Welcome back! Our heroes had to pull themselves out of a fix in deep space with time pirates, made worse by ol’ Heatwave turning on them. This left the team in a dilemma: what to do with him since imprisonment or dumping him back in 2016 would be problematic. The solution was Cold putting his former partner on ice! Was it a permanent freeze Rory was put in? Plus, Ray and Kendra might be an item, so, thanks for that?
Harmony Falls, 1958. Somewhere in Oregon, teens are drag racing in the middle of the night when a loud boom takes one car out. A girl in the car goes in and out of consciousness, seeing an odd blue glowing rock crashed alongside them. The driver of the crashed car and the two guys in the other car look and wonder what this mystery rock is. Then Vandal Savage appears to let them and us know its a meteor, and one of particular interest to him. Oh, and he’s going to have to do something about these teens…
…Which we’ll get to later, because the Waverider arrives in the town the teens live in, Pleasant Falls, following a lead on Savage. This lead is the vanishing of those teens who ran into Savage, so the team breaks off into several groups: Ray and Kendra pretend to be a married couple in the teens’ neighborhood; Stein and Sara go in as doctor and nurse at the local hospital; Rip and Cold pretend to be federal agents; and Jax thinks he can talk to the girl who survived the crash. Of course, this is 1958, so there are some major hurdles for our team to cross in their undercover operations. Like for instance, Kendra being mistaken for Ray’s, ahem, “help”, and Jax getting hassled by the local prejudiced teens. Welcome to the 50’s!
“Nurse, have I ever told you my interest in women in nurse’s uniforms?” “Doctor, have I ever told you about my bloodlust to murder people?”
Going to Pleasantville. While Jax is impressing our only witness, Sara is finding files for Stein and making friends with fellow nurse, Lindsey, who Sara realizes is really not interested in guys. She gets Lindsey to give her a tour of the place, except for the mysterious and restricted Hall H, run by Dr. Conrad Knox, who looks exactly like Vandal Savage! Speaking of “Dr. Knox”, he brings his “wife” with him to welcome Ray and Kendra to the neighborhood and invite them to a dinner party later tonight. Somehow, Savage doesn’t recognize Kendra, or does he? Also, some random guy stranded on the road is attacked by something that flies, and has feathers. And talons. Big ones.
On the Waverider, the team discusses what to do next. Stein believes the meteor the girl talks about to Jax may be like the one that gave Savage and Kendra their powers, which explains his interest in Pleasant Falls, but not what he’s up to. Ray and Kendra will go to that dinner party, and Sara will dig up more info at the hospital regarding Hall H. And also, Jax makes a snide comment to Cold about what happened to Rory, which is…what, exactly? Whatever it was, it must have been a complicated call.
Drinks and Cocktails. Sara is looking around Knox’s office, when she runs into Lindsey and they start to have a long talk about themselves, but how Lindsey is fearful about revealing her sexuality, because, duh, the 50’s weren’t the most progressive. Later, Stein points out to Sara that any relationship she wants with Lindsey is problematic because of the whole mission and the era, but we’ll see that’s not Sara’s biggest problem.
“This dish has been made with care…and tyrannical hatred!”
At the dinner party at the Knox home, Kendra meets some more casual racism before running into the “doctor” and his creepy interest in her. Before things take a turn for the really icky with his talk about “past lives” and “destiny”, he gets a ring from the hospital of an emergency. Savage heads over to Hall H to admonish his subjects, the teens from the crash, about killing an orderly…with their talons. They have been mutated into freakish violent Hawkpeople!
A Kiss Is More Than A Kiss. The next day, Ray is sneaking into the “Knox” home and spots something familiar: the mystical dagger they need to kill Savage. He swipes it before “Knox” returns home, which is good, right? Well, its enough to get Kendra interested in killing Savage with the dagger by playing to his interest in her, which Ray has problems with. Sara, during this, shares a brief kiss with Lindsey, but…she feels something is wrong and leaves. What we learn is since Sara came back from the dead, she’s been a bit distant with feelings, let alone those of a sexual nature. I guess that’s one of the hang-ups of resurrection.
Meanwhile, Jax is going on a date with the teen girl, clearly for learning info on the meteor she saw. CLEARLY. And before that date is interrupted by those prejudiced teens, those Hawkpeople swoop in and make a mess of things. The girl gets slashed around the throat by her ex-boyfriend/freakish Hawkperson, and Jax drives her to get help on the Waverider. But, he gets pulled over by the local sheriff, and gets knocked out while leaving the girl to bleed out in Jax’s car.
AGH! It’s Ted Cruz for President supporters!
Hurt Feelings. Not too long later, Rip and Cold find Jax’s car with him missing and the girl barely alive. They take her back to the Waverider to get healed, and Stein discovers the meteor mutation that has been put into the teens to change them into these creatures. He’s tasked with finding a way to reverse the process, which hopefully they will. Mostly because Jax wakes up in Hall H, where Savage injects him with that meteor serum!
He’s already turning into one of those monsters when “Dr. Knox” has a visitor in Kendra. She’s dressed in her most slinky attire (and that dagger in her purse) and tries to play to his creepy obsession with her, only to find he’s been aware of who she really is when he holds that dagger he knows was stolen at her throat! She says no one else is with her, but just to be sure, he decides to let loose his test subjects for a Hawkperson army under his command loose on the hospital!
Hawkmonsters Attack! Rip and Sara are in the hospital lobby fighting the Hawkmonsters and knocking out the, clearly in-cahoots with Savage, local sheriff (and revealing to Lindsey that Sara is a super ninja), while Ray comes into Dr. Knox’s office and blasts Savage (and that dagger) out a window, saving Kendra. Down in the basement, Stein and Cold run intoning of those monsters, including Jax. Cold is almost ready to ice over Jax, but relents long enough to knock Jax out. It looks like the Hawkmonsters are subdued, but there’s still the problem of curing them. Well, Stein tries a cure out on Jax, which seems to work, and applies it to the other mutated teens. So here’s hoping there isn’t any weird side effects from exposure to that alien rock!
Rip: “Just the facts, mum, um, I mean, MA’AM.”
Missed Your Ride. The next morning, Sara is saying goodbye to Lindsey, who thanks Sara for making her stop being afraid of who she is. Ray and Kendra are packing up at their house and realizing they need to start working on trusting each other. Jax is up and about long enough to tell the recovering girl he tried to save to be happy wherever she goes. Oh, and he arrives back at the Waverider to thank Cold for doing the heroic thing and saving him. But before Leonard there gets reflective on that…
…FRIGGIN CHRONOS SHOWS UP! AGAIN! He’s got some new weapons and enters the Waverider, shooting at Rip, Cold, Stein, and Jax. Ray, Kendra, and Sara are walking towards the Waverider, unaware of what’s going on, when the ship takes off and vanishes! So, what happened on the Waverider? And now what will Ray, Sara, and Kendra do, now stuck in 1958? The answers to that will be in a few weeks!
–Comic book connections: Vandal Savage did have a secret identity of a doctor at one point in the DCU, but it was of a Dr. Conrad Bortz, not Knox.
–So this episode was directed by Joe Dante, who you may recognize from directing the original Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins, Innerspace, but also a underlooked 50’s set comedy, Matinee. Also, he’s also behind the wonderful Trailers From Hell website, and I still got my Hellbound certificate from supporting their KickStarter campaign from a few years back, thank you very much!
–Should I ask about “Dr. Knox’s wife”? Just saying, that’s never cleared up.
–Like Ray is going to turn down a plate of tuna surprise from a genocidal tyrant.
–Seriously, WHAT happened to Rory, anyway?
–Stein: “I could go for a coffee, Nurse.” Sara: “Me too. Black. No sugars.”
–“Just so you know, Ra’s al Ghul taught me how to kill someone slowly…over a number of days.”
–“Tuna surprise. So many surprises.”
–“I was liberating her…with an option to seduce her later.”
–“Should’ve known better than to fall for a ninja.”
That’s it for now, but come back in three weeks for the recap of “Left Behind”…
dee2henry
intellichick
ladydethpool
magnitudev1
natashanerdlush
nerdlushguests
elizabeth ann
Billy
stewartmoncure
thetwoohsix
NerdLush 
What do you think?