Saturday, July 2, 2016

Summer DVR Dump: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow 1.04: “White Knights”

“What if that girl is gone? What if she doesn’t exist anymore?”
- Sara

Well we are finally out of the 1970s. Not by a whole lot but hey, it’s a change at least. We end up in 1986 because that is where Gideon has determined Savage had landed. Their first stop is the Pentagon. There’s a heavily redacted government file that needs to be retrieved so the team can determine what their adversary is up to. The plan starts off okay with Ray and Snart posing as custodians and Sara and Kendra working as military personnel. Snart does some pretty slick con moves to get an ID badge and the girls manage to get into the records room and secure the file thanks to Rory being a tough guy. But then Jax overloads the wires to cut the alarm and it goes off anyway. The girls have to fight their way out of the Pentagon and we see that Kendra can’t really control her other half and claws a guy’s eyes out.

So yes, the mission was a little rough and it results in Jax and Stein having quite the blowout. It turns out Stein is worried about losing Jax like he lost Ronnie. The younger half of Firestorm seems to be quite driven and also tired of Stein talking in his head all the time. Jax needs time to cool off and so does Stein. But despite the tensions among the crew, they have a new location to hunt for Savage: Soviet era Russia. Oh boy. And angry communists aren’t all they have to contend with as they breach Soviet airspace. Chronos has caught up with them. Luckily thanks to some daring flying by Rip, the heat-seeking missiles crash into the bounty hunter’s ship and take him down. Unfortunately for our team, it later looks like he may have survived.

It turns out that another Time Master has come to offer Rip a deal: turn himself in and he gets to live and his team gets to be returned to their time while the Time Masters try to fix what the team has done through history. Rip is hesitant to take the offer (with good reason) and when he shows up to meet his mentor and Chronos is there, too, he feels lucky to have some of the team with him. But Jax ends up injured (which only adds fuel to the dissension in the Firestorm matrix). While the Time Masters were facing off, Ray and Snart were off trying to woo a Russian scientist at the ballet. Ray’s attempts failed miserably but Snart had better luck. I’m not saying he’s the best con I’ve seen (that prize will always rest with Mr. Neal Caffrey), but he’s pretty good.

While all of the boys are off doing various daring and stupid things, Rip has tasked Sara with trying to train Kendra. After all, they can’t risk her going all crazy hawk goddess on their next mission. That isn’t very discreet anyway to leave people without eyes thanks to an angry deity. Sara pushes Kendra but things take a dangerous turn when Kendra lashes out and then Sara responds with some bloodlust-y choking. Both are not particularly pleased with that outcome. Kendra confronts Rip about the training session (and is rather upset that he knew about the bloodlust and he didn’t warn her) but it turns out he wasn’t just hoping Sara could tame the beast within Kendra but that Kendra could coax out the human in Sara. Sara is skeptical that she has any humanity left. I do have to say I was a little confused when Kendra said that Sara had been training half her life to be an assassin. I’m pretty sure she had the same amount of training (time wise) as Oliver and that was at most five years. Definitely not half her life. Anyway, it seems the girls get back to training in the hopes of proving that Sara does still have some humanity left within her.

The scientist is working at a secret Russian lab that the team has to infiltrate. Again, thanks to Snart they have her key card. Stein insists on going in alone because he’s a scientist after all. But I think he kind of regrets that decision when he realizes what Savage is up to: creating his own Soviet Firestorm. And he’s got the first step. Stein thinks he can absorb the energy so that Savage can’t use it but the scientist shows up and threatens to shoot Snart if Ray doesn’t step away from the controls for the containment chamber. Stein is able to absorb the energy but he, Ray and Mick get nabbed by the Russians and tossed in prison. Yes I am fairly certainly this is a very big, wink and nod to Prison Break (since Snart now has to get into prison to break his partners out). I thought it was kind of amusing and a little clever. Anyway, Snart is not pleased to have left the team behind (and the fact that Rip refused to send in backup). The girls are also pissed about not being notified of the bigger plot. But hey, at least we have a fun Russian prison escape episode coming up and I have a feeling they’ll be just fine. Besides, as Rip points out, if Sara and Kendra had gone in to rescue the guys, they likely would have been caught too and then Savage would have everything he wanted: a dead Kendra and Stein. I like that Rip was a bit ruthless this episode. It makes me a little sad he had to turn his back on his mentor but he needs to stand firm in his convictions. I think the Time Masters are wrong on this front. Rip isn’t just on a mission to save his wife and child but the rest of humanity, too. Let him achieve his revenge while working for the greater good.

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