DC Recap Round-Up 3, Week 3: Brothers In Brainwashing!

24 Oct

Welcome back! We got a full house today, with recaps of The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Batwoman! So let’s not waste any more time with preamble and let’s get to it…

“Dead Man Running”

Barry and Iris break to the rest of the Team that bad news about that oncoming Crisis, but leave out that little detail that in order to save them, The Flash is going to have to die.But we got a more pressing issue to deal with besides something about seven weeks away: that reanimated man Ramsey killed with his new blood powers! This zombie is not interested in brains though, rather dark matter, which makes it more powerful. Killer Frost puts the puzzle together rather quickly that Ramsey knows about this, although Barry is not so sure. However, having a celebrated blood analyst might be helpful on this case, so Ramsey is brought on to find our dark matter zombie. Only thing is that zombie is looking for dark matter and finds it and Ramsey in the one place you’d count on for quality security: STAR Labs!

Ramsey learns something important, mainly that he can control the zombie because it was infected with his blood powers (and can call that blood back into himself), just before Frost figures out OD’ing the zombie on dark matter will stop it (or at least, blow it up!). This experience helps Frost deal with her own anger over the likelihood of her attempt at life being cut short by the Crisis, and leads to Barry telling everyone about that whole “him dying to save their Earth” part. Meantime, we get a new Harrison Wells named Nash, and he’s looking for some substance called Eternium in town. Plus, Ralph learns some things about his mom that puts a temporary strain on their relationship. But look, you really want to see exploded dark matter zombie, so here you go…

Oh man, you got dark matter zombie everywhere! That stuff is hard to get out of walls!

–Barry finally learns not to leave strangers alone in the lab, and catches Ramsey trying to steal some dark matter for himself. That conversation turns out to be an interesting one, as Ramsey admits he is terminally ill with his mother’s disease (maybe not anymore thanks to his new powers), and figures out Barry is on borrowed time too. You’d think that would bring Ramsey back from evil, but nope.

–Nash seems to be some kind of collector of things, an Indiana Jones type, of you will. Also, he’s not being discreet about his quest as the only reason Iris and Cisco even knew about him was because he was caught on security footage that was brought to them from new intern Allegra.

–Speaking of Allegra, she has no clue about the multiverse because she reminds us that not only does this Earth think Harrison Wells is a criminal, but that he’s been dead for quite some time. This is gonna be an awkward talk for Iris to have.

–Ralph’s mom issues are interesting as a comedic distraction, but also contend with the very real thing of a single mother wanting to connect with someone new and pushing them away out of fear of replacing Ralph’s dad.

–Cisco’s reaction to the new Wells: “Oh great. Another angry one.”

–“Great. I’ll go mark my calendar.”

“Blurred Lines”

J’onn learns a truly horrible thing or two this time out, as he wants to find out why his brother was hidden from his memory. He discovers with Nia’s help the terrifying answer: J’onn’s brother was an outcast in Martian society because he had the power to control minds but not link psychically with other Martians, and his aligning with the white Martians was due to neglect by their father. M’yrnn was almost driven to madness, and in order to cure him… J’onn wiped his and his father’s memory of their outcast family member! Yeah, that’s REALLY messed up. So that rattles J’onn to the core, and he still has his brother out there, only now he has a new target: Kelly Olsen!

In disguise as an old friend of Kelly, Malefic (that’s what I’ll call our evil Martian) gets her help to unlock his mind control powers, and by accident, she is somehow able to see the evil Martian even in disguise. So Kelly and James are going into hiding until Kara and company can track down Malefic. Oh, and Kara fights an assassin who has deadly alien spider tattoos, until she doesn’t, because a smoke person kills said assassin. Also, Kara’s reporter rival William may have something to do with it. That happened, and some other stuff, such as…

Samwise, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

–Lena uses Kara rather slyly to get some diaries from Lex, which may have information that will help Lena’s mind control, ahem, stopping people from being evil project. It apparently does, too.

–Brainy going 100% on treating Nia right turns out to be a bit too much for Nia (maybe it’s all the poems about her body parts, like her left earlobe) and when she asks him to take it down a few percentage points, he feels rejected. Awww, just let one relationship go well this season, show!

–On the same matter of relationships, Kara goes globe trotting to get some snacks for Lena and does a rather longing flyby Lena’s office. Are we going where I think we’re going? No, we’re probably not.

–Yeah, I buried the lead in the episode as Sean Astin appears as Kelly’s friend, Pete/Malefic, which makes me wonder where the real guy is.

–J’onn asking Nia to lie about what he did to his father and himself is going to be a problem, right?

–“I have really been missing out on the perks of having Supergirl as a friend!”

“The Book of Occupation, Chapter Three: Agent Odell’s Pipe-Dream”

So we got an outbreak on our hands! The Markovians have introduced a deadly virus into the metahuman containment facility, and it’s making the need to find a cure of extreme importance for Lynn, especially with the possibility of the virus spreading out into Freeland. With Agent Odell needing help taking down a Markovian staging post and recover the still missing Dr. Jace, Jefferson uses this opportunity to negotiate his and Lynn’s release from containment. The staging area is squashed, no Dr. Jace found, but at least Jefferson gets a new supersuit and to go back to Freeland, so you take the good with the bad.

Speaking of the machinations of Odell, he convinces Jennifer to use her powers to blow up a Markovian computer server farm, and sends Khalil/Painkiller to mop up things in his own way. Anissa finds an exhausted Grace waiting for her, and Anissa offers to help her with her condition of shape shifting. So with the Pierce family back under the same roof, things are looking up. Except the ASA is still occupying Freeland, the Markovians are still out there, there’s that metahuman virus that needs to be cured, but yeah…things are looking up.

Like I said: nanotech suits are the new superhero fashion trend for 2019!

–This show’s soundtrack often delivers some quality tunes, and this week brings us Black Lightning back in action in his new suit with the music of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightnin'”. A blues classic if there ever was one.

–We check in on Tobias, who is in withdrawal from his serum and getting super old now. He declines Odell’s offer to retrieve that missing briefcase to get a rather nasty sunburn as punishment. Plus, is he hallucinating Black Lightning taunting him now, or is this more of Odell’s tricks?

–Jennifer giving that new student at Garfield the school tour was quite something, as you realize a lot of horrible stuff has happened to her in a pretty contained block of the school since the series started. She’s taking it as well as someone would.

–Henderson has a lot to deal with, besides that old lady who spits on him about how ineffectual he is as the Deputy Chief. But he does bother to deliver stolen money to the husband of a dead detective we saw last episode who died from the metahuman virus.

–Khalil/Painkiller is getting way too confident for his own good. I can’t help but think he’s due for another horrible fall before long, but at least it can’t be worse than having a spinal implant ripped out, huh?

–“You are quoting someone who killed 10 percent of the population of Cambodia.” “25 percent.”

–“I owe you some…time in the sun.”

“Down Down Down”

It was only a matter of time before Kate’s dressing up in her cousin’s Bat-suit was going to attract some unwanted attention, and it does this episode. Someone is ripping off guns that can cut through Bat-armor, dressing up dead people as Batman, taunting the missing hero to show up to stop the carnage. Of course, we know Bruce Wayne is still AWOL, so this poses a problem only Kate can solve. And she should hurry, because the next people threatened with death are Kate’s family!

Kate finds out one of Bruce’s old friends, Tommy Elliott, is the one behind all this, and oh yeah, knows Bruce is Batman. He doesn’t know Bruce won’t show up for his big plan to start killing off Kate’s family, so Kate puts on the Bat-suit again, but makes sure it’s clear there’s a woman in it now (it involves a red wig). She saves her family, and is helped by Alice in stopping Tommy. Oh yeah, Alice is still alive, and it seems less likely Kate is going to bring her sister back from the dark side now.

There. A wig. Now the suit works.

–Kate wants Alice to not kill anyone for a whole day and…she fails that. I mean, stupid thing to ask in retrospect, but hey, you try.

–Looks like Kate might be moving on from Sophie with that lady bartender she runs into, but Sophie herself is discovered to have not told her husband about her and Kate’s relationship at all. And now he knows she didn’t bring it up. Uh oh.

–Alice’s little trip to the Kane loft was interesting, especially for the present she left Catherine: three poker cards, a two of hearts, an eight of clubs, and a three of diamonds. Catherine is definitely the key to this whole mystery of what happened to Beth/Alice.

–Mary is silently becoming one of my favorite characters, and now she has to contend with Sophie being assigned to be her bodyguard. Might put a crimp into her running that clinic.

–So Tommy makes a reference to how he learned Bruce’s secret, and that he inferred the Riddler told him. Also his reason for wanting Batman dead? He saved his gold digging mother as a kid, who he hated, and grew up with her. If you read the Hush storyline in the Batman books, yeah, it’s that nuts.

–“She’s probably dating? Because she’s gorgeous? Single? Emotionally available?”

NEXT TIME: James and Kelly find themselves hunted by J’onn’s brother on Supergirl, Jefferson adjusts to life back in occupied Freeland in Black Lightning, and Kate faces a jewel thief on Batwoman!