Legends of Tomorrow


Dan

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Because it's a big cast and everybody's gotta have something to do?

I enjoyed the second part of the pilot about as much as the first. Marty Stein was fun to see, especially with Sara. The scene with Ray and Snart trapped together was good, Routh and Miller continue to be the best actors of the show. I'm not all that convinced by Jax, but he's starting to grow on me. Loved the first fight scene, the one at the mansion was a little bit more cluttered though. And the relationship between Kendra and Carter continues to drag the show down. Carter was just not cast or written very well. On the other hand, Savage showed a little more menace this time out than before.

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Usually I give props to the DC shows for how they use special effects on a TV budget, but the Atom stuff in this one was so bad. It looked like someone was moving an action figure across the screen in the first big fight, and Rip literally handing one to Ray later on didn't help that. 

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Second episode showed more promise, so I'm thinking the potential for this show is slightly higher than Supergirl's first two episodes. Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell own, and them teaming up with Ray Palmer was great. It was cool (npi) seeing Cold interact with another classic DC hero, and his rapport with Atom was similar to his with Flash's but definitely different. See, this is why people like DC Comics. The laundry list of classic characters interacting with each other really lead to some fun stories.

Victor Garber had some great moments. So far Canary and Jax drag him down with their nothing to do, and Jax is really not all that interesting thus far. He was better as a foil and alternative to Ronnie Raymond in the Flash, but he's been little more than annoying so far in this show.

I actually kind of liked the Hawks moreso in this, but I'm glad Carter's out of the way for the time being. I think Falk Hentschel is a perfectly serviceable actor, but the way he played Carter was kind of annoying. I blame more the writing forcing him to act it a certain way. And Ciera Renee, while amazingly hot, hasn't shown off much strong acting either, although the scenes after she's saved by the team were really good with her screaming and crying in the med bay. This episode had a lot of little moments that showcased what some of the actors can do when given the chance, and if they get a handle on that and harness it like the Flash has, utilizing the actors' greatest strengths, this series will be all the better for it.

I also found it funny that Cold was all "Okay I really didn't know Hawkman, I don't think I shared two sentences with the guy, but whatever-let's do it for him"

 

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Like usual, Captain Cold and White Canary were the best parts of the episode. Cold's speech to his younger self seems uncharacteristically sappy, but he is only about himself and his sister, so I can kinda make it work. I liked that the effort to fix his timeline failed because his father would always be a dumb criminal. Lotz is the best at making ass kicking in these shows believable, although her "monster" storyline was giving me Age of Ultron flashbacks (which I might not have noticed if Flash and Arrow hadn't already referenced it this season). This was probably my favorite use of Savage so far. The "we have a name for Rip Hunter in the past" bit was stupid, but his gloating about killing Rip's family was great; it's the first time he's really felt like a villain. The Hawk stuff continues to be terrible. Why does Kendra care about him now? Why is everybody all bummed at the funeral? Sure, he's a human being, but the character and actor have been awful from day 1. The show is trying to go for big character moments, but the writing is failing to sell them.

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After the general hit/miss quality of the two-part pilot, I thought this third episode was pretty good. Strong acting from the strong actors, and I like the interplay between all of the different characters. I bought CC's plotline because, as lame as his episode in the early second season episode of the Flash was, it did establish him as someone shaken by his upbringing. I thought Miller's acting throughout that entire sequence was fantastic. And I agree about Savage. He was absolutely diabolical throughout, I was kind of shocked what the CW was letting him get away with at the end.

This show's getting better. They need to stop with the episodic platitudes and really push their characters and give their actors more to work with. It's following the same pace of improvement that Supergirl had by this point.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I skipped the episode-before-last and just watched "Star City 2046", so I'm unaware of how Ray got beat up. This is the first "standalone" (?) episode I've seen them do and I quite enjoyed it. It was pretty fun. I really enjoyed the Green Arrow stuff, although Stephen Amell's old man makeup was awful. Makes me wanna shove it in front of Ian and scream "THE WINTER SOLIDER WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING!!!"

Captain Cold and Heatwave make this show. I like Ray, Martin Stein is great solely through the efforts of Victor Garber (whom I've not said nearly enough about, he's terrific), and I like the characters all interacting differently, but Snart and Roury are the GOATS of the show, flat-out. It took me a minute, but Dominic Purcell really does Heatwave well, and I love how both he and Miller seemingly put on fake voices for their characters. I especially loved how there was tension between the two, seeing as how Heatwave's his own character or at least started out that way in the comics (do the Rogues have a leader?). Cold basically responding with "Bitch I run this block you do what I say" was awesome after he was fairly passive for a while.

I love DC Comics and I love the lore that these shows are constantly diving into. Having just read over 130 issues of New Teen Titans, seeing Grant Walker was fantastic, even if he wasn't the Ravager. "Connor"'s appearance reawakened my fandom for that character, and that costume was perfect. The actor was decent as well. Just a fun episode all around. I was watching this the same time as Supergirl, and I feel that Supergirl's been better but at this point LoT has a much more entertaining cast, so I'm currently torn.

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Man this episode was really up and down for me. The pirate stuff was blah and the flashbacks were cliche'd. I can't stand "LOVE IS WRONG" plots.

On the other hand I liked the focus on Rip and Arthur Darvill's frustrated acting was fun to watch.

Atom and Hawkgirl's shipping was alright. Never a fan of the spontaneous kiss as that always comes off as forced in the writing.

On the other hand how can you not like Brandon Routh in this role? He's so endearing and likable.

I don't know why Jax and Stein never formed Firestorm. Dude's not a great actor, but this show's been going out of it's way seemingly to give him the least to do. They have got to write his character better.

On the other hand I still liked the Cold/Heatwave subplot. I like it when they're bad guys, and while I think Cold's warming personality is kind of trite Miller's still bringing it. I thought the ending was legitimately engaging.

I didn't love the episode but there were things I liked in it.

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I thought it was embarrassingly, insultingly bad. The script was atrocious, which I put on Phil Klemmer, since the last episode that was this pop culture reference heavy had his fingerprints on it. "To quote every Star Wars, I've got a bad feeling about this." "Now, let's do Kirk vs. Picard!" Nerd stuff makes billions of dollars, you don't need to mug like that anymore. Rip Hunter is a selfish piece of shit, but instead of rolling into that for some nuance, it's all "no, he's really a good guy." This show has stripped Arthur Darvill of the talent he had in Doctor Who, they could have anybody playing this part. They already ripped off the Time Lords for the Time Masters, but now they're committing to the Jedi as well. Why? Because the people writing this show don't give a shit and don't think the audience will either. Last episode: Kendra's not in a place for a relationship. This episode: nah, she can hook up with Ray, she's here for whatever random plot point we think of rather than to be a character. Stein didn't sound like Stein in this. Not that him being into 50s sci-fi is surprising, but the writing of it was off. And you'll find no bigger fan of Cold (well, you probably can, people love that guy), but even Wentworth Miller didn't seem into it. The shift in his relationship with Heat Wave should've hit, but while they've been able to weather whatever else may have been in the episodes, they're dragged down into the dirt with everything else. It's always been a show that's about parts rather than a satisfying whole, but the show's too weighed down by problems by this point for even those parts to work. 

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I'll absolutely give you Kendra being an appendage to a plot rather than a character. It's almost like the writer's are treating her with kid gloves, they don't want her to be in too much trouble.

It's obvious that this show was made with very little planning in mind, unlike the Flash which, after listening to Andrew Kriesberg's interview in Fatman on Batman, apparently Arrow was almost from the beginning a gateway to do more traditional DC Heroes on the small screen. But there's very little reason for her to be here, and I don't know what Sara brings to it either. She's okay, but she can fight good...what else? Jax is an average mechanic which the show tries to twist into "he can fix anything", so we can get him out of the show for a while fixing stuff and when he's on-screen he endlessly complains.

The mechanics of this mission require Ray, Stein (which by necessity requires Jax), and maybe Snart and Rory to do some dirty work. I don't mind everyone else being there, but the show thus far hasn't gone deep into having them interact. It seems to know who the stronger actors are, which is why the best scenes are always with Brandon Routh, Miller and Purcell and Victor Garber. But it's too often being caught with it's pants down in trying to establish a show that can keep afloat with a fairly thin premise and too many characters that the writers clearly don't give a shit about.

Supergirl is a flawed show, but it's more consistent in that the cast is smaller and there's really no weak link in the bunch save for maybe Chyler Leigh, and that's only due to the show requiring her to be an action star. Everyone else has a reason to be there and is a good enough actor to flesh out their characters. LoT seems like a real mish-mash/shooting for a three pointer and closing your eyes in hoping it goes in.

Damn you Johnson! Stop making me think!

Edited by Donomark
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I was digging this episode for the most part, until they turned Jax into a monster. That's...always racist. Don't do that.

Yeah ,that was egregiously tone deaf. Especially when you consider that the overriding theme of the episode was "Wow, 1950s suburbia was awesome! As long as you were a middle-aged straight white guy."

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