Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 5: Fail-safe
The biggest weakness of Legends of Tomorrow is how it blatantly regards sensible logical story progression for sheer entertainment value. We've discussed how moronic it was to send Ray in without the Atom suit, and send Stein in without Jax as backup. This episode isn't quite as bad, but Team Legends did set off a Firestorm-empowered atomic bomb in a Russian Gulag that would be the site of events in the future -- most crucial to the CW-verse being the Diggle/Deadshot/Lyla team-up in Season 2, set in the exact same gulag. Setting a fucking nuclear bomb in the middle of the Cold War in what is definitely not a remote TerroristCon location would change the course of history rather significantly, you'd think, but apparently not. Neither was a metahuman attack on the Pentagon last episode, or the nuclear bomb at TerroristCon in a previous episode... but distract a young Martin Stein for a moment? Time-caused annulled marriage. You can only play the 'time fixes itself' card so far, really.
Some people have also pointed out how idiotic it is for the team to 'kill' Savage temporarily. The thing is, Savage is a sorcerer. He can just teleport or magic blast or say some random mumbo jumbo about how Carter must be around for the magic to work or whatever, and it wouldn't feel stupid. We would accept it. Rip Hunter setting off a room to explode around Vandal Savage while he walks away might look cool for five seconds, when you realize he could've just shot Vandal Savage in the head, drag him and strap him down to a table while he's regenerating, and have Kendra stab him. Or have Captain Cold freeze him and do the same. Or slice off his limbs and do the same. It just felt impractical, really, and the writers definitely could've done a better job at actually portraying a proper excuse that the Legends Team didn't actually murder Savage when they could and save it for the season finale.
So yeah, the overreaching plot for the series already frays apart, as much as I like it. The characterization part was really fun, though. There never was any doubt that Martin Stein wouldn't break, but we get some really nice moments for him struggling with it, even if that random Not-Cisco hallucination was gratuitously unnecessary. Jefferson gets the brunt of characterization this time, thinking up a way to contact Stein based on the same thing that Ronnie did in Firestorm's earlier appearances in the Flash, we get Jefferson doing his football running thing to reach Stein, and we get that predictable-but-still-nice moment of Jefferson talking Stein down while he's merged within Valentina Vostok as a blue-coloured Firestorm -- which in itself is a trifecta reference to the aesthetic look of Firestorm, Valentina Vostok's comic book counterpart Negative Woman, and Pohzak the Russian counterpart to Firestorm. Valentina blows up at the end of the episode, though really it's not too far of a stretch to think that she would come back.
Heat Wave and Atom got some bonding moments. I feel that Ray's getting a bit too much of Brandon Routh's old Superman role slapped onto the character, and he's definitely got the whole 'has Superman's idealism but none of his competence' vibe going on with him. It's definitely a characterization, but so far all he's got for it is earning him Heat Wave's respect to drag him out of jail when the breakout happened. Ray really needs to step up and actually be a competent Atom. Mick shows some backbone and while it's fun to see him warm up (pun fully intended) to Ray while they are hanging out in the prison and he's just eye-rolling at Ray's naivety, he ends up saving Ray at the end despite Snart's protests. It's nice to see Mick grow into his own character, even if it's one small scene at a time.
Rip's big point in this episode seemed to be that other characters -- Captain Cold in particular -- realizes that Rip's been treating them like pawns. Jax and Kendra certainly don't appreciate being benched even if Rip's logic does make sense, and Sara is definitely being used as an assassin for simple pragmatism of taking out Martin Stein, despite the team being, y'know, a team. But eventually of course heart wins out and neither Sara nor Rip go on with the plans. I really like how it's Captain Cold's unique brand of honour-among-thieves that actually shook Sara's old League training, and really Captain Cold is easily the best character in the show. He's dropped a couple of fun Prison Break references, too. I've never watched the show, but Cold and Heat Wave certainly got a bunch of fun scenes together.
Hawkgirl didn't do anything important, I think. Neither did Savage, really, other than repeat some of the 'I will kill your son and wife!' lines to Rip, be menacing to a couple of powerless men and then get himself blown up.
Chronos randomly shows up in the end only to fail spectacularly at killing or even troubling Team Legends, though he at least strands Team Legends in the obligatory post-apocalyptic 2046 future setting, where they are met with a black successor to the Green Arrow. Connor Hawke? That's certainly going to be interesting next episode.
It's weaker than the 70's arc, definitely and the Cold War arc has mostly been a bit of a less well-written and unevenly-plotted story. Again, like last episode, the things that worked (Stein, Jax, Snart, Ray and Mick to some extent) really worked, and putting the characters in interesting situations is fun... but really when the main story really could've been touched up a whole lot more it brings down the main experience.
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