The Flash Review: Goldfaced (Season 5 Episode 13)
There’s a distinct lack of superpowers on The Flash Season 5 Episode 13, “Goldfaced,” but the almost complete absence of meta abilities this week actually makes for a better and more entertaining story.
On the hunt for yet another random item that’s meant to help the gang stop Cicada, Barry and Ralph must go undercover at an underground flea market, which is in and of itself an intriguing concept that would have been neat to spend more time in.
The two of them pretending to be criminals is, on its face, a kind of predictable trope, but it plays out wonderfully, allowing Barry to play the bad guy for once and Ralph to organically demonstrate how far he’s grown from last season.
(And Grant Gustin looks like he’s having the time of his life, for what it’s worth.)
Generally, the narrative centers on the question of how far Team Flash is willing to go to defeat Cicada. Are they really willing to do anything? Does that include commit crimes? What about murder?
“Goldfaced” also brings Ralph’s story full circle. In Season 5, the Elongated Man often struggled to retain Barry’s lessons in heroism, and often outright dismissed and ignored some of them.
This time around, Ralph can’t commit to truly breaking bad, even in the name of stopping a bigger villain. (And his insistence that Barry not be corrupted by proximity to sketchy underworld dudes is deeply endearing.)
This all ultimately ends with Barry and Ralph giving up on their McGuffin of the week, putting their giant guns on stun — because of course they did — and blasting bad guys in an extended montage set to Rob Zombie’s “Dragula.”
It’s generally more entertaining than it has any right to be, and, despite the lack of demonstrable progress on the Cicada front, it’s still oddly satisfying to see demonstrable on-screen evidence of Ralph’s growth.
The Flash has handled this character’s rehabilitation in a very thoughtful, delicate way — dialing back his screen time and giving him time to settle into the cast organically.
Whether taking Cisco out for a bro date, or giving Caitlin and Killer Frost advice on how to handle their complicated relationship, suddenly Ralph seems like an actual member of Team Flash, rather than some insufferable jerk who just won’t leave STAR Labs.
But, despite its overall fun vibe, “Goldfaced” does present us with more than a few narrative problems. Cisco’s absent again for some reason, but his metahuman cure is ready to go.
(Or at least, it supposedly will be, once the team acquires the random object that drives the plot of this story.)
The thing is, the team never discusses the whole “cure” idea or the fact that Barry’s suddenly totally fine with forcing it on another meta.
Sure, that meta is Cicada, who is demonstrably a bad guy. But the decision to forcibly remove his powers is suspect at best, and a dangerous bright line that could easily be moved when the team runs into another “bad” meta they don’t like.
Maybe the group would ultimately have come to the same decision: that desperate times call for desperate measures.
But in an episode focused on the question of whether the ends justify the means, the fact that they don’t even talk about it is pretty wild.
Caitlin, for example, only signed on to Cisco’s whole cure plan to help keep an eye on the project, ostensibly to help prevent the exact situation the team is now advocating.
This is what Killer Frost was worried about to begin with, yet The Flash doesn’t even allow anyone to acknowledge the murky moral area they’re all standing in. And Caitlin just…goes along with all this because the plot needs her to do so. Ugh.
The other elephant in the room that The Flash really needs to address is that Cicada is just an extremely uninteresting villain. And that’s a real shame, because his initial introduction promised much more.
The idea of a faceless Jack the Ripper-type stalking metas but never getting caught was intriguing.
His shift into a misguided killer trying to protect his family from a threat he didn’t understand at least felt understandable, even we’ve seen variations of that story before.
Now, however, Cicada is just a hot mess.
He no longer has any sort of code, or even an overarching larger plan. He’s no longer sympathetic. And it’s not even clear what he wants anymore, other than to kill as many metas as possible.
At this point the character exists almost solely to glower menacingly, speak in his rip-off Bane voice — why does he talk like that to Iris without the mask on?? – and provide Team Flash with weekly McGuffins to chase.
Goldface, for what it’s worth, is kind of exactly villain The Flash needs. Simultaneously ridiculous and genuinely threatening, he looks like he’s stepped off the pages of a comic book onto our screens.
He’s precisely the sort cheesy, over the top bad guy that this show excels at presenting, and honestly one that I hope we see in some kind of recurring fashion someday.
He’s more interesting than Cicada, at any rate.
Stray Thoughts and Observations
- Honestly, Cicada’s raspy delivery makes it virtually impossible to take anything he says seriously. He’s like a walking “Sir, this is an Arby’s” joke.
- It’s awesome that The Flash is finally getting Iris back into her journalism thing and that she’s being allowed to have her own stories surrounding the Central City Citizen. However, her decision to wander into a serial killer’s home alone was straight up dumb, and one that I don’t ever believe Iris would do in the name of “gumption”. Props on letting her almost think her way out of it though.
- It’s actually impossible for me to care any less about Sherloque and his multiverse-wide crush on The Flash version of Irene Adler.
- How are we actually supposed to be feeling about Nora right now? Sure, she’s still adorable, but she’s busy manipulating people’s lives on the orders of a man we know is a bad dude, no matter how much he might be acting as though he’s changed.
What did you think of this episode of The Flash? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.