Legends of Tomorrow season 3, episode 2 review: Freakshow

Reviewing Tuesday’s episode of Legends of Tomorrow.

On Legends of Tomorrow, the Legends have a pretty impressive record against some pretty scary bad guys. A few even get called out during the episode. An evil Egyptian demigod, an evil speedster, even Julius Caesar is at least a pretty bad guy in the grand scheme of things. That’s exactly why its so entertaining that one of the most effective villains they’ve fought (for a one-off episode, at least) is P.T. Barnum, legendary huckster and the prime example of all con men. It goes perfectly with the premiere’s established “Screw things up for the better” theme.

So its kind of a shame that we only get to see him as a B-plot villain, along with the sabretooth tiger and the ever-sassy Agent Sharpe. This episode, like all CW shows must eventually become, is about feelings. While the first episode of this season was more focused on hi-jinks than romantic entanglements, this episode brings Amaya, the Vixen of 1942 and the Legend we lost in between season, back into the fold, and focuses heavily on the fallout of her lost relationship with Nate.

The plot of this episode is the kind of time travel shenanigans that old X-Men and Fantastic Four comics used to trade on. (For real, the first issue of Fantastic Four to feature Dr. Doom has him sending the FF back in time to hunt for Blackbeard’s treasure, leading to their capture.) The Legends, freshly reassembled and ready to fix time, decide to start small: P.T. Barnum has captured a sabretooth tiger and is using it for his show, which he’s still working out the kinks on, leading to a string of running gags about him not quite landing on the words that will later make his show famous. The Legends can’t quite catch the tiger, so Sara heads off to bring Amaya back into the fold, because she’s the one with the animal powers. Why a nuclear powerhouse, a ninja, a man with steel skin and a genius with a suit of armor are insufficient to capture a tiger, fearsome though it may be, is never really given much explanation beyond “whoa that’s scary.”

Meanwhile, the boys left in the past (Jax, Martin, Mick, Ray, and Nate) proceed to get impressively drunk, leading to some extremely over the top drunk acting on behalf of Nick Zano, who pulls out everything but “I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough” from the bag of drunk cliches and spills the beans to P.T. Barnum about the team’s various superpowers, and gets Ray and Jax caught by the world-renowned showman, who attempts to use them to lure Nate into working in his show. Amaya and Sara catch the tiger with Ray’s shrink ray (He is NOT into calling it that), only for Sara to have to stay on-board to fight Agent Sharp, who is intent on bringing them in for making the anachronism worse. Oh, and she’s also there to rescue Gary, a Time Bureau agent that was assigned to track the Legends, and captured.

Amaya is promptly caught too, because P.T. Barnum is a damned effective supervillain, and when the famed circus man threatens Nate, Amaya taps into her animal powers and demolishes the circus, helped by Martin Stein and Rory, who put on what could charitably be described as a distraction. In the aftermath, Amaya rejoins the team, she and Nate are OK with each other, and the team laughs off the Time Bureau’s concerns about a coming threat. I’m sure they are completely correct to dismiss this and it will in no way come up again.

Coming off the loose, screwball feel of the first episode, this one feels a lot more like down the middle CW. And by that, I mean we spend a lot of time talking about feelings. Credit where its due, Nick Zano creates a believably hurt Nate Heywood, and Masie Richardson-Sellers sold the pain of being forced to leave her life behind admirably. However, this didn’t distract from the fact that the fun parts f the episode felt like they got marginalized for the emotional beats of the episode. The problematic pacing of those emotional beats drained the life out of some of the episodes best moments, like Sara and Agent Sharpe’s mid-fight break.

That said, the episode was still a pretty damned entertaining hour of television. This remains a cast firing on all cylinders, and has a real talent for rotating players to the front of the action while giving actors who are put on the back burner a good moment or two. The best example of this is unquestionably Mick Rory, who despite contributing very little to the plot this week, earns his paycheck with his recurring (and very reasonable) fear of clowns. This episode also brings back Amaya/Vixen, who is an effective straight woman mentality to balance the majority of the over the top Legends’ personalities. In addition, what looks to be her season-long arc, controlling the animal nature of her powers, has been an effective story-line with other characters for decades, most notably Wolverine in the pages of Marvel comics. It should be interesting to see what the show manages to do with that.

Most Valuable Legend: Amaya/Vixen

Amaya takes home the win this week for being possibly the only one on the Waverider this week who is actually good at her job. Seriously, Jax and Ray get tricked by a promise of private dances from acrobats, Nate gets so drunk he blows the entire team’s cover, Mick is too afraid of clowns to save the day, Martin contributes by being a clown himself, and Sara lets the tiger run around on the ship. Amaya may have killed a bunch of Belgian soldiers in a fit of animalistic rage, but she showed up to get a job done and did it without tripping over her shoelaces. Plus, how many of us are going anywhere you are 100% guaranteed to run into an ex you ended things badly with? For that alone, Amaya wins hands down.

Notes from the Waverider

• “Man of steel… write that down, that’s catchy.” P.T. Barnum: secret DC Comics writer?
• I have officially updated my prediction re: Agent Sharpe. I’m still on the fence about whether she’s going to turn out to be evil, but I am now increasingly sure she and Sara are gonna hook up. There were like three times during that fight where I thought things were going that way.
• The stinger reveals a few new things about the season’s villain: he has some kind of a cult-like following, and he’s recruiting.
• Speaking of, it bears saying that the woman summoned is called Kuasa, a villain from the short-lived Vixen CW seed show. I honestly hope Malus is bringing together enemies for each of the Legends, so we get a more traditional Legion of Doom than last season.
• Caity Lotz is a national treasure: her silent physical comedy directing Gary’s phone conversation, from cocking the pistol to her “wrap it up” with the loaded gun are delightful. Also, her “which arm” line is genuinely badass.
• Brandon Routh killing it as Ray Palmer this week with the reactions: His response to his shrink ray being called a shrink ray is fantastic, as is the response to having his powers called “getting teenie-weenie.”
• Equally impressive are the reactions of the Bearded Lady: The best was her absolute disapproval of Barnum calling his show “The Greatest Show… on the Planet.”
• Apparently they train Time Bureau Agents to be the combat equivalent to members of the League of Assassins.
• I have exactly zero faith that the anachronism sliding scale will be consistent at all. It’s a goofy rating system that feels a lot like Dragon Ball Z power levels: it will matter a lot until its completely forgotten.
• “I’d never step foot on the Titanic, whoever designed that thing should be shot.” I give so much credit to the writers of the show for including this for the rare Titanic (movie) and Arrowverse crossover fan. For everyone else: Victor Garber, who plays Martin Stein, played Thomas Andrews, who designed the Titanic, in James Cameron’s iconic blockbuster.
• I’d like to keep track of some of the more deep cut DC comics references in the show going forward. Nothing jumped out at me this episode, but if you spotted any, let me known in the comments.

Next: 50 greatest super villains

Legends of Tomorrow returns on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 9:00 p.m. ET on The CW.