DC Recap Round-Up 3, Week 4: Jimmy Olsen’s Blues!

1 Nov

Welcome back! We got another full plate of recaps for The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Batwoman for this week. So let’s start things with…

“There Will Be Blood”

With The Flash on borrowed time, he wants to do something positive in with the weeks he has left, and one thing is to cure Ramsey Rosso of his terminal cancer. While Barry and company have no clue Ramsey has been experimenting on himself to do just that and has been going slightly mad as a result, they get help from that new Harrison Wells, Nash, who wants a special circuit made for him in exchange for giving them an chemical that rebuilds good human cells.At first it looks like the chemical isn’t there, but it’s quickly revealed that Cisco took it to help Barry survive the oncoming Crisis. Barry’s a bit disappointed in Cisco for doing that, but in retrospect, maybe he did the right thing as Cisco lets Barry give Ramsey the serum.

But with Ramsey’s healthy cells too far gone because of all that dark matter blood treatment, it doesn’t work, leading him to need more blood to survive, which takes him to the local hospital to get blood…from patients! Flash and Frost arrive to find Ramsey after he’s killed several patients and turned them into zombies like we saw last episode, and have to fight them off while Ramsey escapes. So now we got a metahuman vampire baddie running around, and remember that circuit Nash wanted made by Team Flash? He’s using it to track The Monitor! To paraphrase Homer Simpson, I hop Team Flash learned an important lesson today: never help anyone.

This Harrison Wells apparently comes from the Earth where Members Only took over.

–Barry wants Cisco to run the Team after he’s gone, which makes that hiding of the super-serum disappointing. Also, I’m a little confused how a super serum would keep Barry from freaking dissolving in the future, but okay, clinging on to vague hope.

–The other two “member of Team Flash bummed out by Barry’s imminent demise” plotlines this week involve Joe and Ralph. Joe obviously is not handling this well (props to you if you weren’t left a blubbering mess after that last scene breakdown), and Ralph is less interested in searching for this Sue lady. Ralph eventually decides to continue his search for Sue with that info he gets from Iris, but Joe looks like he’s barely hanging on here.

–We get a brief look into Ramsey’s past, and find that there’s some twisted symmetry in his selection of one victim at the hospital: the doctor who failed to treat his dying mother!

–A cute reference to crossovers past, when Nash reveals this super serum they are going to steal actually is based on technology left behind after an alien “invasion” from a few years back.

–If you thought last week’s dark matter zombie exploding was gross, this week tells you to “hold my beer”, as all those zombies at the hospital melt like a chocolate bar in the sun once Ramsey is far away.

–Points to Joe for unknowingly pointing out a meta vampire probably stole all that blood from the hospital in the opening act. Pretty much a correct guess.

–“It’s not like I’m looking to get married.”

“In Plain Sight”

Before we get to the big departure this epsiode, we gotta deal with the whole Malefic situation, where he’s escalated his campaign to hurt J’onn by mind controlling Alex and revealing that whole sordid history the Martian brothers have, and making her say some really hurtful things to J’onn. It’s not too long before J’onn and Kara figure out what happened to Alex and J’onn tried a different approach to deal with Malefic: by reaching out to take back in his wayward brother. When that doesn’t work, he has to use the breaching gun to send Malefic back to the Phantom Zone…or so he and the Superfriends thinks. Lena helped them out and when learning about the Martian’s mind control powers, rigged it so Malefic would be deposited into a holding cell of hers to be studied for her grand plan! I’m sure that won’t be a mistake she regrets later.

While this is happening, James and Kelly go to hide out in their hometown, and find things are really bad there, thanks to a big for profit prison that has a grasp on everything. When seeing the corruption around his home, James comes to a pivotal decision by buying out the local newspaper and staying there to fight for his town. So, it seems James is leaving National City for now, so now what else do the Superfriends have to worry about? How about Kara finding out William isn’t some bad guy, but investigating a secret evil cabal possibly aligned with Kara’s new boss, Andrea Rojas? Yeah, that might do.

You’ll be missed, James. That aborted romance with Kara in season one, that Guardian stuff, the romance with Lena, and all.

–Lena has been leaning towards the evil side, if you consider she just imprisoned J’onn’s brother for help in her big mind control, I mean, “curing people of evil thoughts” plan, but she’s not all bad. She did offer up helpful advice to Brainy and he patched things up with Nia.

–Speaking of Nia, she has a lot of contacts in lots of places, based on the multiple times she tells Kara about something she found out regarding the William thing this episode. She’s as hooked up as Felicity Smoak!

–On the subject of William, do we really believe his story? I mean, we know Andrea isn’t completely on the level here, but there’s still some sketchy stuff about him that doesn’t add up yet.

–Here’s when you know you got a little too much happening in an action scene: Alex had a bomb strapped to her chest and that got revealed and solved in under 30 seconds. I actually had to rewatch the scene just to remember that happened.

–“Hey, you really could have hurt that lady!” Probably not.

–“Call me Jimmy.”

“The Book of Occupation, Chapter Four: Lynn’s Ouroboros”

The Pierce family is reunited, and yet, they couldn’t be further apart than they are right now. Jefferson is trying to adjust to this ASA occupied Freeland, a demotion at his high school with a raise (!), and where the rest of his family are at. For instance, he’s not cool with all of Anissa’s Blackbird related activities, but knows he needs her help when a student at Garfield High is detained improperly by the ASA. While that relationship between father and daughter is maybe on the mend, it’s the rest of the family that’s in real peril.

Lynn has been trying to find the cure for that metahuman virus, and out of desperation (at least that’s what we think at first), she starts taking a less fatal version of Green Light to help her work the long hours she needs. While she finds the cure (and maybe something else we’ll discuss in the notes), we learn it was Odell’s quiet manipulation that lead her to use that Green Light in the first place! As if you didn’t have enough reason to see Odell take a dirt nap this season, it seems like he’s manipulating Jennifer to work for him! We’ll see how all that diabolical planning pans out in about two weeks.

Not sure how she can do that in the vacuum of space and not be dead, but still, pretty cool.

–Gambi is still running around doing things with that cloaking tech, because as you remember, he’s supposed to be dead. Also he’s trying to figure out what’s with that watch Odell gave Jefferson, as any sane person would.

–Henderson gets more short shrifting by the ASA as they take over his precinct house. Not a shock when he helps Jefferson and Anissa break those metahumans out of prison.

–Khalil gets to spend this episode killing guys ripping off military trucks for the resistance in Freeland, which is quite fun considering that’s all he’s up to this week.

–Hey, I’m all for Principal Lowry getting the butt end of a rifle, but while trying to defend the obviously innocent Tavon from being arrested? Not so much.

–Sometimes I do forget to mention stuff in episodes that I liked, and I did forget to mention last episode when Tobias called Black Lightning a “ghetto glow worm”. That was inspired.

–“I told you we’re all in. Me, you, the leopard, the old guy…all of us. It’s one big party up in here.”

–“All these years calling you ‘Harriet Tubman’ were prophetic.”

“Who Are You?”

Being a Bat-person ain’t easy, and Kate is starting to learn that rough lesson this episode. She’s trying to balance her new budding relationship Reagan, that bartender from last episode, while having to duck out now and again for Batwoman related things. The Batwoman related thing this time is the thief Magpie, who is interested in stealing some prize stuff in Gotham City, like Martha Wayne’s prized pearl necklace (yes, that pearl necklace). Kate takes down Magpie, but thanks to her absences and flimsier excuses for being gone, has to cut her relationship with Reagan off. But at least now she’s got a new idea for a secret identity and a new Bat-signal. Win some, lose some.

Kate’s step-mom Catherine on the other hand, loses hard when Alice blackmails her to get something from her tech company or Alice will reveal to Jacob how Catherine squashed the search for her. After a failed attempt to get Alice goes wrong, Catherine decides to not fall for Alice’s blackmail and reveals to Jacob that she faked the evidence pointing to young Beth being dead. Even though it was for seemingly altruistic reasons to keep Jacob and Kate from getting lost in their obsession to find Beth, this news doesn’t go over well to daddy Kane. Plus, we learn Alice is looking for someone or something called “Mouse”, whatever that means.

Even Batman probably messed up with a Batarang once or twice, no biggie.

–Mary does some good work, besides keeping that turncoat Crow soldier who attacked her a few episodes back alive (Kate isn’t very good with prisoner health, apparently). She also pretends to be Alice so she can get info from the drugged up baddie, and…it’s very convincing.

–Kate figures a great secret identity is to go into real estate. Oddly enough, and this is confirmed by the executive producer’s Twitter feed, this actually brings us up to when the Elseworlds crossover. Which means, what, three to four episodes to bring us to where she’ll be in the upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover? It’s a bit of time jumping, I know.

–Even if Catherine didn’t bother to tell her husband the truth behind the whole Beth investigation, it seemed like he was going to figure out some connection based on learning the bomb that sent that police van Alice was in into the river was made specifically for Crow Security.

–Alice sends a message back to Catherine and oddly enough, it’s not with the finger he chops off one of the hired guns sent to kill Alice. It’s with Alice sending the guy who had his finger severed back to Catherine!

–Nice funny interplay between Kate and Luke, especially as he has to explain the deadly booby trapped lair of Magpie to her while she’s there. Just stay super cold, don’t talk, and whatever you do…DON’T. SNEEZE.

–Yeah, she quoted Rihanna.

–“He ruined my favorite plaid shirt when he stabbed me.”

–“You’re Batsplaining.”

NEXT TIME: While Black Lightning takes a week off, we’ll have Kara and friends investigating the mysterious group Leviathan in Supergirl, and we learn about the past of Alice in Batwoman!