TV Reviews: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 02 Episode 16: Trajectory

After an unfortunate hiatus, Flash has returned, and the quest for Barry to become faster and finally defeat Zoom has begun.

What “Trajectory” offered was interesting in concept, if not in execution. With Barry desiring to become faster, and failing in most attempts, the return of Velocity 9 made for an interesting moral dilemma. After all, if every speedster he knew was cheating to be faster, shouldn’t Barry? The obvious answer of “NO!” aside, it was interesting. And it was great to see Wells E2 be the voice of reason here, as he has been known to take shortcuts a lot to get what he wants.

That being said, the arrival of Trajectory was both fun and confusing. On one hand, we got to see another villain be like their comic book counterpart. As in the comics, Trajectory has mental issues. It was fun to see a split personality thing going on here. As it was also to see that she wasn’t a “standard” metahuman, but rather a normal person who enhanced themselves with science.  But…it came with some curious questions. If she made the drug to get faster and thus enhance her work…why didn’t she do that? Yes, she had split personalities, but that still doesn’t explain it.

Also, how could she be faster than Flash via the drug? Yes, it gives you speed, but it didn’t make Jay faster than he was before. It just gave his speed back temporarily, why did it have a different effect on her? While I may be nitpicking, they say every episode that Flash is the “Fastest Man Alive” and yet we’ve met quite a few people who have put that into question.

A fun side story in this episode was about Wells E2 and Jesse. As the latter found out what the former did to try and save her. Again, another interesting conflict in theory, but not well executed by the end. The buildup was great, and their numerous chats lended credence to this. Wells E2 noting how he would never lose her was both beautiful and kind of scary. And her rebuttal that maybe the world shouldn’t suffer because he tried to save her was also compelling.

However, her outright hatred of him doing whatever it took to save her was kind of off. As any true and good parent would do anything to save their child. And most children know that for better for worse. Then, her “exit” was both strange and near impossible. Where did she get the money to go to Opal City? WHY is she going to Opal City of all places? Questions abound, and we likely won’t get any answers.

A storyline that felt completely pointless and out of place was with Iris and her new editor. I honestly tuned this part out cause it felt so weird. They’re trying to make this new editor J. Jonah Jameson, and yet even Jamison would be waiting for the truth before printing an article. After all, he hates redaction articles. But this guy was bent on making Flash a villain. And then Iris asking him to have coffee with her…and yeah it went downhill after that.

What made it more weird was that Barry and Iris talked about how they were married in the future and E2, which of course made it awkward for them AND for us. Yet another reason why it shouldn’t have been revealed to her in the first place.

The ending was interesting, as the team “found out” that Jay is Zoom…except that’s not exactly true…kind of…we still don’t know to be honest. What I did like was that Barry couldn’t help but scream at the fact that another man he trusted turned out to be his greatest foe. Again, not the full truth, but still a good scene.

“Trajectory” wasn’t the best episode to set Flash back on course, but it did do some things right, and hopefully it’ll improve now that we’re back until the end (hopefully!). But, time is running out, and this season is getting dangerously close to a mediocre overall score.