Legends of Tomorrow: Stressed Western
Now, everyone wants to get back to normal, so they literally revisit the past. Sadly, their usual Western contact doesn’t show up in “Stressed Western.”
Now, everyone wants to get back to normal, so they literally revisit the past. Sadly, their usual Western contact doesn’t show up in “Stressed Western.”
The broad strokes of Superman’s origin is a story I’d wager the majority of the world knows. The fine details have changed with various retellings over the years, and bits have been added on to the mythos (Kryptonite didn’t show up until the radio show began, for example), but the bare bones of who he is and how he got here are common knowledge.
It says something in the confidence a show has in their ensemble when the main character takes off for an episode and lets the various supporting characters take center stage. This has happened a few times on Flash now, and they pull it off pretty well.
Some superhero shows get kind of formulaic as they go. Batwoman, especially in the second season, has been a series of surprises, plot twists, shifting alliances, and generally shaking up the status quo.
The Legends have been through a lot, and their leader, Sara Lance, even more. She had a rough life before she signed on with, and eventually became the leader of, this band of time-traveling misfits.
Superman and Lois, as they have with so many other things, went in their own direction with a completely different story. After his big reveal last episode, we get to learn a lot more about him in “O Mother, Where Are Thou?”
This season of the Flash seems to be hitting more emotional notes than going for the fun adventure the show started out as. I didn’t care for the two part “Family Matters” story line with all its strained analogies, and then “Goodbye Vibrations” saw my favorite character leave the series.
Season two has created an entirely new status quo from that of the first season, and even that keeps shifting for the characters on Batwoman.
Things are getting even stranger than usual for the Legends, and that really says something. So far this season, we’ve dealt with Captain Sara Lance being abducted by aliens, the secret origin of Big Belly Burger, an evil painting, and an animated sequence that was like a demented Disney scene, among other things.
Since the first time Tyler Hoechlin showed up on Supergirl playing her more famous cousin, I was impressed. He embodies the goodness of Superman without being cheesy or cliché, and avoids the weird need to darken the character the recent movies seem obsessed with.