Episode Title: Fail-Safe
Original Airdate: 2-18-16
Still behind on this show, but at least I’m not getting any behinder, not that behinder is a word, but two weeks ago we had this episode that in terms of the team dynamic seems to be sluggishly moving forward. The show continues to make baby steps to show the audience that the Legends of Tomorrow still aren’t a team that’s fully meshed together and working as a single unit, but the bonds are continuing to form character by character and each episode the unit as a whole gets just a little bit stronger while Vandal Savage also seems to slowly become more and more capable and prepared for their next threat.
The biggest issue here comes at the moral dilemma that Rip Hunter gives to Sarah. Since she is the former assassin of the group, she’s the one tasked with taking out Dr. Stein if they aren’t able to save him. It’s the whole “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one” dilemma only there seems to be a little less peril behind it as for whatever reason, Dr. Stein never truly feels like his life is on the line. He’s one of the main characters, he’s treated relatively well in captivity, and just the nature of the show itself leads us to believe that he’s going to make it out ok. Especially when the show has been trumping up Sarah’s supposed dark side after being brought back from the Lazarus pit. Honestly, even though I do like Sarah as a character, the show feels like it spends so much time talking about how she has this bloodlust that she’s supposedly unable to control, and yet time after time she appears to have very little difficulty letting it get out of her hands.
What does work a little better in this episode is the building of the relationship between Ray and Heat Wave. Ray has already started to grow a little bit on Snart, now it’s time for him to work on the other half while they are incarcerated in this high security Cold War Russian prison. More than once, Ray takes a pretty harsh beating for another person, first it’s for this random old man, and second it’s for Heat Wave himself. Surprisingly, in these moments, Ray feels a lot like Deadpool with a little less fourth wall breaking and a lot less fighting ability. He has a very similar smart mouth on him in the way that he keeps talking without knowing what’s good for him. The final bit of team building is when the B-team players finally step up and are allowed to step up by Rip. Kendra and Jackson-minus-Stein have generally been the weak links on the team since they are the freshest and least experienced, but they’re finally given a chance to hold their own and it works out. As for the rest of the episode, the action worked well as usual, and the tease for next week’s episode which is technically last week’s episode makes you realize how bad the team is at math to think that Oliver would still be handling the Arrow role in the same way when he’s in his mid 50’s give or take.
Channel: Superhero 