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The Flash 4.13 Review – “True Colors”

February 7, 2018 | Posted by Daniel Alvarez
The Flash - True Colors Image Credit: The CW
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The Flash 4.13 Review – “True Colors”  


We are now 13 episodes into The Flash’s fourth season. It’s been an interesting ride, with the antagonist, DeVoe, framing Barry. Our hero was thrown in jail, and that has been the status quo for the last few episodes. Things took a turn for the extra interesting when Warden Wolfe told Barry that he knew his secret identity. This led to Wolfe drugging Barry, and bringing the hero underneath the prison, where it turns out the warden plans to sell him and other meta humans to Amunet Black. Today’s episode, “True Colors” continues this important plot point. It’s an overall strong episode, and one of the most important in awhile.

It begins from where “Honey, I Shrunk Team Flash” left off. We’re shown Amunet eyeing the various metas Barry had put in jail throughout the season. Instead of picking just one to buy from the warden, she declares that she wants them all. Amunet has been a decent enough character, mainly because of Katee Sackhoff’s charismatic portrayal. We’ll come back to the prison plot point soon. Let’s talk about the next scene.

We see Ralph entering his P.I. room, where an old friend of his named Earl is. Earl claims he has a sketchy case for Ralph, but Ralph says he’s turned over a new leaf, and has friends. Earl snickers, saying that at some point Ralph is going to let those friends down, just like in the past. This “Earl” character leaves, and doesn’t come back to the story. How does this scene relate to what happens later, you might be asking at this point. Well, Ralph takes those words to heart after messing up a mission, and says he’ll have skip out on the next one. What follows is a painful sequence of Caitlin, and then Killer Frost, giving Ralph a pep talk. It feels like we’ve seen this feeling-sorry-for-myself scene at least 25 times in these shows. Ralph’s sadness came off as filler and a waste of time.

That however is really the only primary negative. Aside from that plot point, Ralph surprisingly has some of the best scenes of the episode. We learn that his elongated abilities allow him to change his appeareance. The plan then is to have Ralph masquerade as Wolfe to get to Amunet. (In case you’re wondering, the team found out about Wolfe’s corruption thanks to Cecile’s mind reading ability, an excellent scene.) Ralph, now masquerading as Wolfe, heads to a bar to get in contact with Amunet. The bar sequence is genuinely hilarious. When Ralph missed the beer, thus the glass shattering on the floor, I laughed out loud, a rarity lately in this show. Then, his dialogue with Amunet as he attempts to emulate Wolfe is also hilariously well done. Ralph was a lot of fun in this episode, aside from his subplot mentioned earlier.

Back to the prison, Barry hatches a plan to free himself and the other inmates. What follows is an engaging trek through the underground portion of the prison. There’s a solid tension, such as when Barry has to make a call of how to stop a security guard from getting killed by some of the metas. While these scenes with the inmates are interesting, there are a couple of aspects that should be discussed. For one thing, how come no one is suspicious of Barry? Wolfe announced to Amunet earlier that Barry is a speedster, in the same room as the other inmates. There aren’t that many speedsters running around Central City at the moment, so it’s a little odd that the inmates (or Amunet for that matter) doesn’t question if Barry is the Flash right off the bat.

The other thing about the prison scenes is the inmates themselves. Unfortunately, most of these characters were not engaging in their debut episodes. It’s a fun novelty to see them together here, but a lot of the dialogue comes off as forced evil talk. The only interesting character is Becky, whom gets quality development. One of the best scenes is when Barry asks her about her plans for when she gets out. Unlike the other inmates, she doesn’t have bad guy ideas, which makes her scenes in the climax extra emotional.

The climax begins when Barry and the inmates arrive outside, but are confronted by Wolfe. Wolfe announces to them that Barry is the Flash (again, why weren’t they suspicious earlier?), and they confront Barry, save for Becky. Becky manages to overpower the other inmates thanks to her luck ability. She might have been an exaggerated character in her debut episode, but here she is engaging. Things get even more chaotic when Amunet arrives, and soon after, DeVoe himself. DeVoe steals the powers of the inmates, and then transfers his consciousness into Becky before Barry can stop it. Like I said earlier, this scene is made extra emotional thanks to Becky’s development.

On some last notes, the biggest development is near the ending in the court. Cecile is filing an appeal, but has no other evidence…until the original DeVoe wheelchairs through the door. This is Ralph masquerading as DeVoe, and it was an unpredictable sequence. The judge announces Barry’s release from Iron Heights, thus ending the prison status quo. It should be interesting to see where the team goes from here. Meanwhile DeVoe’s wife, Marlize, is clearly becoming unnerved by her husband’s antics. (DeVoe killed Wolfe in the climax.) Marlize has been a fascinating character, and that’s no different here as she continues to support her husband, but is clearly becoming doubtful. (She sings a song in her head to prevent DeVoe from reading her mind, truly intriguing.) DeVoe then spices his wife’s drink with some kind of drug. We should see the implications of this hopefully in the next episode. The cliffhanger is the team realizing Ralph could be DeVoe’s next target.

Overall, “True Colors” is an engaging, important episode. Barry is cleared of all charges, so now he can go on the offensive against DeVoe. Ralph was genuinely hilarious, aside from his painful melodramatic scenes. The prison scenes were tense, despite generic villains. The Flash’s second part of the season continues to be strong. We’ll see if it can continue to be consistent when it returns in three weeks.

9.0
The final score: review Amazing
The 411
"True Colors" has the key elements that make for a great story: big developments, tension, and genuinely funny comedy. It's not 100% perfect, but it's one of the strongest episodes of Season 4.
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