Friday, March 11, 2016

My Review of Legends Of Tomorrow's 1x08: "Night Of The Hawk"


Written by Sarah Nicole Jones & Cortney Norris
Directed by Joe Dante

Sara (to Stein, re Lindsay): "That's the thing that sucks about feelings is that you realise how much you can hurt someone or get hurt."

Okay, in some ways this episode felt like an after school special but if you're going to do a show about time travel, then it's not unreasonable to have episodes that explore less enlightened times and this one decided to tackle racism, sexuality and sexism in one fell swoop. The results were pretty interesting to be honest.

Going with the latter two first - Sara found herself having to play nurse to Stein's doctor at a local asylum in Oregon in the latest attempt to take out Vandal Savage once and for all. Sara's not exactly the shy and retiring type so she wasn't best impressed with sexist doctors but she was very much impressed with a certain nurse named Lindsay Carlisle (Ali Liebert) in this one.

Although we saw Sara's relationship with Nyssa during her time on Arrow, I think this was the first time in which she even referenced herself as not being straight when herself and Jackson were highlighting the negative aspects of the time period they were in with Stein. It's an interesting little scene as they both raised valid points.

Sara's moments with Lindsay ended up being an awakening for both characters though. On one hand, the episode talked about Lindsay having to hide sexuality but on the other hand, we also saw Sara freak out a little as it was her first time being intimate with someone since her resurrection but things did end on a far nicer note with Sara and Lindsay mutually rescuing each other and unlike The 100, no LGBT female character died as a result. Sorry for that.

Of course with Sara experiencing a sexual reawakening, both Kendra and Jax experience some bouts of racism during their stay in 1958. Kendra got to play house with Ray but had to deal with some ignorance from two of her new neighbours while also trying to stop Savage by herself as well. Kendra's plan nearly worked but for another day, Savage managed to slip out of the team's grasp.

As for Jax, he really did get the short straw of all the characters this week. While Rip and Cold got to play gumshoe detectives, Jax had to deal with intolerant bigots while attempting to help the more open minded Betty and to make things just as bad also got turned into a bird type of creature courtesy of Savage's experiments as well. On the plus side, at least Stein was able to cure him.

However it was the final few moments of the episode that really ramped up the excitement. The Waverider got hijacked by Chronos and his team and Sara, Ray and Kendra ended up being stranded in 1958, which makes the title for the next episode pretty damn appropriate too. As for Cold - he really is shaping up to be a hero but the ambiguity as to what happened to Heatwave also lingered in this episode too.

- Curtis Knox, the alias that Savage used in this episode was also character that Dean Cain played in Smallville. Nice little shout out there.
- The more they talk about Mick, the more convinced that I am he's alive. Snart obviously didn't or couldn't kill him.
- There were a couple of terms like "Ninja" and "serial killer" that were not around in the time period of this episode.
- The show won't be back until March 31st for it's remaining eight episodes.

This episode might not have said anything too new on the issues it raised but I did like how topical Night Of The Hawk attempted to be and the cliffhanger it left us with should have some interesting repercussions when it returns.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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