So far, this is turning out to be the strongest DCTV crossover so far. Good stuff all around. Well, almost...
One big gripe: When the partial Team Arrow (Dinah, Rene, and Curtis) appear and attack Black Arrow, why didn't they... you know... attack? I'd expect to see Dinah's Canary Cry, Rene's guns, and Curtis's T-Spheres all blazing in an all-out assault to take this Very Important Villain down. But... All hand-to-hand? Against an alternate version of a guy they all know can kick their collective asses?
What the... Why? That has to have been the dumbest tactical call ever. These people're smarter than that. Dammit, Writers!
But in the moments that I can push that glaring sore-thumb aside, good stuff.
My only real gripe this episode: Why does Barry suddenly start to have flashes (yes, I said that) of incompetence whenever a apprentice-in-training is around to step in and assist (or fail to do so and earn a lesson)? (E.g., Barry can't speed-blast the armor-suit and then blaze off after Black Bison; Barry's leg is hurt so that he can't save the girl, but seconds later he can streak over to check on her injuries.) C'mon, writers, it shouldn't take that much more effort to write the scene in which the noobs earn those experiences, right?
Oh, and does Flash really have to stand there defiantly waiting for Black Bison to animate something? Every. Single. Time? (Dammit, writers!)
But, other than that... so many amusements in so little time...
"That belongs in a museum!" And before I could even say "So do you!" and look around for Indy and the Panama Hat guy, here comes Night at the Museum, immediately followed by Ralph's multiple Jurassic Park references -- Ralph and Cisco really should hang out long enough to compare pop-culture references -- ...
Also, that brief what-did-I-just-say look right after Cisco heard himself pronounce "you're a wizard, Harry"... Yeah, in this the writers are constantly on fire.
I can only imagine what we'd see if The Flash's writers put the same detailed effort into plotting as they do into the weaving in of pop-culture references...
Interesting developments with Lee and Ed, not sure what to make of Barbara, Tabitha, and Selena -- they seem a bit like they just haven't realized how confused they are -- but one disappointment kinda sticks out...
I've been somewhat fascinated Sophia's obviously complex and layered manipulations, wondering where she was going with it all, how honest she was being with Jim about her goals, etc. And now... Soooo, all that complex machinistic planning by Sophia, all of it depended on her ability to maneuver Jim into a state and position from which she could nudge him into simply (and very un-Jim-ly) rallying the GCPD like any other mob boss to go to war with Penguin? Whaaaaa.... Feels like a bit of a let-down after all that that storyline's gradual build.
Well, that, and... Did Sophia and the ladies really think that Oswald would really just hand over his empire like that, given that they held back nothing to hold over his head if he went back on any agreement? They've all been much smarter than that in the past... what happened here? Writer's Stroke?
And what's with the perennial stupidity of guards at Arkham? Is there some kind of intelligence-and-common-sense test on which one has to score sufficiently low to become an Arkham guard, or is that just where the GCPD assigns its dumbest and most expendable?
C'mon, o writers and directors of Gotham. You can plot so much better than this...
It does seem as though every time I see Adrian Pasdar, he's playing a bigger eviller jerk than last time, and increasingly convincingly so. Nathan Petrelli (Heroes), Glenn Talbot (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Nolan Burgess (Colony), Morgan Edge (Supergirl). Almost like he's refining... something...
Okay, so this episode did have a few real causality/realism issues:
And, of course, there's the one we could apply to most episodes: When they've first determined that Ray has met and brought home a Dominator baby, and has been significantly altering his behavior for at least a couple of days, shouldn't they time-hop back a few days, look for the point at which Ray met the Dominator, and fix things as close to the source of the divergence as possible? Or would that make too much sense?
But, somehow, this being DC's Legends of Tomorrow, in the end, none of that really mattered all that much, and this was (IMO) one of this series's more fun and entertaining episodes. Go figure. Sometimes they really do screw things up for the better, or at least for the better entertainment of us viewers. :-)
There're so many amusing, cute, and LOLable moments in this one. I won't attempt to list them all (others already largely have anyway), but one will oddly stick with me and I will have to tell my huge-stage-musical-fan wife about*:
Sara Lance: Is that music?
Ray Palmer: Yeah, "Singin' in the Rain". Only the best musical ever.
Mick Rory: Not as good as "Fiddler on the Roof".
[Sara and Martin both look at Mick strangely]
Mick Rory: I love that show.
[Mick sees Sara and Martin looking at him]
Mick Rory: What?
Yeah, Mick. You keep us guessing. Little surprises like this are sooo worth it.
*Edit: She doesn't watch this show regularly (more of a The Flash fan), but she knows who the characters all are. And she did indeed find even my second-hand description of this scene utterly hilarious.
Although I liked the episode otherwise, that whole Internet Vault thing was absolute crap. The beginning of the team's discovery and explanation of the Evil Plan sounded sort of okay at first, sounding like it was heading toward some sort of widespread DNS hack (which could indeed have paralyzed much of how the Internet is used), but then... only three? in one single (and conveniently local) "vault"? for the entire Internet? C'mon writers, we all know that you're capable of much better than that.
Fun episode, otherwise, but given that it all depends on that crappy core...
Okay, well, we did get to see Oliver nicely running the Overwatch station; that was pretty cool. He certainly has the tactical abilities to run that sort of coordination, and throw in that quick "well, you've automated so much of the tech that anyone could do it" explanation and we're good, right? Well, a lot better than that those "Internet Vault" crap.
Did anyone else wonder what Pyg was really up to here, what his point was? No cameras to publicize and expose the rich's eating of the poor? No poisons in the pies to punish the rich? Did he really think that he'd be teaching these rich a lesson that they'd actually take to heart? What was the point? Just seems inconsistent with his earlier intentions to actually clean up Gotham's corruption. And who else was surprised that Pyg seemed trying to kill Jim, the one GCPD officer he actually respected? I get the desperation of escaping capture, but...
Oddly, it ending up being a good thing that Oswald left that one knife in the odd place that he did... :-O
Other than those niggling bits, great episode. So many threads winding their wiggly ways all over Gotham, I'm sure to eventually collide in myriad interesting ways...a
So, fun stuff, mostly. And very curious to see where the storyline with Sam and Ruby leads to; the treatment so far looks much more interesting and thought-out than the "Reign" teaser-bits floating around before the season started...
OTOH, there are moments when I want to slap the writers and give them a "C" on their middle-school writing details. Not all of 'em. Just the sloppy bits. Like leaving Kara's purse in the elevator with the Supergirl-sized hole in the ceiling (yeah, no one'll notice that there). And how Supergirl kept presenting herself to Psi and giving plenty of lead-time in which to blast Supergirl over and over and over. That one moment Supergirl breath-blasted Psi should have been immediate and repeated and game over, done. If we need Psi to have her moment and demonstrate her powers and formidability (and in which Supergirl must face Psi's powers and her own terrors) then write the story in which she earns it, not in which Supergirl suffers repeated spontaneous brain-damage and hands it over to her like that.
And is anyone else finding themselves repeatedly insisting that it is waaay past time for Kara to tell Lena about her Little Secret? Especially now.
Like many others, I had fun watching the return of Team Kid Flash-- no, Team Vibe-- no, Team... oh, nevermind.
But...
Barry's return and recovery really should have taken at least three episodes. This way it feels much too... simple. Disrespected, even.
It took an entire season to figure out and defeat Savitar, but just toss one Samaroid into the city and--poof--Cisco extracts scatter-brained Barry and Iris puts herself in immediate danger and--poof--Barry quickly descatters and saves her. Clearly, Barry's six months in Speed Force Prison was a piece of cake compares to the Savitar Crisis...
I hope, at least, that we haven't simply poofed all the effects of the six-month Speed Force Solitary away like that, that we'll be seeing interesting effects pop up for awhile. Even if they have to be prodded along by our new Thinker...
So, aside from all the questions about whether this show is leaning more crisis-of-the-week than the original story that gave it life...
The whole trail that Agent Wells is compelling down has found some quirky developments that beg the question of what the heck Lloyd was setting them after -- is he simply setting up for a Presidential scandal to toss the White House into turmoil again? what's the point now? -- but even then... Who the hell set that bomb in the medical records facility, and shouldn't Agent Wells and the others be all over where the hell that weirdly coincident explosion came from? Feels a little too much like "Oh, damm; guess we can't search for those records, what else have we got?" Uhhh... Hopefully that'll come back around in future episodes. It just feels like it could have used a line in there somewhere recognizing the WTFness of that explosion...
Although I'm finding much of the storyline direction this season so far to be interesting... This is the third live-action Ra's al Ghul treatment I've seen -- including those from Batman Begins and Arrow and, IMO, clearly the oddest. The other two were rather different from each other, but both worked, made sense, etc. This one seems more like a sloppily thrown-together and somewhat unhinged Ra's, in comparison. Not sure if that's intentional, or just carelessness.
And... What the heck was with that dog-man-thing? I know Gotham can host some pretty comically weird characters, but...
At least the immediate story developments around Bruce (except: see above) and Oswald/Ed and Sofia are looking more interesting.
And... sigh. Alex...
Hmm. I have to wonder if Omar will now be redirecting his seemingly endless supply of ready-to-die morons.
Oh, Niska. You don't even know for sure if anyone in that room was involved at all. And now getting anyone to believe in the future... sigh.
Just a few trailing thoughts after letting the finale sink in a bit...
I have to wonder if there's anything odd to "dying" within the ancient skeleton of a dragon, in the very place from which The Hand had intended to harvest "the substance", that we'll see affecting the path and nature of the somehow-rescued Devil of Hell's Kitchen when we see him next...
And who thinks that we'll see not only Matt coming back in whatever crazy way just happened, but probably Elektra and/or Gao, as well?
Did we just see a set-up pointing toward the Daughters of the Dragon coming soon? (Arm? Pfft. We can rebuild her. We have the technology... Danny's hospital resources, a little Stark tech... yeeaaah. Actually, it'd be pretty wild for Misty to get her bionic prosthetic arm and then sometime later happen to run into Deathlok— what? oh, what was I saying... right. Okay.)
At the end, Danny, crouching kinda-sorta Daredevil-like atop that building, watching, listening, or whatever he thought he was doing... Kind of a wonderful tribute to the fallen, even if there's no way Danny could be doing (or even really understand) what Matt did when he stood like that, listening to the beats and arrhythmias and myocardial infarctions of his city... but he's there, trying to honor and fulfill, somehow... Just don't fall off that ledge, kid, okay?
Overall, the core of this was typical Stitchers fun. The whole murder-for-barter ring isn't terribly original, but it works, and falls apart pretty quickly when the NSA can stitch into the victims. Maybe a little too quickly, but...
But if I may nitpick for a moment:
* Tor is an anonymizer used by lots of people who like their internet privacy; nothing inherently evil about it. But automatically assuming that use of a Tor browser means dark web and evil intentions? Ooookay.
* The "dark web" consists of websites that support Tor-like encryption and anonymization to further support people who like their internet privacy. Some of those sites do support illegal and worse activities, but many of them do not -- news site ProPublica, for example. So Tor means Dark Web means evil? Sigh.
* Suddenly Detective Fisher is all ninja assassin? Where'd that come from?
* Drawing out that pointless pizza-guy suspense? And not even well, like a few-seconds of undisguised yeah-we're-just-messing-with-you. Really?
* Someone must have been pretty unstable to begin with to go all if-I-can't-have-All-In-any-more-instead-of-just-starting-over-with-a-new-site-I'll-just-go-end-it-all-Kamikaze-on-Maggie.
Stitchers overall is a cool idea and a mostly-fun show with mostly-entertaining characters, but I feel the story-writing has grown increasingly careless, glossing over development and details like pesky annoyances, as though the writers/producers don't really care enough to spend the time to build something as well as I'm sure they could if they tried. Scorpion has suffered terribly from that sort of affliction, and the newer MacGyver to some extent, as well. TV series can only survive so long under such carelessness...
I was a little disappointed that they redshirted Dave "Bam Bam" Baumgardner so quickly like that. I may not have liked the way he ended up being added to the team, but he seemed like a good guy; would've been cool to see him and Wyatt cooperating in all the anti-Rittenhouse madness coming up, but... sigh. Oh, well.
Other than that, great stuff. They seem to be getting better at involving the "locals" in creative ways: Hemingway can be a jerk, but he was a good jerk, and Baker was just brilliant...
After all that, I now have to wonder... Did Flynn lie to Wyatt about who killed Jessica (and Gilliam was just taking an opportunity to mess with Wyatt), or was Flynn trying to show Wyatt something more insidious (and very not-yet-obvious) about Rittenhouse's machinations, or...
Or perhaps Time just doesn't like to be forced into a paradox -- such as Wyatt going back in time to erase the event that formed his motivation to go back in time -- and so has a tendency to Nudge Things in ways that will keep paradoxes from forming, like the barrage of occurrences repeatedly getting in Wyatt's way of distracting Claire and Joel, something else killing Jessica that night to take the place of Gilliam doing so, etc..
And Lucy getting over her own personal "Nooooo! That's not True! That's impossible!" moment and confronting her father like that...
Fun, and good to see the gang back, but...
Did it feel like a rather lot was resolved awfully quickly and simply? Almost feels like the writers changed their minds about where they wanted to go between the end of season two and the beginning of season three, and so [a little too] quickly wiped things clean so as to redirect. Maybe not, maybe it's just plain old sloppy writing. Either way, hope the season's plot improves from there...
In addition to all the utter amazingness that has been Orphan Black's fifty-episode story...
(Wow. Did they really cram all of that into a mere fifty episodes? Wow. Did I mention wow?)
There's something oddly funny about the whole Orphan Black story being a memoir told by Helena.
"My story is an embroidery — many beginnings and no ends, but I will start with the thread of my sestra Sarah, who stepped off a train one day and met herself…"
Thank you to everyone involved in bringing us this incredible embroidery, from stunning beginning to final-trip end.
I didn't quite get why they allowed him to return his transit-clone with his memories of the encounter. He's clearly established that they won't be able to talk or threaten him out of continuing to attack them, so any little piece of information they can prevent him from obtaining about what happened and how they pushed him back... and what he offered the colony worlds' representatives... Sigh.
But other than that, fun stuff. And yet another don't-mess-with-Five reminder.
Damn. As if it wasn't enough, last season, to have to sit helplessly and watch Kendall Malone executed and obliterated in front of her, but now Cosima's stunned out her attempts to calm Yanis by the unexpected bullet slamming into Yanis's skull. She may never see the quiet intellectual experience of the laboratory quite the same way again.
Gaahhh! MK! Dammit. In some ways, she basically pulled a Beth: suddenly just couldn't take it any more, and found a train named Ferdinand to throw herself in front of. But still... Dammit. Would like to have seen more of and from her before she went and did something like that... Sigh.
Even so, I'm kinda hoping that, somewhere down the line, we'll find out that MK left some sort of surprise running on some computer server somewhere that'll suddenly spit out valuable information or crash some big neo network at just the right time... Ah, well. I can hope, at least.
And maybe we'll get lucky and Ferdinand will go the way of Aldous Leekie.
It is rather amazing how richly these few well-chosen flashback-brushstrokes of Kate/Kaplan's past fleshed out her history and motivations toward both Masha/Elizabeth and Raymond, as well as why she acted to help Liz behind Redd's back the way she did. A masterful filling-in and tying together of so much.
Honestly, after all this, it's become difficult to decide who should come out on top between Raymond and Kate (if either one truly must). Kate seems to be the only one who fully understands how Raymond's original mission of protection has evolved into an unshakable obsession of control to the point of itself repeatedly threatening the mission...
Redd just keeps unfolding new ways to mess up his own world, doesn't he?
(Knew that was coming back to him in some form; looks like it ain't gonna be a small one.)
"With all due respect, Madame, where are you going with this?"
"Wherever I goddamn like!”
"Whoever the fuck you are, stand down and let her speak."
Yup. Gotta love Chrisjen Avasarala more and more all the time.
Why do I now kinda feel like the line "You want a war?" was a foreshadowing of the later shift in cancellation-disappointed Sense8 fans' attitudes toward Netflix...? :-(
Efforts like http://bit.ly/RenewSense8 might have something to do with that, too. Sigh.
A few randomish highlights and comments:
Applause for the Punisher of the evening, Ward Meachum!
Am I the only one wondering how interesting a novelization of this season's story solely from Ward's tortured and evolving point of view would be? Hmm.
Damn, but Davos is taking his feelings of abandonment and betrayal awfully deeply. And now, feeding on redirecting Joy's newly devastating daddy-issues to fuel his own vengeful plans? Dark. Maybe he and Karl Mordo should get together and vent.
And Joy. Sort of like experiencing all of Ward's last thirteen years of torment and disillusionment and despair slammed into just a couple of days. She looked so crushed. That won't be good.
And, yes, Danny, you abandoned your singular guardpost without warning or backup for a good while. Of course something happened while you were away. Duh.
Here's hoping that both Finn Jones (portraying Danny Rand) and the Iron Fist writing/directing team hone their skills -- which came off as a bit clumsy over much this season -- more fully before returning to us in The Defenders. Much potential -- especially with such strong support from Jessica Henwick (Colleen Wing) and Tom Pelphrey (Ward Meachum), and of course Rosario Dawson (Claire Temple) -- but much rougher than the other Marvel Netflix series so far. We'll see...
Wow. Something about being a Marvel TV character named Ward just really screws a guy up, doesn't it?
So I suppose the final Answer is that the world split into two identical worlds, most of the people continuing on in only one of the worlds and a small fraction of the people continuing on in only the other, those in each world baffled at where everyone else "departed" off to. That's the what Answer, anyway. The why is left as an open mystery that may never be solved in either world...
But the story never was about what happened that day or why, was it? It was about what happened in and to the lives of those who continued on in the more populated world from which 2% had apparently "departed", and especially the lives of the Garveys and those around them, most especially Kevin and Nora. And in that it did deliver. Wow. And given all of that, what an ending. It would probably have taken too much and too long to depict all of what happened to Nora, so I appreciate how the story-telling summary approach fit in more easily. And how these two people, terribly broken by the massively complex fallout of the "departure", finally rejoined, each (mostly) free of the baggage that'd been haunting them for so long...
Oh, yeah. And: Yay! Laurie lived! :-)
Thank you White Rabbit Productions, Film 44, Warner Bros. Television, and HBO Entertainment for this wildly imaginative and richly illustrated ride, and for not giving up on it before giving it a true and fair conclusion.
So much depth of portrayal, all to support and frame the core realizations of the episode which can be summed up with:
"We fucked up with Nora.
and
"Take this thing out of me." "Why?" So that we can never come back to this place again."
This seemed more like a final redemption and righting of Kevin himself than it did of the world-threat Dad believed was coming. (I suppose the implication afterwards is that there was no eventful significance to the seven-year anniversary after all.)
In that sense, this episode also bookends very nicely with the next...
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z2017-12-31T23:59:59Z