Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 14: River of Time
This episode had shades of Loki being captured by the Avengers in, well, the Avengers before his mere presence and the idea about what to do with him, plus Loki's own silver tongue, got the Avengers to turn against each other. In this episode, it's more about Rip's own stubbornness, the utterly moronic love triangle and, well, the Legends continually going into Vandal Savage's cell to talk to him despite knowing that, oh, he's the bad guy.
This episode was a slower one, with almost the entirety of it being spent abroad the Waverider and a bit at the end changing locations in the (admittedly pretty-looking) Vanishing Point, most likely due to the show's budget of effects being used up in the slightly-disappointing big robot fight last episode. The episode tries to offset this a bit by having Clarissa Stein, Felicity Smoak and Nyssa Al Ghul have guest star roles in short flashback sequences for Martin Stein, Ray Palmer and Sara Lance respectively. Also, Jax's mother shows up for the first time. I think Kendra/Carter got one too, but I don't really care enough to check. The flashbacks showed the respective characters saying goodbye in their own way before leaving off to join the Legends team, with various degrees of heartwarming levels -- the Steins and the Jacksons were melancholic but heartwarming.
Nyssa's appearance in the flashback sequence is cool, too but it's at odds against her most recent appearance in Arrow, where we had Laurel inform her of what happened to Sara. Though Nyssa might just be playing along and pretending she doesn't know because... reasons? Nyssa telling Sara to move on from the League and her makes Sara cheating with that one hot nurse less dickish on her part, though.
The team is asking questions that I've been asking throughout my last review: why not just fucking kill Savage outright? Captain Cold and Heat Wave have the same idea that I do -- fuck Carter, he can reincarnate, kill Savage already! But no, everyone is an idiot. Even when Carter actually does get his fucking mind back in the latter half of the episode, no one puts Hawkgirl's enchanted mace in her arms with which to bash Vandal Savage's head in. If she's too much of a wimp to do it, I'm pretty sure Evil Carter will do it for him.
The stupid love triangle is just handled utterly badly in this episode moreso than any previous episodes, which spent all this time building up that Kendra Saunders does have a choice independent from fate and previous lives... so the first thing Kendra does when they rescue Carter? Read a love poem to him, and give passive-aggressive comments to Ray that soul mates are a thing. Even without Savage goading Ray on with his anecdotes of how Chay-Ara always returns to Khufu, it's badly written and generally stupid all around.
Also, Hawkgirl is honestly the biggest reason no work gets done. It's her decision that Vandal Savage is even alive to poison their minds and turn the crew against each other -- as everyone points out, their whole mission was to kill Savage. If she had the patience to interrogate Carter later on instead of causing tensions to spring high and drive a wedge between herself and Ray, or if she at least had the decency to talk to Ray about her romantic problems, then Savage wouldn't have gotten free. She even had kind of a shitty showing in battle, and honestly if Savage hadn't been distracted with gloating over stabbing Carter (again) she wouldn't even get a hit in. But no, Rip treats Kendra winning with a cheap shot as having saved the entire crew. CW's Kendra Saunders, you're the worst and you bring shame to the Hawkgirl name.
Also I find it stupid that despite it being established that the Hawks have reincarnated numerous times with numerous children all over the timeline, Kendra is just super-fixated on Aldus Aldus Aldus despite not remembering the dude until like an hour before his death. I guess she's the person who's stupid enough not to realize that Evil Carter is also just a Carter Hall from a timeline. And it's just dumb, really.
Evil Carter Hall, or... whatever the hell his future McCool name is... is a lot more entertaining than the original bland Carter Hall. Definitely far more interesting than Kendra.
Ray's also an idiot, and evidently close proximity to Kendra has caused some of it to rub on him. Yeah, I know the dude's angry, but you'd think he would know better than to try to duke it out with Vandal Savage, immortal tyrant who has lived over a thousand years... with fisticuffs. Not even with an Atom suit. And while fighting Savage later on he doesn't even shrink down. What the hell, man? Ray's character arc, despite him getting this Felicity flashback... amounts to... 'I need my heart broken so that I can move on from my dead wife to find love again'. What in the hell? It's just cheap justification to bring Kendra and Carter back together, meaning all that time wasted for painful scenes of Ray and Kendra interacting without any semblance of chemistry whatsoever was... well, a fucking waste. Ray, go crawl in a corner and feel ashamed of yourself.
Rip Hunter isn't stellar himself, and considering he's the next member of the Legends team to have the most screentime in this episode, it's damning this episode even further, isn't it? They are time travelers, so why the hell does Rip need to literally put the pedal on the metal to reach the Vanishing Point faster? That led indirectly to, well, Jax getting hit with some crazy-ass time wave thing causing him to age quickly, which is kind of dumb, honestly. And the crew doesn't pull off a mutiny? This is worse than any of the other times that the crew and Rip had came to a disagreement. And, no, telling your crew that you'll abandon them for the sake of saving your family isn't quite redeeming, and I'm surprised Sara hadn't clocked him in the face then. And taking a bullet for Kendra? Even if I liked Kendra, that doesn't do you any favours. It all culminates in Rip Hunter being locked up because, shockers, the Time Masters are in league with Vandal Savage! Whoops, bet you feel like a total tit, don't you, Rip?
Savage, meanwhile, is probably the sole redeeming factor of this episode. I mean, well, the trio of Sara, Rory and Snart are always entertaining with their snark, and Jax and Stein get a decent (if too-short) sub-plot showing what a crappy captain Rip Hunter is. I'm 100% sure Jackson being shot back to 2016 is how a rescue team will arrive to save the Legends.
Vandal Savage, after several episodes' worth of getting his ass handed to him and only escaping due to technicality on how to murder him and circumvent his immortality, is the true star of this episode. Admittedly it doesn't take a particularly ingenious mind to outwit the likes of Kendra and Ray, considering the lack of common sense they have, but his speeches to Rip and especially Ray, preying on the latter's insecurities and generally playing devil's advocate, managed to paint him as a psychologically far more threatening villain. Savage challenging the Legends team in a corridor is far more suspenseful and visceral than any of the open-area laser fight we had with him before.
Besides, it leads to this immortal exchange that is definitely the best series of lines uttered in the history of superhero cinematic universe:
"Who are you to stand against me, Vandal Savage, the Destroyer of Empires?"
"Leonard Snart, robber of ATMs!"
Other than Savage and that excellent exchange, though... yeah, this is easily the worst episode of Legends of Tomorrow. And, well, I never liked pinning a series' problem on a single character... but, well, this series would be infinitely better if Kendra Saunders wasn't in it.
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