Oh, Legends of Tomorrow. You are so fucking weird.
1. Christmas?
Let me say this before I rip into this episode: I love Christmas. I love Christmas media, movies, decorations, the works. Love it.
That said, on February 7th, the last thing I want to do in the whole world is watch a Christmas episode. What are you, Legends, my four year old daughter? She’s still singing “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in the car, but she’s four – what’s your excuse?
This episode is set, primarily on Christmas Eve and Day 1776, and involves the Legends hurdling through time to stop the assassination of General George Washington before leading his troops across the Delaware. While it always fun to see historical figures pop up on Legends, it is far less exciting when we know exactly how the episode has to end. There is no way in hell that the show would actually kill off George Washington and, if they did, it would be my favorite show ever, I’d adopt a dog and name it Gideon, and stop picking on Ray and Nate for being a toothpaste commercial.
The episode, though, didn’t kill Washington, but almost killed Sara three times, and killed any momentum about a dozen times. So much of the episode is people doubting what they can/are supposed to do, it made me just want to shake my TV and say “FOR FUCK’S SAKE YOU ARE SUPERHEROES!”
The one positive part of that aspect of the episode was seeing Jax really step up and act like a boss – even if he ultimately gave evil Rip exactly what he wanted, barely saved Sara’s life, and did nothing to thwart the Legion of Doom.
Side note: did someone fill in Rip on that name – the Legion of Doom – because he pretty quickly starts calling them the Legion, and that seems like a weird thing for him to just infer/guess at.
2. Nate and Amaya, eh?
So, just like it did with Ray and Kendra last season, the show has paired up the superpowered female, fish out of water character and the bland white guy into a weird, rushed love story. This happened in the space of about 90 seconds at the top of the episode (where Nate flips a pancake twice between it hitting the griddle, rendering it totally unnecessary), and then went on to be the B-plot for the rest of the episode. This sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not: Nate fills in Amaya on Tinder, the term “chill,” and dating in the 21st century, while she pulls a Logan’s Run and makes him take his clothes off to stave off hypothermia. She eventually gives into his “Nate wants some sex” routine – and again, I’m not fucking kidding – asks her if they can fuck again instead of saving their friends/history/the United States of America.
I know I’m nitpicking, but fuck it: having Nate and Amaya pose as a married couple in 1776 is so amazingly absurd – hell, it wouldn’t have been accepted in Amaya’s native 1940s, let alone 165 years earlier. This episode went to so much trouble to put these two together, only to have the episode end with a robotic conversation about how team members shouldn’t fraternize.
But, Nate did say “Hitler ruins everything,” so it has that bit of cultural relevance going for it.
3. Atomic CGI
OK, so much like Paul McCartney in the weirdest scene from Help!, Ray gets stuck in his tiny state for most of the episode. Early on, Ray yells at Mick for leaving crumbs everywhere, setting up a “hilarious” scene where Ray is chased by a rat, a rat which Mick’s crumbs led to the ship. Let’s leave behind how dumb this is, and focus instead on how incredibly bad the CGI for these scenes were. It appears that someone pranked the production and stole the full-sized Atom suit, because I’m pretty sure every shot of Ray in it was 100% CGI. When I say “I’m pretty sure,” I mean that a child who doesn’t know what CGI is would never think it wasn’t. This was some seriously bad CGI, and totally inexcusable for a few reasons. This plot point had no purpose whatsoever, except to keep Ray from helping in any meaningful way. This isn’t the horrible Gus Fring half-exploded tie-straightening CGI, which was distracting but was a huge payoff. This was a throwaway plot point with the least realistic screen rat since The Princess Bride.
Continued below4. Building tension
Despite all the flaws with this episode, I have to give credit where credit is due: the episode built some real tension. At times, it seemed like every character was really in danger of either dying or having their situations permanently altered. Jax was the only person even remotely in control for most of the episode, and he almost cracked under the pressure of it. There were points in the episode where all help seemed lost, and the show doesn’t often pull of dramatic tension like that.
5. Flawed execution
And, sadly, it didn’t here either. After “killing” Sara twice, but having her able to walk out of the ship and find Jax and Rip literally five minutes after being revived, she stopped Jax from retrieving the Spear of Destiny fragment, as it seemed to imply that if Jax shot Rip, he would die, despite the fact that Jax could have shot him, oh, anywhere that could’ve simply injured him, letting him take the spear. Or even if he shot him in the gut, he was using a Revolutionary weapon, and we saw earlier in this very hour that a modern gunshot to the stomach won’t kill someone (as Sara survived just that).
This episode ended with the heroes in a worse situation than they started in, even after “winning” in almost any way you look at it, and removed any real chance of consequence or lasting impact of their actions here. It had almost no residual impact on the season as a whole, and killed a bunch of opportunities for fun stuff to play out over a few weeks/months.
Ugh. At least we have a break next week.
So, am I crazy or was this a really bad episode? Let me know in the comments!
