What I’m Watching: Legends of Tomorrow

Legends of Tomorrow: Season 7, Episode 8 “Paranoid Android” (B+)

I liked this episode a lot since I’m all about people trying to counteract their programming, which in this case was specifically robotic and hard to achieve. The idea that the robots believe that they’re the real legends and that they’re hunting the robots who are destroying the timeline is inherently interesting, and this was also plenty of fun since all these characters are sloppier or more exaggerated versions of the people we’ve come to know. They’re also not so quick on the uptake, with Spooner and Behrad vowing to avenge Astra and Zari even after they came back to life following their Dr. Sharpe reboots. Sara being the one to realize that what they were doing wasn’t right made sense since she is a natural leader – apparently programmed with too much leadership ability – and the critical mistake that she and Zari made was that they broke the news to the team before shutting Gideon down, giving the evil computer the chance to corrupt Zari with the allure of enhanced intelligence. It is not good news that Sara was then reset so that she could be a ruthless killing machine whose methods were even grimmer than the robot legends could have predicted in their popcorn-fueled screening session. The ending Citizen Steel bullying promo made reference to John Cena, a curiously-timed reference given that Cena is playing Peacemaker, a DC character who would be fun to see on this show but whose production rights I think would prohibit that from happening.