DC’s Legends of Tomorrow bowls a spare
The time-idiots battle for the fate of the universe in rented shoes
TV Reviews Legends of Tomorrow
DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow has always embraced the Doctor Who in its DNA. You don’t cast Arthur Darvill as a former “Time Master” and put him in that trench coat accidentally. But in “The Final Frame,” an assured episode credited to writers James Eagan & Ray Utarnachitt, that connection has never been more clear. It’s not just because we got the traditional wow-the-door-to-the-TARDIS-opens-into-the-vast-nothingness-of-space moment, though that’s a classic. It’s the coupling of an absosutely absurd premise with world/universe-saving stakes. Some come on, gang, let’s bowl for the fate of planet Earth—and some other planets, too! Why not?
“The Final Frame” is a Legends “buddy system” episode, and it’s a pretty great one. It’s easy to imagine what things might have looked like if it weren’t made in a Covid season: More bowling teams, perhaps? For sure more chaos in Zari and Nate’s camping adventure. And, uh, maybe this wouldn’t be Nic Bishop’s third role this season? But even with a cast of thousands, the episode wouldn’t change much, because the four (four!) storylines are so thoughtfully woven together, tied to both the arc of the season overall and the absurd premise.
Eagan and Utarnachitt (and the rest of the show’s writers) obviously deserve much of the credit for the success of “The Final Frame,” but they’re not alone in that. It’s also due in no small part to the work of debut director Jes Macallan, whose lively direction enhances the chaos of the premise while reinforcing the structure on which it’s built.
Let’s look at the four (again, four!) storylines in this episode and how they’re tied together. It’s impressive stuff. So our A story is, of course, pod-related, since Pods Scattered Across Timeline are the new Magical Creatures Scattered Across The Timeline (which are the new Historical Figures/Aberrations Scattered Across The Timeline, etc.) Right away, things get extra Doctor Who-y, as this week’s Legends field team — Sara, Spooner, Mick, and Astra — make a rookie mistake and decide to monkey around with a mysteriously ornate silver cube. Turns out that’s not a great idea, and they find themselves zapped to an intergalactic bowling alley where a team of alien meanies/world-eaters (including one played by Nic Bishop) have turned a bowling alley into a “bullying alley,” as Buddy (Alvin Sanders) puts it.
While our bowling team prepares to save the universe, the Legends left on board have to do some serious problem-solving. Since the gang has been abducted by aliens (“again”), the first concern is obviously getting them back, but devoted ‘shipper Gary also feels compelled to try to keep Ava from getting re-traumatized. So what can those two do together that will successfully distract Ava? Wedding dress shopping, that’s what. And what does wedding dress shopping look like on board the Waverider? Gary going nuts with the fabricator, that’s what. Ava’s absurd confection of a wedding dress is a marvelous sight gag, and Macallan and Adam Tsekhman pitch their scenes perfectly, adding just enough gravity to a screwball premise to keep things rooted in the emotional reality of the season and that relationship. 10s across the board (and some top-notch work from costume designer Vicky Mulholland.)
So what is Gary distracting Ava from? That would be from the increasingly troubling behavior of one John Constantine, who, with the help of a mostly oblivious/stoned Behrad, uses his new scary blood-vial-powered magic to yoink the Waverider across time and space to the approximate orbit of the bullying alley. The wedding dress subplot is pitched perfectly, but this one is somewhat less successful. It’s all a little familiar, a continuation of what we saw in “Bad Blood” that moves the story forward only in that it all seems worse, to the extent that even poor stoned Behrad is picking up on the wrongness of it all. Matt Ryan is doing really terrific work; it’s honestly pretty disturbing. But addiction stories should always be about more than the addiction and resulting “addict behavior,” and so far, Legends hasn’t managed to find that depth.*
So where’s the rest of the team? Taking advantage of out-of-totem time. The Nate/Flannel!Zari story (thanks for “Flannel!Zari,” Behrad!) shows “The Final Frame” at its cleverest, but it’s also the most tangled of the episode’s four threads. That it succeeds at all is a testament to the actors, including Gavin Langelo and Jenna Romanin as Jeff and Jamie, who fully commit to the absurdity and horror of the end-of-the-world shit. But Tala Ashe and Nick Zano do yeoman’s work, the former especially, taking a reasonable premise (Zari has a lot of insecurities about long-distance totem dating) that’s not fully fleshed out and adding some much-needed emotional specificity.
But any shortcoming there is easy enough to forgive when the ideas are so deliciously clever and weird. Earth = bowling ball, great. So where are the holes in the bowling ball, and what if Zari and Nate are camping right at the edge of one such hole? That’s inspired. It’s very Doctor Who, but brings to mind things like the Hitchhiker’s Guide and the first Men In Black film. And it’s a choice that instantly ramps up the stakes in all the other storylines, our primary one in particular.
And what a fun one it is. Macallan’s playful approach to the episode calls to mind not just irreverent time-and-space stories like those listed above, but also the work of the Coen Brothers (a not-infrequent source of inspiration for this show.) And Eagan and Utarnachitt lace the whole thing through with some classic sports movie tropes, to great effect. The real bowling victory was the friends we made along the way! A win seized from the jaws of defeat by virtue of a granny roll! Never change, Legends. Just keep rolling.
* — I am not worried that it won’t. Legends is more likely to do a thoughtful addiction storyline than any number of Very Serious Dramas, because it’s a show that nearly always asks the extra question and takes the extra step. This show is many things, but lazy is not one of them.
Stray observations
- The Zari/Nate kiss was appropriately epic and while the show has often given us literal Ava/Sara fireworks, it hasn’t often allowed those two to truly demolish each other. Let the queer ladies make out, show!
- Mike the Strike, get it?
- Does Nate use his extremely helpful superpower in this episode? Nope.
- Episode MVP: Jes Macallan, come on down! You were great in the episode and directed it beautifully!
- Why the fuck not?: Sky-finger.
- Line-reading of the week: “I can’t get married in plain shoulders!”
- Gideon, what’s the most meta moment?: There are a few good ones, but I’m very partial to the red shirt bowling team (especially since the Legends are in blue shirts.)
- Episode title ranking: 1. Stressed Western. 2. This Is Gus. 3. Meat: The Legends. 4. Ground Control To Sara Lance. 5. Back To The Finale: Pt. ii. 6. Bishop’s Gambit 7. Bay Of Squids. 8. The Satanist’s Apprentice. 9. The Ex-Factor. 10. The Final Frame (a perfectly good title!) 11. Bad Blood.
49 Comments
Nic Bishop’s pompadour hairstyle:
I wish I had a local establishment that kindly old Alvin Sanders was running so I could be a regular and be greeted by him every day.
His voice is so familiar, I’m sure I’ve heard him before but I can’t pin down anything on IMDB. Great performance.
He’s Pop Tate in Riverdale also, but mostly his career is a mix of Hallmark holiday movies, voice acting and TV guest spots.
If you watched anime in your youth, it’s probably from DBZ (Ocean Mr. Popo) or Transformers Armada/Energon (Demolishor).
Oh, I remember Demolisher!
In a vacuum, I loved this episode. The character interactions were great, Mick and Spooner work great together, and the premise is absurd enough to be hilariously awesome. But this episode also had another one of those things that irritates me way more than it should, and that’s people from outside the Waverider seeing this crazy stuff. The world is in a panic because three sections of North America have completely disappeared (I guess in subspace or something?) and nothing is said about memories being erased afterwards. And yet, I guarantee nobody in any of the Arrowverse shows will even allude to something that insane happening, either this season or next season. The Arrowverse actually being a shared universe is tenuous at best as is (seems like only Flash gives a shit most of the time), but stuff like this just stretches things.
Remember when Supergirl had Clark and Lois go visit Argo City to justify why Superman wasn’t around to help? Now they just routinely face world-ending threats without even thinking of asking each other for help. “Kara, there’s an army of evil Kryptonians, can you and J’onn swing by for 10 minutes?”
last time they tried to call AlexDirector Danvers for help they found out the whole DEO was blown upthough I really would’ve loved to see the Legends/Superfriends team up to save Sara/Kara
superman and lois straight up acts like supergirl doesn’t exist in their world
I’m going to assume the entirety of Superman & Lois Season 1 takes place while Kara’s in the Phantom Zone.
The interesting thing in hindsight is that “the heroes aren’t asking each other for help” is mostly a post-Crisis issue. Previously Supergirl and Black Lightning were on different Earths, Flash’s problems were localized to Central City, Team Arrow took on their own street-level threats and the Legends’ adventures were mostly confined to the timeline. It’s only recently that Supergirl/Superman have become a potential resource in times of Crisis and the Legends’ are having more adventures in the present day (that whole season 5 finale where everyone was seemingly under the Fates’ control for a few months and ate mush).
“And yet, I guarantee nobody in any of the Arrowverse shows will even allude to something that insane happening, either this season or next season. The Arrowverse actually being a shared universe is tenuous at best as is (seems like only Flash gives a shit most of the time), but stuff like this just stretches things.”I mean, this is Comic Book (Lack of) Logic 101 in any medium; to enjoy the genre, you have to be willing to roll with the fact that shared help/experiences, no matter how wide-ranging and apocalyptic, are rarely shared unless a crossover dictates it, even in something as meticulously crafted as the MCU (did Stark and Strange ever know they were within a hairsbreadth of being wiped out, along with millions of of others, by Project Insight in Cap 2?)
LoT at least has the decency to straight-up tell the audience to turn their brains off and stop asking questions. I put it at the opposite end of the spectrum from Superman & Lois, whose entire deal is that they’re trying to be more grounded, emotional, and serious. The latter is a good show in a vacuum, but its seriousness raises and/or begs questions constantly.LoT, well… you are still technically correct that it’s a mess. But at least the vibe is that everybody involved on the production side knows it’s a mess.
These sort of superhero stories kinda depend on the public having a pretty chill response to world-threatening catastrophes. If there were realistic levels of panic everytime some weird sci-fi event almost destroyed civilization, no one would ever get anything done.Presumably everyone in the Arrowverse felt those earthquakes and saw giant fingers appear in the sky, freaked out a little bit … then, when everything returned to normal, went on with their day.
I’m wondering if they’ll wrap Nic Bishop’s meta-casting into a moment where it turns out all his characters were also (the OTHER, in-universe) Bishop-developed clones scattered throughout history.And thank you so much for delivering a recap. I was worried after it not being on WOT (after two weeks of false positives).
That’s what I’ve been wondering too. But my head canon takes that a step further. It’d be hilarious if Big Bad Bishop was such a huge fan of Actor Nic Bishop that he not only cloned him and sprinkled the clones throughout time and space but named himself after the actor as well. :DI read an interview with Jes Macallan on TV Line, though, and it says that she’s actually married to Nic Bishop (which I had no idea about), and she asked him to try out for the role of Mike the Strike. So it sounds like the boring IRL explanation is that it was just a matter of Covid Convenience. But I do still hope they actually address it within the show somehow.
It’s interesting that neither Macallan or Bishop’s IMDb mentions they are married. Maybe it’s time for them to update.
After reading your comment, I thought that seemed odd. So I went back and double-checked the interview, and it just called him her “significant other,” not husband. My apologies for the misinformation.
No need to apologize. It was good information and most likely explains why Bishop keeps popping-up. Though like you, I kind of wish they could come up with some kind of interesting in-show explanation. Thanks!
The “I got a secret vasectomy…!” exchange was just the sprinkle of spicy weirdness that picked this episode up and plopped it in the “A” range for me.
Which was then confirmed to NOT be rock-and-roll!
I wish the show handled the actual bowling better. Aside from the crazy approach by Spooner (it doesn’t work) and mick getting a lot of zeroes and them somehow still being in a it with supposedly a good team (whose strike balls seemed to mostly be brooklyns… any decent league team feels like could have beaten them easily)…the final frame was… supposedly she needed a strike to win. If you throw a strike in the 10th you get two more shots. So either she already had a spare and then needed a strike (i.e. entered down 19), had two strikes and then needed a strike (entered down 29) or she was just down 9, threw a strike and then still had two more shots. If she was down 9 then a spare would have been enough.Either of the other two scenarios there would have already been big drama in her previous two shots.I feel it would not have taken a lot of trouble for the episode to still have compact drama while giving a nod to how bowling scoring works.
My teenage weekend league self was also yelling about the scoring, as well as the overall structure of how they were playing, but eh, I’ll take some That’s Not How Bowling Works over the usual That’s Not How Computers Work.
I was willing to grant the episode the gimmie that all aliens are terrible at bowling, and these douches just happened to be the best of the worst. There was a shred of a setup, with the manager saying that humans must be great at bowling because they invented it.I dunno man. I was way more peeved by the fact that the king douche was using Earth as a bowling ball before winning it. It’s not his unless/until he wins! That’s not cool at all.
THIS IS COSMIC BOWLING! THERE ARE RULES!
This one was a little slow to start for me, but fortunately it quickly came together.I love how literal the bowling with planets was, it’s such a nice touch- at once uniquely Legends but also very Silver Age DC. Also a good way of tying in Nate and Zari’s storyline. “Not Rock and Roll at all!”
And yes, Gary and Ava’s dress adventures were adorable. (Do wish we’d get a heads-up or something when a review is delayed, especially in this case where it wasn’t listed on What’s On Tonight. I understand sometimes it has to happen but someone saying “Oh BTW this one’s gonna be a little late” would be appreciated.)
Here I was kicking myself for not logging on earlier to read the review, and it was delayed until today. I’m just going to let me ego think you were waiting for me.Love that Mick finally decided Spooner deserved to see his scars, and her clever/goofy solution. Finger in the sky was great, but shouldn’t people have been smushed beneath the palm in between them? One thing that struck me was Jeff casually announcing he had abandoned cars in many mountains. Exactly how stupid do you have to be to do that repeatedly and not figure out you were draining your battery running the glamping site? Jeff is clearly the worst.Gary in that bustle is a sight I will cherish for the rest of my life. Perfect!
The wedding dress plot was peak Gary at his best. Yes, Jeff is absolutely the worst. Also I was convinced for most of the episode (until she decided to shake Flannel Zari’s confidence for no goddamn reason) that the only three words Jamie knew were “rock” and “and” and “roll.”
I was definitely expecting Jaime to be some sort of robot with a limited vocabulary, completing the array of camping gadgets.
Only problem I had with this one is it’s hard to make bowling interesting or fun on telly when you’re not actually playing. Sure the Simpsons pulled it off but that’s the Simpsons for you. Elsewhere it’s basically a lot of people doing strike after strike, seemingly on command, and yet somehow the Legends could still win. Also Red Dwarf did the playing games with actual planets thing better, but then pool is the superior game to bowling anyway so that should be a surprise. Not to say I didn’t love that bit of Sara bowling the Earth back into place which was delightfully cosmic.
It’s time for another Good Idea, Bad Idea.Good Idea: When you need a plotline for your science fiction show, doing a riff on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.Bad Idea: Choosing “The Royale”.The end.
This episode makes me want to get back to bowling as soon as COVID is over!
I’m wondering how they’ll use Constantine’s current addiction storyline into his departure from the show; I assume they will, and if, perhaps, it’ll be fatal or just him, perhaps, giving up magic or something similar. They’re definitely foreshadowing it heavily at this point.
“Power will be the death of you”Yeah, that’s some foreshadowing!
Saying it now, but I would be pissed if Constantine actually dies. A core trait of the character is that he perpetually cheats death, often at various costs to his friends and associates. I’d rather they just kick him off the ship and he walks off into the night while lighting up.
Oh, I absolutely expect him to die, but staying dead is only ever a 50/50 chance on this show.
Several important deaths have stuck though, (with some multiversal exceptions- looking at you, Snart) namely Rip and Stein.
The rule seems to be, if you perform a heroic sacrifice to save the world, your death is permanent, since bringing you back would a) cheapen your dramatic moment of heroism, and b) potentially cause the world to be re-doomed.
Are the bowling aliens an oblique reference to The Big Empty? The Pin Killers were the bowling version of Brainiac.I hated everything about the Nate & Zari go camping subplot until we learned the settings on Spooner’s rifle go up to middle finger.
Spooner and Astra’s relationship evolving this season from hating each other to BFFs has been great and a very Legends appropriate storyline. I also love how every new Legend becoming part of the team has to figure out that Mick is not just a thug but under it all a very loyal and even sensitive guy
Astra and Spooner may be friends, but sooner or later, Behrad is gonna get VERY friendly with Astra lol“I left hell to bowl GRANNY STYLE?” is the kind of stuff that makes me hope this show lasts forever
I don’t even know that Astra and Behrad together will work, but Astra grew up in hell, she for sure deserves to have some dating fun
nic bishop keeps showing up this season yet i never recognize him
I’ll admit I was all set to call this episode the worst of the season or even a potential shark-jumper. Based on the promos the bowling seemed to be another weird flex from the writers on how random and camp they can push the series. Plus another unexplained Nic Bishop appearance.In the end though, pleasantly surprised by how well the results come together, and how Men In Black the whole conceit is. That had me smiling once I realized what was going on. Also, the B/C plots tie back to the main plot pretty well, and that always feels like an unexpected bonus on this show, so kudos.Astra continues to be the load for me. I’m hoping the writers move past the “I didn’t leave Hell just to X” phase of her character and commit to her as a team player. One thing I’ve noticed about this season as its progressed is that it really lacks the optimistic charm Brandon Routh brought as Ray Palmer – a lot of the crew seem prickly in various ways and Behrad’s mellowness isn’t enough to counter it.
The first comics I ever got into were late-80’s First Comics series: Badger, Nexus, and John Ostrander’s Grimjack tying the multiverse together at Munden’s Bar. I wish they were better known just because they’re so enjoyable.
In Grimjack #52 after a long and harrowing storyline the cosmic warrior Judah Maccabee arrives to take our hero Grimjack bowling. Naturally they find themselves bowling with gods. Worse, YUPPIE gods who bowl helpless planets. Battle ensues to free the planets and bring low the yuppies.I have no idea if the Legends writers ever read it but this episode was a worthy telling of the concept.
Was anyone else getting strong Isiah Whitlock Jr vibes off of Buddy? I kept wanting Buddy to go “Sheeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit” whenever the Pin Killers got a strike.
Ok, I have been away so I am just starting to catch up. This was great over all, but I did have a bit of an issue with the ending. We were told that the losers forfeit their civilization. While of course Sara and others wouldn’t want to do that. Astra?
While maybe she could be talked down from destroying their planet, I think she would demand a commiserate favor. Am I mistaken in that?