Category: Directed by Maisie Richardson-Sellers

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e10 – The Fixed Point

This episode’s so well-paced when the surprise guest star appears, I thought it was the end of the episode cliffhanger. Nope, there’s time for another action beat and setting up for next time.

The team goes back to June 28, 1914, intending to save Franz Ferdinand from the assassin, throwing the time line into turmoil so their evil doppelgängers have to fix it. That fixing will require the ship be temporarily without a crew and able to be taken back. Except when Caity Lotz tries to stop the assassins, a mysterious stranger (a well-cast Timothy Webber) takes her aside and explains she’s got to get in line.

Webber’s got a bar for time travelers who are all out to prevent WWI. You get a ticket to try, then everyone watches on a constantly changing news reel. Most people who attempt it die immediately; Lotz has got her alien recovery powers so presumably she’ll be able to survive a failed attempt. But, they still need her to succeed eventually.

That part of the episode is kind of Groundhog Day in 1914 Sarajevo, with Lotz trying and having to repeat after making corrections. They make a great Edge of Tomorrow reference, with Shayan Sobhian telling Olivia Swann they’ll have to watch it. Sobhian and Swann are in the episode a bunch but without anything to do but flirt. They’re not dating yet, they’re just romantically friendly.

Their pairing off leaves Tala Ashe and Lisseth Chavez needing a new bestie to spend the episode with. The Ashe and Chavez subplot starts funny and ends profoundly touching. Similarly, Jes Macallan and Matt Ryan have an arc where Macallan’s trying to get Ryan to see past his religiosity and religiously fueled self-loathing (he’s gay). Ashe and Chavez have the better plot, but it’s less ambitious. The one with Ryan and Macallan forces the issue, with Macallan unrelenting. It’s real good.

The episode also allows Amy Louise Pemberton and Adam Tsekhman to be cute together, when appropriate (they don’t have a lot to do throughout). And Nick Zano gets a number of good comedy scenes.

Former series star Maisie Richardson-Sellers is directing (again) and does a good job with it, especially after there’s a plot twist revealing how the time travel snafus have been occurring.

It’s also a good lead episode for Lotz. There’s a balance between the cast, but it’s another outing where she’s very obviously the star of the show, ensemble or not.

And presumably, next time, the show will be done with bridging episodes and they can get back to the season’s A-plot.

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e14 – There Will Be Brood

It’s a very, very busy episode. Even though nothing really fulfills its potential, director (and former series regular—who doesn’t cameo) Maisie Richardson-Sellers keeps things moving at a satisfactory pace. It’s not until the end of the episode you realize how little the main team has been in it. Instead, in addition to resolving evil Matt Ryan’s team-up with season villain Raffi Barsoumian (sort of), the episode does a deep, and thorough reveal on Lisseth Chavez’s origin.

Ryan and Barsoumian steal the time machine spaceship to go get Ryan his magic back—also, the special effects on the magical “Fountain of Imperium” are outstanding—with Chavez and Olivia Swann tagging along. They just happened to be on the ship at the time while everyone else isn’t. Once they get to the past—1920s Texas—Chavez is pretty sure local healer Alexandra Castillo is her mom and doesn’t want bad oil guy Steve Bacic messing with her.

So while Barsoumian is boring Ryan with all the science behind how they’re going to get his magic back, Swann’s trying to convince Chavez they need to concentrate on stopping the team-up, not trying to figure out what’s so familiar with Castillo. Everything turns out to be intricately connected, which is a reasonably neat trick for the episode—Ray Utarnachitt and Marcelena Campos Mayhorn—until the third act when they rush the dramatics to get to the cliffhangers. Next episode’s the season finale, and there’s a lot left to resolve, including three potentially dying regulars (who may or may not be time anachronisms now). There’s actually so much I’m wondering if the show’s just going to hurry through it instead of trying to logic it out.

Unfortunately, Ryan’s still bad as the evil version of himself. Especially when he’s mean to his friends. Everyone’s forcing it: Ryan, his costars, Richardson-Sellers, the writers. It feels very undercooked, which is a bit of a fail as they’ve been working on the subplot since the first or second episode of the season. Maybe they’ll sort it out next episode; hopefully, they’ll sort it out next episode.

Chavez, Swann, and Castillo all have a lot of decent material in the episode. The script fails them towards the end, but the journey itself is solid. Chavez takes the biggest hit in terms of acting. It might be Swann’s best episode if only the material were a little stronger. The writing’s too pat on the showdowns with evil Ryan, and her character arc with Chavez is flimsy, likable, but flimsy.

Barsoumian’s fine. He brings some energy to the villain plot, even as Ryan sops up said energy. Meanwhile, the action with the stranded cast—Tala Ashe, Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell—is bridging filler, very tense cliffhanger or not.

It’ll be fine as long as they end the season well, but it’s a disappointing episode. The first two-thirds is a lot better than the finish.