REVIEW: The Flash – Season 9, Episode 6, “The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky”

Television Reviews

What do you do when it’s the final season of your serialized superhero sci-fi show, you’ve got half the episodes you normally do, and you have to make every week count? You have a standalone episode without the main character that puts the most boring sidekicks in the lead roles, of course! “The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky” is one of those dull, corny Flash filler episodes with a lame villain-of-the-week who makes awful jokes and brings out the worst in the cast, and it’s so uninspired that it brings back one of the old throwaway metas.

With Barry and Iris on vacation, Cecile remembers she’s a lawyer and takes the case of Becky Sharpe, a meta with impossibly good luck who’s had a reversal of fortune and is accused of trying to kill her fiancé. Allegra helps her because she has nothing to do and all the good characters are gone. Blaine and Chester test Khione’s powers in a desperate attempt to make Khione interesting.

When Barry and Iris announce that they won’t be around this week, you know you’re in for a great one. But “The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky” makes up for their absence with… yeah, I got nothing. But Becky Sharpe is back! Remember Becky Sharpe? If not (and for which I wouldn’t blame you), she’s a metahuman whose power is that she has an unending supply of good luck. In her first appearance, which was in season 4, she was using her abilities to win big at casinos. She died in season 4, but she came back during “Crisis on Infinite Earths” because of her luck, which apparently exists after death. And she’s reformed, no longer using her powers for financial gain – which seems like a moot point when your powers are having literally everything turn out in your favor. But Becky’s newfound altruism has manifested in her luck rubbing off on those around her, an important plot point that the show forgets when it becomes inconvenient.

***SPOILERS***

But Becky’s luck turns when she gets engaged to the man of her dreams, Dom. Suddenly, nothing goes right for Becky anymore, and that culminates in her walking in on Dom bleeding from a massive head wound and the police arresting her for his attempted murder. But Kramer looks into Becky’s eyes and sees her soul or some such nonsense, so she just knows in her heart Becky’s innocent and asks Cecile to represent her. Allegra tags along because this is a girl episode (and I’m not trying to be derisive – well, not about that, anyway; a later scene has one of the women refer to them all as “badass bitches”), and we’re off on the dopiest mystery we’re likely to see till The Flash decides to waste more time on a standalone in its final season.

I’m not kidding about the mystery, either. “The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky” has one of the dumbest, most convoluted plots I’ve seen on this show. Becky’s bad luck is the result of her engagement ring, which has a red gem that reverses her powers. This is because Dom’s brother, Tony (whom we all know is the bad guy because he’s the only other character in the episode with a name), “helped” Dom pick it out, and for some reason, Dom thought buying an engagement ring with some weird red gem that isn’t a ruby would be a better idea than getting one with a diamond. Then, Tony attacked Dom and framed Becky for it because… he has gambling debts with some gangsters and wants Becky to run a card game in a local bar so he can win thanks to her bad luck and pay off what he owes.

So… why was any of this necessary? Did Tony even attempt to explain the situation and ask Becky for help? She’s a pretty nice lady; she’d have probably just gotten him out of trouble with her good luck powers, especially since he’s her fiancé’s brother. But fine; bad guys gonna bad guy, I guess. But the rest of the plan makes no sense, either. Why frame her for attempted murder? How does sending her to jail help Tony? Was he counting on them just letting her go? (That’s another problem? Why is Becky free all of a sudden? They said she’d have to spend the weekend in a holding cell, but she’s released when they find more evidence against her. What the hell is going on with this episode?) Then, she’s kidnapped so she can run a card game in the bar and lose on behalf of the house. But… she doesn’t work at the bar. How would any game run by someone who isn’t an employee there be honored? Do the owners take it on faith because she’s wearing an official-looking uniform? Wouldn’t it make more sense to forget the power-reversing ring and just kidnap Becky and have her give you good luck at the gaming table? And who are the guys who kidnap her? Are they working for Tony, or are they the guys he’s in debt to? If the former, how can he afford to hire henchmen but not pay his tab? If the latter, why are they helping Tony with this scheme? There are hand towels that are smarter than this episode.

So, what’s the point of “The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky?” The point is to make Cecile feel better about herself for being absent from her daughter’s life. Last week, Joe and their daughter, Jenna, moved out to the country and left Cecile behind to be a superhero/lawyer for the downtrodden, and she’s sad that she’s missing so much time with Jenna. She promises to be there for Jenna’s birthday breakfast, but she can’t make the last train out of Central City because she’s busy solving the world’s dumbest mystery, so she laments that she’s not around for her daughter. (Anyone else think of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles? “Those are the precious moments, too. They don’t come back again.”) But this is a modern show, so Allegra is there to assure Cecile that doing whatever she wants and sacrificing absolutely nothing is the best way to be a mom, and her daughter is lucky to have a mother who spends time with criminals instead of her. Thank God, because I needed something to make me like these two more. And what makes it all worse is that Danielle Nicolet and Kayla Compton aren’t nearly good enough actors to make any of this work. Their line delivery is terrible, like they’re reading The Three Little Pigs to a child at bedtime. The jokes aren’t funny, the drama has no weight, and you feel no sympathy for these self-centered whiners.

The rest of “The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky” is just as dull and lame. Chester (who is back to being goofy and obnoxious) and Blaine test Khione to see if she’s got Frost’s powers, and while Blaine establishes that he misses Frost (breakthrough!), Chester discovers that Khione isn’t a human or a metahuman. I’m so glad the final season killed Caitlin off-screen so we could delve into the secrets of a new, annoying character that the others constantly remind us is amazing because we’d never figure it out on our own. They also keep telling us what a cute couple Chester and Allegra are because the show knows everyone is sick to death of these two. Remember the final season of Friends, when they had fewer episodes and still had the nerve to make one of them a clip show? That’s what this crap feels like.