Catching Up: The Flash Episode 510, "The Flash & The Furious"

THE FLASH has been having some really great episodes in this fifth season.

"The Flash & The Furious" is not one of them.

This mid-season premiere introduces us to the Silver Ghost (GABRIELLE WALSH), whose meta-tech ability is...a key fob that controls any car. She's a car thief.

And when she steals a Lamborghini while Barry Allen (GRANT GUSTIN) is supposed to testify in court as a CSI for the trial of the Weather Witch (REINA HARDESTY), he gets paged to deal with it as The Flash.

Let's reiterate: a CAR is stolen, and because it's faster than a standard issue police cruiser, S.T.A.R. Labs thinks it's important enough to buzz in a pair of superheroes.

What next? Shining the Batsignal in response to a stickup? Firing up Jimmy Olsen's signal watch for a kitten in a tree?

Flash's plan is to phase the driver out of the car while XS (JESSICA PARKER KENNEDY) takes over the wheel. But when he phases into the car, the meta-tech works against him, leaving him in a constant state of phasing, requiring that he be locked in the power-dampening Pipeline until his body recovers (which, in typical comic book trope fashion, requires exactly twenty-four hours).

This leaves XS to be the superhero of the episode, as the Silver Ghost later breaks out Weather Witch so she can use Weather Witch's metatech to break into an ARGUS facility. Why? To steal something that will make them, the so-called Young Rogues, "unstoppable."

Yeah, she's going to steal a car. A jacked-up car filled with WayneTech that includes the Flash's phasing capabilities of driving through walls, all controlled by an ultra-intuitive emoji-driven keyboard.

Thing is, Weather Witch doesn't want to be broken out. She wants to serve her time and go back to a normal life. But apparently, despite not being a metahuman, she's the only one who can use the meta-tech weather vane. She tries to convince XS of her intentions, but XS doesn't believe people change. And with good reason. She just learned that Eobard Thawne (TOM CAVANAGH) killed her grandmother, something that comes as a shock to her since she's been working with him in the future to travel in time for whatever reason she has. But Eobard's time is limited, as there's some sort of countdown that's under an hour, so there'll be some time-relativity going on between Nora's visits to Thawne and her return visits to the present. And why is Cavanagh still playing Thawne? Not that he doesn't play the hell out of that role, but the "face" of Harrison Wells was a disguise, with his true visage being that of MATT LETSCHER, to which he reverted in the first season and during his run in LEGENDS OF TOMORROW (who apparently pop in and out of the present day for no reason other than to drop off reading material for Barry).

As all of this is going on, Cisco (CARLOS VALDES) has the last microsopic shards of dark matter removed from the wound on his hand -- with TWEEZERS. Yes, the great Dr. Caitlin Snow (DANIELLE PANABAKER) missed these shards which were affecting Cisco's "Vibe" powers the last time, but with the aid of a needlepoint crafter's magnifying light and a good pair of tweezers, she pulled the last of them out, before suturing the wound shut with a blast of Kiler Frost coldness.

God, just kill me now.

Cisco studies the shards and learns they were not dampening his powers, but draining them, which is what he wants. He wants his powers gone so he can have a normal life again. So he sets about creating a "cure" for the mutant gene (cough) metahuman condition. Caitlin stands against him in this, until she doesn't, and they vow that whatever cure they develop will never be used on anyone without their consent. (Plot point: It's going to be used on metahumans without their consent.)

There's so much head-desking in this episode I gave myself a concussion. Here's hoping the mystery of Nora's mission is good enough the rest of the season to make us forget this mistake of an episode.