The Flash 5x17 "Time Bomb"

Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I did get a laugh out of the Operation Shazam line. Whether an intentional nod to the upcoming film or otherwise, I liked that.

 

That was good. But how come no one has thought yet about destroying the sphere before it is going to be stolen in the future..?

 

april 16th? Jesus.

 

I was about to say, why such a long break? There's only five more episodes. Why not just go ahead and speed through them? It's not like there'll be another DC show airing in its place, kind of like Legends and Black Lightning sharing a spot.

 

It's sad that it's coming to be that thawne is going to be the most interesting thing about this season

 

I’m still laughing at how we had the first Cicada who was boring to watch and then they change things up by giving us another Cicada but with more powers. Girl is fast enough to deflect lasers and can have her dagger keep up with XS.

I’m sure the security at the storage site is even worse than STAR labs. So, it’s not surprise Grace stole the time bubble.

Wasn’t surprised that Orlin was killed off. But his growl lives on in Grace.

I laughed at the Spider-Man references.

I laughed at the husband and daughter being so negative about the wife having powers.

I thought it was lame to have Barry say she had to let her family know.

I’m happy Nora’s secret is out and I cracked up at Sherloque not letting her explain.

 

To have the final episode coincide with the last week of May ratings sweeps.

 

Well it was inevitable that Nora would be found out. And I knew that Sherloque would probably be the one to spill the beans rather than Nora herself. It never works out in these shows that the person with the secret is the one to tell it. They're always exposed by someone else.

I do wish though that Sherloque was Harry Wells who had figured it out, or he was a more normal Wells. While Sherloque did some good detective work, he is still a caricature and doesn't really seem to have that much of a connection to the rest of the team either.

Why did Grace kill her uncle? Was she acting out of her child's mind because she never properly matured or grew up but still thinks like a child? Why do Team Flash feel that young Grace needs to consent to the treatment anyway? If she's unconscious and in a coma, then she can't give her consent. If a patient in real life needs emergency surgery and there's no-one else to give consent, then wouldn't the doctor have to make a decision on how to best save or cure the patient? It's not like it's going to kill her anyway.

Also, if young Grace is cured in the present, does that mean it would change the timeline and she would never come back from the future and kill her uncle?

Is there also a break for Arrow and Supergirl?

 

I don't know what happened to this show. The first 5 episodes were promising, then it went back to downhill. It has gotten to the point where I don't watch reactions to these episode anymore.

 

COMPLETELY agree. I'll actually say I liked the first 9 episodes before break. Was very promising. After break, it went completely downhill despite LAST week's episode with the Cicada II reveal.

Unless the REST of the season is on fire, which I highly doubt, S5 is another letdown. I know this sounds super fanboy-y but you tease the ring in the SDCC teaser -- something they KNOW hardcore fans have been wanting for a really long time -- and he's only used it twice 17 episodes in? What's that about?

"Time Bomb" reminded me of a S4 episode. The comedy, the pacing. Ugh

 

Apart from obvious plot holes involving the dagger and Grace's origin, the only redeeming part of the episode was Nora getting exposed finally by Sherloque. I enjoyed every minute of seeing that awful character finally get hers.

Grant's acting in that scene was on another level of amazing. Something real actually happened. Nora is paying for her betrayal like she should be. What I dread is her being inevitably forgiven by Barry in the next couple of episodes. Barry should react like anyone who lies, manipulates and betrays the team. A la Zoom, Reverse Flash. Nora is a villain, she needs to be treated as such. Eobard Thawne is in control, no way Nora is that naive.

 

Barry and Iris are going to forgive her. Being stuck in that cell is like the equivalent of them grounding her and giving her a time out. And she's never had to experience some discipline from her father before.

 

We see her in two entirely different ways!
To me she is a good person who's fallen under a bad influence.
Most everything she had done has been for good, as that is her innate response. However, her desire to know her father, esp being alienated from her mother, led her to pursue unusual avenues. First in the Flash Museum where we know they haven't gotten everything correct and then to meeting Thrawn. She knows he was one of her father's enemies, but again there are things that she did not know, such as him killing her grandmother.
I think you are correct in that she was naive and Thrawn has taken advantage of that, as we know he can be very manipulative, and she was also obviously angry. He saw the daughter of his greatest enemy, knew she was unaware of several very important things, and had decided to use her for whatever his plans are.

Now yes, she should have told them right from the starts, but then fear comes in. She was in a great place with her parents, actually connected with her mother and teaming up with her hero, her father, in fighting crime. Her greatest dream. Of course she would be terrified of that being taken away and would end up not saying anything.

Sherluc now, was an ass! He was so into his 'big moment,' playing up to his audience, that he didn't see or care that he was doing something that she should have been given the time to do. He should have told her he knew, and then gave her the time to come clean with her parents. Instead, he forced a situation that put her and her father at odds.

 

Nora is far from the villain. She’s just been misguided and manipulated. She’s a little naive maybe, but it’s not as if she’s a super villain or anything quite as drastic. She’ll be forgiven too; it’s in the teams nature.

This is the second episode in two weeks (isn’t it?) that we’ve had a Spider-Man reference. The Shazam reference was nice too. Wonder whether he’s around on the CWmultiverse somewhere..

Shouldn’t be surprising either that Cisco will soon be off with his new love (thus the reason for his show departure) though when he said (something along the lines of) never feeling this way about someone before where he can simply be himself? Has he already forgot about Gipsy?

 

If Nora had tried to lie and say she doesn't know what Sherloque was talking about, I would've been okay with him outing her. That wasn't the case. After coming in and saying how Nora is trying to tell them her secret, he kept talking. Not letting her get a word in. . Both you and Cecile confirmed she was starting to confess, how about you actually LET her?

 

I think he got caught up in a big caper-reveal moment. Sherlock Holmes was famous for those.

And yeah, I think they are foreshadowing Cisco going, but also deciding to 'cure' himself. He wants a normal life now rather than constantly fighting for his life all the time.

 

I just wish Cisco’s powers involved break dancing like they did in the 80s

 

I give the show alot of leeway when it comes to logic and plot holes, by Grace killing the nurse that loved and took care of her as a child, and then her uncle was just plain lazy and dumb.

So she's turned into a generic irrational psycho killer? Care to tell us how and why? What is the pay off. Is her crazy behaviour going to force team flash to make decision about forcing the cure on her?

I'm not one to nit pick, and I'll give them a chance to redeem this Grace arc, but so far it's been an utter mess.

 

This new Cicada is actually skills and genuine threat to Team Flash, and meta humans everywhere. However the old Cicada wasn't. I'm still having trouble believing that neither Ollie, nor Kara were able to apprehend him. It's not like he was actually a menace, and his powers were quite limited compared to his Graces.

Don't quite get why she needs the mask either; does she also have bad lungs?

 

Barry's let Harry go on a similar situation. I don't see him treating Nora harshly than that.

 

Not the same situation. Harry was doing what he did for his daughter and confessed later on his plans. Nora knowingly still worked with Eobard Thawne even after learning he murdered her grandmother and still kept it from the group. Nora is worse than Harry ever was. Harry at least told the truth of what he did to the group and we all sympathized with him. Nora on the other hand wanted to continue lying to the group and tried to prevent Sherloque from exposing her.

 

She's mentally unstable. From the time she was 8 years old she's had a voice in her head (her uncle's voice) filling her with hate. It also probably got mangled up with the shard of dark matter in her brain.

The poor girl is insane.

But we know that this Cicada is not the one they would have been facing, right? When Nora went back in time, she altered history which was proven by Sherluc finding the real Cicada, only it was too soon and that man had no powers.

It's also entirely possible that the Cicada that Ollie and Supergirl are unable to defeat, is now Grace.

By the time she learned about her grandmother, Nora was in too deep and still too afraid of losing what she'd gained by going back in time. She actually has a family now and not something so dysfunctional that she wanted to run away from. I can see her being frozen by the fear of losing all that.

Plus Harry is not a good example, because he is an adult while she is still basically a 'child.' That adulthood and life experiences, that Nora is now accumulating, would have told him it was better to rip the band-aid off quick while it was still early. Just like a child, still consumed by fear instead of reason, Nora was trying to cover it up.

And she wasn't trying to stop the others from finding out in the end. She was trying to stop Sherluc from telling it. Remember what Cecile said, that Nora wanted to tell them something, not that she didn't want them to find out. It was only the how, cause she knew she had to do it herself, esp if she was to retain her parent's trust..

 

Perhaps her left hemisphere brain injury interferes with her ability to process emotions.