DC's Legends of Tomorrow S03E14 Review: Hound Dog

DC's Legend of Tomorrow, Season 3, Episode 14: Amazing Grace

Legends of Tomorrow is a show that isn't much for long-time planning. Even moreso than its compatriots Arrow, Supergirl, Flash and Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow quite literally doesn't give two shits about the logistics of time travel or really crafting a proper long-term storyline, existing mostly for the laughs and one-off episodes instead of a proper epic superhero sci-fi show. I've learned to accept that, and have enjoyed these episodes a lot more as a result. But sometimes you get an episode like "Amazing Grace" that ends up being so utterly daft that it probably wouldn't get past the editorial team even in the Golden Age. (Who am I kidding? The Golden Age lets you print any stupid story.)

The concept of them hunting down the mysterious sixth totem -- the Death Totem, as it's revealed to be -- and that it's actually embedded in an aspiring Elvis Presley's guitar is an interesting and wacky-zany hook for an episode of Legends of Tomorrow. But the execution is so predictable and honestly quite genuinely piss-poor that I can't really say much about this episode. Apparently Elvis uses this to communicate with his dead twin brother, we get some wacky "ROCK IS SATANISM" angry preacher thrown in (and also the preacher quite literally waffles between "hateful small-minded preacher" and "understanding uncle" like three times in this episode), we get the fact that the death totem causes ghosts to come to life, and there's some half-assed attempt to tell a message about accepting death?

There's some attempt to give a mini character arc for Nate and his love for rock music and getting the 'music moment' with Amaya with Elvis's rendition of the religious song Amazing Grace, but it all fell flat. Even moreso because they didn't even bother to actually showcase some African music and relied on the shortcut of "Nate is listening to it via headphones". There's a long subplot about Mick's emotional shock as his pet rat, Axl, dies and is one of the ghosts brought back to life, but not even Dominic Purcell and Brandon Routh's acting chops can save this plotline, which ran on for way, way for too long and didn't have that interesting of a payoff.

The best part of the episode has to be Wally West's dopey "hay guys am I helpful now?" as he just keeps using his super-speed to instantly do any task asked of him, but I genuinely really think that, hey, that's a plus point for these guys. Zari is immensely irritated by Wally's constant "yep I did that, am I helpful?" puppy-dog-eyed happiness. And Zari's speech about how sometimes zooming in with super-speed might make things would strike a proper chord if the Legends hasn't been so insanely reckless with time travel throughout the entire series. Still, I can't be too mad, since the pairing of Wally and Zari are easily the only actual funny moments in this trainwreck of an episode.