Taking "screwing things up for the better" to a whole new wormhole x-treme.
Ever so oddly—paradoxically, perhaps?—Legends of Tomorrow seems to perform at its best when it goes full-out timey-wimey wacko.
Muriel is so oddly adorable in her utter cluelessness.
Best line:
"Oh, look at the time!" —Hondo Ohnaka
C'mon, Jess, you know not to touch evidence like that. DNA? Fingerprints? Evil genius booby traps?
Otherwise... iiinterestinger...
Wow. Just...
Okay, if you're one who truly hates musical episodes and just can't fathom the thought that a non-musical TV show can come up with a concept that fits a musical into the storyline and execute it well, then maybe skim through this one or find a synopsis somewhere and move along.
But, if you can open your mind a bit and give it a chance...
Musical episodes just aren't the cool concept that they were some decades ago. I still cringe whenever I hear that a show I watch is doing one. But I've learned to give 'em a chance, 'cause sometimes they don't suck. I think that most productions these days have learned that, if they're gonna do a musical episode these days (as opposed to forty years ago), it can't just be a cheesy sort of fun; it has to be solidly good or it'll backfire hard. They can't all live up to what The Magicians did with the concept (especially with "All That Josh" S03E09 and "All That Hard, Glossy Armor" S04E10), but...
Then again, Doom Patrol already has such a pantheon of all kinds of Weird about it...
IMO, this one was actually pretty good. It made sense within the plot (especially concerning Isabelle's super-naïve experience and wannabe musical theater background) and it was executed surprisingly well. (And we got to see Keeg as a Disneyesque Happy Fun Ball.) Personally, I found it fun and it suited the story. And knowing that the actors all sang their own songs kinda adds to it (especially since since of 'em are pretty good).
Not everyone will agree, and that's okay. This show's wide range of weird almost guarantees that not everyone will enjoy every episode.
In case anyone's interested, more about what went into the episode at https://www.tvinsider.com/1108762/doom-patrol-season-4-episode-9-musical-songs-immortimas-day/
"Damn, Kent." :thumbsup::open_mouth::thumbsup:
"I call it the Kessel Run."
That look, and the sudden-but-smooth deflation-transition to it, was so damn perfectly delivered, that it easily deserved a couple of rewind-and-rewatches.
So we know that some (Jonas, Ulrich) can cross times through the odd metal gates in the caves. But others... Mikkel would probably remember if he'd opened and passed through those stiff heavy gates, and gone back. And I have trouble imagining Gretchen opening the gates at all. So... uh...
So the Lazarus Pits here are pretty different from the ones on Earth Prime, eh?
I think my only problem with this episode was the farcical treatment of the end of the Deep-saves-dolphin scene: everything from the van's hard-stop to the ending smear on the road felt like a bad parody (well beyond what the show inherently is), too ridiculous to be real. I get the point that Deep is no planner and screws up when he goes out on his own, but the writers could have worked just a little more to make that piece feel more real and less like a detour into self-parody.
I also have to wonder if, if Deep's apparently real passion-concern for marine life were taken remotely seriously by Vought and the team, maybe he'd be a better hero and less of the jerk they've basically taught him to be (and Vought could even spin it into yet another PR plus if they really wanted to), but that's a whole another thought-experiment.
Otherwise, this episode continues this show's pretty impressive job of stitching together an image of a superhero-populated world (rife with corporatism and politics and PR) whose possibility no one wants to face. Except, maybe, that it still has Spice Girls.
One of the more fun episodes in awhile, methinks, weaving in increasing threads of wackiness in a way that worked.
And I think we all knew that all sorts of wackiness lurked deep inside the mind of Patterson. Like ninja bo-staff warrior madness. Right?
But that Breakfast Club riff... (The Blindspot Club?) Now that was some funny wacky...
Did we just see the proto-beginning of Heroes for Hire?
Margo: Who are we, now, El? We used to be glamorous amazing mega-bitches. And now?
Eliot: We have... depth, and... character.
Margo: [the penultimate WTF look]
Another moment "pause" buttons were made for...
That was a whole different kind of hallway fight scene.
Did we just see the energy-absorption powers of DC's Parasite?
Ryan: "Ok. So how do we dose that many people all at once?"
Luke: "You have to inject each person one at a time."
Ryan: "But that means…"
Me: "It's time to call Barry."
I do have to wonder, watching this, how much of Boba's drive to avenge his father comes from within vs. being stoked by old-friend-of-Jango Aurra Sing. Probably a mix of both, but it might say something about the influences of elders/mentors on the youngers' choices, such as Aurra Sing on Boba, Plo Koon (and Tera Sinube and Luminara Unduli and...) on Ahsoka, etc.
In the Good Omens book, Crowley's old Bentley was quite the character in and of itself, especially when it came to that fire. Not as much in this series, up 'til now; It's nice to finally see it get its due here. :-)
I'm feeling like some of these side-adventures that incidentally affect some far-off village deserve their own short-story collection.
Eliot and the First Key.
Margot and the Ice Axes.
Quentin and the Repair of Small Objects
...
That sight at the end, of John lighting his cigarette by leaning into the fireball, was worth pausing on for several seconds to appreciate the poster-shot appropriateness of the moment.
From now on, whenever Oliver says "I have an idea" like that, John's stomach should drop, hard.
Oh, Quentin. I have to wonder which path would end up destroying you more, this one or the bottle...
Alan kept me wondering 'til the end what he was really playing in that intricate mind of his, knowing that his daughter's fate might still depend on what he does and where he goes...
Poor Radovid looked like he was having one hell of a panic attack there at the end.
The weird choppy visual of the worlds coming within "sight" of each other, like some sort of TV signal being erratically interrupted, was odd. I very much doubt something like that would look so sharply back-and-forth choppy. But, IMO, that's a relatively small complaint in yet another solid segment of the story.
A larger complaint might be: Why does no one seem to remember the existence of others who might be able to help: Kara, Barry, Jefferson, etc? That story-hole has been annoying me much more, lately.
At the end, that security monitor image with the cell ("zelle") number in the corner... I have to wonder if the use of cell number 2187 was a deliberate reference.
It ain't detention block AA-23, but...
That's okay. Finn didn't get the reference, either.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Season Seven is turning out to be some of the most fun in the Marvelverse so far. This episode was a little overly cheesy-wacky in places, but in ways that fully fit with the 80s action-TV styles at the time, if just a bit extra self-parodying. In there were obvious references to Breakfast Club, Max Headroom (we saved the hard drive), Dr. Who ("Exterminate!"), The A-Team (those new-team member intros), Short Circuit (you tell 'em, Mack), the Speak and Spell ("'cause that would be embarrassing for a robot"), Chopping Mall and bad 80s slasher movies in general, plus arguable potential nods to Battlestar Galactica (with those Cylonesque eye-bars), WarGames (the intro title screen and the initial contact with computer guy), Weird Science (computer guy's build project), and I'm sure more that I'm not remembering right now. All Season Seven episodes have done at least a little of this so far, but the 80s are just so ripe for pop-culture references that some of us would still recognize that this episode felt like a feast of 'em.
Meanwhile, we got what I see as two primary story advancements (connectors between what's happened so far and what's next):
Mack recovers. (Yay!)
Sibyl recovers. (Uh-oh.)
And the beat goes on...
And, I gotta say, yes, Deke can be a total mess and seems to screw up half of what he tries to do, but, dammit, he tries so damn hard...
With those two right there at the iconic Ace Chemicals, the one dunking the other... taking Jeremiah sooo close to the classic Joker origin story... Starting to wonder if we actually will hear the Joker name somewhere in there...
Knowing that our heroes have been through this loop of time who-knows-how-many times already, I have to wonder what can be different this time around that'll let them finally win and avoid The Ultimate EarthQuake. Then, I see this episode, and (among all the other amazingness and YoYo's horror), I wonder: Did their past trips through this time-loop include Zeke getting pulled back in time with them? Hmmm....
This is a total side-note, but...
As I catch up on various recorded shows at different rates, I was somewhat amused by hearing very similar speeches from Raymond Reddington (to FBI Special Agent Harold Cooper) and from Ralph Dibny (to CCPD Detective Joe West). :-)
