What I’m Watching: Legends of Tomorrow

Legends of Tomorrow: Season 1, Episode 11 “The Magnificent Eight” (B+)

This show is usually all about the science fiction, and therefore it’s nice to see a fully fun episode that resembles the third “Back to the Future” film a lot more than the first two (though I personally like the second film best). I enjoyed Ray’s enthusiasm for getting to experience the Old West and that Rip knew he was hopeless to stop the team from going out and messing with the timeline as they got themselves into a bar brawl within a few minutes. It’s a good thing that Snart had his finger on the trigger to save Professor Stein’s life when he nearly got himself shot from trying to defend a woman’s honor. It figures that they would run into someone who knew that they weren’t from that time, who happened to be Jonah Hex, who I now realize was also the title character played by Josh Brolin in the poorly-reviewed 2010 film. The notion of getting too attached to being in a certain time is intriguing, and it’s evidently the cause of many problems. Anna Deavere Smith playing an older version of Kendra’s past self was pretty trippy, and an important charge for her to defy her destiny. The Pilgrim seems like a formidable and worrisome enemy, especially since she’s starting by taking out every member of this team long before Rip ever found them. I’m not sure how exactly they can combat being hunted that way, and it’s definitely a much more serious and intense threat than they’ve dealt with so far.