The Flash faces off against the State Of The Union
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Tuesday, February 5. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
The Flash (The CW, 8 p.m.): Chris Klein’s Cicada is a pretty weird villain. He’s a serial killer who targets metahumans, and his power depends on what’s essentially a meta-boomerang, which is connected somehow to a shard of dark-matter-imbued metal in his chest. It’s a Swiss Army Knife dagger, basically: It negates the powers of other metas, makes force fields, creates electricity, glows if a meta is nearby, and probably lots of other handy features. This season of The Flash has been entertaining, but some of Cicada’s stuff is, frankly, bullshit.
This could be an entirely Cicada-centric hour, and the bullshit quotient would still somehow be lower than the State Of The Union. Go ahead and watch whichever you choose, but hey, at least The Flash has Cisco Ramon and the word “schway.”
Regular coverage
Wild card
Finding Your Roots, “Freedom Tales” (PBS, 8 p.m.): Here’s some SOTU counter-programming for you. In this episode of PBS’s documentary series—in which celebrities discover their family histories with the help of Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a team of researchers—Michael Strahan and S. Epatha Merkerson learn about the “Freedom Tales” twining throughout their family trees. It’s affecting stuff, and well worth your time.
Merkerson also has some very controversial opinions on the hot-button issue of a hot dog’s position in relation to sandwichdom, which you can read over at The Takeout.