Legends of Tomorrow, Season 3, Episode 4: Phone Home
By this point I've made my peace with Legends of Tomorrow being more of a comedy show than a proper superhero time-travel epic. It's not a move I'm okay with, because the previous two seasons of Legends manage to juggle 'funny episodic sci-fi' with 'epic superheroing' pretty well, and this is, once more, very much tilted to one side instead of the other, but at least it's embracing the laffs and parodying so hard that the energy is infectious.
This episode focuses more on Ray Palmer and his extremely boyish optimism, as he tries to be a good team leader with Zari as she's integrated into the Legends team (and gets a brand new outfit in the process) but ends up having to deal with a paradox that temporarily wipes him from existence. It turns out that young Ray is stuck in an E.T. homage where instead of an E.T., Ray brings home a potentially deadly Dominator baby. Between the shifty generic government people hunting down Ray, and the Mama Dominator trying to murder (or, well, cocoon) every human in her path, it's a fun little free-for-all.
The usage of the Dominator is a pretty inspired choice that helps with the world-building for the CW DC stuff, since the Dominators themselves are a relatively known quantity, and they have served as villains in the past. I thought the episode gave away their hand a bit too early by showing kid!Ray being killed by the human FBI agents, and I think I'd rather keep Gumball's allegiance ambiguous for at least longer in the episode.
There's a bit of an attempt at character development by having Ray look back at his childhood and realize that he's been looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses, like how his 'friends' are actually bullies, and his mom doesn't actually approve about his geeky loneliness, and this culminates in him trying to talk to his younger self and basically tell him to grow the eff up -- before Zari ends up telling both Rays that optimism is sometimes required in the world. And, of course, they save Gumball, Gumball uses his telepathic powers to take control of the agents and have them re-enact 'Singing in the Rain', reunite it with his mommy before Sara can break Mama Dominator's teeth, and they go trick-or-treating together.
The E.T. references and homages are obvious, including a point where I laughed out when Zari uses her wind powers to allow them to ride bicycles in the air (why Zari doesn't just carry little Ray in her hands and just fly off is a question best left unanswered).
Zari's a bit more of an enigma at this point. She's just... your everyman, I think, where she fills Amaya's role previous season as this newcomer to the whole time-travel superheroing business that's displaced from a different time frame compared to the rest of the team, and she keeps commenting on her dystopian future home while at the same time trying to remain positive.
Nate, meanwhile, tries to hit on Ray's mom. Instead he nearly fucks Mama Dominator. The scene should be an irritating distraction, but is so absurd and hilarious that I really liked it.
The B-plot involves Jax and Mick going around and investigating Martin's strange behaviour, and they're working on the impression that Martin's not committed to their cause and is selling them out to the Time Bureau. When, of course, he's communicating with his daughter Lily because he wants to witness his newborn. Nevermind the odd time ramifications of the fact that Martin can literally wait until the end of the season to be there for his grandson's birth (or time-jumped to that period immediately during the lull of the first episode), it does give all three actors a great chance to interact and act, and Victor Garber's acting talents have been sorely underused this season. This is definitely a chance for him to show off, and I'm glad for it. There was... the bit of eye-rolling I had when I realized how silly it is for Martrin to not inform the rest of the team what he's doing (I'm pretty sure everyone will understand) but the acting's pretty strong that I didn't really mind.
(Martin named his son Ronnie! D'awwwww)
Mick also gets to be fun, between his trust fall thing with Ray (as Ray gets erased from the timeline), giving a cigar to baby Ronnie, or flat-out hijacking the Waverider because he's became a bit of a big softie.
Jax, at the end of the episode, sees how being apart from his real family is tearing Martin apart, and he wants to do it literally -- asking Ray for help to break Firestorm apart. Firestorm has barely done any Firestorming at all this season, and if Victor Garber/Martin Stein's going to leave the show, it's nice that they're giving him an exit strategy as opposed to the far more depressing death I expected was going to happen.
The episode would probably be more appreciatable if the characters actually acted a bit smarter (Martin Stein, as much as Victor Garber's a great actor, did a lot of stupid things this episode despite being the smartest man on Earth) but eh. It's fun.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Ray lives in Ivy Town as a kid, which is the setting of most Atom stories. In the Arrowverse, while Ivy Town's appeared a couple of times, Ray Palmer is based out of Starling/Star City, and I think this is the first time we get confirmation that Ray Palmer does hail from Ivy Town.
- Zari's new costume is a more wholesome version of her comic book counterpart's alter ego, Isis -- and I'm pretty sure they're not going to use the name, because despite Isis drawing her name from the Egyptian goddess, the name has such a huge negative connotation in the current political climate right now that I don't think the character's going to be called that.
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