Board Thread:DC's Legends of Tomorrow discussions/@comment-9346948-20161104005311/@comment-27097330-20161105001507

Kir the Wizard wrote: On an unrelated note, DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Among the DCTV shows, this one always made me giddy with the sheer extraordinary stuff they sometimes pull out. It had its ups and downs, of course, with episodes like "River of Time" being a series of the team's fuck ups in an enclosed space for a whole ep.

But this episode's gotta be one of the worst.

The lazy zombie virus is barely explained. Why is Mick contaminated while alive and healed, while the Confederates had to die before becoming zombies? Why couldn't Nate and Sara just say "living dead" to explain what the heck are zombies? How could sharpshooters kill zombies, when even a single head was shown to be operational? Eeeeeeh, who cares.

Of cares, what matters in a show is the acting and the overall theme of your piece. And that's human slavery, with the main villain being an asshole plantation owner (played by a terrific actor, sad to see him wasted on such a minor and grotesque role). Who apparently cuts off his slaves' dicks for disobedience and keeps them caged like dogs beside the house. Well, his whole whipping act implies mental issues and affinity for BDSM, so I'm not gonna comment on that. What doesn't work is how this whole grotesque villainy is apparently not enough for Uncle Guggie to signal his virtues and beat down the message (human slavery is horrific, who knew). Instead, the episode starts with Jax mouthing off Martin Stein (himself a target of prejudice as a Jew) for worrying about him, implying that he experienced racism akin to human slavery in all time periods. WHAT? Then, despite them being the worst pick for the mission for being possibly compromised and (in Amaya's case) inexperienced, Jax insists that only he and Amaya go to the plantation, instead of the people that could actually infiltrate the plantationer's party as "guests", saying that "black people were invisible". WHAT? No, I get the idea about high-and-mighty not noticing smallfolk and servants, but they are going as slaves to a slaveowner's party. They'd obviously get noticed (since slavedrivers and feudal lords constantly checked the usefulness of their human resources in slaves/peasants and tried to force them to work at all times) and forced to work/imprisoned. Which is what happens. While imprisoned for one hour by the crazy BDSM slavemaster, Jax feels so bad that Stein feels it back on the ship, saying that this is the worst and most frightened he ever felt. Which would make sense with the recently-from-Africa Amaya, but not the veteran Jackson, who's already experienced imprisonment, torture, near death, being turned into a monstrous Thanagarian meta-human, becoming an old man and almost dying... It’s difficult to buy into the idea that Jefferson is being confronted with the reality of history when the show is so limited in what it can show us, and when Jax himself claimed that he knew all about the horrific experience, just because "racism was always there". Just to hammer the point, as if the despicable villainy of the slavedriver wasn't obvious. Finally, when Jax tries to introduce himself, he's distrusted for getting named after some fancy slavers. How do the (mostly illiterate) slaves even know who the historical Jefferson is, especially when they're implied to be recently bought and get constantly tortured and killed at this human slaughterhouse? And throwing this to Jax's face to make him, of all people feel guilty was just terrible. And of course, the dumb villain hates slaves so much he'd rather die by zombies than help arm them, despite the actual historical plantation owners hosting their own squads of slaves even during Civil War. Well, he's a BDSM creep, so fuck him. Funny how he's got the guts to even continue to order them to save him while he was dying...

Along with the hammered down message, the episodes also has some lovely plot hijinks.

1) Jax suddenly decides he's all super-serious about this "protecting the timeline" stuff and stops Amaya from harming evildoers, because they might be necessary for the timeline. Firstly, ask your friend Chronos for the tech that shows whether they are, or not, he's had it since the second episode. Secondly, since when do the Legends care? Last episode, you killed lots of people that you'd have otherwise ignored, along with Shogun Iemitsu 10 years too early, changing the timeline of the Tokugawa Shogunate forever. And you have the gal to stop Amaya from saving people from villains? Wat?

2) Ray gets shunned by the rest of the team except for Rory and Stein. Sara unceremoniously shuts him down from mission control. This obviously leaves Ray with a complex about how he has no worth to the team without his exosuit, that he's powerless without. Which would make sense, except... Ray is not only a genius scientist on the level of Cisco that makes that kidna futuristic stuff out of thin air without a STAR Labs to assist him in it, but he is a superior superhero, and a man who survived the Age of Dinosaurs long enough to grow a beard and successfully fought a medieval super-samurai in his own armor just this season so far!!! He's an extremely useful guy, despite his many fuck-ups, and is definitely a superhero.

Though it might be fun to see him as the second Captain Cold, would've been actually nice if he decided to call himself that.

Overall, the episode was a mess, and the main actors' cheesy acting did not help the weak writing. Kudos go to Brandon Routh, and the actor who somehow managed to salvage this grotesque BDSM slaver, he'd be a great Dark Archer on the level of Barrowman. Also, I really liked Amaya this episode, after two lackluster appearances, since she finally showed any character outside of insulting Ray and Rory.

Arrow remains the best DCTV Halloween episode of this week. Sorry, Gotham! LOT and Flash, do better. Supergirl... well, the Martians were kinda neat, I guess? Are there any episodes you do like?