The Legends head back in time as they should have been doing all along and land in the middle of 1950’s America where Vandal Savage is pretending to be a doctor and where a bunch of teenagers have up and disappeared. Also, there are some flying things that may or may not be Batman.
Television is so groovy. People on it fall in love at the drop of a hat! Did your eternally beloved resurrected boyfriend get killed right in front of you? No problem! Shack up some someone new in only a few episodes! Are you a lesbian from 2016 stuck in the 1950’s? Great news, you just met another lesbian and she digs you, baby! Are you a black teenage man in the 1950’s with a taste for white meat? Don’t worry, my brother, she’s into you. Don’t let those klan robes and burning crosses get you down!
The character writing on this show is just… so bad. People do things for no reason, there’s no lead up to anything… these characters aren’t living lives, they’re reading the script and the script is being written by people who don’t seem to know what makes these characters tick.
For example… and I know I’ve harped on this before… the Kendra and Ray romance that came out of nowhere and makes no sense. These two fell in love, basically, because the writers told them to. There was no hint of it in the writing, no clue it was going to happen… just one day a writer hit the switch and screamed, “RAY AND BIRD-NOSE MAKE WITH THE SEXY TIMES DUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRR!”
Now, as I understand it, the stranding that takes place at the end of this episode is supposed to last several months. If that’s the case and the writers are determined to make Rayndra a thing… or is that Kenray? THIS is when it should have happened. Where there is time and closeness and introspection and, most of all, a time to heal from LOSING YOUR BOYFRIEND THROUGH TIME WHO WAS KILLED IN FRONT OF YOU A FEW EPISODES AGO!
Sara isn’t being handled very well either. So, she learned she can still feel because of her magical lesbian-finding superpowers? Who the heck talks like that and who feels that way about someone else after only a single day? You want to know what that makes Sara look like? Like someone completely full of crap.
Don’t get me wrong. As an episode of Legends of Tomorrow goes, this wasn’t even that horrible. I applaud the show for actually saying something about racism existing in the 1950’s even though next to nothing was done with it. Heck, most TV shows just kind of gloss over it like we can’t handle the idea or we don’t know that Donald Trump is a thing happening now.
I do have to say, though, that it did highlight just how woefully incompetent Rip Hunter is as a captain that he send Ray and Kendra out together to pose as a married couple. He keeps saying that he doesn’t want to attract attention and yet, teams up an interracial pair in the 1950’s to pose as a married couple. Not only that, but knowing that Vandal Savage is out there, Hunter stupidly parades Kendra down the streets with a neon sign that says, “KILL ME!” If he were competent in the least little bit, he would have her feathery butt sitting on the Waverider where it’s safe. Savage would be dead in this episode if Rip had a brain cell working to his advantage.
While we’re on the subject, is there any reason they didn’t just kill Vandal Savage after they shot him out the window? He took a blast from Ray’s Iron Man suit. He had to have been hurt. Just… you know… climb out the window and kill him dead with that knife.
I also question the idiocy of keeping Firestorm’s two halves separated. If you ask me, Stein and Jax should always be on the same team. NO EXCEPTIONS! Firestorm could have fixed this mess in seconds, but apparently having Firestorm actually appear more than every other episode is expensive.
This show just can’t get its act together. I keep watching it wanting it to be better, but it just keeps airballing. I think I’ve found a new Heroes Reborn to vex me and make me angry.
Jason Gaston 