“Why don’t you do yourself a favor, Biff. Keep walking before you really embarrass yourself.”
With as big and elaborate a story that we already have so far in Legends of Tomorrow, making things fresh is always a plus. Putting the characters in a new environment, changing the story and shuffling the spotlight keeps us engrossed in a story. But even with those factors and a very heavily stylized environment, which director Joe Dante presented to us fantastically, things can still be a little bland in the end. From the beginning, I thought the setting to our story was fantastic. The beauty of a time travel story device lets you play around with a lot of environments and looks. It would have been a shame if they didn’t use the 50s Pleasantville backdrop at least once. Huge shout out to the Back to the Future references as well.
From a big picture aspect I thought the story was good. The intricacies of it was what I thought came off a little bland. We were again reintroduced to Savage’s origin story in a sense when we were shown the same meteor that gave him his powers. It also made a lot of sense that Savage was trying to use the monsters to create an army. But I found myself questioning a lot of what had to do with these winged creatures. I really wanted a bit more info on them. Correct me if I’m wrong, but were they even given a name? They were also stopped awfully easy by the team at the end to be considered a real threat. When they put effort into all aspects of the story, like the episode where Savage was trying to create a Soviet Firestorm, and not just a stylized backdrop to tell it in, an episode can really shine. Even more importantly than the 50s backdrop and the old monster movie feel Joe Dante gave us, the story touched on a lot of serious issues from the 1950s like race and sexuality. I give two thumbs up to the people at DC for including this intelligent storytelling. It may not be fast paced action and adventure, but it’s something beneficial to see in today’s day and age, especially to younger viewers.
Sara, in my opinion, was given most of the spotlight in this episode and I think she really ran with it. I liked that her character did kick ass like we always expect, but she also moved forward emotionally with the fact that she realized she’s feeling again. It was interesting to see her show such straightforward and strong romantic emotions after everything that happened to her with her death and rebirth in the Lazarus Pit. Sara’s lines about Ra's al-Ghul, ‘teaching her to kill someone slowly' and the callbacks to it was really some great writing.
I still don’t see much of a point to the romantic coupling of Kendra and Ray, but I have said before it could lead to big ramifications down the line, especially if we see the return of Carter Hall. Speaking of Ray, I still want to see consistency and really just more from him. The past few episodes we were given the goofy Ray. This episode we got the lady killer who was wooing Kendra and trying to protect her when she made a move against Savage. I’d really like to see some consistency in the way he acts as a character, and maybe even more of him as a leader. If I’m being even pickier, I want to see him shrink and grow more too. That short second where he snuck into Savage’s house looked great from a special effects standpoint.
I’m pretty eager for the next episode on March 31. The idea of teammates being left behind is something we haven’t been exposed to yet. It could change the whole dynamic of our team as we know it.
Written by Mark Storey, LoT Beat Writer -- Click to read Mark's posts.
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