Legends of Tomorrow S01E08 Review: Cliche Storm

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 8: Night of the Hawks

Sometimes I have the feeling that this show could be so much better if it didn't try so hard to homage different periods in time and actually just tell a good time-travel superhero story. See, Legends of Tomorrow has a good concept, has a pretty good and already well-established cast, a fun script and a fuckton of CGI action goodness. The biggest problem, really, is that it treats its audience like idiots sometimes by just taking utterly daft and stupid decisions in their episode-to-episode plotting -- like their refusal to put Vandal Savage in a cage until they can deal with him and/or going back in time to Egypt prior to the time that he met Rip. Plus, again, insert rant about how the constant speeches about not changing the timeline because it's important ends up being redundant because guess what, they're fucking up the timeline every single episode. 

Like this one. While I can argue up a defense for most of the previous episodes, even that ADHD-driven Cold War Russia era two-parter, Night of the Hawks is one that is really, really hard to defend. It tries to steer the plot back in the direction of Vandal Savage after two filler episodes (post-apocalyptic Star City and Star Trek Space Pirates) but it feels even more like a filler than the actual filler episodes. 

They tackle the multiple social -isms of the fifties in this episode, and racism, sexism and anti-LGBT form the root of the several subplots that run throughout this episode. While they don't quite sink as low as Supergirl-level of whack-your-head-with-an-anvil level of unsubtlety, it's pretty unentertaining to watch, especially when they repeat 'hey, the fifties are bad for mixed-race couples, girls and gays' for the fourth time. It's not that portraying these events are bad at all, no -- more power to shows that tackle these kind of issues, but other than Jax standing up to racist bullies and some golden lines from Sara, the rest are handled rather... not badly, but just bland. Ray and Kendra haven't been the best-acted or the most interesting characters in the bunch, and the attempts to force them to a 'oh look we're totally married except we aren't' situation ends up being absolutely banal. Likewise, Sara's attempts to flirt with a woman in the fifties ended up feeling absolutely forced, not to mention an utter dick move to Sara's actual lover, Nyssa, who, by the way, is still pining for Sara back in 2016. All I'm saying is, y'know, when tackling social injustice as a topic, make it at least somewhat interesting instead of it feeling like an obligation.

The plot of this episode homages old horror films, which Jax pointed out and lampshaded at least twice. A small American town that looks peaceful, until the murders start happening. The main plot, really, is that Savage discovers another Nth Metal meteor, and ends up using it (and the guise of the local nice doctor) to create the CWverse iteration of the Manhawks, these insane bestial Hawkman/Hawkgirl knockoffs. Which ended up falling flat. I mean, yeah, the Manhawks were decent, scary-looking antagonists, and the random plot twist of Savage being Ray and Kendra's friendly neighbourhood creep is surprising, but they don't do much with it other than the same old song and dance of them trying to stab Savage with the knife, fail, knock him out of the window and then escape.

Plus, y'know, the subplots aren't even good. Ray and Kendra playing house ends up feeling like a big distraction, because, y'know, it is one. Sara and Jax's respective love interests are generic girls-of-the-week who have your generic sickeningly-sweet personality, with the teenage girl being at least somewhat relevant to the plot. Nurse Hottie doesn't have that excuse, and, again, is just another unneeded distraction. Though honestly the episode does wonders at not really delivering anything at all so it's probably just as well.

It's just flat. And dull. And you think they would give a wee bit more focus to the Nth Metal or whatever, but not even Savage himself made the episode's plot really compelling -- why was he playing mad scientist at all? Learning about the meteors? Building an army like the Russian Firestorms? It's never made clear, and he feels like just a flat, bland supervillain. Oh, monsters, ho hum. There isn't really even a big mystery regarding local monsters or whatever, so they're not even doing the homage right. The fact that they turned Jax into a Manhawk is immaterial -- of all the people in the crew, they're not going to take out the one that fusion-dances with another member, and certainly not so soon after Heat Wave leaves the show.

Oh, and Captain Cold totally didn't murder Heat Wave, yeah? As much as Jax tries to call him a murderer (and eat his own words) and everyone pretends Cold killed Heat Wave, but honestly does anyone believes that?

I think, from the title, this episode is meant to give Kendra some spotlight after being woefully underutilized beyond being yet another Berserker Girl (which we had tons of)... and... um... I honestly can't think of anything she does in this episode that develops her character. Her chemistry with Ray is laughably bad, and is it that much of an achievement that she's (gasp) actually competent and brave enough to try and dupe Vandal Savage to stab him? She's been fighting Vandal Savage since episode one with a goddamned mace, I think it's honestly disservice to the character that it's treated as this big character development, when it's not.

Thankfully, at the end Chronos shows up, says 'fuck you all' and shoots up the Waverider. We get an explanation to why Firestorm never does anything even though he/they is/are the most overpowered member of the team -- they'll blow the ship up if they merge inside it. And the Waverider ends up taking off leaving three of the team stranded in 1950. Hopefully this will lead to something better-executed, and hopefully Chronos himself grows a personality.

Overall, easily the weakest (and hopefully the only really bad) episode of Legends of Tomorrow so far.