Frenemies Chapter 5: The Thief – Director: Lea Thompson/Writer: Steve Harper
This one starts five days ago at the scene of Gambler’s murder, where Cindy is standing beside his body, retracting her forearm blade. She notices Gambler’s laptop and grabs it, but has to hide it when she hears the JSA coming. She sees the Derringer beside Gambler’s body and picks it up, then fires it … but it looks like her arm had some kind of spasm and she fired the gun without meaning to.
In the present, Cameron walks Courtney home after their date and they
smooch a little more. She tells him she’ll do some research on his “condition”. Pat notices what a good mood she’s in, but she doesn’t tell him why. He lets her know Sylvester went to the tunnels with Yolanda and Rick to look for Dragon King and since he has the Staff, there’s not much Courtney can do to help. She does sneak into the basement and take the JSA file on Icicle. In the old Injustice Society headquarters, Cindy is still trying to crack Gambler’s password and finally 
decides to use his own cracking software to do it for her. That works and she gets a list of all her father’s hidden labs, probably hoping something in one of them will stop her from turning reptilian. She hears the JSA coming and grabs the laptop and some other stuff before taking off. Sylvester and the others find some of Cindy’s experiments and realize someone has been using the place. Sylvester freaks out about whoever’s behind everything, vowing to take them down no matter who it turns out to be.
Later, Sylvester feels bad about losing his shit and gets up to polish the silverware (and no, that’s not a euphemism). Once again, he figures he’s not a good role model, but Barbara talks about how she had trouble relating
to Mike at first but now considers him her son. The next day, Sylvester talks to Mike about being in the JSA and suggests he needs to do something big to prove himself. Sylvester mentions Dragon King having other labs and that he plans to check one out while Courtney’s at school. Mike tells Jakeem what Sylvester said about proving themselves, but they’re interrupted by a couple of bullies demanding money. They try wishing for the bullies to be nicer (which just makes them say “please” before getting physical), but then Cindy shows up and kicks their asses. Sylvester goes to Dragon King’s hidden lab south of 
Blue Valley and manages to get inside with a little remote help from Beth in cracking the password. The place seems like it hasn’t been used in years. At the diner (where we find out Maria is sweet on Zeek), Pat talks to Barbara about Courtney’s strange behaviour lately and Barbara points out the obvious … Courtney has a crush on someone. The Crocks show up and tell Pat and Courtney how they’ve interrogated (vigorously) all the people Gambler was blackmailing, and he apparently paid all of them back.
At school, Courtney and Cindy team up in chemistry lab and Courtney tells her that she’s kinda seeing Cameron. Cindy says she’s happy for her, but
urges Courtney not to tell Cameron the truth about his father being a villain, pointing out that she and Courtney both had horrible fathers and there’s no reason to make Cameron feel like they do. Later, Mike asks Cindy to join him and Jakeem in their new “Young All-Stars” team, which Cindy finds hilarious. At lunch, Courtney’s 
distracted and things get tense when Cameron stops by to say hello. Rick and Yolanda aren’t happy about her getting close to Cameron and Courtney doesn’t mention that his cold powers have manifested. After lunch, Cindy talks to Cameron about him dating Courtney and mentions him being institutionalized for anger issues when he was a kid. She pushes him until his eyes ice over, which was probably her intention all along.
At the garage, the JSA tell Sylvester about Courtney getting mad at lunch and he reminds them how the original JSA broke up over ideological differences. He encourages Yolanda to follow Cindy and when Beth
mentions how her parents want to get more involved with her superhero career, he reminds her that his sister was killed by Brainwave. At the diner, Cindy tells Courtney that Cameron (and his grandmother) has ice powers, then realizes Courtney already knew. She urges Courtney to walk away from Cameron since it can’t end well between them. At the garage, Rick is still having trouble fixing the hourglass and Sylvester suggests he remove the limiter, to allow him to have super-powers 24/7. At home, Beth tells her parents they need to back 
off from her Dr. Mid-Nite career so they don’t get hurt. Cindy checks her father’s lab (the same one Sylvester checked earlier) for something to halt her metamorphosis, but doesn’t seem to find anything. Meanwhile, Yolanda breaks into Cindy’s house and snoops around, finding Gambler’s laptop under the bed. Courtney is at Cameron’s place, showing him pictures of ice hotels and urging him to use his powers to create something like them. Neither of them notice his grandparents giving Courtney a death stare.
This is a pretty good episode, with the evidence against Cindy really seeming to pile up. But I still think it could all be a fake-out. When we see
Cindy standing over Gambler’s body with her knife out, she kinda looks surprised, and she’s definitely surprised a couple minutes later when she shoots off his gun. It looks like the gunshot was caused by an involuntary spasm, so maybe that’s why she had her forearm knife out too. Or maybe someone else is controlling her, or her change into reptile form is making her lose control of her motor functions. She does seem to genuinely care about Courtney being hurt by Cameron, so she can’t be all bad. And stealing Gambler’s laptop was obviously just to get the locations of her father’s labs so she could look for something to cure her condition. I’m kinda wondering about Sylvester in 
this episode; he sometimes seems rational and gives good advice and at other times he’s freaking out and telling the kids to do irresponsible stuff (like urging Rick to remove the hourglass limiter, Yolanda to go after Cindy, and Mike to get more involved in the investigation). It’s almost like he’s trying to sabotage the team, but I can’t figure out why … unless Sylvester killed the Gambler? He does seem to have anger issues and maybe some PTSD, so maybe he had one of his freak-outs and wasted Gambler. As usual, there were some nice comedic touches in the episode, like Mike and Jakeem’s offer to Cindy, Sylvester’s mention of Crimson Avenger, and the Crocks bragging about their new altruism supercharging their sex lives.
Favourite Quotes:
- “What the hell’s a Wotan? Is that like a skin disease?” Mike’s reaction when Sylvester mentions Dr. Fate’s archenemy, Wotan.
- “I like my comfort zone. It doesn’t have Crocodile People in it.” Jakeem’s reply when Mike says they need to get out of their comfort zone.
- “You don’t want him to feel like us.” Cindy warning Courtney not to disillusion Cameron about his father, while pointing out some common ground between the two of them.