Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 4: Abominations
Like the previous episode, 'Shoguns', this episode was more of a standalone filler story that demonstrates Legends of Tomorrow's new formula that doesn't let every single episode get hung up on the main season arc plot. In some ways it's an improvement because we don't see Vandal Savage escape (or the Time Masters' nameless agents fail) every single episode, but in some ways it kind of makes me even forget that there's even a Legion of Doom plotline running. And like 'Shoguns', this episode is ultimately forgettable, especially since nothing really huge came along character development wise.
We have a pretty generic plotline. Time traveler gets stranded in an interesting locale and time, and the Legends have to deal with them to prevent timestream nonsense. After so flagrantly blowing up the Shogun last episode and having a track record of convincing people to act because it's the right thing to do, it's a bit weird that Jax and Amaya spent the first half of the episode passively watching the slaves get abused... but hey, that's how Legends always rolls. Blowing up nuclear bunkers? Setting off a nuke when it's not supposed to be set off? Blowing up a shogun ten years before he's supposed to die? Accidentally convincing Per Degaton to kill his father? But eh.
The team is split very cleanly into three groups in the period of the American Civil War, dealing with the zombie plague TX-90 (a sure reference to Walking Dead's TS-19) that gets accidentally unleashed upon the... Confederates or Republicans or whatever, I don't know the sides and I wasn't particularly fully alert watching this episode. The zombies were fun -- the makeup obviously isn't as well-done as Walking Dead, but the gwaghrhglaaa zombie marching is believable enough.
The first group has Sara and Nate warn... some historical figure or other about the zombies, which has a couple of really cool scenes like Sara nonchalantly showing up with a bloody, air-chomping zombie head to demonstrate what a zombie is, and Nate's pretty awesome 'run towards a crate of explosives and blow it up while turning into Steel' moment... but ultimately is easily the most boring of the three plotlines. They try to spice it up by having Sara have some dialogue about leadership or whatever, but it honestly didn't stick since Sara has been an absolutely confident leader throughout her short tenure and suddenly having doubts felt shoehorned in.
The second group has Stein and an un-powered Ray deal with Mick being infected with the zombie plague on board the Waverider, with Martin's insane phobia of zombies being absolutely hilarious. "It's not irrational, HE'S A ZOMBIE!". There's a bit of Ray being left with nothing to do without his Atom suit, left to squawk trivia on board the Waverider during the initial mission, but ended up being the cool-headed scientist that was eventually able to develop the means to take down Mick. It's not particularly groundbreaking, but Mick's desperation before his change into a zombie, and him later bonding with Ray and giving him Snart's old Captain Cold gun is out of the left field but a pretty cool change in direction.
(Granted, I groaned a little when, instead of using his fucking fire gun Mick goes ahead and punches the zombies)
The Stein/Ray bits were shot like a traditional horror movie, but never really too tense because of the sheer comedy and hilarity of the situation and Stein's continually hilarious dialogue and the fact that, yeah, this is not how Mick Rory is going to die, so you kind of know that the team will succeed.
Jax and Amaya bear the brunt of the more dramatic moments of the episode, which finally tackles racism in a more realistic way than season one did, which had Jax wander around that one American town in a racist period, but didn't get anything bad happen to him other than a few teenage punks saying some mean words. Here, Jax takes the place of... a slave double agent or something that got killed by the zombies, and tries to infiltrate some party ran by a slave-driver, trying his best to be a professional but ended up getting caught anyway because, hey, as much as Jax has dealt with racism all his life, he's still treated as a human being, which isn't exactly what these slave owners do with their slaves. It never gets particularly graphic other than the sight of the black slaves in chains, and the mostly-offscreen whipping of one lady, but we did get descriptions of setting bloodhounds on runaway slaves, chopping off manhoods and whatnot. And despite that, the other slaves persevered and whatnot. And while Jax got himself captured, Amaya was able to use her Vixen powers to beat up the slave master, free Jax, accidentally get caught up in a zombie apocalypse, and Jax burns down the house with zombies and evil slavemaster dude.
It's not the best portrayal of periodical racism in television, and the pacing's a bit off at times, but it's the meat of the story that's far more... interesting than all the fun zombie stuff. Which is still fun on their own (and with Ray's suit down, Nate unable to control his powers and Firestorm split up, the Legends are actually unprepared for the zombie apocalypse) but ultimately fillery.
Poor Amaya is still not really well-defined as a character, though. She has her 'channel gorilla powers' moments, and the bit where the slaves recognize her totem is a cool touch, but as with the pervious episode she exists mostly just to bounce dialogue off of and to give the team another heavy-hitter. One that doesn't require as much special effects as Firestorm or Citizen Steel to portray.
Overall, though, it's not a bad episode, but it's definitely a filler-y one. No Easter Egg Corner this week because, well, there is none.
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