DC's Legends of Tomorrow S05E10-11 Review: Gary Junior!

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 5, Episode 10: Ship Broken; Episode 11: Freaks and Geeks

Episode 10: Ship Broken
This one was pretty fun! In 'Ship Broken', we've got a typical "whodunnit" episode, something that Legends of Tomorrow have, I believe, dabbled a couple of times before. But between the current temporary addition of hell baroness Astra Logue into the crew, the argument at the beginning of the episode on who gets to use the Loom of Fate first, as well as Sara Lance's bizarre, unpredictable new future death-visions, there's a couple of fun red herrings. Oh, and Mick's kid is on board the Waverider trying to do her history homework and gets into a bit of an argument.

And there really isn't much to "Ship Broken". It's just a fun, wacky installment of Legends of Tomorrow, and there's the 'of course' solution to the fact that the one-off gag of Gary showing up with a random new emotional support puppy called Gary Jr (awww) turns out to be a heinous hellhound sent to infiltrate the ship. Still, the whole sabotage mystery isn't the only part of the episode. There's still the constant argument between Zari and Astra on who gets to use the Loom first to resurrect their respective dead loved ones, plus Ava, who's intent on fixing Sara's blindness.

Of course, the episode offers no shortage of red herrings. Sara's clearly not in her right mind and might be going crazy from her exposure to Atropos (and she clearly doesn't trust herself). Astra is, well, a literal demon from hell, although she's the obvious red herring and the episode makes it clear that she's clearly offended by all of the instant accusations from everyone around her. Charlie/Clotho is clearly showing some reluctance initially to fuck with the Loom. And there's also Zari, whose attempts to talk to Astra seems to imply that she's thinking of making an alliance between the two of them, and we're not sure who's acting shifty to root out the actual perpetrator, and who's actually shifty because they are evil. And that's not counting mind-control or shape-shifters, either... and, of course, the solution is... Gary's dog! Who shows up in a couple of gag scenes where the dog has a nervous bladder and acts cute.

So turns out that Gary Junior is Marchosias, the Canine of Chaos from hell, who has limited mind-controlling abilities and the climax of the episode ends up with a blind, future-seeing Sara Lance spin-kicking a hellhound while Astra, proving her (relative) loyalty to the team, tells the pooch's true name to Constantine to banish it to hell.

Ultimately, a very fun episode even if it doesn't add a whole ton. The B-plot with Mick's relationship with Lita, clumsily attempting to be a dad to a teenage kid with abandonment issues, showing off his hoard and actually bonding with Lita over thievery before realizing that this isn't what he wants for her and shutting her out from that part of his life... it's supremely well done, I feel, and as long as it doesn't take up too much screentime in subsequent episodes (or it ties into the other subplots well) this is actually a side-story I'm actually a fan of. Nothing of real consequence happens in this one, and I'm not sure I have much to talk about here without just repeating specific jokes from the episode. The fun dialogue, vibe and the general, well, fun of the episode makes it one of the episodes in this season I'm a bigger fan of.
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Episode 11: Freaks and Geeks

On the other hand, this episode... didn't quite catch my attention as much as the previous episode did, but that's probably because I really never found the appeal in this sort of storylines about, like, sororities and being popular kids and whatever? I've never been someone who really attended these sort of things, anyway, and while the episode does have a fun guest star that works with Charlie's newfound Greek mythology backstory. Apparently, the Greek God of Wine, Dionysus, has set up shop in a university frat house, and because Dionysus is a ker-aaaazy god, and they need his immortality-granting chalice, our heroes have to go off and play frat-boys and sorority-girls or whatever the term for those are... and for what it's worth, the episode isn't terrible, but while I felt like "Ship Broken" was a solid fun hour of ridiculousness, this one is just... eh.

The sorta-main storyline is also painfully obvious and not particularly well-executed. Oh, so Astra is maligned by a majority of the cast because she's a former villain, and we have to go through some wackiness-turned-honesty-ramble while our heroes are trapped in a zany situation. Unlike any of the other times that this has happened, though (and one would argue that these sort of episodes form the emotional backbone of the best Legends episodes) this one feels shoehorned and forced, and I never bought into just how rapidly Astra is converted by arguing and later teaming up with the other Legends girls in the sorority of something-phi-or-other. And... I dunno, spinning the same old yarn of "she's not really evil, it's just a bad environment" that they did for Mick and Nora doesn't quite feel as organic, and the fact that Astra was randomly ready to play sisters with the Legends is a bit stretching it. Mostly, though, it's that Astra's prior portrayal leaned so much towards Astra feeling more like a token evil member that's allying with them thanks to Constantine and common interests, and this rather forced direction isn't something I'm particularly a huge fan of... and it's not done quite as well. I'm not sure if it's the scripting, the constant cutaways to other parts of this episode, or the fact that "the Legends are being frat boys hyuck hyuck" just plain don't appeal to me, but... eh.

There's still some fun here, particularly with how easily Nate gets fooled and roped into Dion's frat-bro craziness, or the B-plot with Mick and Lita (which honestly is more of a repeat and reinforcement of last episode's, but Mick's huge gesture of going back in time and donating just to make Lita not embarrassed is awww), and the appropriately no-fucks-given mentality that Dionysus has... it's not a terrible episode, and I still find it enjoyable. Just not as enjoyable as the rest of the season.