After a lackluster episode last week, it’s great to back with a relatively entertaining and inventive episode of The Flash in “Honey, I Shrunk Team Flash”.
On a positive note, the episode starts with all the domesticity one could expect from the pregnant Cecille who suddenly starts being able to read Joe’s mind. Upon examination, Caitlin affirms that the baby girl is not a meta and, therefore, Cecille’s temporary powers are likely coming from the stage of pregnancy mediated by latent dark matter in her body.
Harry seems to have his priorities right, bring attention to the fact that Barry is in jail and the writers’ room is dragging this out. In prison and looking extra pretty for some reason, Barry appears to be getting along with a few of the other criminals, using his powers to cheat at cards so he can eat more pudding. Talking with Dave, Barry gets the full story: he was walking at night and found the body of a security guard, being caught with blood on his hands which led to his unfair arrest.
Somewhere else, the new Mayor of Central City is unveiling Kord Industries’ new advanced research facility—a whole skyscraper—supposed to be incredibly secure to remedy how unsafe both Central City’s and Star City’s industries are. Because this show thrives on irony, the building immediately gets attacked, vanishing in thin air before a man collects a miniature of it: yes, we’re dealing with a mix of ATOM/Ant-Man & The Wasp/Downsizing situation which, frankly, was the best part of the episode, reminding me that wackiness can have a place on The Flash, but just not like last week’s episode.
Cisco brings Cecille along to the crime scene to help Joe out, but Joe ends up asking her to leave so he can do his job. It’s really fun seeing Cecille being so happy about his powers. Cisco gets footage from the place and they spot the culprit pulling a car out of nowhere which is convenient because Joe can run his plates.
As per Barry’s request, Team Flash takes on the case of Big Sir/Dave, proving his innocence so he can get off jail. Joe gets a match to the car to a man called Sylbert Rundin, a man who collects figurines and used to be super jacked about fifteen years previous. The latter fact and his resemblance to Big Sir prompted Joe to ask Sylbert whether he worked around Mercury Labs and boom, the cover is blown. Sylbert de-miniaturizes a gun and jumps his building using a parachute. The boys catch up to them, but before he gets away, Sylbert managed to decrease Ralph and Cisco. For some reason, Ralph can’t stretch himself to his usual size and Cisco’s breaches are less than efficient.
Iris comes in with hot new info: Sylbert had robbed the last of Ray Palmer’s Dwarf Star alloy the day Barry came out of the speedforce which explains how he got his powers. The whole group has come together on the theory that Sylbert is the actual culpable party in Big Sir’s case, but Cecille will still need a confession from him.
Sensing there might be some tension between Cecille and Joe, Iris sends them to Doctor Sharon Finkle aka the best running gag of this season and maybe even the show! We love that psychologist and this time is no different. Back to prison however, Barry’s optimism is contrasting Big Sir’s pessimistic personality as someone who has pretty much stopped having hope which leads to his skepticism towards Allen’s promises that he will get out when they catch Sylbert.
Harry comes out with a modified version of the Bazooka that was once used to stop Savitar and also get Barry out of the speedforce, if I recall correctly. This time, Harry adapted it to enlarge Cisco and Ralph back to their usual size. However, there’s still 20 minutes left before the episode ends and we need some stakes, so obviously, not only does the weapon not work, but also makes it worse as the diminute duo’s cells will explode in 10 hours.
Still devouring a couple of Chekhov-flavored-pudding cups—available to you on your nearest Plot Twist Mart— Barry gets Dave to admit that his ultimate dream would be to go to a small village in China. The Warden takes Barry aside to tell him “everyone [at the prison] is a monster”. Spooky, right? I wonder if he’s gonna turn out to be a bad guy *eye emoji*.
After some heated debate whether Harry is smart or not to go against DeVoe, Team Flash comes to the conclusion that, in order to get Cisco and Ralph back, they will need to receive an energy blast from Sylbert himself. Speaking of, we get back to him as he’s performing another heist and the shrunk duo is down to barely a couple of minutes before they die. They engage in a fight, throwing stuff at each other like one would expect when a super hero movie/show uses this kind of technology — I mean, what the Ant-Man & The Wasp trailer did with that Pez dispenser? Amazing. With one minute to go, Harry tricks Sylbert into shooting a laser at him, but it actually reaches Ralph and Cisco, who were hidden in his shirt pocket. The two get back to normal and Iris puts a meta human leash on Dwarfstar, ending it after all. Sadly, Sylbert refuses to confess to his crime from fifteen years ago.
Barry breaks the news to Dave, but he takes it well, having felt hope once again in his life. After some advice from Joe but not before checking to see if the camera was looking the other way, Barry uses his speed to take Dave all the way to China and yes, that happened before the camera could circle back to his cell. Yes. China. From Central City to China and then back to Central City again. I wonder if someone on the internet is going to come at this episode and look for inconsistencies when it comes to Barry’s speed throughout the season…I mean, it just feels like the Barry that took Dave to China definitely seems like a Barry that could have saved Iris from Savitar or even other cases of the week where the writers suddenly needed him to be slower.
After a brief moment in which Cecille and Joe come together again, Team Flash tries to rationalize this entire episode, but this time keeping in mind that DeVoe is likely to be pulling strings, but they don’t know what would his intentions be by putting Sylbert on the line when Barry is prisonmates with Dave. The final scene brings the answers to us as the Warden comes to Barry telling him that had some “Barry, Exclusively” cameras installed when he wasn’t looking and, therefore, knows that he is The Flash. He also put some narcotics on one of those pudding cups because of course he did.
Barry gets dragged unconscious to a more secure location, likely to have dampening, as the Warden is phoning Amunet about having the one and only Flash.
