What I’m Watching: Legends of Tomorrow

Legends of Tomorrow: Season 1, Episode 12 “Last Refuge” (C+)

Somehow, this was a fun episode, despite the fact that its plotline was completely absurd. I haven’t said much about the questionable nature of time on this show, and I’ve accepted the notion that you can’t return to the same moment but you can talk to your past self without worrying about the implications. A friend warned me ahead of time that this episode was pretty hard to take seriously, and I do think that’s true. The whole idea of one time bounty hunter going back to kill past selves of each of the members of our team so that they would later disappear seems like a lot of extra work given that, if she were actually smart, she could just lure them to one place and then kill them off instead of needing to wipe them out at an earlier point. She can’t go after them more than once because she might really damage the timeline, but she can kidnap their loved ones? There’s nothing better to show that you don’t mean business than failing to start with a show of force, not that I’m advocating for any of our friends’ family members to be killed. It would also seem to me that starting by going after them as babies would have been more productive than already failing to take out a few of them by letting them get in the way and stop her. Putting aside the fact that Rip’s adoptive mother apparently exists apart from time and can shelter multiple versions of the same people at once, it was cool to see young Rip as the element of surprise that ultimately enabled the team to defeat their opponent. Won’t someone else just come after them now? At this point, it’s worth celebrating the minor victories of the hour: Jax got to spend some time with his dad and Ray and Kendra are tempting fate and got engaged!