Welcome to Last Night on TV, our ongoing series that looks back at what happened on television the night before. If we’re going to stay up all night and watch TV, we might as well talk about it the next day.
The Flash has returned from hiatus and has brought back with it all the wonderful things that make DC’s television offerings great. Chiefly, character development and the exploration of interesting themes. In a week where we’re all about to be pummeled by Zack Snyder’s montage of chaos Batman v Superman, this respite is a welcomed one.
This week’s episode allows its theme to simmer a little bit, opening with Team Flash trying to figure out ways to creatively splatter Barry against the side of a mountain. Since the loss of Jay Garrick to Zoom’s speedster sword hands, they’ve been looking for a way to become faster. As per usual, another metahuman shows up with just the right formula for being Faster Than The Flash. The only problem is that Trajectory, the Evil Lady Flash played joyously by Days of Our Lives star Allison Paige, has been using a version of the Velocity-9 serum developed by Jay and Caitlin. And it’s broken her mind into two opposing halves, making her as schizophrenic as she is fast.
The episode deals with the notion of cheating — crossing the line to be the best — in numerous ways. Barry is tempted to take Velocity-9 himself in order to become a supremely fast hero, but it’s Harry that ultimately talks him out of it. It’s not unlike a conversation someone may have had with a baseball player who is looking to juice up to hit more homeruns. Is using a performance enhancing drug worth it? In baseball, no. But in superhero world? It’s an interesting question. One could argue that the Speedforce making its way into Barry’s body via the lightning strike is a form of performance enhancing drug, though not taken willfully by the host. It’s not as if Barry was born with his abilities. The real danger to Velocity-9 is that it clearly isn’t good for the brain, though the show plays it as Barry wanting to go the natural route. I suppose that means eating a lot of kale and running on his cosmic treadmill a lot. For Barry, it’s a weird line of logic that keeps him from using the V-9, but it plays into another storyline perfectly and the Flash Writers room loves symmetry.
The other half of the thematic equation is the relationship breakdown between Harry and his daughter Jesse. The show needed a way to get us to the point where Jesse leaves for Opal City and may eventually returns as speedster Jesse Quick (because if this show needs anything, it’s more speedsters). What better way than to wrap her relationship with her father up in this theme of someone who is willing to go too far over the line to accomplish their goals. Harry’s impulse to protect his daughter at all costs, though hypocritical in light of his conversation with Barry about doping, is what ultimately gets her injected with V-9 and almost killed at the hands of Trajectory. Though if I had to guess, a non-volatile dose of that V-9 is still lurking in Jesse’s bloodstream post-transfusion. Hello, Jesse Quick! Let’s just hope that when Violett Beane returns as a speedster, she gets a better costume than what Jesse Quick had in the comics (see the image to the right). It’s safe to assume this show will allow her to keep some dignity.
The end of “Trajectory” allows Flash‘s creative team to do what they love most: move quickly to tie up any loose ends. A little vibe from Cisco and now everyone knows what the audience found out at the end of the last episode: Jay Garrick, or someone who looks a lot like Jay Garrick, is Zoom. The honeymoon is over for Caitlin, Barry is off screaming in the woods and Team Flash is devastated. It would appear that the season its home stretch. Seven episodes left to solve a problem like Zoom.
A few stray observations: A number of fun little meta jokes in this episode, including Jesse’s reference to Earth-2 Beyonce being a Senator, Harry referencing a Kanye West lyric and Eliza delivering a wonderful Law & Order punchline, to which former Law & Order star Jesse L. Martin gave a perfect reaction. It’s the little things that prove you can always find time for a little fun, even when you’re dealing with weighty superhero melodrama.
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