Legends Of Tomorrow stalls, but on the upside: it’s got a French lawyer/vampire now!
The French lawyer/vampire is also a blood-potion black-marketeer and an art collector, so as always, the Legends characters contain multitudes
TV Reviews Legends of Tomorrow
This is your moment, theater majors. Brace yourselves. In the paragraph below, you will be asked to call upon your degree.
One of my favorite nerdy theater words comes from Commedia dell’arte. There are several ways to define “lazzi,” both in terms of how it was used in the 17th century and how it’s used today, but I tend to think of the penguin-waiters entering in Mary Poppins:
Or, more recently, Jaida Essence Hall yelling “look over there!” My theater history professor would probably retroactively fail me for saying this, but in my mind, an easy/lazy way to define lazzi is to think of a lazzo as a “wocka wocka wocka” moment. Do you need to fill time? Lazzi. Is the audience asleep? Lazzi. Has a scene gone off the rails? Lazzi. Do you need to distract from something else? Lazzi. It’s the unholy, extremely helpful, often very entertaining marriage of stalling for time and playing the hits.*
“Bad Blood” is a lazzi episode. That’s an odd thing to say, maybe, of an hour in which a kid watches his uncle get killed by a fascist, then brings the uncle back to life with magic that scares the crap out of him, knowing full well that things are going to get even worse after that because, well, fascists. One does not hear the word “lazzi” and think “Constantine’s unaddressed trauma and self-loathing rear their ugly heads when his quest for a MacGuffin comes up short, so Spooner attempts to lullaby a kid’s magic out of him and float it across the room to John, but John isn’t worthy so instead he drinks a crazy blood-magic potion that makes him maniacally cackle while he trips balls and murders fascists in a dried-up-fountain cave.”
But that’s “Bad Blood:” half a grim, unsettling Legends history episode in which Constantine seriously regresses and transgresses, and half a collection of lazzi loosely strung together. It’s also the first episode of the year to feel like the uphill battle that making this whole season almost certainly was. You can sense and sometimes see the budgetary restrictions, the time constraints, and the surely endless practical and safety issues unavoidable in a pandemic season. (What a thing to say.)
Chaos is pretty much always welcome on Legends. It’s what makes the time-idiots so great: chaotic good = screwing things up for the better. But this doesn’t play like cultivated chaos. Instead, it’s a frustrating, though of course entertaining, 42 minutes in which a potentially good (and legitimately scary) Constantine/Spooner episode gets bulked up by Gary losing his glasses, the shipbound Legends getting their asses kicked by a rapidly-growing Gus**, and Mick yelling about being pregnant.
None of that stuff is bad! It’s all either engrossing or fun, but when it’s all smushed together it becomes a sort of glob of Legends essence, like the nicotine gum John stuck on Crowley’s painted forehead. But because the A-story isn’t a total triumph, its inadequacies become that much more obvious. The Legends dealing with Gus-Gus off-screen is a good lazzo, but it’s not that good. The Legends singing Gus-Gus to sleep, though? Perfect.
There are highlights, of course: This season, Legends is really not fucking around when it comes to its political leanings. The gang has now taken shots at capitalism, Nazis, the Catholic Church, gentrification, the flattening of art for mass consumption, and racism in several of its many forms; I’m sure I’ve forgotten others. To the credit of the writers (including this episode’s credited writer, Grainne Godfree), it never comes off as self-congratulatory or trite; it’s always either totally earned, a la John’s really wonderful speech about why he needs magical power, or it takes the form of a jabby punchline, which is a Legends specialty. Matt Ryan sells the hell out of that speech, and it’s potent enough that it counterbalances the slight nature of the war aspect of the story and makes up for some, if not all, of the uncharacteristic issues with tonal shifts. If any show can make the switch from ‘magical donkey’*** to a sort of Indiana Jones vs. Nazi situation and from Indiana Jones to blood magic murder hallucinogens, it’s Legends, but I’m not sure Legends can, either.
Still, Ryan and Lisseth Chavez, who gets to do some real capital-A Acting in this episode, are both great. Mick’s storyline spun its wheels until it arrived in the medbay, but Dominick Purcell and Mina Sundwall do lovely work together, and the adjustments Sundwall makes to her performance for this older, wiser Lita are really thoughtful and effective. The rest of the time-idiots are pretty great, too; we don’t spend much time with Zari (“the O.Z.”), but her getting a video of the Gus lullaby was funny, as were the increasingly chaotic hair situations of everyone but Mick. And Jes Macallan got the biggest laugh of the episode from me when Ava reacted to Mick’s brood-sac sonogram.
But as is always the case when an episode of this show falls a little flat, my instinct is to end with what’s most promising. This isn’t a series that stands still; often new supporting characters help to yank even the most recalcitrant storylines along. So it is with Noelle the French vampire/lawyer (Melissa Farman). Feeling a little let down because Legends is stalling for time? Just say the words “French vampire-slash-lawyer” aloud to yourself, or better yet, start imagining the possibilities—because on this show, they’re pretty much endless.
* — I am not any sort of serious scholar when it comes to dell’arte, please do not write “the penguins from Mary Poppins” on any theater history exam you may take next year. This is just how I’ve got it filed away in my brain.
** — Uh, where did they drop him? Is he hanging out with Ray’s dinosaur community? Is he on planet Kayla? He’s coming back, right?
*** — The surest sign of budget constraints is not Nate failing to steel up. It’s the magical donkey with giant magical udders that must be suckled THAT WE NEVER SEE ON SCREEN.
Stray observations
- Gary losing his glasses is BRILLIANT. BRILLIANT. SO BRILLIANT.
- I’m going to be bummed if we don’t get a live-action Matt Lucas appearance, if only for the Doctor Who element. Every Who player in Legends puts me one step closer to seeing Bill Potts on the Waverider.
- Does Nate use his extremely helpful superpower in this episode? Hahahahahahhhahahahahahah yeah probably, since he’s mostly off-screen dealing with Gus-Gus.
- Episode MVP: If every time Matt Ryan was good at playing John Constantine he got an MVP then he’d have 14 MVPs for the NBC series alone. He’s good, but I think this has got to go to Lisseth Chavez, who hit a bunch of solid comic beats but also held down the heavier stuff as well as, if not better than, her new blood-juiced hypnotist pal.
- Why the fuck not?: French lawyer/vampire/blood-potion-dealer.
- Line-reading of the week: “Yeah, well, then you’ll understand my attitude towards priests.”
- Gideon, what’s the most meta moment?: Tie: “New girl on the ship vibes” and the fact that the Nazis researched the Spear of Destiny and the Loom of Fate as well as the Fountain of Imperium. Presumably, they also researched the Hawk People and various and sundry totems.
- 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. Bad Blood.
75 Comments
I liked the episode and thought it was pretty good focusing on Constatine and Spooner. We got more out of Spooner and I liker her slow character moments more than her action moments. However Constatine wasn’t worthy because he strayed from his original quest with Magic to help others. He makes a good speech but he has fallen from those Ideals because he doesn’t want to help El Gato and crew and wants just to get his magic back. He talks about hating facists but he makes the spell to control Spooner. Fernando got his powers by praying for his uncle and wanting to save him.
I felt that they embraced the “not worthy” reason for failure rather hastily. Constantine wasn’t interacting with the fountain itself. Why would they assume that transferring its magic from one person to another follows the same rules? Maybe it was just that the empty fountain had a greater pull on it than did Constantine.I was sitting there going, “Who cares if the fountain has dried up? You know where it is! You have a time machine! Go back to when the boy found the cave, and then see if “not worthy” applies!”
fact that the Nazis researched the Spear of Destiny and the Loom of FateThat was great. As first time I heard it I thought they were doing the Star Trek thing where they’ll name two historical figures and then a made up alien for verisimilitude and loads of properties have covered Hitler wanting the spear, before remembering oh yeah that was totally a thing on Legends too along with the Loom which makes it even better. Also more vampire lawyer lady please.
I remembered the Spear of Destiny being important in DC Comics’ version of WWII but completely forgot that Legends specifically had an arc about it.
Not just an arc, but for me, the arc that made the Legends legendary. Grabbing the three best villains of the Arrowverse (IMO) and teaming them up was a fantastic recovery from the mediocre-at-best debut season of the show, and effectively reset my expectations for what it could achieve when it was firing on all cylinders.
I loved how they were able to name these three “the Legion of Doom” on the show and make it work.
I 100% thought that the magical donkey was a subtle dig at/wink to Doom Patrol, the other “DC Weird” offering.Nate did Steel up – or at least, very briefly de-steeled as he was getting tossed about by Size of a Bus Gus. You can see the effect receding from him for about 1-2 seconds.Vampire Lawyer was Danielle Rousseau from Lost! This seems like a better character.
For a sec I thought you meant the late Mira Furlan.
Size of a Bus GusIf this phrase isn’t used in a future review I will be sorely disappointed. Also I need Gus to meet Beebo. I NEED!
I like this desperate depowered con artist bastard John Constantine because he’s more comics accurate.
Gus Gus got sent back to Raincouver to be a sasquatch.Is Noelle from Transilvane?
What’s the deal with the hiatus?!
Yeah, the scheduling this year has been a mess. Superman&Lois has aired only 12 episodes but had like 5 hiatuses (to be fair, they had to shutdown production because of a positive covid case, but still).
Riverdale is currently in a 4.5 month hiatus. And the sixth season is scheduled to start only a month after the fifth ends.
I would guess maybe Olympics?
Good call
-Did John actually dick over Spooner like that, or does the drink have more of a possession effect than he was expecting? He can be enough of a bastard, but I’m worried about vampiric possession too.-I am amazed Sara put up with Gary while she and Ava were venue-hunting.-Could really feel the COVID restrictions with Constantine+Spooner and Mick+Lita paired off and the rest of the regulars minimized for nearly the whole episode.
-It seems that John is more addicted to the potion rather than outright possessed by it due to the trippy visuals and his loopy demeanor while on it plus his sudden crash afterwards. Then again maybe magical drugs count as possessions?-Gary wasn’t with Sara and Ava while they were out. He lost his glasses and was in his alien form until the end. Gary just happened to walk in the med bay with the two of them after finding his glasses.
…ok, but now I kind of want to see tentacle!Gary hovering around for part of the wedding planning.
Soooo given Bishop is dead (RIP my beautiful, crazy villain) and they’ve been mentioning the Fountain and alien magic from the pilot, Johnny C is the big bad, right, right??? Even though The O.Z is technically a Tomaz, I loved “Tarazi siblings, activate”. Wonder Twins!! Auntie Ava will now be an aunt to 48 tentacled baby aliens, aww.
Constantine lurching into Dark Willow territory sure seems to track after his behavior in the final act this week.
Unfortunately the Willow becoming addicted to magic storyline was Buffy’s worst-ever storyline so I don’t have high hopes for this show using it
It didn’t help that immediately before using the magic-as-drugs metaphor, Buffy has kind of used magic as a way to slip Willow/Tara consummating their relationship past BS&P
I’m assuming Bishop will be back – would be very odd to introduce a big bad and the whole alien-clone-hybrid angle and not circle back later. But I also thought we’d get hints by now, and maybe this is why the episode stalls a bit. Stressed Western and This is Gus were fine breather episodes but I want to pick things back up.
Definitely looking like Constantine will wind up being the big bad. Hopefully Legends handles that better than Buffy did.
I really don’t know what to expect from the remaining five episodes. I think every bit of footage shown in the Season 6 trailer is from episodes we’ve now seen, so we’re gonna be going ahead largely blind.
….Is that the first time we’ve seen vampires in the Arrowverse?Does that mean no Sara or Ava this episode?But, we have Lita.I don’t remember what Behrad said that he made, but it looks delicious.Looks like they’re slowly building Behrad and Astra.Legends, you’re better than this heavy-handed pregnancy storyline. We know that you can be a little more subtle.Is Spooner going to get a superhero identity?There you go, Legends. That’s much better. Mick’s problem is that he feels he deserves it.Hernando knows about the JSA.Oh, God. John’s Italian accent.I love John, deprived of his magic, having to rely on his wits.There’s Sara and Ava.Spooner doesn’t remember what her mother looks like, but remembers her voice. I’m sure that that’s not a plot point.Hmmmm…this storyline for John does seem to have some potential.I’m sad that we missed the chance to see Zari and Behrad talking. This is the first extended opportunity that they’ve had to sit and chat over their lives. Give us that.
Gideon was a vampire slayer in Sirens of Space-Time so even though that timeline was reversed, this isn’t the first time.
This reminded me it’s almost time for Gideon’s live actress check-in. Whoop whoop!
Assuming Amy Pemberton was able to get into Canada last year
I love John, deprived of his magic, having to rely on his wits.This was a great moment. Maybe not so much the accent, but everything going south and turning into a gunfight with no super powers to help is one of the grittier bits in recent years.
There was sort of a vampire on Batwoman, Nocturna. But she used tech & wasn’t really undead
I don’t remember what Behrad said that he made, but it looks delicious.It was a Spanish Tortilla. Basically a potato omelette.
If the Legends can fight zombies, vampires shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Wasn’t there a vampire on Supergirl last season?
Oh right, there was a whole storyline about that – which I think is actually this season, the hiatus has been long??. He was an alien who had all vampire traits and inspired the vampire-lore but technically was an alien.
Also, earlier this season Supergirl introduced an alien from the Planet Transylvane, who has a pair of sharp fangs, drinks blood, and can turn into a bat, and his kind are supposedly where legends about vampires came from.Whether French vampire lawyer is also from the Planet Transylvane, or is an unrelated, fully mystical vampire, will probably never be answered.
I wonder if they’re setting up Constantine’s departure from the show? He’s been on for a while, and maybe they’ve run out of stories for him. Not a guarantee, and with Mick already leaving they may not want to jettison two major players at once, but it seems like the seeds are there.
I’m wondering this too. Since he joined, the show has increasingly become “Constantine and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” with Constantine’s plot threads increasingly driving the overall arc of each season. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – the magic elements pair well with Legends and Matt Ryan has been amazing in the role. But he was never a character meant to be a team player for this long, and it would be very appropriate for him to eventually be kicked off the ship for being a bastard to the others.Put another way, if this is going to end with Constantine learning a lesson about friendship, faith, and everything resets to normal, I think CW’s hit a ceiling with the character and I’m less interested in where this will lead.
I slightly disagree with the O.Z. – Spooner’s new girl vibe has just about worn off. I love her – she’s part of the crew. Everyone calls her “Spoons” now which is great. I’ll go a little higher and give it a B. … B+ for Matt Ryan flipping out … B- for the crazy fro hijinks (Gus better be 4 stories tall next time we see him) so the B’s balance. Actually the crazy fros and spitting pink fluff gets funnier in retrospect. Nice suspense & eye acting in the “fascists vs hidden barkeep shotgun” sequence.“Let the Right One in” indeed.
I will say, in that scene alone they already did Magic Is A Drug way better than Buffy did in its entire 6th season…
If there’s one thing Legends did in previous years that actually benefits this pandemic season, it’s that it firmly established characters can stay on the ship and do jack all, blissfully unaware of a more important A plot happening elsewhere. So yeah, while the Gus aging story and Mick pregnancy is very “lazzi,” in itself it doesn’t feel out of place. It just doesn’t work as the B-plot to this particular Constantine A-plot, and I wish it all fit together a bit better tonally or thematically. John isn’t worthy so instead he drinks a crazy blood-magic potion that makes him maniacally cackle while he trips balls and murders fascistsThis…I need to watch this again. Legends has always been very Doctor Who in terms of production value, but specifically Doctor Who from the reboot era onwards. This felt more akin to vintage Doctor Who, and not in a good way. I was reasonably enjoying this episode and this took me out completely.
I’m not an Arrowverse viewer at all, because as much of a sucker for a shared universe as I am, the whole thing seems too confusing at this point. However, on the strength of your reviews alone, I’m tempted to start watching Legends. And if Pearl Mackie joins the cast as you so brilliantly suggested, that may be my tipping point!
After the first season (and except for the crossovers), Legends stands more and more on its own and separately from the rest of the Arrowverse. Except for the odd reference or two, I would say by now it’s very much its own thing.
Every Who player in Legends puts me one step closer to seeing Bill Potts on the Waverider.Reposting this to manifest it.
It just hit me. Sara’s mom should visit the Waverider on the Matt Lucas-in-person episode.
Might’ve leaned too much into the cheese at times, but this episode was the closest they’ve come to absolutely nailing Constantine as a character since his own series got cancelled, and I’d like to see some more of it in the future.
Really good Spooner episode, she feels like a real member of the team and not just because of her new girl energy. She has a distinct point of view.I like Astra too. I liked when Nate told Mick they all love him, Astra saying she isn’t really there yet. I see why Behrad is into her but frankly I am not sure they work
Astra was for sure giving Behrad some bedroom eyes while he was singing. IDK about their longevity but they’ll surely make an interesting couple.
Apart from whether they will actually work as a couple, Astra is certainly due for some action It reminds me of Mack asking Sousa what his intentions were toward Daisy. When Sousa said he didn’t have any, Mack said, well you’d better get some, because this thing is coming for you
I’m bummed that i can’t do the evil grin emoji here but yeah, she definitely needs some action stat!!
I didn’t think the Spooner/Constantine combo would work for me but it did. Definitely happy to have Spooner on board. I think John using magic to wipe her memory kinda feels unethical to do to a coworker, especially someone with Spooner’s baggage.
I sincerely hope that Spooner kicks John’s ass for wiping her memory, which I think she is smart & paranoid enough to figure out
Though, not like the Legends don’t wipe people’s memories on a regular basis (to preserve the integrity of the timeline, but still).
You don’t memory wipe your teammates though! Unless you are drunk & do it accidentally, like on Ray’s last mission when they were in Shakespearean England
I did like that Constantine’s big monologue this week reaffirmed the parallels between this version and Alan Moore’s take, which many of us probably took to earlier on in our lives.
I was really impressed by how bad Lisseth Chavez‘s singing was when she sang the lullaby! She must‘ve changed keys at least 4 times.
I’m glad not every character is a flipping operatic diva. Spoons is perhaps the worst Arrowverse singer since Caitlin Snow.
I am not quite sure of what is happening with the rest of this season. Is it all about Constantine losing his magic? What happened to the aliens messing with the timeline? Mick is just hanging around and being pregnant. Are we stuck with a cloned Sara? The episodes are still good, but something seems to be missing.
Yeah, we don’t seem to be building to any one thing here. In the first few episodes, I was like “uh oh, Gideon” and then “Oh, Bishop, duh” and then “Bishop somehow survived, right?” and then “Maybe Crowley?” and now I’m like “wtf you up to, John?”
We goddamn well better get the real Sara back by the end of the season, preferably before the wedding.
The Nazis may have indeed researched the Hawk People, but did they know Hawkgirl was a barista? Because weirdly she never mentioned that.
I have it as a B+, mostly because I am apparently a bigger fan of Spooner than you are and have zero qualms about getting less of Gary.
No love for Nate pausing and saying, “Heh, you’re pregnant” when running out to deal with Gus-Gus?
I thought it was great, especially after Mick’s threat.
I’m so glad Constantine went dark. He’s been feeling way too decent since he hooked up with Zari. The man’s an utter bastard and he should be living up to that. It’s good to know the writers saw it too and have corrected. Wherever else the story goes, it’s sure to be interesting.
as soon as i saw that i immediately thought “i see the writers are going back to nbc’s constantine”
So, are we supposed to assume that Gus Gus went into the past and was the source of all the Bigfoot sightings? Because he looked a lot like Bigfoot at the end.
Um, in the Spanish Civil War La Revolucion was the bad guys, not El Gato and the barmaid. It should be “¡Viva la República!”.
I caught up this week and saw last night’s new episode (bowling) and this week’s was better. I love John, he is the best thing about the show.I was happy for no Sara and Eva in this episode (as I’m a bit tired after Sara is a clone now as well). Legends knows how to make their new characters awesome as Astra is so great and I love whenever Lita is on screen as well. We need a Legends vs. Doom Patrol 3 part miniseries.
Did you stop covering this show without even mentioning it? Shit, it’s bad enough you stopped covering Bob’s Burgers, what even is the point of this place any more?
No review for the bowling one?
it’s up now
Username checks out.
It’s there: https://www.avclub.com/dcs-legends-of-tomorrow-bowls-a-spare-1847455898
Bless your cotton socks for thinking I was still waiting for it. That review was pretty late but it did indeed go up eventually.