The Flash All-Star Team-up
Getting the business out of the way: a Bechdel pass, with Brie and Dr. McGee talking about the weaponized robot bees. Yes, this episode has weaponized robot bees.
I’m delaying the posting on this but writing it up prior to seeing Arrow, as I guess there will be some cross-informing. I do enjoy that Iris has had enough of everyone’s bullshit, and I’m really hoping Eddie tells her anyway despite the breakup because he’s really redeemed himself as a character by insisting that this is stupid. Even if his motivation is getting laid again.
Anyway, the story: Barry’s still out there kicking ass, helping cops, angsting about Wells. A professor gets killed by a bunch of bees swarming out of her car. NOPE. As the team investigates, Felicity and Ray show up, with their special brand of accidental references to Ray’s ability to maintain an erection. Joe meanwhile is still not helping Eddie with his sex life, which is understandable as a father, but overall an obnoxious move. Eddie didn’t ask to get sucked into this. To be fair Joe also doesn’t want to let Cisco and Caitlin know about Barry’s suspicions of Dr. Wells, so he’s just being secretive all up in this place.
The bees strike again! This time, another robotics professor. Barry shows up, and is guided the wrong way by Cisco and stung to death but also saved by Cisco with the suit’s build-in defibrillator. I’d like to take this opportunity to note that while we can take some license with crazy bee robot toxins, it’s still api-toxin, and if it causes anaphylaxis you could use epinephrine instead of relying on a defibrillator, especially because YOU DON’T USE DEFIBRILLATORS ON PEOPLE WHOSE HEARTS HAVE STOPPED. This is brought to you by a person who carries an epi-pen and is related to a physician and an EMT. Too many lemons, The Flash.
So Barry recovers quickly but now has his own doubts about Cisco, which coupled with his feelings about Wells have already tipped off Felicity that something’s wrong, he’s moved on to the sullen and weird stage of mentor betrayal (stages: Denial, Realization, Emotional Breakdown, Sullen and Weird, Telling other People, Despairing, Determined, Kicking Their Ass. Telling others through Determined are optional and may be in a different order, and Sullen and Weird varies based on the character’s normal emotional state. Oliver, for example, wakes up each morning pretty sullen, and Barry’s usually weird).
Cisco meanwhile a. totally screwed up by accident and because he’s helping Ray with the supersuit, and b. is having weird visions of the darkest timeline.
It’s at this point Iris, Eddie, Barry, Felicity, and Ray go off to their fancy dinner, in which Ray buys up all reservations at a very fancy french restaurant, Barry wanders off to be more sullen and weird (at which point Felicity a. gets in on the secret, b. talks sense to him and c. tells Barry literally all the things going on in Starling which never get mentioned again...you’d think Barry, having lost one mentor, might want to save his other one from joining the league) and Eddie and Iris have a fight. Then Barry gets called off, so Felicity and Ray stick around presumably to be awkwardly romantic.
Barry is called away because a robot bee was in the lab. He gets there just in time to prevent Harrison from revealing his lack of paralysis and save him. They discover that the robot bees are robot bees (before they thought they were being controlled by a metahuman but were normal bees; instead they’re being controlled by a normal person who’s crazy as hell). Specifically Brie Larvan. Is this a name from the comics, or did they sneak in a silver age comics writer into the CW?
Barry, Wells, and Joe go to warn Dr. McGee of Mercury labs again that she may be in danger. She snarks at them and says she’ll be fine since they are fuck-ups. She is super wrong. Barry then tells Iris to give Eddie another chance, basically ripping off Joe’s speech from last episode where he talks about how cops have to shut a lot of things out.
Later, Brie attacks McGee, which leads to the robot bee Bechdel pass. Barry can’t go to help because he has no defibrillator (ARGH BRING AN EPI-PEN) so Ray, his suit having been viagra-ed up by Cisco, goes (” the bees can’t penetrate my suit”: not a good enough reason to use the word penetrate). Felicity meanwhile is going to hack the robot bees, and Barry’s going to go after Brie in her hive. Cisco and Caitlin are the ground team for Ray.
Ray successfully diverts the bees from McGee and gets them to follow him into the water, which wrecks them and his suit. Cisco and Caitlin catch him in the van. Felicity hacks the bees attacking Barry after some back and forth battling with Brie and ‘kills’ them; Barry ties up Brie and calls the cops.
One lone bee remains on Ray’s suit. Cisco sees it and takes the bee hit (I assume their default is to just sting the fuck out of everything?) and Barry uses the speed force/electricity to...sigh...defibrillate him. So Cisco redeems himself to Barry, despite the TERRIBLE MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Iris walks out on Eddie. Which is sad because I like how Eddie was really not okay with this whole secret thing, but at least good on Iris.
Barry reveals the secret about Wells to Caitlin and Cisco, rather cruelly by tricking them into thinking it’s Karaoke Night. Cisco incidentally in the five seconds before he realizes the trick sounds much better than Caitlin at Karaoke.
Caitlin can’t really believe it, but Cisco’s been having weird visions...
(alternate stage 2 of mentor betrayal: weird visions).
