In Review: The Flash – Harry and the Harrisons

Synopsis: The Flash and his team put their faith in an unlikely ally, Amunet Black, to defeat DeVoe; Harry hits an all-time low when the “Council of Wells” kicks him out but then Cisco introduces him to the “Council of Harrisons.”

Review: This episode deals with Wells problem with regards to his incredible shrinking intellect, but I’m starting to wonder if Wells shrinking intellect is a metaphor for yet another mediocre episode and an incredible shrinking vault of ideas in the writer’s room. Sure the council of Wells was great as a one-off. But the council of Harrisons is just crossing the line. In fact, wells himself sums it up after his meeting ends. A complete waste of time. Oh but wait. Harry has learned empathy from this experience. I guess the writers are trying to point out that people with high IQ’s often do not have that great of an EQ or something to that effect. Yawn.

The saving grace of this episode was Amunet Black, but even Katee Sackhoff’s superpower for giving us the hammiest of British snooty accents was starting to wear thin by the close of the story. I wonder if it is a secret weapon to bring Dick Van Dyke on the show to perhaps out ham Amunet. Sackhoff does a respectable job of it and is obviously enjoying herself, but the accent kind of grates after a while.

The reason for Amunet being in this episode is a pretty good one in that her ability to fashion weapons out of super metals could be key to helping Flash and the teal defeat DeVoe. The scenes dealing with Caitlin wanting Amunet’s help to resurrect Killer Frost was a high point. As was seeing a bit of the relationship between Amunet and Caitlin, which is something we never really seen much of in earlier episodes. I also liked how Joe kind of became Caitlin’s conscience in the story.

By the close of the episode Iris’s plan to write an article outing DeVoe and his plans yield results. Which makes me wonder why she didn’t think of it earlier. For me having Iris as the leader of Team Flash has been an awful waste. I always liked her better as the crusading journalist and feel that the writers kind of robbed her of that and in so doing blew off a ton of great story opportunities. Having her as head of Team Flash has kind of taken a lot away from the Iris character.

Overall. This was a really mixed bag. Tom Cavanagh does great as the various multiverse incarnations of Wells, but it used up a little to much screen time for my taste. Also, Katee Sackhoff puts in a solid, but hammy performance as Amunet Black who has an accent that could probably convert most Americans into clones of Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep from Mary Poppins. But despite that Sackhoff’s scenes with Danielle Panabaker really added something to the mix. It will be interesting to see if Amunet Black will continue to recur as a reluctant ally in future seasons. 

To sum up. Not a great episode. More of a Pick N Mix. Ultimately the story was mostly filler and was only saved by some fairly decent acting performances and some nice character beats.