THE FLASH “GoldFaced” Review

The Flash — “Goldfaced” Pictured: Grant Gustin as Barry Allen — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW

THE FLASH “GOLDFACED” REVIEW

BY JUSTIN CARTER

In 1999, Pizza Hut gave away PlayStation Underground demo discs for young kids. One of them contained a short demo of Sled Storm, a snowboarding game that happened to feature Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” on its soundtrack. It’s the kind of earworm that instantly takes me back to those Saturday nights of pizza and endless trick attempts.

This nostalgia trip is a protracted way of saying that when Barry and Ralph got into a shootout with some criminals set to that same song, complete with Ralph doing an impromptu power slide and a moment where they were back to back, I ended up liking this episode more because of it.

This is a shootout that has no real business being in any episode of The Flash unless Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell are in it, but it’s here, and it’s very good. That kind of silliness and Ralph’s joke about playing Red Dead Redemption 2 immediately afterward fit well within the confines of this show’s tone, and even the buildup to that silly fight scene is entertaining in and of itself. Team Flash, still deciding to use the metahuman cure on Cicada, need a fancy gizmo to render him still enough for said cure to work, so Barry and Ralph go to an underground arms dealer named Goldface. Naturally, Goldface wants them to do something for him first, especially after Barry bluffs his way into sounding like a badass nicknamed the Chemist: steal a 3D printer that’s about to be delivered to a hospital for kids. Oh, and they’re got bracelets that are dampening their powers and will blow their arms off at Goldface’s whim.

It sounds much more of a downer than it actually is; the weapons deal environment is pretty fun for what little we see of it, and Goldface (played by Damion Poitier, who was the original Thanos back in Avengers seven years ago) is a lot of fun, even before he turns out to have both a body made of gold and a necklace that becomes a gold whip. If the other storylines polarize more towards comedy or straight seriousness, this one’s a very nice middle ground between the two, helped by Ralph in particular being very good this episode and this season in general. To say that he’s gone through a marked improvement from the last season would be an understatement, and he’s better served for the material because of it.

Iris, meanwhile, decides to try and look for Cicada on her own as a journalist. This of course leads to her not just sneaking into his home but being cornered by him and having to bluff her way out of being killed before having to fight her way out of the house period. It’s a good sequence of events, even if Chris Klein is overdoing it on the brood factor to a point where he just stands out from everyone else. He is still intimidating, though, and they do at least learn that he can be harmed through his dark matter wound.

And then there’s Sherloque and Nora. Having her (as instructed by Thawne) to distract him with a new lover of course is the show’s way of introducing Renee, aka Sherlock Holmes mainstay Irene Adler. And of course the payoff to Sherloque’s mentioning of his ex-wives is that they’re all the same woman from different Earths, but seeing the different Adlers dump on Sherloque was pretty fun, as it has been see to see the multiple Wells converse with one another. But it’s not all fun and love, as it turns out Renee is also a meta. So Sherloque’s distracted from uncovering Nora’s big secret to focus on his potential paramour and keeping her safe from Cicada. That’s one way to tie all the stories together.

Additional Notes

• Sherloque’s attempts at love with his previous wives don’t sound entirely bad, though the Adler who fell for him faking his death twice really does have to take that one on her own.

• It’s pretty funny that the Adlers all talk to each other and are aware that Superman gave the Earth-38 Adler her long overdue alimony check.

• No Cisco this week, yet again.

• Not for nothing, but Cicada isn’t all that smart if he didn’t think someone would eventually look for him at his old house.

• Next week: Nora goes through a time loop hell of her own!