The Flash Season 5: 6 Ups & 1 Down From ‘Blocked’

Ups...

6. Cecile's Concerns About Her Parenting Skills

In a world in which speedsters, time-travellers and telepathic gorillas exist, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the show's protagonists are supposed to be real people with real feelings, real thoughts and real struggles. Thankfully, we were reminded of that in this week's episode.

Ever since Cecile was brought into the fold full-time as Joe's love interest, she has been a lot quirkier and happier than she ever was. She even took to gaining a metahuman ability during her pregnancy really well. Of course, there were those who thought that the storyline didn't merge well with the grim DeVoe arc of last season because it risked coming off as silly if it wasn't executed correctly.

However, this week's episode saw the new mother struggle with the fact that she was losing her abilities. Though the humour initially continued as she came up with some pretty out there solutions to maintain them, her real motivations soon became clear: she was simply terrified of not understanding why her daughter was crying. In extension, she was terrified of failing as a mother.

In that single moment, the show added some unexpectedly real gravity to this previously light-hearted storyline, and it worked incredibly well. Cecile wasn't a humorous caricature desperately holding onto a superpower, she was a struggling mother trying to ensure that she was there for her child no matter what, and this all resonated beautifully through Danielle Nicolet's incredible performance.