Legends of Tomorrow: Knocked Down, Knocked Up
March 2, 2022 6:37 PM - Season 7, Episode 13 - Subscribe

 
Avalance: Gary's "alien biology... just go with it" was a nice moment of useful meta.

Gwyn/Alun: couldn't watch the death scene in These Times, muted and looked away, I just couldn't

Booster Gold: what an absolute waste of space, and if there's another season I hope he gets gone ASAP. Nothing against the actor, who did fine with the paper-thinness he was given, but I hope we're not actually supposed to like the character, because I cannot like anyone who tees off in the middle of a WWI battlefield. I'm actually pretty unhappy now with how this season brushed off the huge amounts of death it used as setpieces without really thinking through. DO BETTER, LEGENDS WRITING TEAM. Especially now.

Nate's exit: I rarely thought the character's intellectual or superpower strengths were used well. I'll miss him, but I think Behrad and Gwyn fill his emotional roles on the team just fine. I wouldn't be averse to a guest appearance, if the show is renewed. If, however, Booster Gold is brought onto the core cast as The New Nate... that is quite likely to be the moment I break up with this show. Just nope to that level of callousness.
posted by humbug at 10:33 AM on March 3, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also, LOVE AND HOPE, Shimizu?

Yeah, no, you and the writers' room should have thought a bit more about ALL THE DEATH before going there. Maybe you didn't mean to undercut this supposed season theme repeatedly and often unnecessarily, but you sure enough DID do that.
posted by humbug at 10:38 AM on March 3, 2022


I don't know much about the Booster Gold of the comics -- from all these years of watching & reading about the DC/CW/Arrowverse shows, I've gained the vague impression that he's much beloved by a lot of fans and by various writers/producers. I didn't dislike him here as much as you, humbug, but, I didn't particularly like him either. It was more of an "ok, so, I still don't know anything about Booster Gold" shrug of a feeling.

As Legends finales go, I enjoyed this one. And I hope they get renewed for season 8. I didn't have much hope for season 7 after what a mess season 6 was, but, I think they really managed to get their groove back this season, and I'd hate for it to end with this "everyone was arrested by the Time Cops" cliffhanger.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:05 PM on March 3, 2022 [3 favorites]


One of the most important parts of the episode, to me, was when past!Gwynn was comforting the dying fellow soldier and current!Gwynn saw that his memory of his trauma was wrong. He's been beating himself up for years - decades - for freezing, and it turns out he didn't freeze. He gave comfort to a dying man. This isn't out of nowhere. It's a commentary on how trauma can make you forget things, or remember them wrong, and make you blame yourself for things that weren't your fault. It was right up there with Spooner coming out as ace for me.

I'm gonna miss Nate a lot. I'm glad they got him back to his roots this season; he got to be the brains several times along the way, as well as the heart. Didn't know until I read the interview that he's had to keep his hair the same for SEVEN YEARS so they could steel him up! I bet he's going for a haircut first thing.

I did not have as much of a reaction to Booster Gold golfing as Humbug did. Based on what we saw with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Booster has had to watch these soldiers die hundreds, if not thousands of times. If you look at the way some people coped with being in the trenches in WWI, it looked a bit like that. How else can you survive it, when you're in a trench and the arm of your dead best friend is sticking out of the wall and slowly decaying? (Which was a thing that happened a lot - trench walls collapsed all the time.) Outside of that bit, they did show us the horrors of war repeatedly. Nate lost his powers due to mustard gas, even.
posted by rednikki at 7:41 PM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]


The first thing I did once I watched the episode was look up whether mustard gas is corrosive to metal (they never mentioned that in history classes--just the effects on people). Apparently it is.

Although Nate hasn't been utilized as well as he could have been, something about Zano himself made the character likable, so overall, I suspect I'll miss him. Zari giving Nate the totem, however, made no sense, especially if his whole reason for going is he is now depowered. Well, without the totem, so is Zari (not that powers ever meant anything on this show).

Gideon vs. Gideon was well played. As was the Gideon-Spooner-Astra relationship.

I'm not warming up to a quarter-alien AvaLance baby, especially not so soon after Mick's alien babies story line. In shows like these, babies either need to be aged up quickly or sent away somewhere, and neither option interests me.

As for Booster, Faison did a better job than I was expecting. Mike (Michael Jon Carter) was smarter and better educated regarding time matters and history and important people in the timeline than he was typically portrayed to be (at least in ancient history--I haven't kept up with his more modern appearances, but I think he's got more of a clue these days, and he definitely has more experience), but he was still incompetent and capable of beating himself up when he realized his lack of competence was the reason why people looked down on him and why he ended up in the pickle he was in. He appeared to be missing a few key pieces of equipment, but I'm guess the time guardians who placed him at the fixed point stripped him of his ring, his belt, and his little buddy. Still, I think the casting people made a mistake by going with an actor as old as Faison is. A younger Booster Gold is a more versatile character (unless a Blue and Gold spin-off flashes back and focuses on a middle-aged Ted and Michael who have been partners for years).

Booster never really seemed like the golfing type, but I guess playing football is out of the question if you don't have anybody to pass to or kick to. And it's not like there's a pool or an opportunity for sunbathing on the battlefield.

I have no idea how the show (assuming it gets renewed) will be able to explain away the relationship between Rip and Booster, or whether we'll get a visit from Rip.

As for this season's death and battle scenes, up until now, they haven't really bothered me too much, but watching them this week was a bit more emotionally demanding. I'm sure the Legends team is regretting the timing of this episode. Oddly, it was the trenches rather than the deaths that really caught my attention. I hadn't realized trench warfare was still a thing until I saw a piece on the news before Russia's re-invasion of Ukraine that showed the trenches used in Crimea. That kind of blew my mind, trenches always meant WWI and WWII to me.

I've been having major computer issues over the past few weeks (hence my lack of posting on recent these threads) but I wanted to make it a point to connect and post here in case the show doesn't get renewed. It's been quite the ride--definitely the highlight of the Arrowverse, which is something we could have never predicted during the terrible first season--and it's been a blast watching along with everybody. Fingers crossed we'll get the chance to do it again (and that will allow me to figure out who the head of the handcuff squad is because he looks very familiar).
posted by sardonyx at 8:33 PM on March 3, 2022 [3 favorites]


Yeah, this is the only Arrowverse show that made random comic book logic a feature, not a bug. And it's really the only one that's consistently fun to watch.

Remember when someone in a thread said their spouse could never remember the name of the show and called it "Cat People of Yesteryear"? I still call it that in my head.

They really pulled it out this season after last season's disappointment. I wonder how much of the improvement is due to not having to work around Dominic Purcell. It sounds like he was a real pill the last couple of seasons.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 4:52 PM on March 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


TV Line - Legends of Tomorrow Cancelled at CW

Sigh. For Legends to get cancelled on a cliffhanger after finding its groove again while The Flash continues on in suckitude. Sigh.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:49 PM on April 29, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hello friends. I haven't been around but I came by just to share in the mourning of Legends being cancelled. I'm so sad! I was really looking forward to the next season and having Donald Faison being Buster Gold.

* pours one out of whatever Mick is drinking *
posted by numaner at 8:19 AM on April 30, 2022


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