TV - The Flash Season 1, Episode 5

A woman scorned this week and Steve Taylor-Bryant seems like the just man to deal with her. In other news, here's his thoughts on Plastique...

Oh dear. Like a scorned woman isn't bad enough, this one can physically make you blow up, but we shall get to that. Barry, Iris, Eddie, Cisco and Caitlin are all in a bar enjoying socialising, only Barry realises he cannot actually get drunk. His superhuman metabolism burns off the alcohol too quickly therefore making him the perfect designated driver, or my new hero (I really want his liver before Christmas). During the drinks, a bomb goes off in a building leaving a window cleaner dangling about fifty floors up. After a rough calculation, it is decided that if he runs really, really fast (I love science) that he can scale the building and rescue the cleaner, which he does in the nick of time, landing right in front of Iris. Barry disguises his face and shoots off but not before Iris knows he is real and that makes her even more determined to keep her blog on The Streak going, much to the annoyance of both Barry and her father, Detective West.

Back at the police station the Army, under the leadership of General Wade Eiling, takes over the bomb case as the suspect, the aforementioned scorned lady, is an ex soldier. Bette Sans Souci used to be in bomb disposal and after the S.T.A.R. Labs explosion changed her DNA, she awoke from her shrapnel induced coma being able to blow things up with her touch, as Barry finds out the first time he tracks her down and she touches his suit. Bette has always blamed Eiling for doing tests on her and, when she goes for a visit with the Doctor she also holds responsible, Eiling takes his opportunity to try and take her down, before Barry rescues her and takes her to the lab.

Dr Wells explains that he and Eiling used to work on programs together. Wells wanted to be able to use science to heal the injured soldiers and Eiling was obsessed with creating a super soldier. Bette, now nicknamed Plastique by the very smitten Cisco, is kept hidden as the General and his men descend on the lab but, when they return, the tests that Caitlin had been doing prove that her affliction is permanent and cannot be reversed, leaving Bette facing a lifetime of no human interaction.

Late at night when most of the team have gone home, Wells visits Plastique and tasks her with killing the General, who he says will hunt her and her kind down until all metahumans are eradicated. She sets up a meet with the General and all his men but, when he thinks he has her surrounded, she uses the ball bearings she had been holding as explosives. As she stands over the General ready to end his life, Barry intervenes, making her realise she doesn’t need to become a murderer but the General manages to get a shot off and before she can warn Barry about Wells she passes away. Then starts to glow purple. Then Barry realises she is about to detonate. More science calculations later it is decided that Barry can probably run on the water and get Plastique out to sea before she blows up the city and he makes it, just getting back to shore in time.

Elsewhere this week The Flash visits Iris and begs her not to continue with her blog, but she tells him that it’s the story of young Barry and his mum’s murder that drives her. When Barry, as himself, tries one last time to get Iris to give it up, she refuses leaving Barry no choice but to end their friendship. Oh, and we go back five years to the General and Wells bust up and a first shadowy glimpse at Gorilla Grodd.

It was all a bit too rushed with the scenes including Plastique and the idea that she could do no good therefore not join the team was not well written or played out. I can see what the writers were trying to do and what the endgame would bring but it felt panicky, almost like they realised too late that they had created a fascinating character and had better kill her off before the audience noticed. The scene towards the end where Barry and Iris end their friendship has been coming for a couple of weeks and I really hope that the pining after Iris that Barry does each week dies with the friendship as that was getting a bit tiresome too. But flick back to the pilot and the mangled cage after the explosion with the twisted nameplate Grodd on it and now the audience knows what was in the cage and which twisted doctor created him. The saving grace of an episode that promised plenty and delivered little.

Image - CW.