An amalgamation of Doctor Who, Prison Break and a low-budget Avengers. That’s the best way that I can describe the second part of the pilot of Legends of Tomorrow. Where there wasn’t some wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff going on, there was a whole bunch of action. Throw in the subplot involving Snart and Ray getting stuck in Savage’s inbuilt prison cell and you’ve got a combination of the three things that I really expected, and in a way wanted, this show to be.
Given how extremely lacking last week’s premiere was, I was surprised to see how well put-together this episode was. It’s still worth noting that in terms of what you’d generally want from a television show - deep character development, realistic and smart dialogue, great acting among other things - Legends of Tomorrow has yet to deliver.
Yet, this certainly wasn’t a bad thing, because the show was able to deliver what the trailers and pre-air press promised. Free of the need for long narration and exposition and set-up, part two of the pilot got right down to business and did exactly what was needed: a lot of people firing flames and ice (I didn’t particularly want to describe Snart’s gun as shooting “cold”) and flying about against an innumerable amount of henchmen while learning the hard way not to screw with time.
And that’s totally fine. Not every show needs to be a Breaking Bad. I don’t need to have to think long and hard about what I just watched for every show. What this show can be is pure entertainment. Guns and lasers and fire and blowing things up and sarcastic dialogue. That’s how the show was sold. That’s how it can be good.
Still, even when this wasn’t happening, what we got instead was development for arguably the most interesting concept that the show can explore: the dangers of time travel. It seemed pretty obvious that the group would do something to cause issues in the timeline, and that they’d do so quite quickly, but I enjoyed how the entire episode basically revolved around them having to clean up the mess that Ray made in leaving behind a piece of his tech.
If I were to be cynical about it, basing most of an episode around relying on the stupidity of the supposed heroes isn’t necessarily a good idea. But this isn’t exactly your standard team of heroes, nor are they dealing with any sort of realistic construct in which minor mistakes are meaningless. More importantly, looking at it from the outside, I struggle to comprehend how the show can do a 16 episode season without structuring much of the content around the group making problems for themselves. There’s only so much that the show can do with the idea of travelling to one time to stop Savage and repeatedly failing to do so.
Stein’s story was easily the most interesting of the hour as we were treated to his much younger self. Sara, in particular, enjoyed the experience, choosing to accept Marty’s offer of marijuana and being quite flirtatious with him. It was an entertaining set of scenes, but more importantly, the ramifications of time travel were intriguing to watch unfold. A show with a premise such as this needs to explore this side of things, and it was great to see Legends do it.
What weighed the episode down was the storyline involving the Hawk people. They were by far the least interesting aspect of both parts of the crossover that introduced them, which was never a good sign, and this continued over into both parts of this pilot. Particularly, where the show attempted to force the romance that they were supposedly destined to have, things grinded to somewhat of a halt. It’s still a struggle for me to accept their continued reincarnation story, particularly given the recurrence of the utterly abysmal flashbacks outlining their birth - or, rather, death - into beings capable of reincarnation.
Yet, the thing that irked me most: clichéd trickery whereby Kendra must be the one to kill Savage, despite Rip stating in the preceding episode that it must be either Kendra or Carter (a clichéd point as is) leaves me wondering why the writers think this to be a good plot point. It’s lazy. Either this was the plan all along, which is dumb - suggesting that he could only be killed by the Hawks was bad enough; if they wanted to make it clear that only Kendra can kill Savage, they should have done so last week - or they wrote themselves into a corner and this was the best way of getting out of it. Neither option is preferable.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Carter will most likely return, I might be pleased with his death, despite the problems with how it came about and Kendra’s sudden memory of her feelings for him, yet another mark in the negative column. Without him the show might be able to free its arms more, but instead, we’re probably going to end up with the same problems with their characters.
Also ever-present and frustrating? Vandal Savage. As much as Legends of Tomorrow has tried in this pilot and during the Flash-Arrow crossover to present him as intimidating, I just don’t see it. By this point, I’m beginning to think that Casper Crump is extremely miscast in the role. Despite the actions of the character, Crump’s attempts to make Savage seem like a credible threat are falling short and, as a result, the show is suffering.
Legends of Tomorrow’s second hour was far more promising than the first, with far fewer issues to be seen. There are problems still to address, but right now, I’m reminded of the expectation for the show that had drained out of me following the first instalment.
Odds and ends:
- Does Stein’s alpha detector boil an egg at 30 paces and go “ding”?
- When Arrow debuted back in October 2012, the “My name is Oliver Queen” opening voiceover was a fun gimmick. And I still cope with it there because of that fact. But can we please, please, please stop having one for every other show? Just use a previously and be done with it.
- So, Legends is taking to keeping the Waverider a secret from people in the same way as Arrow and Flash take to hiding the identity of their titular characters?
- “When I was a kid, my dad brought me along on jobs.” Not that I didn’t already realise it from his appearances on The Flash, but Snart could really benefit from therapy.
- “In another life, you could have been an electrical engineer.” I guess ‘structural engineer’, Michael’s job in Prison Break, would have been too on-the-nose, right?
- “I don’t just burn, pal. I blast things too.” Show, don’t tell. Also, come on. At least try with the dialogue.
- Neal McDonough appearing as Damien Darkh was a fun little easter egg.
What did you think of Legends of Tomorrow’s second episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!
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