"Here I Go Again" Moves Beyond References Into Something Wonderful!

The Good: Wonderful performances, Interesting character explorations, Good direction, Decent plot twist near the end, Good balance of humor and heart
The Bad: Somewhat derivative plot
The Basics: "Here I Go Again" plays the time loop conceit on Legends Of Tomorrow . . . surprisingly well!


Legends Of Tomorrow is having a third season that is made more weird than by its air schedule. The show has had two essential characters depart, a new character added, the brief return of an alternate-universe version of Leonard Snart, and the return of one of the most familiar villains in the franchise as support for the season's primary villain. "Daddy Darhkest" found Sara Lance starting to explore feelings for Ava Sharpe, despite having a fling with John Constantine. Throughout this season, the show has not had a lot of time to explore and grow the new character of Zari Tomaz. The attempt to rectify that is made in "Here I Go Again."

"Here I Go Again" follows on "Daddy Darhkest" (reviewed here!), which had Mallus tormenting Damien Darhk's daughter. "Here I Go Again" also begins with the Legends Of Tomorrow now having a quest of their own; Mallus appears vulnerable to the totems used by Amaya Jiwe, Zari Tomaz and Kuasa.

Zari Tomaz is attempting to alter Gideon's programming when the rest of the Legends return to the Waverider. While checking the results of the mission, Gideon crashes and Sara Lance gets furious with Tomaz. Zari indicates she is trying to hack time to alter the flow of history to prevent her Earth from becoming a dystopia and when she tries to fix the Waverider, it blows up. Time reboots and Tomaz is frustrated and confused by returning to a conversation in which Lance gives her a dressing down. Within an hour from the conversation, the Waverider explodes and Tomaz is thrown back in time.

As one of the loops progresses, Dr. Heywood tells Tomaz about Groundhog Day and the next time through, Tomaz hunts down Heywood and enlists his aid. Together the two try to figure out who might have blown up the Waverider and why.

Despite the allusions to Groundhog Day, "Here I Go Again" plays much like the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause And Effect" (reviewed here!) on the plot front. "Here I Go Again" is fun and there is a lot of joy in the moment when Ray Palmer actually references the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode.

More than simply being a plot conceit, "Here I Go Again" uses the repeating time loop to explore the characters of Legends Of Tomorrow and Tomaz especially. Zari Tomaz came from a dark and miserable place and has not truly integrated with the crew. So, putting her at the core of the conflict where she has to try to win the trust of her teammates and save the day is interesting.

Tala Ashe has a chance to truly shine in "Here I Go Again" and she runs with the opportunity. While it is hard not to see Tala Ashe when she is used as windowdressing, to fill a niche to make viewers think of Morena Baccarin, "Here I Go Again" allows her to step out with an incredibly diverse performance. Ashe gets to play heavily dramatic, incredibly funny and wonderfully earnest at various points in "Here I Go Again" and she rises to the occasion each and every time. Ashe's performance is matched by Dominic Purcell's wonderful deadpan and the best on-screen sexual chemistry between Maisie Richardson-Sellers and Nick Zano.

More than simply a rehashing of Groundhog Day or "Cause And Effect," "Here I Go Again" races to a surprising, clever and original climax. Director Ben Hernandez Bray makes "Here I Go Again" feel fresh and original and some of the editing telegraphs the end, but that only makes the episode feel smarter and better-constructed than it originally does.

The result is one of the best episodes of Legends Of Tomorrow.

9/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2018 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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James Olsen Struggles To Explore His Relevance In The "City Of Lost Children"

The Good: Good James Olsen story, Mehcad Brooks shows off a lot of range in his performance
The Bad: Writing is all over the place, Simple plot, Multiple plotlines prevent any one plot from satisfactorily developing.
The Basics: "City Of Lost Children" brings James Olsen back to the forefront of Supergirl with mixed results.


One of the big problems with a show hitting a high-water mark is that what immediately follows it is inherently less-than that episode (or moment). Unfortunately for Supergirl when the show skyrocketed into truly great territory with "Alex" (reviewed here!), it mortgaged some of its own greatness by treading predictable on one arc and undermining its own intelligence with a punch that, disturbingly, did not phase cop Maggie Sawyer. "Alex" could have been a perfect episode and it came incredibly close by being very smart.

But then, Lena Luthor went in the exact direction viewers figured she would end up going since her very first appearance and the motivation for her character turn was painfully stupid and simplistic. "City Of Lost Children" picks up Lena and Rhea's new alliance, but is much more focused on James Olsen and his feelings of inadequacy.

Guardian rescues a woman from a mugger and is surprised when she reacts in horror to his rescue and runs away. The next day, Kara and Lena have lunch together and Lena admits she is working on a big new project involving quantum entanglement, but Kara does not pursue her with further questions. James and Winn discuss the woman's reaction to his armored self and James questions whether he is actually doing any good. Nearby, a telekinetic alien woman suddenly starts wreaking havoc until Supergirl arrives. Returning to the DEO, Schott identifies the alien as a Phorian, which leaves J'onzz confused given the usual peaceful nature of the Phorians.

Lena and Rhea meet for dinner and Lena is frustrated that their first test of the portal device was unsuccessful. Rhea leaves and Mon-El sees her on the street, but at such a distance that he cannot follow her. Guardian tracks down the Phorian's household and finds the alien's son there. Olsen brings in Marcus, but Alex is unable to make any progress with him. Alex suggests Olsen interview Marcus in order prevent the Phorian from attacking National City again and he agrees. Mon-El asks Schott for help in tracking his parents' ship out of Earth's orbit, but sees no evidence that his parents are still around while Lena gets frustrated with her lack of progress on the project with Rhea. While Olsen slowly bonds with Marcus, Lena finds a new approach to the portal she is building with Rhea.

"City Of Lost Children" is fun for making a solid allusion to Batman, which is pretty cool for the DC Television Universe. Beyond that, "City Of Lost Children" has a funny moment when Guardian busts an alien for buying weed on the street, but is mired in trying to make James Olsen relevant again.

The preoccupation with James Olsen in "City Of Lost Children" illustrates part of the difficulty Supergirl has had in its second season. With the cast expanding, some of the first season characters like James Olsen have had very erratic arcs in the season. Olsen leapt right into the role of Guardian at the beginning of the season and the writers didn't seem to know what to do with him after he made that transition. In "City Of Lost Children," the idea that the people of National City might actually be freaked out by Guardian is a neat one, but it quickly gets sublimated into the plot with Olsen just giving Marcus a tour of his office to build the boy's trust.

The benefit of "City Of Lost Children" is that some of James Olsen's backstory is fleshed out as he talks about his father and his photography. That backstory comes out in a fairly organic way and it does effectively allow Olsen to interface with Marcus. While much of "City Of Lost Children" feels like the writers are trying the shotgun approach to writing James Olsen to figure out what to do with him, Mehcad Brooks plays the role with consistency and in a way that makes him seem like Olsen is struggling with an existential crisis of his own. One almost wishes that Olsen had been given a full episode with more conflict to him to explore, as opposed to peppering Brooks' best moments alongside the Lena and Mon-El plots.

The sense of the writers taking the shotgun approach reaches its peak when Olsen throws out to J'onzz that J'onn might think that he and Marcus are bonding only because the photographer is black. That assertion comes completely out of left field and feels very much out of character.

As "City Of Lost Children" reaches its climax, the DEO figures out exactly what is going on and, unfortunately, it is exactly what one might suspect with the two main plots coming together. While Brooks shows off a lot of range, Teri Hatcher leaps right into being a full-fledged comic book villain with her over-the-top performance.

The only real saving grace of "City Of Lost Children" is that it gives fans of Supergirl the slim hope that Lena Luthor is just being dumbed down into a hapless pawn instead of a predictable villain. Regardless, "City Of Lost Children" tries a lot of different things with Olsen, Rhea and Luthor and in the process makes none of their arcs very satisfying.

For other works with Darcy Hinds, please check out my reviews of:
X-Men: Apocalypse
"Last Refuge"- Legends Of Tomorrow
Robocop

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Supergirl - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of the Kryptonian superheroine here!
Thanks!]

3/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Tread Again Toward The Snappy: "The Fellowship Of The Spear" Repeats An Earlier Episode!

The Good: Performances, The return of Leonard Snart, Direction
The Bad: Entirely derivative plot, Painfully obvious references,
The Basics: "The Fellowship Of The Spear" reworks a more successful Legends Of Tomorrow episode poorly and undermines a developed character in the process.


One of the reasonable concerns genre fans had with the creation of Legends Of Tomorrow was that it might end up as a half-rate rip off of Doctor Who. In the second season of Legends Of Tomorrow, those fears have begun to come into very clear focus. Usually, at least once per season, there is an episode of Doctor Who where The Doctor and his Companion end up on Earth interacting with an important, recognizable, historic figure like Vincent Van Gogh in "Vincent And The Doctor" (reviewed here!). Legends Of Tomorrow has started to seem derivative of that style Doctor Who episode with figures like George Lucas popping up in "Raiders Of The Lost Art" (reviewed here!) and now J.R.R. Tolkien in "The Fellowship Of The Spear."

"The Fellowship Of The Spear" picks up after "Moonshot" (reviewed here!) and has the Waverider crew, restored, successfully holding on to the final fragment of the Spear Of Destiny. "The Fellowship Of The Spear" puts the Waverider crew back in World War I and the Vanishing Point in a cheap reworking of The Lord Of The Rings.

Opening in 1916 , Heywood, Jiwe and Lance are contemplating using the fragment of the Spear Of Destiny to track down blood. 72 hours earlier, the Waverider crew convenes to figure out how to keep the Spear Of Destiny away from the Legion Of Doom. Rip informs the crew that Thawne's team has been operating out of the Vanishing Point and the crew travels there to try to recover the other fragments of the Spear. The Waverider crew is actually able to get the last fragments of the Spear through Firestrom transmuting Thawne's vault into jellybeans! Putting the Spear fragments in proximity unifies the entire Spear and Mick Rory attempting to destroy it reveals a message on the Spear. Heywood believes that only the blood of Christ can destroy the Spear and the greatest expert on where that blood can be found is . . . J.R.R. Tolkien!

The Waverider crew journeys to 1916 France to find Tolkien to get information from him, while Thawne freaks out at the Vanishing Point. Damien Darhk suggests that Thawne change tactics and when Rory is in the past, he sees Leonard Snart. Snart encourages Rory to steal the Spear of Destiny for himself and remake time, including resurrecting Snart. Rory begins to become unhinged, especially after Dr. Stein confronts him. The Legends visit the church where the knight who might have Christ's blood is buried. Amaya and Rory become tempted to use the Spear to rewrite reality, but Lance argues for getting the blood of Christ to destroy the Spear.

"The Fellowship Of The Spear" is an unfortunate repeat of "Raiders Of The Lost Art." As such, there are in-jokes to the Lord Of The Rings and various Legends make comments that Tolkien might use in order to create his famed trilogy. Characters mirror those found in The Lord Of The Rings and putting much of the episode in a famous battle allows for even more parallels.

When it is not being derivative, "The Fellowship Of The Spear" is one of the best episodes for Dominic Purcell's Mick Rory. Rory thinks he is hallucinating when he tells Leonard Snart the full plan to destroy the Spear Of Destiny. Rory turns to Stein and Victor Garber delivers one of the most sensibly-written lines of all time in reaction to the menace his character faces. But when it becomes clear that Snart is real and resurrected by the Legion Of Doom, most of the crew turns on Rory, fearing that he will choose Snart over their mission.

Once the team turns on Rory, Dominic Purcell has the chance to shine. Purcell plays Rory as unsettled and intriguingly contemplative. Purcell has surprising range for his facial expressions and especially his eye motions to convey an incredible emotional range. Purcell makes Rory appear delightfully conflicted with very subtle expression changes.

"The Fellowship Of The Spear" is also a big episode for Amaya. Jiwe is shaken by the fact that her descendants will suffer, a fact she learned at the climax of the prior episode. Outside of acting as an archetype for the parallel story of The Lord Of The Rings, Jiwe is compelling in her sense of conflict and her objections to Lance's course of action. Maisie Richardson-Sellers does a decent job of playing that internal conflict.

"The Fellowship Of The Spear" has moments that are both over-complicated and disturbingly naive. While the episode goes for an obvious confrontation between Snart and Darhk and the Legends, by this point in the series, Ray Palmer knows that Eobard Thawne has some technological ability to change his appearance. It is hard for seasoned viewers to not watch "The Fellowship Of The Spear" with a sense of anticipatory dread for Tolkien to be revealed as an appearance-altered Thawne. On the over-complicated front, a cease-fire is engineered which allows things to go entirely south. It is unclear why Lance does not simply send the invulnerable Steel (Heywood) and the Spear into No Man's Land to recover the vial.

Unfortunately, "The Fellowship Of The Spear" lacks the charm factor of "Raiders Of The Lost Art." Instead of pushing in a new direction, the episode treads toward the familiar in a particularly obvious way. And the episode's resolution is troubling in and of itself. Mick Rory has grown over the course of Legends Of Tomorrow and "The Fellowship Of The Spear" tears all of that down. Rory has developed bonds with Ray Palmer and Dr. Stein and his late-episode return-to-form feels cheap when one considers the implied amount of time that Rory has been a Legend (at the beginning of the second season, there was a several month gap where the Legends actually worked as a team to stop time anomalies before the Waverider was almost destroyed).

As such, fans of Legends Of Tomorrow might well be thrilled that Leonard Snart is returned to action and existence in "The Fellowship Of The Spear," but it is a shame that it comes at the cost of all that Mick Rory has become in his absence.

For other works Ben Hernandez Bray has been involved with, please visit my reviews of:
American Hustle
Argo
Casa De Mi Padre

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Legends Of Tomorrow - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of the time traveling hero team here!
Thanks!]

4.5/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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