At times during the last season or so, Arrow has suffered greatly from a lack of focus, caused mostly by the introduction of a plethora of different characters, all of whom the show needs to spend time developing. Both ignorance and recognition of characters caused issues: either through underdevelopment or through overload.
So when Legends of Tomorrow, a show with no fewer than ten regulars, was announced, I was cautiously excited. Turns out, I should have just been cautious.
Let’s get this out of the way right now. Legends of Tomorrow isn’t a terrible show, nor is it a good one. And it will never be anything more than watchable and enjoyable for what it is: a completely disorganised hour of television with characters making sarcastic remarks at each another, mixed with more action than one can possibly desire.
If the first half of the pilot demonstrated anything, it’s that having so many characters to utilise in a 44 minute episode is overwhelming, and it’s impossible to give them all something to do AND add any sort of real meaning to the scenes. Less than ten minutes total were spent with the characters deciding to go on this adventure. That’s an insanely short amount of time to progress eight characters into kickstarting the show, with each character receiving one short scene before being convinced: Sara said yes after a quick chat with her sister, the Hawks were in after an off-screen fight (also featuring an appalling looking jump into their duel), Snart persuaded Rory that they should do this to continue to be thieves, Ray was game from the beginning and only sought out Oliver to say why he was leaving, while Stein was also up for the challenge but needed to drug Jax for him to go along (in one of the few highlights of the episode). What’s doubly frustrating about this is that both Arrow and The Flash spent considerable chunks of their pre-Christmas episodes setting up this show, and yet it still felt like the characters had some way to go before being ready to join this team.
Once we got past this set-up, we were left with a whole bunch of exposition as Rip, Stein, Ray and the Hawks went looking for Dr. Aldus Boardman, who made an appearance on tape during the Flash-Arrow crossover. Therein lied another problem I had with the hour. It was far too predictable. From very early on, I contemplated the idea of Kendra and Carter having had a child in a previous life, and that’s what happened. The team bringing Boardman with them was clearly going to result in his death, and again, that’s what happened. There wasn’t anything that played out that I wasn’t expecting to happen.Still, the real problem was in the lack of action that the pilot used. When the first trailer debuted back in May, it suggested a promise of a ton of fight sequences of all kinds. Yet, this episode felt extremely light on action, and in an hour that struggled through some sort of character development and narrative, it was very noticeable. The bar scene with Sara, Snart and Rory was the best scene of the pilot, and really what I want this show to do. A little bit of exposition featuring some banter back and forth (witty or not) followed by a bunch of guys getting beaten. It’s scenes like these that will make the show far more entertaining, and if we’re going to get little in the way of smart storytelling or character development, the show needs to embrace this idea.
That being said, one of the avenues I am intrigued to see the show explore is the way in which the team’s actions affect history. It’s a question that always surrounds time travel on television and in movies. By changing one seemingly insignificant moment, what kind of a ripple does that have on the rest of time? Chronos’ line to the onlookers whom he killed in the present day about whether they were integral to the timeline was a good way of introducing this idea, and more on this will make the show far more interesting.However, the show needs to be careful to avoid getting too complicated. Boardman’s death left open the question of whether or not the Hawks caused his demise, and it is this idea that could lead the show down a mind-bendingly complex path. Did this happen because of their appearance and discovery or was it always going to happen? - i.e. did their effort to save Boardman result in his death in the version of history alluded to by Rip, thus catching the events in a loop, or would he have died some other way in the same space of time? Both Arrow and Flash have displayed a difficulty in expanding simple storylines in the past, and one this complicated is difficult to pull off anyway. Perhaps it will be better if the show doesn’t attempt to answer these kinds of questions.
Perhaps I’ll have a much more positive outlook on the series after next week’s episode. Splitting a pilot into two episodes is smart, given how much the show has to deal with, but is also problematic when it comes to forming an opinion as it’s not quite finished introducing us to this world. Still, I feel that next Thursday’s hour has a long way to go in order to convince me that Legends of Tomorrow is capable of being anything really worth watching.
Odds and ends:
- Some of the dialogue on both Arrow and Flash can be corny at times, but it felt like Legends of Tomorrow turned that up to 11. “Kendra. You, my love, almost got us killed.”
- For a show as high budget as this, some of the special effects looked pretty bad. All of the VFX used in the scene where the team attempt to get past Chronos onto the ship looked terrible.
- Speaking of, how was Chronos able to shoot at four different targets all without sustaining any damage himself, when two of those targets were an imminent threat to him?
- Am I misinterpreting, or is the show saying that Savage caused all of the atrocities to happen to humanity? In which case, it means that he won’t be defeated any earlier in time than 2016.
- I’ll suspend disbelief quite a bit with this universe, but there’s no way that I’m getting convinced that Laurel had Cisco make a White Canary suit before now.
- Did we have to have narration for the first six minutes? And, more importantly, are we going to have a “My name is…” introduction in future episodes?
- “Unless you or Mr. Hall deliver the death blow, Savage can be restored from but a single cell.” Of all the potential explanations for Savage still being alive, this seems like one of the laziest.
- “I love the 70s!”
- “Have you two considered couples counselling?”
- “Whatever you roofied him with, I'd like some.” “I did not roofie him.” “Oh, I ain't judging.”
What did you think of the Legends of Tomorrow premiere? Hit the comments with your thoughts!
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