The Flash: "Abra Kadabra"

She must be strong, she's wearing black pants.

By Flash standards, this wasn't an awful episode. More goofy dumb than stupid. Oh, sure, there was another Inexplicably Kept Secret, and the actor playing the villain seemed to be attempting to chew scenery and failing horribly, but hey, small victories.



That said, I'm starting to think there's a serious problem with the handling of the female characters on this show, especially with regards to their agency. Iris, for example, apparently needs her dad's help to read a computer screen and tell The Flash where Kadabra's time ship is.Plus Joe releases Kadabra even though that's not what Iris wants, and when Iris questions (rightfully) whether Kadabra is full of shit, Barry just shuts her down with a "he's not" instead of, say, explaining details Kadabra kn ows. Caitlin gets her necklace ripped off despite specifically telling them she'd rather die, and makes sure to give Juian a ton of credit for essentially yanking things out fo her with tweezers. And going back a few weeks, the general, across the board treatment of Jessie Quick.

And Gypsy. Oh, Gypsy. Whoever's writing Cisco's half of this relationship needs to back the fuck off.

There's something really uncomfortably aggressive about the way he's been hitting on Gypsy at every point after her debut episode. It's out of character for Cisco, and it's just gross. And I can tell they think they're getting away with it by making Gypsy a very "men writing strong women" kind of strong woman, saying sassy things like "you couldn't handle me", but that doesn't actually work in practice, especially since her only motivation in this episode is revenge for a dead boyfriend.

It's starting to seem like a pattern. And not a good one.