Wednesday 22 November 2017

The Flash ‘Girls Night Out’ Review



Originally published on Set The Tape

The Flash continues its race towards the much anticipated wedding of Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Iris West (Candice Patton) as the boys and girls of the show go out for their stag/hen nights respectively (bachelor and bachelorette for our american readers), which nicely splits the two groups into their own tidy narratives which makes it good for discussion and review.

The boys, initially hanging out round Joes (Jesse L. Martin) house watching some old movies of Barry and drinking brandy before they head out for a fancy steak dinner. Thankfully, Ralph Dibney (Hartley Sawyer) turns up and points out to Cisco (Carlos Valdes) that his party is as boring as you’d expect with that plan, and drags the group to one of his favourite hangouts, a strip club. The events at the strip club are there simply to keep the male cast members in the show, and to give us something to laugh at, as things go from one extreme moment to the next. Having concocted a batch of super alcohol so that Barry can get drunk, Cisco may have miscalculated as Barry ends up very, very drunk.

Thankfully drunk Barry is amazing, screaming around the club that he’s the Flash, getting covered in sauce and crying about how much he loves chicken wings, and asking Joe why Rose couldn’t move over to let Jack up on the door. His best moment has to be when he makes a weird judder and claims to have gone to the bar for peanuts without appearing to have moved. Whilst this may simply be Barry messing around, the idea of his drunkenly speeding around the room was genuinely amusing. As to be expected, things go mad (mainly thanks to Ralph), and the group end up in a huge bar fight and get arrested, only being bailed out towards the end of the episode by Harry (Tom Cavanagh).


Ralph is proving to be a great addition to the cast, fitting in nicely to the role of an antagonistic dick that seems to mainly be there to annoy Cisco, a role that used to belong to Harry back in the day before their friendship. Harry is also very good this episode, quietly stealing all of his scenes with his very ‘I just don’t give a shit’ attitude. More of this please. The main focus of the episode, however, is as the name suggests, the women. Iris is joined on her night out by Cecile (Danielle Nicolet), Caitlyn (Danielle Panabaker), and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) who has come to town especially to celebrate.

Unfortunately for the group, their night out is quickly derailed when a metahuman thug shows up, bringing our Caitlyns dark side, turning her back into Killer Frost. After teasing for a number of episodes, we then get to meet Amunet Black (Katee Sackhoff), one of the new ongoing villains for the fourth season. Whilst her British accent is a little ridiculous, and goes all over the place at times, it’s obvious that Sackhoff is having an absolute joy playing the part, and is intentionally hamming things up. Whilst this doesn’t always work, her scenery chewing is perfect, and reminds me a lot of Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) in the way that it’s so silly, yet fits well.

Whilst we don’t get much of a look at her powers in this episode, or at least the full extant of how dangerous they are if Killer Frost’s fear of them is to be believed, but with her being a returning antagonist, hopefully we will get to see more of this as the season progresses. We also get some progression on the Caitlyn/Killer Frost front this episode, as the rest of the team learn that Frost isn’t quite gone, but isn’t necessarily the killer villain that they’ve suspected. I’m sure that this is another story that will progress throughout the season, possibly connected to Amunet’s.

‘Girls Night Out’ manages to pack in some great story and character progression, introduce a new villain, and deliver some great comedic moments without feeling boring or drawn out. Having followed on from the brilliant ‘Eloingated Journey Into The Night’, it looks like this season of The Flash has found its groove.


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