THE FLASH: You Can’t Outrun This Recap

I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that every single metaphor this show ever makes will involve running. I fall into the Ann Perkins school of beliefs on jogging, so this is going to be a hilarious show for me to recap. Luckily, I have a very pretty cast to enjoy every week for my running troubles.

We open after your typical Arrow/Flash style intro with the narration (please drop this?) to shots of Barry running all through Central City and talking about how it’s a constant of human life that we’re running: to something, from something, etc. etc. But some things you can’t outrun, and that appears to be a movie theater, where Iris and Barry are evaluating the movie they’ve just seen. Barry goes full nerd—the show’s words, not mine—until Eddie calls, putting a damper on things. Luckily, Caitlin and Cisco have a fix: there’s a bad man in a getaway car. Barry takes off, snatches the dude, puts him in the police car, and makes it back just in time for Iris to turn around.

They walk to get dinner past a restaurant full of mob dudes. There’s a bald smiley guy that gives me the creeps, and I’m probably right about that because Slimer—er, I mean green gas with a face—overtakes the table, suffocating everybody in the restaurant as the title card plays. Hey, guys, I found the bad guy.

We return to the police station to hear a cop bragging about the arrest of the bad man in the getaway car, and Barry’s a little grumpy. Joe points out that he’s not doing it for the glory, but Barry gripes that keeping his life a secret is harder than he thought it would be. Good thing Joe has some work for them to do: they’re going to crack open Henry Allen’s case. Unfortunately, Eddie really is interrupting everything, as he shows up to let them know that the Darbinian crime family is dead. At the scene, the police speculate about how gas might have killed everybody, but Barry points out it’s likely a metahuman since the gas seemed to attack each victim one by one.

Time to bring in the nerds! They’re excited about a gaseous human (I have a small gaseous dog that is equally exciting, so I understand), but Joe has other concerns. Specifically: Iron Heights prison isn’t equipped to hold metahumans. Hell, from the amount of breakouts we’ve seen on Arrow, Iron Heights isn’t equipped to hold regular humans, but let’s not quibble over details. Harrison has a solution. It’s the particle accelerator! Who saw that coming? Raise your hands!

This also means flaaaashback. The night the particle accelerator goes live, and Harrison gives a big speech. In the control room, Cisco brings up concerns about a thunderstorm, and Caitlin is busy arguing Tahiti vs. Italy with her fiancé Ronnie (Robbie Amell). He argues for pizza, she argues for mai-tais. The moment arrives, they push a button, nothing happens (not even people frantically going over readings)…until they pop the champagne and the liquid floats in the air, followed by a big bang. That’s probably not good, but before we can find out more, we’re back in the present with Caitlin looking troubled. When Harrison says he’s going down to check out the accelerator, Barry sees Caitlin’s distress and asks for her help with the poison gas instead.

He brings Caitlin to work, which is delightful (she introduces herself as Barry’s personal physician and you can make all the playing doctor jokes you like; I’ll wait). At the West house, Joe listens to Henry’s testimony again, quickly closing the laptop when Iris comes downstairs. They’re chatting when Eddie interrupts YET AGAIN, looking surprised to see Joe. He comes up with an excuse and when Joe steps out to the car, has a heart to heart about telling her dad. “I know my dad. He’ll kill us.” / “Right now? You’re killing us.” Whoa there, drama queen.

Cisco and Harrison visit the accelerator, and talk about reconfiguring it into cells. I have some questions. Like, are they going to feed these people and provide humane treatment? Are they going to get time outside for good behavior or any sort of justice? But before the show answers these ethics questions, we flash back to Ronnie and Cisco trying to fix the particle accelerator. Ronnie makes Cisco promise that if he’s not back in two minutes, Cisco will close the blast doors. Spoiler: he doesn’t make it back in two minutes. Poor Cisco, man.

In the police station, Barry asks Caitlin what Ronnie was like. She doesn’t reply “he looks like a bizarro version of Oliver Queen,” but that Ronnie was a structural engineer—a very high-priced janitor. Ha. I see what you did there, show. She tells Barry that Ronnie had come to the particle accelerator for her, that he wasn’t supposed to be there that night. The ding of SCIENCE! being done interrupts them, and they discover no traces of gas in the victims, but there is a second strand of DNA. They put forth a theory that the metahuman becomes gas rather than controls it, right as the dude shows up at the mall and kills a woman that’s apparently a judge. Or at least she told him “May God have mercy on your soul” in a courtroom once. That sounds like a judgey thing to say. Caitlin asks Barry not to go when they get word, but he takes off.

At the mall, he arrives in time to face down the bald creepy smiley dude, but can’t punch him due to the fact that he turns into gas, so instead he gets gassed. He runs back to the team, where they can extract the gas (but apparently anesthetic won’t work on him, so I hope he never has to have a knee replacement). When he wakes, quipping cutely about feeling like that one time he had a cigarette, Caitlin’s less than amused at his recklessness and Cisco’s more focused on naming the villain. This week’s edition? The Mist. Beats Multiplex.

Barry ignores Harrison’s advice to rest and goes to talk to Joe about Henry. Barry points out that he could be in and out with his father before anybody would see, but Joe returns that his father will then be on the run, “and he’s not as fast as you.” He advises Barry that the worst thing out there isn’t the monsters; it’s the feeling of uselessness, of not being able to save everybody. Some things you just have to live with. Joe is the best superhero mentor you can have, guys. Barry’s being raised by his evil dad and his good dad, and I love it.

Meanwhile, Iris shows up to talk to Eddie. She tells him he’s the first serious relationship she’s ever had, and that telling her father about it makes it real. I guess it’s real now because they’re kissing in front of the awesome Justice mural (Mel, if I keep recapping this show, do you think I can get a copy of that for my mantle?) and you KNOW cops are notorious gossips. Better tell Joe quick! At STAR labs, Barry and Caitlin talk about the dead people in their lives and how that hurts. Barry offers to accompany Caitlin to the hall, where Ronnie died annnnnd flashback.

Ronnie apparently managed to redirect the blast to go up instead of outward, and he and Caitlin manage to tearfully say good-bye, and it’s tragic. (I SEE THAT 52 ON THE WALL, DC) Up in the lab, Cisco and Harrison have ID’d the toxin as hydrogen cyanide, with a sedative inside. Barry recognizes this as a death row thing, and they ID Kyle Nimbus, a hitman for the Darbinian crime family who was being executed right as the lightning struck. You’re telling me a guy with the last name of Nimbus turns into a cloud of poisonous gas? Oh, show, you’re delightful. Never stop. They figure out the third person on the Mist’s list: Joe, the lead detective. So it’s probably a bad thing that Joe’s at the prison to visit Henry and Kyle Nimbus shows up? Mmmkay.

Good thing Caitlin’s reverse-engineered an antidote! Joe tells Henry he’s reopening the case, but before they can get much further, Nimbus shows up and attacks the guard and Joe. Barry arrives not long after with the antidote, carefully blurring his face before his father can recognize him (though c’mon, this is the same universe where Oliver wore greasepaint as a disguise for over a year, so I fully believe that even with the mask on, nobody would recognize him), and takes off to fight Nimbus. It…basically turns into a giant game of keepaway, with Barry running around to exhaust Nimbus, who has to regenerate into his human form periodically. If anything, it’s probably the weakest part of the episode.

We come back from commercial break to Joe in a hospital bed, snarking back and forth at Barry (“I miss being able to ground you.”), and Barry tells him that he was right: they need to get Henry out of prison the right way. Eddie interruptus strikes for the millionth time when Iris and Eddie show up, and Joe tells them he knows they’re dating. C’mon, he’s a detective and they are now canonically terrible liars. He’s angry, so Eddie gives them a moment and goes outside to look into the witness protection program. Joe promises to do his best not to shoot Eddie, which is all Iris asks. He doesn’t like complicated, but I think he likes his daughter more.

The Mist is now imprisoned at the Particle Incarcerator (tm Lexie) and is not happy about that and while I’m wondering if he needs to, um, eat or anything humane, Cisco and Caitlin talk about Ronnie and his sacrifice and go off to get either drunk or chip-faced, as the legendary Gracie Hart once put it. Barry visits Henry in prison, and we get Barry’s closing monologue over shots of Iris updating her Streak Lives blog, Cisco and Caitlin eating ice cream, Barry saving a woman from a mugging.

The required Harrison is Creepy scene time is here! Harrison drinks and stares at the outfit and flashes back to nine months before and his little hideout/braille room. The hologram this time shows Barry getting struck by lightning: “See you soon, Barry.”