At least the Barry/Ralph partnership is proving entertaining. Grant Gustin and Hartley Sawyer play off one another very well, with plenty of bright, easy banter and a rivalry that is slowly but surely shifting towards friendship. My wife informed me that she’s become a Barry/Ralph shipper now, which I can kind of see. And as predictable as Ralph’s character arc was this week, it’s still satisfying to watch the unrepentant jerk slowly morph into a selfless, empathetic hero. No longer does Ralph feel like a mere replacement for Julian, but a character who fills his own unique niche in Team Flash.
While Barry and Ralph were doing their thing, this episode mainly focused on the inaugural meeting of the Council of Wells. It’s a great concept on paper that I wish worked out a little better in practice. Tom Cavanagh has shown time and time again how adept he is at playing different incarnations of the same character, often sharing the screen with himself. Harrison Wells is different from Harry is different from H.R. Why not craft an entire episode around that ability?
The Council subplot probably would have worked better if it employed a bit more subtlety. These other Wellses didn’t feel like real people so much as cartoon caricatures of the real deal. Basically an excuse for Cavanagh to put on funny wigs and ridiculous accents. Not that these scenes weren’t entertaining (especially the Cyborg Mad Max Wells 2.0), but I can’t help but wonder what might have been if these characters were a little less flamboyant and a little more grounded.The other problem with this Wells-focused subplot is that it left very little room for the rest of Team Flash to do much of anything. We barely saw any of Iris, Caitlin or Joe this week. Even Cisco was reduced to playing straight man to Harry’s manic scheme.
The good news in all of this is that there does finally seem to be some momentum developing on the DeVoe front. Rather than drag out the manhunt for several episodes, Barry and friends have now found their man. But the fact that Devoe and his assistant (wife?) are so good at hiding in plain sight may throw a wrench in those plans. I’m eager to see how that particular twist plays out next week. I’m also very glad to see that Neil Sandilands won’t always be decked out in full supervillain mode. It’ll be nice to see a quieter, more understated side of the character for a change.
It’s interesting that both sides seem to think they can outsmart the other. Barry caught a whiff of this new threat from his future self, and as he said, he thinks he can use that to finally get one step ahead of his annual nemesis for a change. DeVoe, meanwhile, is so utterly confident in his abilities that he thinks he can predict and account for any move Team Flash might make. There’s a real cat-and-mouse game developing between the two factions. That should serve the series well, assuming the focus remains on DeVoe himself and not these forgettable, one-off villains.