The Flash Review: Girls Night Out (Season 4 Episode 5)

It’s not a secret that The Flash sometimes struggles with what to do with its women. The show has great female leads in Iris West and Caitlin Snow but frequently sidelines them both, forcing them into predictable “love interest” territory or simply excising them from stories entirely.

“Girls Night Out” changes all that. The episode gives significant screen time to every female cast member, also telling a story that’s predominantly about female relationships — both good and bad.

This set up isn’t perfect, by any stretch. The Flash regularly features so few women that the bachelorette party that forms the center of the episode feels like it’s cobbled together out of the only female characters who happen to be part of the show, rather than Iris’ actual friends.

It’s certainly a reminder that the show can do better about giving each character — particularly the women — lives and interests outside of the work they do at Star Labs. (Seriously, Iris didn’t have, say, any journalist friends she wants to invite? Anything?)

However, it’s easy to ignore the semi-forced nature of the gathering, because the show is so starved for female interactions that this episode feels like water in the desert. Arrow’s Emily Bett Rickards pops by as Felicity, and even though she and Iris haven’t ever really felt that close, it’s fine.

Why? Because ladies are doing things! Together! Saving the day with (hashtag) #feminism! Sometimes, that’s really all it takes for me.

“Girls Night Out” allows the women of The Flash to step into the spotlight, have some fun, and even battle the week’s Big Bad, all without batting an eye.

If only the show could reach this level of girl power every week. (After all, The Flash himself doesn’t even appear.) But this episode does illustrate that the women of The Flash are just as interesting, capable, and complex as the men — and the series’ stories should reflect that more often.

It honestly makes for better episodes, in the end, as this installment more than ably proves.

“Girls Night Out” (finally) sketches in the basics of Caitlin’s missing time between Seasons 3 and 4, outlining the basics of her months working as an enforcer for black market dealer Amunet Black. Ostensibly, her obsession with (and access to) metahuman technology promised some hope of Caitlin getting her Killer Frost side under control.

That… doesn’t really seem like it worked at all, and now Amunet wants her favorite icy henchwoman back at her side.

Battlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff plays Amunet with a particularly vicious glee that’s extremely entertaining to watch. Her powers — manipulating a very specific kind of metal — are not particularly interesting or awe-inspiring. But her sinister, scenery-devouring snark results in what is probably the most fun villain The Flash has had in years.

Since the girls decide (for some incomprehensible reason) to simply let Amunet escape after they defeat her — rather than turn her over to the police, or put her in the vast metahuman prison beneath Star Labs — we’ll doubtless see her again this season.

This isn’t a bad thing, in my book. Watching four women come together to save the day themselves, without Barry’s intervention or even knowledge, is pretty awesome. I certainly wouldn’t mind doing it again. (More importantly: here’s hoping the show manages to work these capable women into its ongoing narrative in real and meaningful ways.)

As I mentioned already, this all-girl presentation isn’t perfect. “Girls Night Out” can’t help but highlight the fact that The Flash hasn’t really considered female relationships a priority up until this point.

When Iris asks Caitlin why she didn’t come to her about her struggles with Killer Frost, Caitlin’s answer that they are just “work friends” rings true. When have we ever seen the two of them even have a conversation outside of Star Labs, let alone hang out?

It’s important that the show acknowledges these gaps happen. And while Iris’ out of the blue decision to ask Caitlin to be her maid of honor feels remarkably random, it also appears as if the show is attempting to correct its mistake in this area.

Through the Amunet subplot, The Flash also uses this episode to try and clarify the Caitlin/Killer Frost divide a bit further. But somehow, it manages to provide a few answers and muddy the waters all over again at the same time.

“Girls Night Out” doubles down on the idea that Caitlin and Killer Frost are two separate entities who happen to share a body. It’s kind of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, apparently. But by episode’s end, the show also seems to hint that that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

As Killer Frost chooses to rescue Caitlin’s friends and free Amunet rather than kill her, the lines between the two personalities grow increasingly thin. In the final scene, it sure looks like Caitlin has more control over her icy alter ego than ever before and may even be able to consciously choose whether to use her powers.

Honestly, this is a much-needed evolution. After all, the Season 3 Finale did imply that Caitlin was on some kind of personal journey to figure out who she is as a person if she isn’t strictly Caitlin Snow or Killer Frost.

“Girls Night Out” takes tentative steps towards saying that Caitlin can integrate these separate sides of herself into one. Whether The Flash will actually do that this season is anyone’s guess. But the possibility certainly seems to be there, and it’s a natural next step for this story.

The closing shot of a Caitlin who transitions easily between her normal and Killer Frost personas offers hope that her character can become something more than an occasional villain or source of convenient internal tension for Team Flash.

Here’s hoping, anyway. Caitlin deserves agency within her own story and the chance to make some sort of peace with herself and her abilities.

(Plus, we deserve the chance to see more of a powered-up Caitlin appearing out of nowhere to save the day. It’s what the guys get to do all the time, after all.)

Stray thoughts:

• Drunk Barry crying over Jack, Rose, and the size of the floating door in Titanic is my favorite one-off moment the show has done in years.
• Actually Drunk Barry, all around, is a total win.
• Other winners from the bachelor party: Harrison Wells, whose brusque arrival to pick up the guys from the drunk tank made me laugh out loud.
• The fourth bus metahuman is a man who basically cries drugs, and Team Flash just lets him wander off, shirtless, into the night at the end?
• I have no idea what the Thinker wants with “The Weeper,” but wow his high-tech levitating chair looks h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e.

What did you think of this episode of The Flash? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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