The Flash Review: Don’t Run (Season 4 Episode 9)

The Flash’s midseason finale is a slow-moving build-up to a shocking cliffhanger, with big implications for the back half of Season 4.

Unfortunately, the rest of “Don’t Run” (Season 4 Episode 9) is a largely forgettable installment that basically exists to build up to the episode’s closing scenes. While there are several solid character beats here, it nevertheless feels as though a significant part of the story is left spinning its wheels.

On the plus side, however, this episode does finally attempt to address one of The Flash’s ongoing narrative problems: The way the show treats the strange dichotomy between Caitlin Snow and her Killer Frost alter ego. It’s not entirely successful — the show has made the truth of Caitlin’s metahuman abilities so pointlessly complicated that it’s probably going to take all season to truly unravel it all — but it’s a start.

The acknowledgement that Caitlin’s powers are a story The Flash still needs to deal with is reassuring, since her almost-seamless Killer Frost transitions during the “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover made it seem as though the issue was at least somewhat settled. Apparently, that isn’t exactly the case.

Here, Caitlin and Killer Frost are treated as two different people, and the show goes so far as to establish that the rest of the team has different relationships with each of them. We haven’t exactly seen Frost hanging out with Cisco on a random Thursday or anything, but perhaps fighting Nazis together creates quick bonds.

It is honestly kind of confusing that The Flash seems so committed to the idea that Caitlin and Killer Frost are separate beings. They’ve never really bothered to explain it, beyond referring to Frost as Caitlin’s “mean roommate” last week. Nor have they ever touched on why it is only Caitlin whose metahuman abilities affect her in this way.

The Flash is equally unclear about when and how Caitlin can use her icy powers. According to the “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover, Frost appears when Cailtin is angry or scared. Yet earlier this season, in “Girls’ Night Out,” The Flash seems to imply that Caitlin has some degree of control over her transitions.  It’s all kind of a mess, really.

This week, the show veers hard in the other direction, with a story that underlines how smart and capable Caitlin is in her own right. The return of Katee Sackhoff’s entertainingly evil Amunet Black gives Caitlin an interesting foil to play off of, and her convenient use of a power-dampening bracelet means that Frost’s abilities are off the table.

In all honesty, this part of “Don’t Run” is the kind of story Caitlin deserves to get more often. Sure, she finds herself getting kidnapped once again, but she also manages to turn the tables on her captor using only her brain and her nerve, rather than her icy meta abilities.

The Flash often makes the mistake of leaving Caitlin in the background until it needs someone to credibly provide medical lingo about something or other. Here, the episode not only uses her medical knowledge in a natural, obvious way, it reminds viewers that Caitlin was always pretty awesome on her own, long before she got special powers.

Though it’s great that “Don’t Run” gives Caitlin the room to explore her own insecurities about her value to the team compared to that of Killer Frost, it’s disappointing that the show seems to view their situation as some kind of binary choice. Why should we have to choose between them? Can’t we have both?

(I’m still holding out hope that The Flash someday figures out that a more interesting story lies in integrating Caitlin and Frost into a single person. Just carve that on my tombstone now.)

Elsewhere, Iris faces her hardest decision yet as Team Flash’s de facto leader, forced to choose between focusing the group’s rescue efforts on either Caitlin or Barry. While this is a great story idea in theory, it’s rather clumsily handled here.

It’s not like anyone knew Caitlin didn’t have access to her Killer Frost abilities, or that Barry could break out of The Thinker’s jail so easily. Plus, the two of them just got married — it’s hard to imagine Iris choosing anyone other than her new husband to save.

Regardless of the contrivance factor, the moment is nevertheless an encouraging sign that Iris won’t get shoved to the sideline of the story just because she’s Barry’s wife now. So, that’s something!

To the surprise of probably no one, the end of the episode reveals that everything was part of The Thinker’s grand plan. He coordinated it all, from Amunet’s kidnapping of Dominic to Caitlin’s impromptu surgery to Barry’s escape. All this is done so he can transfer his mind into Dominic’s, gaining both the power of telepathy and a younger, stronger body.

Of course, the added bonus of killing off his original recipe Clifford DeVoe body is that The Thinker can subsequently plant it in Barry’s apartment, tip off the cops and frame him for murder. It’s a pretty stone cold move.

Barry’s decision to stay and face his problems (i.e. the cops) head-on is clearly meant to show the newfound maturity he discussed earlier with Iris. But it also kind of makes no sense.

We all know Barry could have zipped around, cleaned up the mess and removed DeVoe’s body before the police ever made it through his front door. Why he suddenly believes that depending on the justice system to recognize or eventually suss out his innocence is the right thing to do is baffling, particularly considering that his own father spent decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Also, it’s not like Team Flash has been particularly good at getting ahead of The Thinker’s plan to this point, and it’s clear he wants Barry to be arrested. Why play into his hands like this?

At least it will all make for an exciting return when the series comes back in January.

Stray Thoughts:

• Other things that make no sense: Does anyone on The Flash understand anything about how medical procedures work? Watching Caitlin try to operate on Dominic in a poorly-lit, dirty warehouse room with anesthesia that didn’t even knock him out is laughable. I mean, the fact that Dominic’s awake, talking to Caitlin through his “surgery,” and then jumping up immediately afterward is… something else. Whew.
• Is Dominic dead? Did The Thinker just replace his brain with his own, or is he still in there somewhere? And is he officially Brainstorm now?
• The return of Flotation Mode makes everything about Barry’s ridiculously bad CGI fight with The Thinker worth it.
• I love love love that Killer Frost has her own personally-branded Jitters beverage.
• Happy Holidays, The Flash fans! See you next year!

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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