Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This week’s episode is named “Family Matters, Part 1” and it’s the first of a two-part “finale” for the first half a.k.a. “graphic novel” of the seventh season, let’s dive right in!
1. Seriously, Miami?
We’ll start by focusing about Cisco’s storyline. Now that they are leaving Central City, and therefore, the show, Cisco and Kamila are looking for a place to live, they float the idea of living in Miami, but come on, dudes, Florida is not a serious option.
Well, after the obligatory mocking of Florida, let’s talk about the important stuff: Cisco is not convinced of leaving, and when Kamilla asks why, he tells her that he is capable of working on over 7000 different jobs in the US alone, and that is overwhelming, but he is afraid.
When Psych attacked him, he saw himself 40 years later, still on the battleground in S.T.A.R.Labs, everybody moved on and he is still stuck saving the day, he does want to leave, but there are things he needs to do before leaving, like saving the city yet again.
2. Hear the monster inside you
Nora and Deon have teamed up and Barry is desperate to do the same, recruit Psych and help Alexa control Fuerza and the strength force, because otherwise she is going to get killed by the Speed Force. He proposes a training session for her, and he starts putting a lot of pressure on her and Cisco ends up partially injured by Barry’s insistence.
This is just another of the many examples of Barry’s constant screw ups, he is forcing Alexa to do something that she is not capable of doing yet, she is a recovering addict and daring to do steps this big are an incredibly difficult challenge for her.
Fortunately, Caitlin is here to save the day, she gives Alexa the device that she used to wear to help her talk with Frost when she was still an uncontrollable part of Caitlin. That patience is the spark that makes Alexa take the step and help Barry when the moment to be a hero came.
3. Magentacles
Meanwhile, Iris keeps investigating Psych’s origins, he attacks one of his former friends, and team Flash follows the leads to the League of Lions, and Ivy League-type organization with extremely rich alumni.
They discover that Psych is Bashir, an adoptive son abandoned by his real parents, abandoned again by his adoptive parents, when they are being investigated for white-collar crimes, and finally, abandoned yet again by his friends when his adoptive parents died.
Psych is becoming stronger, and Barry is not capable of controlling him alone, so Alexa comes along and unleashes Fuerza, who convinces Psych of listening to Barry, obviously not before a fight, which to be honest, is one of the cheesiest I have ever seen in this show, a couple of episodes earlier I praised the recent use of CGI but in this episode it looked bad, “Power Rangers-bad” said my wife and I have to agree with her, I have seen sincerely astonishing effects for the TV on this show, and I know what they are capable of doing, so it’s strange to me seeing a giant cartoonish monster fighting against two purple tentacles.
Well, anyway, now that Psych is listening, Iris reveals that his friends didn’t abandoned him (except for Naomi, she is an asshole), and he is convinced to temporally join Team Flash with his “sister” Alexa, and they immediately start to fight like siblings, which leads us to…
4. This whole “parents of the Forces” is really weird
At the beginning of the episode, Nora tells Deon that he is her sister, and that they both were rejected by Barry, later, Psych senses that The Flash is his “father”, and that Alexa is his sister and… yeah this is really weird.
I mean, I understand that the power of Iris and Barry’s love is what gave birth to the Forces, but as I understand, the Speed Force created the body of Nora to make herself relatable to Barry, and the other the bearers of the Force are regular people that got imbued with the force, right?
Continued belowSo, why are they treating this whole thing as an issue of parents and their children? It feels weird that four grown adults refer to Iris and Barry as their Father and Mother, and its especially weird to see Nora saying that, I mean, just a couple of episodes earlier we were debating the complexity of her having the body of, and acting like Barry’s mother.
So, now Barry’s “mother” is really his daughter and Iris is her own’s mother-in-law mother. You see how weird this whole thing is?! Oh, and add to it the fact that Nora/XS and Bart/Impulse –the real West-Allen children of the future– are going to appear in this season, seriously, this is getting really complicated.
5. Kramer is back and Joe is done
Damn, Kristen Kramer is back and now her plan is to use bullets charged with the meta-cure on any meta-criminal that the city confronts, she explicitly said that she is doing this brutal thing instead of de-escalating because “legally” there’s not a precedent that prohibits it.
So, she is technically doing her work “by the book” and Joe is hand tied and there’s nothing he can do to block Kramer’s actions, so, Joe decides to be on the right side of the moral line and he… wait what? He chose to quit instead of fighting her? I mean, how is quitting supposed to be a correct way of standing up to fascist persons in power? Well, I’m not convinced of how it’s going to work but I guess we’ll have to see on the coming episodes.
And that’s it for this episode, I gotta be honest, this one was a hard pill to swallow, from bad CGI to weird relationships and bad choices, I was left with an uneasiness, I do have confidence on Eric Wallace and his team, so we’ll have to see how all this problems are solved. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 711, “Family Matters, Part 2,” this season’s first “graphic novel” finale.
