Legends of Tomorrow, “Night of the Hawk”, Review!

By Lil’ Yoda,

We swing right into the 50’s with this new episode of Legends of Tomorrow. We start out with a drag race between some teenagers, where one of the tires blow out and the car crashes next to a meteorite. Savage shows up saying that he was drawn to it. Back on the time ship, the Legends are not having a good time feeling the full side affects of time travel after a long time jump. Rip tells them that there has been a series of murders in the small town where they landed, Pleasentville. They figure if they investigate the murders they can find Savage. Ray and Kendra go undercover as newlyweds and are shocked at the racial prejudice shown by the community. Stein and Sara pose as a doctor and nurse at the local insane asylum, and Sara is quickly annoyed by the clear sexism shown by the doctors. Meanwhile, Rip and Snart pose as FBI agents and go to the police department to see what they can find out about Savage. Finally, Jefferson plays the new kid in town to try and talk to the teenagers involved in the crash. Stein and Sara meet with Jefferson at a cafe and Stein makes remarks as to how ‘idyllic’ the 50’s are with ‘Firebirds, white picket fences’ and whatnot. Jefferson and Sara are quick to remind him that it isn’t so perfect if your not white, straight or male. I like that they came at this topic head on. It’s not always easy to talk about, especially in era that are seen as the ‘glory days’, but we need to be reminded that things were only great for a few.

Sara notices a cheerleader looking a little sullen, and Jefferson decides to talk to her to see if he can find anything out. The two hit it off, but not before he can be harassed by a couple of white jocks, we get a nice Back to the Future reference before they head off. The cheerleader, Betty (Melissa Roxburgh), is impressed with Jefferson fending them off and invites him out on a date. Back at the hospital, Sara flirts with nurse Lindsey Carlisle (Ali Liebert) after rescuing her from a doctor who could be the poster child for workplace sexual harassment. Lindsey offers to give Sara a tour. Sara gives some files to Stein and Stein says he could go for some coffee, to which Sara replies how she takes hers. As they go on their tour, we get an awesome Hall H reference (Comic-Con’s Hall H is the place of nightmares) and we find out that Vandal Savage is posting as a doctor of the asylum. Meanwhile, Kendra is greeted by a neighbor and invited to a party, only to find that her neighbor’s husband is Savage. Savage doesn’t recognize Kendra, but Ray finding Savage at the front door with a casserole sure is funny. Just before they cut to commercials we see some sort of monster kill a local while he works on his car. You know, just normal small town stuff.

They figure that Savage thinks that Kendra doesn’t have her power’s yet, so they attend the party at Savage’s house. After another bout of 1950’s racism, Ray goes and snoops around while Kendra distracts Savage. He finds what he calls Savage’s ‘man cave’, but isn’t able to fully investigate without his suit. Just as things start getting creepy (Savage starts talking about ‘fate’ and ‘past lives’), Kendra is saved by the bell as Savage gets a call about an incident at the asylum. You’d think after two thousand years of experience, Savage would be a bit better with his pick-up lines. Back at the hospital, we see that a few of the teenagers from the crash have been turned into the monsters that we saw earlier in the episode, and have torn into one of orderlies. Back at the white picket fence neighborhood, Ray is investigating Savage’s secret room. Kendra is playing lookout and finds Savage coming home. Ray is just barely able to get out in the nick of time, with Savage’s dagger. Back at the hospital, the tension between Sara and Lindsey build up to them kissing, and surprisingly it is Sara who flips out.

It seems that isn’t even close to being it for the smooching in this episode as we switch over to Jefferson on his date with Betty. Betty is rather forward and kisses Jefferson almost immediately, surprising him enough to say that “I didn’t know that 1958 women were this forward”. Way to keep your cover man. Just as he gets her to talk about her boyfriend and the crash, they are attacked by the white jocks from the dinner. Before they can do any real damage to Jefferson they are attacked by the monsters from the asylum. Betty recognizes one of them as what used to be her boyfriend. They get back in the car, but Betty still gets some fairly serious scratches on her neck before they can get away. Just when they think they are home free, they get pulled over by a cop. Obviously, things do not go over well as the cop ends up knocking out Jefferson and leaving the girl to bleed out in the car. Luckily, she doesn’t die as Rip and Snart find her by tracing Jefferson’s last known bio-sign. They take her to the ship to be patched up and find out about the town’s monsters. Betty is seemingly so disoriented to not really understand where she is. We find out that the meteor that we saw at the beginning of the episode is the same kind that affected Kendra and Savage back in ancient Egypt.

Speaking of meteors, back at the hospital, the cop that knocked out Jefferson has handed him over to Savage as a test subject. He injects him with extract from the meteor turning him into one of the monsters. Back at the ship they try to make up a plan, and Kendra decides to face Savage, which makes Ray uncomfortable. Before they go, Sara talks to Stein about her kiss with Lindsey. She reveals that it was the first time she had been kissed since her death, and so it felt like the first time ever. Then, it’s showtime. With Kendra using Savage’s weakness for her, she flirts with him in order to get close enough to kill him, Rip poses as a orderly and Ray gets checked in as a patient to the asylum. From that we get some fun dialogue about Ray hearing “voices in my head, my wife talking to another man” to which Sara replies that, “You should trust your wife”. On the other end, Snart and Stein go investigating, and Stein mentions how odd it is not having a connection to his partner, and Snart tells him he knows how that feels. That plan quickly goes to hell in a handbasket as Rip and Ray are discovered by the cop, and Savage figures out what Kendra is doing and grabs his dagger from her. Savage releases the monsters which takes out the cop, but also head for the rest of the asylum.

With Snart and Stein, we see an interesting moment with Snart as he hesitates to take out Jefferson once he recognizes him. With Sara, Lindsey nearly gets taken out by one of the monsters before Sara saves her by knocking it out. Sara finds Snart and Stein and knock out Jefferson. Back with Savage, Kendra is barely holding her own and nearly gets taken out before Ray swoops in and knock Savage out the window. Back on the ship, Gideon and Stein manage to synthesize a cure for the meteor and save Jefferson and the boys from Pleasantville. Here comes the make-out and make up time. Jefferson says goodbye to Betty and replaces the car that got wrecked. Jefferson ends up apologizing to Snart who he had been calling him a murderer for the entire episode, after he had refused to ice Jefferson in his monster form. It seems the crew is certain that Snart killed Rory, but I’m still not so sure. As for Sara and her nurse, they end up making out and saying goodbye, or more of a ‘see you later’. Ray and Kendra end up both apologizing, for respectively refusing help and being to protective and what do you know, there’s more kissing. All seems well until Kronos, aka discount Boba Fett, attacks the Waverider and takes off with it. Leaving Kendra, Ray and Sara, stranded in 1958.

Overall, I really enjoyed this particular episode. As I mentioned before, I liked how they tackled the 1950’s prejeduce issues head-on. I also loved the costuming and set pieces for this episode. It felt very authentic, and I felt like I was in the middle of a very odd episode of I Love Lucy. Also, I wonder if Betty is a referrence to Betty Kane from the Batman comics, who made her first appearence just three years after this episode is supposed to take place. Some of the things I didn’t like was that Kendra went in against Savage alone. I’m all for girl power, but it’s obvious that no one person can take down Savage alone. Also, we need some better plans to take down Savage. ‘Let’s just go on and stab him’, obviously isn’t going to work. Other then that, it was a great episode and I look forward to next week. Four out of five Time Masters.