Review- The Flash Season 2 Episode 16: “Trajectory”

Check out Our Review [WITH SPOILERS] for The Flash Episode 16: “Trajectory”

This week on The Flash, the show makes some obvious allusions to heroin addiction while setting things up for the last half of the season. It all feels like filler but there is at least some stuff to enjoy.

Let’s start with the new villain, a new troubled female speedster named Trajectory. She out-powers Barry from Jump Street and the whole episode is about Barry trying to find the speed to take her down. It’s all sort of a warm-up battle for Zoom as Barry is tempted to take the Velocity Nine drug in order to defeat this new speedster menace. In fact, it is the Velocity drug that gives Trajectory her speed. Turns out, Trajectory is a chemist friend of Caitlin Snow who synthesized the drug herself after Snow came to her for help. Now, we have an obvious analogy to drug addiction as the Velocity drug has turned this once mild-mannered chemist into an addicted menace.

Barry must avoid the same fate while still maintaining his humanity. Barry needn’t worry as the girl took so much speed drug, she basically burned herself out and turned into pure energy. I guess she learned nothing from John Belushi.

The battle with Trajectory is a thinly veiled cautionary tale, but it did allow for the highlighting of the Harrison Wells/ Jesse Wells relationship. Jesse becomes a bit annoying this week as she rebels against her father. It is all sort of drama for drama’s sake as the episode never found real logic for Jesse’s behavior, but it does create some poignant moments with Harrison Wells as a father. This is a man driven to keep his daughter safe whether she likes it or not and for reasons never properly explained, Jesse lashes out at her father because of this and goes it alone. Oh, by the way, she is also infected with Velocity Nine thanks to Trajectory so look for that to have some repercussions down the road.

There is some fun stuff with Cisco as he gets dire, ‘vibed’ warnings from Jay Garrick’s helmet; there is an inexplicably dull subplot with Iris West and her boss who go out on a non-date, and finally, our heroes come to the realization that Zoom is, in fact, Jay. The next few episodes should be loaded as Team Flash must come to terms with this betrayal, and this fascinating direction is welcome because this week’s episode of The Flash was just kind of there.