The official description of this episode (from the CW Network) is, “Barry and Ralph must go undercover as criminals in an illegal black market to purchase a device that could help them stop Cicada.” What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Meanwhile, is Sherloque looking for love in all the wrong places…again? And why is Nora helping him? Want to know more? Follow us after the jump!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

NOTE: This review is posting prior to THE FLASH being aired in the Pacific Time Zone USA. If you haven’t see the show yet, STOP HERE and come back after watching the episode. You’ll be glad you did!

This episode gives us a sort of sideways step when it comes to the battle with Cicada. He is still prominent in the thoughts of everyone, but this settles more into three separate threads tonight. Let’s take them one by one:

• Thread #1 concerns Nora’s attempts to get Sherloque to quit investigating her. Thawne give her the advice to set him up with someone special, that love will distract him. Following that advice, she sets things up just so that Sherloque will meet Renee Adler at jitters as she is about to slip and fall. Sherloque falls for her, and as it turns out that isn’t so unusual. He has fallen for the same woman seven times (on multiple earths)! When things start to go very wrong, Nora thinks that contacting Sherloques exes will help him…and no, that’s a bad idea. Turns out that they now know where he is and they want their back alimony. He has one month…or he will meet their new bounty hunter, Breacher! Still, by the end of the show Sherloque makes things work better with this Earth’s Renee. As she leaves Jitters a second time, he realizes she is a meta! Of course that will change Sherloque’s path as he has a BIG reason to do more work on Cicada. He wants to protect he new relationship, and Nora is off the hook – at least for now.
• Thread #2 has Iris trying to figure out how to get more traffic for her Central City Citizen. She realizes she has to take a risk – and wow what a risk! She tracks down where Cicada has been hiding out and breaks in to the house! Cicada come back while she is there, placing her in real jeopardy. She manages for a while to make him think she just arrived for an interview with the supposed owner of the house. When that falls apart, he tries to attack her with that infamous lightning bolt dagger. She gets away by stabbing him in that glowing bit of shoulder with her pen (we’ll get back to that in a minute).
• Thread #3…and the main thread…gives us our villain of the week, Goldface. He is the ex-boyfriend of Amunet, and he runs a huge black market of weapons. Barry and Ralph manage to infiltrate Goldface’s black market, in search of a Neuro Stasis Field Generator. That device would immobilize Cicada while the metahuman “cure” worked on him. But, to get a chance at that device, they have to agree to another theft. That heist would involve a 3D printer for human organs…and of course there is inner conflict here. In the end that printer (stored at Ivo Laboratories) is safe and Goldface is defeated (we’ll get back to this in the comments below).
• As we wrap up all the story lines, we find out that this Neuro Stasis Field Generator may not be needed. Iris has found Cicada’s weakness – that glowing area in his shoulder where part of the satellite shards landed.  So, one avenue closed and another opened for a new episode.

NOTES/COMMENTS:

• Goldface is a Silver Age character who first appeared in Green Lantern back in the 1960’s. In the comics world he was the ex-husband of Amunet Black – here he is her ex-boyfriend. The comics version had found an invulnerability serum using gold. In this show, there is still a definite connection to gold as you’ll see in the fight scenes. I’m just adding this info in case anyone is confusing this week’s villain with an Austin Powers reference.
• We are well past the point of finding the way to defeat Cicada, and are in a bit of a holding pattern her to keep the season going. We have gone down several dead end roads in attempts to stop Cicada, each time coming up with a wilder idea that also hits a dead end in the next episode. I think there may be a problem here if we don’t make real progress soon…unless Cicada is not the true biggest bad guy of the season. Stay tuned for that.
• We also make a revisit to the storyline of “how far will Barry go to stop the bad guy”. We’ve seen this a few times, where Barry nearly crosses a line into being a bad guy, and is pulled back at the last moment – in this case (as before) by Ralph. This is a good plot thread as long as it isn’t revisited too often. It works okay in this episode, but let’s hope that this is the last time for the season.
• One problem with Iris’ new approach to delivering the metahuman cure – yes, they can deliver it with a carefully aimed shot to that shoulder…but they still need to wait a full minute before it takes effect. Even if they are a good distance away, that’s still one full minute for Cicada to control a dagger that he has pulled back from outer space before. Hopefully we can get past that plot hole and can get something that will work well.

SUMMARY: I know that my comments above are a bit cynical toward the episode, but it still was a pretty solid show. The acting was good, we get a new character in Renee Adler who may be a great addition to the show, and we put off the inevitable reveal of Nora’s mentor for another week or so in a way that actually works here. This isn’t the best episode of the season – but it is at least a 7/10. That of course is just my opinion – what do YOU think? Please leave your comments below!

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