As far as longitudinal plotting goes, Best Served Cold serves a specific purpose: to wipe Whitney Stane’s memory.

With this episode, Stane has been reverted back to her first appearance. She doesn’t remember being Madame Masque, that Tony Stark is Iron Man—nothing. She’s just a rich girl with daddy issues and a crush on Stark.

I dislike the “amnesia” trick. It wipes away character development and wastes the audience’s time. If the creators did not want to develop Whitney Stane’s character in a certain way, they should not have done it. As the grim reaper once told Peter Griffin, “No mulligans.”

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like Best Served Cold. This is a good episode with a silly epilogue.

In summation, Whitney Stane is sick. Using the Masque technology has poisoned her. Obadiah Stane, her father, contracts with a villain scientist, the Blizzard, to heal her. Meanwhile, Stark tries to find a cure of his own.

There’s a lot of tension among the players. The Blizzard hates Iron Man and wants revenge against Obadiah Stane. Stark also hates Stane but wants to help his daughter. Whitney is hallucinating and trying to kill her own father.

So, basically, everybody hates Obadiah Stane. Meanwhile, Obadiah wants to save his daughter—even though she wants to kill him, and even if he has to defrost another psychopath who wants to murder him to do it.

The writers juggle the tensions well. My only knocks on Best Served Cold involve its clipped third act. Stark uses part of the mechanism that keeps his heart beating to save Whitney. Previously, Stark spends a lot of time talking about how dangerous that would be; but we don’t see any consequences for Stark after he makes the sacrifice. It leaves the audience wondering why he didn’t just do that 15 minutes ago.

And then there’s that amnesia trick…