This review contains spoilers.
5.5 All Doll’d Up
I’m worried that I’m starting to sound more like a broken record than usual, but I’m just going to lay it out here one more time up front. If All Doll’d Up is an example of what an ‘off’ week for The Flash season five is going to look like, then I think we are going to be just fine this year. This season has so far successfully balanced its necessary metas of the week with its main story (Barry/Iris/Nora) and its secondary story (Sherloque/Cisco/Caitlin), and I have yet to feel shortchanged by any of it. Even the villains of the week, often the bane of this show when not dealing with more recognisable Flash rogues have worked well in the context of the episode, and this week, the Rag Doll is the first this year that I genuinely hope we get to see more of, whether here or on another DC show.
While Rag Doll isn’t really much of a threat to a team that consists of two speedsters and a stretchy guy, he’s a terrific visual (thanks in no small part to actual contortionist Troy James doing the honours, although it’s Phil LaMarr providing his voice) and the icky sound effects that accompany his contortions are a nice touch. This is one of the more faithful visual translations of a DC Comics supervillain we’ve seen on the show in recent times, and his apparent ‘one and done’ status here doesn’t quite hint at why certain fans are probably so excited to see him on screen. But the eerie physicality of Troy James helps make up for the fact that Rag Doll is done of those baddies who is just here to give the team something to do while they work out their own problems.
Rag Doll himself gets a note-perfect introduction. It’s the kind of thing that would have worked equally well had they chosen to introduce the character on Arrow, where I maintain that had they not decided to go with the expected Enlightenment-fallout/meta powers route with his powers he would have been a perfect fit. It helps that Rag Doll, unlike say, Spin or Block, has enough of a comic book pedigree to make him worthy of an intro like this, but even were that not the case, the horror movie tone of this scene was really terrific.
To that end, All Doll’d Up is kind of a slow, talky, relationship-heavy episode. It’s the closest we’ve come to genuine filler in some spots this season (was the slow motion dance at the party really necessary?) but it never meandered long enough to really make me feel like they were spinning their wheels. Lesser shows (or hell, some of these DC CW shows) probably could have tried to get an entire season out of Nora’s ambivalence about Iris, but here it’s resolved thanks to some clever ‘bait and switch’ storytelling by Cecile. Should I have seen it coming? Probably. But given how I haven’t loved Cecile’s general track since she got her powers, her interactions with Nora here were a great reminder of why I love the character.
While Barry/Iris/Nora got their own work done, I was particularly impressed with Caitlin/Cisco/Sherloque. I still maintain that the ‘quest for Killer Frost’ is far less interesting than the ‘quest for Caitlin’s dad.’ I reserve the right to change my mind if they wow me with the former element as they continue to make progress with the latter. But the beauty of all of this is how (despite that diversion for ‘sad breakup Cisco’ in the second episode of the season) it has re-centered how central the Snow/Ramon partnership is. In fact, Cisco’s arc right now is quietly the most compelling thing the show has going, and his struggles, paired with Caitlin’s quest, have really helped bring them back to where I feel they should be. Closing the episode on a quiet moment between the two of them was a really nice touch.
The genuine fun being had with Sherloque and Ralph is a bonus, and it’s nice to see a new pairing of characters emerging organically within the story. Tom Cavanagh and Hartley Sawyer appear to genuinely be having fun with each other, and it makes these scenes work. Similarly welcome is Ralph’s evolution into very much the Elongated Man of the comics. I’m not talking about the costume or even the ambitious (but not entirely convincing) special effects meant to showcase using stretching as a means of travel. I’m talking about Ralph the detective, and finally the Ralph who has shed the most irritating character traits of the previous season. I could have done without him actually swallowing Rag Doll, though.
After a traditional superhero action sequence to open the episode involving motorcycles and Nora’s continued carelessness/inexperience, Barry as Flash is relatively absent from the episode. But Barry as husband and father are front and centre. In his first scene, his delivery of “at ten am? That’s bold,” was the most Joe West line delivery imaginable, and Grant Gustin nailed it. They say we all become our parents, and all it took for Barry to turn into Joe was to discover he had a daughter of his own. I love it.
The rest of the episode doubled down on these more ‘adult’ aspects of Barry’s personality, and I think it was to great effect. Whether it was his calm stoicism while teetering on a chair on the end of a building or his “you’re crazy, thank you, I love you” to Iris, I feel like this is a version of Barry Allen that is roughly one season overdue, and Gustin seems more than up to the challenge.
It’s rare that I find so many things to nitpick in an episode like this, whether it’s the villain of the week formula or the pacing, and still come away feeling especially positive about it. But like I’ve pointed out other times this year, so far, The Flash season five feels balanced. In many ways, All Doll’d Up felt like a season one episode. There were no shortage of episodes like this, that made incremental progress on the overall story, and spent time with minor villains rather than the season’s big bad. But there was a novelty there that was lacking by season two, but perhaps because he’s a favourite of mine, or perhaps because he’s such a striking visual, Rag Doll was enough to hold my attention, even as there was never any real illusion that he was important to the bigger elements of the season five story.
My only concern right now is that, once you subtract the upcoming Elseworlds crossover episode, we’re fast approaching the mid-point of the season, and while Cicada has so far been a cool and credible threat, the writers have a real tightrope to walk between not showing us too much and not showing us enough. At some point, we need to get a real idea of what the stakes for this season are for everyone (Cisco’s are pretty clear at the moment), in order to make sure we don’t feel cheated like we were with the Thinker last year. I’m not going to think too hard on that just yet, though. So far, The Flash is doing everything right that I could hope for, and looking at the overall ratio of this show, there have been more good episodes than bad. That’s plenty of reason to give this season a long leash, and they’re earning that more and more with each episode.
Read Mike’s review of the previous episode, News Flash, here.