Episode six, titled “When Harry Met Harry…,” was a total fiasco in my opinion. Several times during the episode I caught myself thinking, “I can recap this episode in a paragraph or two” because I feel like absolutely nothing happened. The jokes didn’t land and the focus on Ralph was yawn-worthy at worse and anviliciously inspired at best. The only part that I can say frankly worked was the villain’s motivations. Nonetheless, this is what The Flash‘s writers brought to us this week, so let’s dive into the nonsense.
Recap
So, before the episode *actually* starts ten minutes in, there are a couple of scenes that I should probably mention. Dibny is nonchalant about a robber’s safety. The Mechanic and the Thinker talk about how Team Flash is gonna find out who they are by the end of the episode. Team Flash at STAR Labs tries to figure out who this DeVoe is that led to Harry having the idea to invite a couple of his friends to pitch in. Oh, and Barry and Iris take Dibny to their counselor so he could be hypnotized and remember who else was in the bus when they got infected with dark matter.
As Dibny remembers a woman sporting the illustration of a bison on her clothes, we immediately go to her. She is Native American and can control statues to her will, making a huge granite panther kill a guy with a briefcase that gets stolen. Barry uses his CSI expertise to put these facts together, and the team figures out that the killer was after a three piece bison necklace from her Sioux culture.
Given this was a terrible part of the episode, I don’t want to subject anyone to read this in bits and pieces, so let’s just rip the band-aid off: Harry’s friends are actually three versions of himself from the multiverse which are clearly just the writers adding fodder to the episode and having “fun” with Tom Cavanagh. The first friend is a pretentious-ass white-haired Herr Harrison Wolfgang. The second is a hippie/womanizing-ass long haired H. Lothariel Wells. Finally and thank heavens it’s the last one, Wells 2.0, a brutish-ass lowkey Cyborg (and probably the only Cyborg we’ll get in the DCTV universe).
The gist of this reunion is that all of the Wellses are unnerving and don’t really help out. Then Cisco, very underutilized in this episode if I may say so, gives Harry a speech about how he can also be garbage sometimes and that he should start loving himself in order to make friends — did I get that right? I think so, I’m doing my best with what this episode gave me, which was barely a thing. Anyways, the Council of DoucheWells is able to pool their “superior expert” together and correctly track the correct DeVoe down.
Now moving along, we see the metahuman going after the second part of the Sioux necklace, which was with a private collector who thought the piece was a pipe. Rightfully offended by a totem of her culture being used as a bong, the Black Bison makes a knight’s armor attack the collector. The Flash and Elongated Man arrive just in time to save the man, but also to let her escape.
Caitlin theorizes that Black Bison can only control effigies which is, uhhhhhh, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh, yeah. Convenient. Iris gets some data on the meta and identifies her as Mina Chaytan, former professor of cultural anthropology turned hardcore activist. This scene also provides an expensive, leathery, and aesthetically pleasing piece of decorative lampshade when Dibny calls Barry out on “letting Mina go.” I want to point this out in my convoluted way because it sucks that this even happens. Sure, Barry took a whole lot of four seconds to save the collector from death, but why didn’t he run after Mina? It’s, what’s that pesky word again, convenient. I know I’ve been mentioning this more lately, but the inconsistency in literally everyone’s powers has become a huge issue to me.
The team tracks down the third piece of the necklace as the CCPD decides to relocate it to prevent it from being robbed. I don’t want to sound repetitive, but once again, convenience strikes because what was located inside the armored car transporting the last piece? You got it right if you said a “statue” or “effigy” — bonus points if you said something like “a fucking caveman.” Mina gets her hands on the piece, but once again, she is interrupted by Elongated Man and The Flash who, if you can even believe, literally turned his back on the caveman that was standing outside the car. Like, he deserved to be beaten up. That was also very convenient because he couldn’t help the little girl in danger while Dibny was focused on stopping Mina. The end result was Dibny feeling guilty over the girl getting hurt and several scenes describing that.
So, right now we find ourselves at a crossroads. So far, nothing has happened, but also, it seems like it has been an eternity, which makes you feel sad because there are still 10 minutes left. Therefore, we get to yet another convenience: the CCPD was having a workshop that day in which new supplies were being shown. Lucky for Mina, who uses her powers to animate a mannequin/dummy and has it break her out jail, taking some cops out, while we’re at it.
The Flash and Elongated Man make their way to the museum to which the entire necklace got relocated, which is also the most obvious place for Mina to go. Now a reformed man after Barry’s speech, Dibny aims to save people—in this case, a security guard—from a T-Rex’s skeleton that Black Bison brought to life. Oh, and just so we’re on the same page here, the T-Rex also takes Barry out without any trouble whatsoever. Thankfully, he remembered he has super speed and actually decided to go after Mina when she tried to escape and finally succeeds at something this entire episode. Hard to believe that this is the same superhero that has dealt with three supervillains, huh?
FINALLY, we get to the actual development in this episode: after the DoucheWells located Clifford DeVoe, the team thinks they can actually get ahead of the situation this time around and avoid another Savitar. Sadly, they also forget that only a few episodes ago they were theorizing that someone very ingenious was manipulating the whole damn thing, including Barry’s timely return. If they had remembered that, they would probably not be surprised that The Thinker and The Mechanic were already expecting them, playing the roles of a loving and rich couple. The actual surprise here was seeing DeVoe without his supervillain attire. The wheelchair was a given, but the fact that he had hair actually made me gasp.
Review
And that was it, folks. We did it. This was a boring and unnecessary episode that makes me wonder if the show would benefit from being shorter than its 23 mandated episodes. Focusing on Dibny also proved to be a low point, in my opinion, which comes hand in hand with the very few scenes involving Iris West. Now that Barry and DeVoe have met, we should at least be getting faster-paced episodes, right? I hope so. And for crying out loud, stop with the “Harrisons From Other Earths” gag, it’s not funny anymore.
One final thought. Maybe it’s just me and how much I appreciate the ladies from the DCTV shows. Maybe I watched last week’s episode through rose-colored glasses and this week’s through dark ones, which incidentally made me like “Girls Night Out” and hate “When Harry Met Harry…”. Maybe this is just a me thing, but it’s not like I am blind to the bad parts of “Girls Night Out” that focused on the women. However, maybe something bigger, like sexism, that can explain why “Girls Night Out” got a 5.5 on IMDB and the emptiness that is “When Harry Met Harry…” got a 7.8. In the words of the lovely Santana Lopez, “maybe that has something to do with it.”
