Goldfaced is a pretty great episode. It’s light on meta action but the character dynamics in the three plots is fun/tense to watch and it’s all balanced very well.

In an effort to get Sherloque off Nora’s back, Thawne suggests that she play to his greatest weakness; being a notorious puss-hound. Okay, it’s his heart, but he married the same woman 7 times across five different universes, that woman being Renee Adler. Her and Sherloque seem to have good chemistry so it’ll be fun to see their relationship develop in the episodes to come, especially after Sherloque discovers Renee is a meta and is incensed to protect her from Cicada.

Flash Fact: Renee Adler is played by Kimberley Williams-Paisley, most known for her role as Annie Banks, Steve Martin’s daughter in Father of the Bride! She looks great considering I haven’t seen or thought about her in almost 30 years!

Meanwhile, Iris is cruising for a stabbing by pulling a B&E on Cicada’s house. There’s been instances of Iris being badass in the past but I often forget that when she spends most of the season making doe eyes at Barry or being motherly. This episode shows, again, that she’s a badass because not only does she keep a cool head but she kicks the shit out of Cicada!

I mean it; she bear maces his face off, wrecks his doll house, stabs him with a pen and then, for good measure, stands over him and says “We’ll beat you.” DAAAAAAAAAAAAMN, Iris! You scary!

And the last plot thread is the Barry and Ralph Buddy Cop Comedy and I am here for it! Infiltrating a weapons black market for some tech macguffin leads the duo to Goldface, the titular villain du jour and I really dig this dude. He’s a real smooth criminal and while I’m glad he’s not dead and can come back, the dude was bleeding gold out of his eyes, he SHOULD be dead. But it was Barry so we can’t have him kill. Yet. It’s coming, I can feel it.

Flash Fact: Goldface is played by Damion Poitier, a well-known stunt man but comic fans would know him as Thanos in the first Avengers movie!

Also, Barry and Ralph’s running gun fight with Goldface’s goons was scored with Rob Zombie’s Dragula, which is an out-of-fucking-nowhere pick and slapped me in the face with nostalgia for a goth ex-girlfriend so thanks, show?

Overall, I really dug this episode. It didn’t drive the plot forward too much but it was a fun ride at the very least and that counts for a lot. In the same vein, check out this week’s Arrow episode, Emerald Archer, for a fun in-universe documentary theme that breaks up the show’s usual formula quite nicely. Be sure to come back next week as things seem to be coming to a head in Cause and XS.

Grodd Lives delivers on what we’ve been waiting for ever since we saw a certain busted cage in the pilot and that’s Gorilla Grodd and all manner of monkey business is occurring in this episode!

I’ll get this out of the way early doors because I HATE Iris right now. She’s every distaff character who was kept out of the cool secret in sister-show Arrow rolled into one. She’s Season 1 Laurel and I want to put my foot through the TV because I’ve seen this shit! I think this is the one problem to arise from being related to Arrow, every episode has a god damn heart-felt/emotional scene between hero and love interest and it’s BORING. The one thing that saved Arrow recently was Felicity’s fun relationship with Ray until it was FUCKED UP FOR EVERYONE. Oy vey… It’s probably gonna get worse when Eddie gets rescued and dumps her because of his knowledge of the future.

Teenage high school angst aside, this episode was pretty damn cool! Grodd is the puppeteer of Wade Eiling, who has been missing for 3 months in-universe. Is it just me or is the masked identity Grodd gives Eiling Goldface? He’s robbing gold shipments and his mask is gold-ish? That’s kind of weird, but maybe someone else will use the costume in the future and we can have a proper Goldface! Clancy Brown kills it as usual, even as a meat puppet for Grodd.

Grodd himself is pretty damn cool! The CGI looks solid and the voice actor is bang on point! David Sobolov has voiced some fantastic characters in the past, including Drax The Destroyer in every animated incarnation this side of 2013, Lobo in Young Justice, Shockwave in Transformers: Prime and, my favourite, Depth Charge in Beast Wars! That’s so damned cool!

Wells is only in a couple scenes but he’s basically here to torment Eddie, tinker with some machinery and then reveal his ultimate goal. This side of Wells is still impish but is a massive dick and it’s still entertaining to watch. The stinger reveals that his secret lair has been underneath the pipeline of STAR Labs this entire time as the device he was working on activates the tunnel.

What a fantastic episode (barring the scenes with Iris) and we’ve still got hypeness to come when some old friends (and old enemies) come to visit in Rogue Air.