Recap / The Flash 2014 S 2 E 3 Family Of Rogues

Snart attack.

Season 2, Episode 3:

Family of Rogues

Lisa "Golden Glider" Snart comes to the team for help when she thinks her brother has been kidnapped, but Barry discovers the situation is much more complicated. Joe wrestles with telling Iris the truth about her mother.

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Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Being willing to kill his own daughter just to force his son into helping him, and doing this after he'd brutally abused her as a child? Lewis Snart, you will not be mourned by anyone.
• Antagonist in Mourning: When he sees Lewis shoot "Sam" (Barry in disguise), Lenny's apology seems genuine.
• Artistic License – Engineering: Any real high-security keypad would lock up and trigger an alarm after multiple consecutive failed attempts at entering the password, specifically to prevent exactly what Barry did from working.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Captain Cold can apparently freeze a laser.
    • This is given an at least pseudoscientific explanation here.
  • Thermite burns very hot, but it's also extremely stable (hard to ignite) and very slow-burning. In other words, the exact opposite of an explosive substance. It certainly doesn't ignite merely through contact with air. And even if it did, that would be absurdly easy to work around, especially in a physics lab which probably has giant canisters of liquid nitrogen handy.
  • Cold does not have an ultraviolet signature. The hotter the substance the shorter the wavelength of the blackbody radiation, and the less radiation it emits. Basically the signature of cold is less radiation emission and emission at longer wavelengths.
• Armor-Piercing Response: After it appears that Lisa lied about her brother being kidnapped, Kaitlyn questions why they should believe anything she says since she and her whole family are criminals. Lisa shows them a scar and says she got it being a daughter, not a criminal then walks away, leaving everyone in shocked silence.
• Asshole Victim: Lewis Snart is killed by his own son. It's impossible to feel bad for that when he has been a horrible father and isn't above killing his own daughter in a specially gruesome way just to have Leonard as a pawn.
• Bait-and-Switch: Barry runs into Patty, and she says Flash. This shocks Barry until he learns she's actually referring to the coffee he's carrying, named after him. Doubles as Dramatic Irony.
• Be Gone Bribe: Joe gives his ex some money to try to get her to leave town. It doesn't work.
• Bond One-Liner: Leonard, regarding Lewis.
  Leonard: He broke my sister's heart. Only fair I break his.
• Broken Pedestal: Joe had told Iris that her supposedly dead mother had been a loving and excellent parent. She'd actually been a negligent drug addict.
• Bullet Catch: How Barry avoids being shot by Lewis. He moves so fast doing it that, when he falls back, he convincingly fakes death.
• The Bus Came Back: Linda makes a brief appearance, having last been seen in Season 1's "Rogue Time".
• Calling the Old Man Out: Captain Cold spends most of the episode snarking at his father's relatively amateurish theft (compared to Snart's own, better methods), and then has a short, brutal and effective one when he kills the man.
• The Cameo: Linda Park and once again Earth-2 Harrison Wells.
• Cardboard Prison: Averted. Barry and Joe don't think a normal cell in Iron Heights could hold Captain Cold, so they make arrangements to have him held in Iron Height's new meta-human wing which has more beefed up security measures.
• Cassandra Truth: Lisa Snart begs Team Flash for help finding Leonard, who she claims was kidnapped. When Barry finds Leonard, he's pulling a heist. Team Flash assumes that Lisa lied to them, since she and her brother are known to be dishonest criminals, but Barry eventually finds out that Leonard's father, Lewis, forcibly recruited Leonard onto his team, proving Lisa correct (as far as she knew.)
• Continuity Nod:
  • The two potential Rogue "recruits", Mardon and Bivolo, get mentioned.
  • Barry mentions helping Cold with the theft of the Khandaq Diamond.
• A Day in the Limelight: For Captain Cold and Golden Glider. Turns out there's more to them than just pulling heists.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cold turns it up around his dad:
  Lewis: Make me proud.
  Cold: Like I care.
• Dramatic Irony: Patty refers to the drinks in Barry's hands as "Flash," completely oblivious to the fact that the Flash is right in front of her.
  • Later, Cisco says he could call the Flash, who would be there in two seconds. Since Barry is less than a foot away...
• Dysfunctional Family: A father who would put a bomb in his own daughter's head. The Wests seem to have had some problems in the past, also.
• Enemy Mine: Captain Cold explains it well when he kills Lewis.
  Lewis: You're working with the Flash? I thought you hated him.
  Leonard: Not as much as I hate...hate you.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Dialed up to the max for Leonard and Lisa. Absolutely averted for their father.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Leonard and Lisa might not be saints, but neither of them are fond of their father's cruelty and sadism.
• Evil Is Petty: When Barry tries to offer his help to Leonard, who's dining at a bar, Leonard dismisses the assistance, thanks Barry for dinner, and leaves right when the tab is brought to the table.
• Explosive Leash: This is Lewis Snart's M.O.
• Failed a Spot Check: Barry somehow missed the giant posters in Jitters showing the Flash coffee.
• Family Title: The episode title refers to the Snarts.
• Faking the Dead: Barry-as-Sam actually faked being shot by Lewis. He grabbed the bullet before falling to the floor.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Iris trying to expose a real estate scam that "broke families", in light of the truth behind her Missing Mom.
  • Lisa getting knocked unconscious actually has more meaning behind it than just to prevent her from chasing her brother's kidnappers.
  • Barry and Cold's conversation at Iron Heights.
    Barry: There's good in you, Snart. There's a part of you that knows you don't have to let your past define you, that you don't have to be a criminal.
    Cold: So I should be a hero like you, Barry? What exactly does that pay again?
    Barry: It's just a matter of time.
• Freudian Excuse: With Lewis Snart as a parent, it's amazing Leonard and Lisa didn't turn out to be even worse people than mere supervillains.
• Friendly Enemy: The Snart siblings and Team Flash have clearly assumed this attitude regarding each other.
• Get Out!: Joe is not happy that his wife has come back to town 20 years after she walked away from the family, telling her it's too little too late for to reconcile with him and Iris.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Fortunately, the screen transitions to Lenny and Lewis when the latter detonates an Explosive Leash on his goon. We don't even see much of the remains from the neck up, or when CCPD finds the corpse.
• Hypocrite: Lewis sees himself in the position to abuse his children. If somebody else however just as much as insults one of them, he'll blow their heads off.
• I Have Your Wife: Lewis threatens to set off a thermite bomb implanted in Lisa if Leonard refuses to assist him in his heist.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When Lenny freezes his father, it looks like an ice spear was run through him.
• Intrepid Reporter: Iris is finally getting more hands-on with her job by investigating a scam nearly at the cost of her life.
• Insistent Terminology: It's a Cold Gun, not a Freeze Ray.
• Irony: Anyone else notice the oddity of Lenny requesting Barry to pass the salt?
• Laser-Guided Karma: Cold kills his father by freezing his heart solid. The man stuck a bomb in his daughter's neck to gain his son's cooperation and pulled enough For the Evulz stunts that not even Barry is protesting his death.
• Love Is a Weakness: Lewis uses Cold's love for Lisa against to get him to do his bidding, and admonishes the Rogues' avoidance of civilian casualties.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The beginning is a full-blown Lois Lane/Superman homage.
  • The Drakon brand of security keypads references the Green Arrow villain Constantine Drakon (who himself had appeared in the pilot episode of Arrow).
  • To crack the keypad as "Sam", Barry enters all possible number combinations at Super-Speed. Wally West tried to do the same thing to escape a cell in the Justice League episode "A Better World", but was stopped by Batman, who guessed the correct code.
  • Iron Heights is now tailored to house metahumans. The Pipeline is now at the same location as its comics namesake, although it's implied the STAR Labs Pipeline is still functional.
  • With a touch of Not His Sled: In the comics, Cold couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger on his dad, he had to have Heat Wave do it. Then again, in the comics, Lisa was long-dead and Lewis hadn't recently threatened her life...
  • When Barry visits Cold in prison, Cold reminds him that he still knows his identity, and that Barry had better hope Cold doesn't talk in his sleep. In the comics, Iris discovered Barry's identity when she heard him talking in his sleep.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Lewis pulling You Have Failed Me on his goon and not properly disposing of the corpse for the police to find, sets up Barry's plan to infiltrate Lewis' gang.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Lisa was knocked out and Leonard was kidnapped in the middle of a heist. What did Mick do? He ran off with the loot.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: It is the change in momentum. By altering Irises' momentum from falling down to suddenly moving fast enough to so she would go up to the roof, Iris experienced more G's than she would hitting the ground. Presumably what saved her was some undefined property of the speed force.
• Oh, Crap!: When Lewis learns that Team Flash removed the bomb from Lisa's head and realizes he's lost his leverage over his son he knows what's going to happen.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • The normally unfettered Lisa displays genuine shock when Barry tells her that Lenny is back to working for their hated father.
  • Considering Lenny's hatred of being forced into doing anything, Barry observes that he would probably have tried to remove the explosive device if it was in his own head, which allows him to deduce that Lewis is threatening Lisa to get his son's cooperation.
• Password Slot Machine: Barry does it to unlock a door.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Snart puts a block of ice through his father's heart. Although he's broken his promise to Barry not to kill any more, Barry is not especially distressed by it. It's especially telling that this is the one crime Snart is perfectly willing to go to jail for.
• Properly Paranoid: After finally arresting Leonard Snart, Barry and Joe agree that it's probably for the best to transfer him to the metahuman wing of Iron Heights.
• Red Herring
  • Two of the three cliffhangers from the previous episode get Out of Focus: Professor Stein's collapse was only to briefly remove him from this episode's plot (and set up another cliffhanger), and Francine West shows up only to give Joe something to angst about (namely, keeping a secret from Iris again).
  • The fact that Joe keeps Barry and Iris in the dark implied that there was fault on Joe's part. Mrs. West was more to blame on her "disappearance" than Joe was.
  • There was some speculation that with her showing up, Wally would potentially get a mention, at least. Nope.
• Ship Tease:
  • Cisco and Lisa's Foe Romantic Subtext was at its highest peak yet this episode.
  • Barry and Patty continue their flirting. So does Jay and Caitlin.
  • Subverted by Joe and his ex-wife, as he immediately tells her to Get Out! of his and their daughter's life complete with a Be Gone Bribe.
• Shout-Out: Catching a bullet in mid-air and covering it by falling to the ground? Then casually tossing it aside when you're clear? Sounds familiar.
• Super Window Jump: Iris sends Barry an SOS, and learning she's on a skyscraper, he suggests that she pull one off. Iris was very hesitant of the plan even though Barry assures her he will catch her.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Leonart doesn't finish his meal and leaves the bill for Barry.
• Try Everything: Barry tries many number combinations to open a lock.
• Villain Episode: The Snart family is front and center in this episode, though it shows both Leonard and Lisa at their most sympathetic.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The episode has quite a number of heartwarming moments in spite of its especially nasty Monster of the Week.
• Wham Shot:
  • Professor Stein suddenly bursting into flames. Blue flames.
  • In The Stinger, Earth-2's Harrison Wells goes through the breach and lands through the other side in Star Labs' basement.
• Why Am I Ticking?: Lisa is unknowingly carrying around a thermite bomb in her neck.
• With Friends Like These...: During a Rogues' heist, Lenny gets kidnapped, Lisa gets knocked out, and Mick...makes off with the loot.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Barry tells Snart that he believes that deep down Leonard is actually a good person.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Lewis shoots Barry after he unlocks the door. Subverted when Barry uses his super speed to catch the bullet just before it hits him, and then pretends to die to keep Lewis from suspecting a thing. Barry then confronts Lewis in costume as the Flash.
• Your Head A-Splode: Lewis likes to implant bombs in peoples' heads to ensure compliance, even a daughter.