What I’m Watching: Legends of Tomorrow

Legends of Tomorrow: Season 1, Episode 5 “Fail-Safe” (B+)

I’m still not sure what the pacing of this show is going to be like, but thus far I’m pretty impressed with how it’s running week-to-week and not set on any specific duration that needs to be spent in a given time period. It’s easy to forget sometimes that Vandal Savage isn’t actually a time-traveler and that he has no knowledge of what’s to come in the future. He is awfully intent on remembering the names of Rip’s family so that he can kill them, and he also got so excited by the opportunity to come face-to-face with Kendra. I’m not entirely sure why she couldn’t just kill him then, but I guess they’re hoping that she’ll be stronger in the future and they can really catch him off-guard. I like that Mick decided to rescue Ray even though Snart was ready to leave him behind, and that there are some real relationships developing between these characters. Stein held up pretty well under torture until they nipped at his Achilles heel by bringing in others to hurt and threaten, and he also did superbly overpowering Valentina when she merged with him to become Soviet Firestorm. Even though they successfully escaped Soviet doom, that pesky time bounty hunter is really giving them grief, and sending them into some sort of alternate history in which Green Arrow is definitely not Oliver Queen presents a huge problem for them and an exciting opportunity for this show to play with conventional concepts of who characters are and give them a dark twist.