Legends of Tomorrow, Season 3, Episode 7: Welcome to the Jungle
(The Punisher reviews will start hopefully later this week. I really need to watch the series first before actually, y'know, reviewing it)
I really want to like this episode. I really do. It has Gorilla Grodd, and Gorilla Grodd has always been consistently one of the best parts of the CW-Arrowverse. The fact that Grodd is almost always played straight as this monstrous telepathic gorilla that's a huge, huge threat adds to the appeal of Grodd, and to say that I was absolutely freaking out when I learned that he was in the episode (I wasn't spoiled by trailers or previews) was a huge understatement. It felt a little surprising that the mysterious rogue element in the Vietnam War ends up being a known quantity -- Grodd -- is a huge surprise to me. Grodd's plan isn't as well fleshed-out as his multiple appearances in Flash, with his storyline about trying to bring about peace between Americans and Vietnamese by subjugating them all under his mental thrall, and proceeding to kickstart WWIII, is not super-original. But there is enough entertainment factor, and some attempts at comparison between the Vietnamese war and the war-torn dystopia of Zari's future, as well as Amaya trying to get Grodd to see her side, that having peace with Grodd is almost believable.
Yet so many multiple plotlines are running that none of Zari or Amaya's points really got the focus that they deserve. We've got Mick's dad, we've got Jefferson and Stein's little song and dance, we've got Sara rising up from a coma... It's honestly a bit of a disservice to the Grodd storyline, I think, to pile up so much stuff -- and even in Zari's case I didn't think she really ever got a proper focus episode after her introduction. Sure, she's got multiple scenes that establish her as an independent superhero, but I really feel that there's something significantly lacking about her. There's also the whole plotline of Amaya trying to befriend Grodd, while at the same time dealing with her own problems with the revelation that Kuasa is her descendant. Oh, and Jax saving the president. Oh OH and Martin plucking Isaac Newton and a bunch of other scientists from the timeline for no reason other than a gag. While I appreciate multi-layered storytelling, this is one that I didn't think worked all that well.
The Mick storyline is honestly unnecessary, although by god, Dominic Purcell is an amazing actor here. Perhaps one of my big dislike about it is how everyone in the Legends team with parental issues ends up discovering that their parents aren't all that bad (Nate even lampshades how he gets over daddy issues in an episode last season) means that while Mick's acting is amazing, a combination of Mick's dad Dick (no, really) being acted by someone who tries to out-ham Dominic Purcell's performance makes me really hard to take the Mick subplot seriously.
Although, once more, Dominic Purcell's performance is really quite strong enough to carry the plotline and not make it too cringe-y, I did really feel that it was a bit more overdone than it should. Add that to the fact that I'm not sure if I really like the revelation that Mick killed his dad who's traumatized by war... who may not actually carry that trauma back after Mick maybe-kinda-changes-the-timeline... I dunno. It makes me think that Mick might just get some random reversal and get a happy ending the way Martin gets his anachronism daughter back, and... I dunno. It just kind of feels out of left field, although I do appreciate the attempt -- if not the result -- of trying to make Mick a lot more than just 'angry pyromaniac'.
But, still, for all the faults of this episode... we get Grodd. And Grodd is pretty amazing. Be it just glowering and roaring at our heroes, or jumping around like King Kong on the Waverider, Grodd is a villain that just works. This is definitely a more sympathetic version of Grodd than I'm used to from the mainstream DC universe, but it works due to how Grodd himself has been portrayed within the CW-verse, and I'm a big fan of it. And the fact that Damien Darrhk (Darhk? I'm genuinely not sure which is the right spelling now) has decided to pluck Grodd out of certain death and recruit him into the New Legion of Doom is just amazing.
So yeah. While this episode has its weak points, enough material from Grodd and Heatwave works in the episode's favour to make it far more entertaining than it should.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Grodd was last seen in The Flash's third season, where he invaded Central City with an army of Earth-2 sentient gorillas. His attack on central city was referenced to by Darrhk, and his torture under the hands of human scientists in Flash season one was referenced to by Grodd himself.
- "Kneel before Grodd" seems very likely to be a reference to the iconic quote from Superman II, "Kneel before Zod".
- "There is no Sara, only Grodd" is a reference to the Ghostbusters quote "there is no Dana, only Zuul".
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