First Thoughts on 'The Flash' Season 4 (Episodes 3-7)
Let's talk about Ralph Dibny: I don't like his character. Not. One. Bit. And while The Flash as a show has stumbled in recent years, out of all its problems I never expected a main superhero character to be one of them. Ralph Dibny is an unfunny, unlikable character who is so firmly established as such in his very first episode. He's a corrupt cop, he's lazy, he has no respect for anyone other than himself, and he cracks jokes that nobody (including the audience) laughs at. Why are we meant to like this character? Or, at least find him somewhat endearing? The actor and the rest of the cast have absolutely no chemistry, the CG used for his stretching powers is understandably ropey - which if used for one episode would be fine, not the entire season - and he's given no heroic moments. All he does is criticise and moan at Barry for...no reason, other than that Dibny is meant to be a pain in the arse. Does he need to be in the series? No. Does he detract from the other characters? Yes! Introducing a new character into this soft-reboot season has meant that particularly Barry has been pushed to the side in terms of development. Barry's got no arc this season, and comes across as a plot device more than anything.
The show gives us no reason to like Dibny as a character, and yet somehow thinks that giving him "comedic" scenes and a completely unjustified emotional arc in Episode 6 will redeem him. It doesn't. Perhaps in the future, Ralph Dibny will become a much stronger character, but I can't quite see how, or why the writers would try to achieve that. They don't care about the audience liking him now, why would they care later? Unless, of course, the ratings are dropping...
Episode 5, however, has been the only episode I've actually disliked in this run so far, and it's not for any particular reason other than that I didn't like any of the creative choices made in the episode. Having a Hen Night / Stag Night episode sounds like a fantastic idea, especially with a show as playful and light as The Flash, and in some ways the series tries to achieve this: both parties end up on humorous misadventures that they decide to never talk about again. Felicity shows up, because I guess The Flash doesn't have enough of a female supporting cast to go without bringing in an Arrow lead, and serves to do absolutely nothing but blurt out one-liners: a cute gimmick at first, until you realise that that is the only role she has in the story, and that it hasn't worked for Arrow very well in the past, so why would it work here?
The episode also tries to hinge its emotional anchor around Caitlin, whose dual persona as Killer Frost remains one of the show's most bizarre enigmas. Quite why Caitlin and Killer Frost are two separate characters confuses me to this day, a whole season later, thus meaning that I just can't invest in character drama I don't understand. But ultimately its meant to be about Caitlin and Iris' friendship...which doesn't feel earned at all, because the two rarely interact, let alone have some kind of character development. I'm not trying to say that The Flash doesn't have enough female characters, but when the show has to awkwardly force the only two female leads to become BFFs for a future wedding episode...it does bring that argument to mind. Wasn't Iris friends with someone from her newspaper company? Wait, remember that Iris was a journalist at one point?
Oh yeah, and the villain was pretty poor.
Then we arrived at Episode 7, and our full introduction to big bad The Thinker, AKA Clifford DeVoe. While the character had been teased in the last season, getting to meet The Thinker made for a surprisingly interesting episode. This was very much Barry's episode, following his near-mental breakdown as he tries to break DeVoe, trying to reveal him as the mastermind behind everything. There were some terrific performances in the episode, and the whole thing was a massive step-up from previous entries in the series, but I couldn't help but wonder how far the writers could have gone with this if they weren't wasting time on superfluous story-threads (*cough* Ralph Dibny *cough*). DeVoe makes for an interesting presence, and while his power-set feels almost comical in how ridiculous it is, this is The Flash after all - the show with the giant telepathic gorilla. This kind of thing is kind of expected.
The whole episode may have felt slightly rushed, but it leaves Team Flash in an interesting position: how do they stop this guy? While I am worried about the rest of the season repeating familiar cliches, the one real cliche I'm worried about is how Barry is going to stop The Thinker. See, my theory - or, more accurately, hunch - is that The Thinker is going to build some kind of Flash-esque suit (akin to Savitar's), and thus Barry has a physical threat to match, allowing for a big "run Barry run" sequence...like in Season 1....and 2.....and 3. A similar thing occurred in Iron Man 2, and given how true-to-form The Flash can be, I wouldn't put it past the writers.
I originally concluded this article on a very different note, before I had seen Episode 7, but now having watched our pre-crossover episode, my thoughts on The Flash as a whole are somewhat changed. The show isn't heading in a direction of steady decline so much as it is in a state of fan-appeasement. The first season was such a success that the subsequent seasons have tried to desperately re-capture that magic, but each season has failed. And while Seasons 2 and 3 had some fantastic standalone, non-arc episodes, Season 4 has had a very strong arc episode, and mostly weak standalone entries. I'm not sure whether the quality of the overall show is dropping, or if perhaps its been a rough patch for the series. They've lost the trust of many fans (including myself) and with viewing figures decreasing, they need more wins...its just that Season 4 hasn't been too great at those so far...
I guess we can only hope for the best - which is definitely not Ralph Dibny.
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