If y'all remember I was never a fan of Captain Cold, i found his writing lazy and convenient and his character inconsistent and the acting far too cheesy and his sister is just as bad. So when I see the title "Family of Rogues" a little part of me sighs. In Family of Rogues, Lisa Snart AKA Golden Glyder shows up and asks for Team Flash's help, as it turns out, Leonard Snart AKA Captain Cold is working with his father against his will as he has placed a bomb in Lisa's head and could blow it up at any minute. Thus Barry must go undercover with Cold's help to save Lisa. Surprisingly I found myself actually enjoying this episode despite being based around my least favourite recurring villains.
Actually before I get to why I like this episode i do want to say the basic set up really bugs me, Barry agrees to help because he "owes" Cold a favour, that favour being Cold didn't kill him when he had the chance. You know, after he betrayed Barry, shot him in the leg and let several meta-human criminals go free. So incase it isn't clear, Barry doesn't owe Cold a damn thing! I don't know about you but i don't consider not being killed by someone the same as being saved by them. But that's my only problem with this set-up. So what do I like about it? The development of Cold's character, he's said before that the only thing he cares about is his sister but we've never seen him have to do anything to prove it, now we have him begrudgingly working with his father, the man he hates more than anything just to keep her safe. Not only that but you can sense a level of respect he has for Barry for helping him, and when he thinks he's been shot you get a slight sense of regret in his voice. For the first time ever i felt an actual character coming from Cold and i was actually invested in what was going on.
Even better is i'm starting to believe the relationship between Cisco and Lisa, last season she only pretended to like him to trick him but then that turned out to be real? It didn't make much sense to me. Now with some actual moments of vulnerability between the two it gets fleshed out more, her never really having anyone to trust or like apart from her brother and Cisco now being the one to save her life, it was quite touching and is the first step towards me actually believing these two like each other.
But the best thing about this episode was Joe's subplot where everything was done perfectly. Joe's ex-wife comes to town looking to make things up with him and Iris, Joe refuses and goes to talk to Iris telling her the truth about her mother, she didn't die when she was young but instead ran out on them because she was a druggy. Not only did Jesse L Martin do a brilliant job in this episode but holy crap, Iris had a reasonable reaction! After his big monologue about the truth of her mother I was thinking to myself "please Iris, for once respond like a human being! See things from his perspective!" and she does! She understands why he did what he did and doesn't blame him, the perfect way to wrap up the subplot for this episode. I'm honestly excited to see where this goes from here.
Then Professor Stein passes out...again. Yeah that was weird, last episode ended with him passing out and at the start of this one he's awake and acting like it was a mild inconvenience and then the episode ends with him setting ablaze and then passing out again. I get that they had to foreshadow this event and set up that his condition is getting worse but they could have found a better way to do it.
Overall, this was a brilliant episode, a lot of heavy emotional arcs are dealt with here and characters i don't usually like i actually really enjoyed in this episode. 9/10.
-Danny
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