The Flash season 5, episode 13 review: Goldfaced

“The streets are paved with gold.” Mild spoilers for The Flash season 5, episode 13 follow.

The metahuman cure is almost complete so Team Flash has a chance to finally beat Cicada, but first Barry and Ralph must get one final piece of equipment from a new crime lord.

Meanwhile, Iris needs to boost her readership and there’s one surefire way to do that for her and that’s to go after Cicada.

The name is Allen, Barry Allen

There’s very much a spy kind of vibe going on with this episode. The Flash has pretty often played with genres outside of the sci-fi/superhero, so it’s nice to see them play up another genre with this episode. Plus, having a villain named Goldface is perfect to use for an episode like this simply as a reference of James Bond and the film Goldfinger.

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Barry and Ralph make for a fun team when dealing with Goldface because while Ralph is willing to bend the rules, Barry isn’t at all. For Ralph, the ends justify the means, but for Barry, they never have and they never will, which is why we love him. However, sometimes his moral code makes you want to punch him in the face for being such an idiot, then he goes back around to being a genius, which is why he’s such a fun character. He has his codes and he sticks to them, but every now again, he learns that he has to change his codes, which is what happens here.

Then there’s Ralph being the hero that everyone knows that he can be, even if he doesn’t always act like it. He really hasn’t been given much to do throughout the season, but it’s nice to see that the writers actually give him ample oppurtunity to be an actual character in this episode, not simply a body to take up space in the frame.

Goldface himself is ever the villain to chew the scenery on this show. So many villains have come and gone in the space of five seasons and so many have been able to bring a certain sort of shlock to their performances, I.e. Katee Sackhoff as Amunet Black. Damion Poitier though, brings a fantastic sense of realism and charm to Goldface that really hasn’t been seen since Tom Cavanaugh as Harrison Wells in season one.

The Central City Citizen

Iris begins her first week with the Central City Citizen and much to her chagrin, her numbers are lower than ever. This did feel a bit because while journalists do criticize other journalists, it’s mainly for presenting stories in a way that misrepresents, fabricates, or omits facts, not actual writing style. Regardless, this is the choice that the team went with which leads to Iris wanting to go after a bigger story, Cicada.

This leads to Iris making her into Cicada’s home causing her to be caught by him before she can get out of the house. Honestly, this scene, however brief it is, is one of the more tense scenes that the show has produced this season, let alone the entirety of the show itself. There’s actual tension and fear that Cicada will hurt Iris because he’s already hurt members of Team Flash before.

Sherloque finds love

It’s been a couple of episodes since really following up on the reveal that Nora and Eobard have been communicating with each other in the year 2049, the beginning of this episode seemed like it was going to do a lot more with it. Sadly though, the knowledge that Nora gains from Eobard in the future is mainly about getting Sherloque to fall in love again. Yes, it so that he stops trying to figure her out, but it’s still played mainly for laughs.

This would be fine if for one thing, the jokes fall flat throughout the entirety of the episode. The Flash has had a propensity for thinking that it’s funnier than it actually is at times and this is definitely one of the episodes where that’s the case. There is some great potential for the storyline as a whole though.

The Flash has one of its better episodes since returning from its midseason break, despite its lackluster C-story, because of its focus on the story being told rather than every story being spread thin by having too many.