on the fly.  (Should’ve known, she’s a lawyer after all.)

Questions from “All Doll’d Up”:

  1. Can they remove the traces of metal from Cisco’s hands before they kill him?
  2. Why did Ragdoll decide to kill Barry? It seemed like a bit of a contrivance.
  3. Do Marvel Comics exist on CW-Earth One?

Just another guy on the internet.