DC TV Recap Round-Up, Week 14: Exercise and Exorcism!

24 Feb

Welcome back! Because things have been paltry these last two weeks, it made sense to wait a while before doing another round of the recaps. And now, we got enough here, with Black Lightning and two weeks worth of returning favorite Legends of Tomorrow! So let’s get to it…

“And Then The Devil Brought the Plague: The Book of Green Light”

Jefferson is looking to stop the spread of the super drug Green Light in Freeland, but is confronted by a few problems he didn’t count on. One is issues with his supersuit interacting with his powers, which is causing him some health issues that are affecting his late night crime fighting. The other is learning the man who killed his father, Joey Toledo, is not only alive but working for Tobias as a henchman! He wants vengeance immediately, and thanks to said suit and power problems, is unable to get it for now.

Meantime, Jennifer is maybe developing some super strength, or at least some great ability at breaking the arm of fellow girls who trash talk her. Anissa is on a more dangerous path, investigating a conspiracy theory that involves metahumans, her grandfather, and several kids who went missing for a time. She’s warned away from this by a journalist who covered it, but she keeps looking for answers, which brings her to a self-storage place. What will she find there? What will Jefferson do, knowing Tobias and the man who killed his father are still alive?

Eat your heart out, Iron Man.

–Nice fun way to start this episode, with Jefferson learning he can use the suit to fly. I mean, his reaction to this whole thing is priceless.

–Another priceless moment comes when Jefferson hears about what Jennifer did to that other girl’s arm. He’s proud, but also has to be a disappointed parent at the same time.

–On the other hand, Tobias and his sister deal with their deadbeat abusive dad in a truly gruesome fashion. I mean, Tobias hugging him so hard his spine breaks and leaving him to die is pretty harsh, even for a hateful guy like his dad.

–So a few things are dropped just randomly. One: Tobias has some serum that has stopped him from aging. Two: Gamby is part of some intelligence agency. What all this means I can only guess.

–Anissa came up with that from her superhero outfit shopping? It’s a work in progress.

–“Two girls?”

–“Consider this the ‘Black Signal’.”

–“You wanna be a superhero, you can’t be afraid of damn rats.”

–“I just found my new favorite thing!”

“Daddy Darhkest”

As you might remember from the last time we checked in on our time-traveling screw-ups, occult magician John Constantine came seeking their help in an exorcism case. That demon possessing the girl in question is Mallus, but what is discovered later is of more surprise: the young girl is Damien Darhk’s daughter! The idea of stopping the corruption of Nora Darhk before she becomes a problem for the Legends is appealing, but that exorcism goes wrong when Sara, Constantine, and Earth-X’s Snart get sent back in time to the 60’s! Meantime, Amaya tries to reach out to her granddaughter Kuasa to help them stop Mallus, while Ray and Zari try to help young Nora (still traumatized by her dad’s death at the hands of the Green Arrow). The former seems to go well, the latter not so much.

While Amaya gains some ground on turning her granddaughter to her side, Damien from the future arrives to collect his daughter to groom her into the evil spawn he always wanted. And while the rest of the team gets back to the present, it’s with a few concerns. Constantine warns Ray that he may have to use his new magician stopping gun on Sara if Mallus takes her over. Oh, and Rip Hunter has escaped from the Time Bureau! Welcome back, guys!

Cirque De Soleil has some strange auditions.

–This marks the end of Earth-X’s Leonard Snart on the Waverider as he decides to back to his home dimension and marry Ray (not our Ray). Not a bad send off for this character for the foreseeable future.

–Constantine and Sara hook up for a second, which of course they would! They are both damaged people.

–Meantime, Rory stays in to watch a soccer game in present time. Sure, he could check on what the result is in the future, but hey, why ruin the experience?

–So Zari and Amaya (and possibly Kuasa) are part of “the six” that can hurt Mallus because they are totem bearers.

–Amaya suggests Nate is “needed”. Um, are we getting a tease about something else involving this couple in the near future?

–“I hope no one was trying to seduce anyone while I was about to be lobotomized.”

–“We’re also from the future, and spoiler alert, you don’t age well.”

–“Gay, not blind.”

–“And thanks for the shag too. That was great.”

“Here I Go Again”

Zari is not having a great day, what with playing with simulations to save her family and aggravating Sara…and then the Waverider exploding! Of course, she somehow is repeating that hour before the Waverider goes ka-boom, so now she’s stuck in a time loop dilemma, and needs to convince her teammates to what is happening, and yes, stop their ship from blowing up. And in-between those attempts, Zari learns some secrets about the crew and learns to be a better person. That, as we discover, is kind of the point of the big reveal later on.

You see, she’s not actually stuck in a time loop at all (at least, not the Groundhog Day kind). She got knocked into a coma and Gideon used this time to teach her via a simulation that the only way she may be able to find a solution for saving her family…is by gaining the trust of her new family. Well, whatever way works. In the meantime, we catch up with the escaped Rip Hunter, who is looking to recruit some help…like say, the former Kid Flash, Wally West!

“Hmmm, this time loop is really just her in a coma being shown all of this by a supercomputer? Well, maybe I’ll work this out in the next draft.”

–So Sara has concerns about starting a thing with Agent Sharpe, Amaya and Nate may be memory erasing themselves after hooking up, and Rory is writing a sci-fi romance novel. Oh, and Ray is scared of having to kill Sara if Mallus takes her over again. But Zari’s little nap seems to have helped her teammates work past that.

–The “Zari Fun Montage” was a fun sequence. You kind of need that in these time loop situations.

–Hard to get past “dinky tickling” as a phrase. Also, nice to see the actress who voices Gideon in that final reveal.

–We don’t see that 1975 trip to stop Napoleon from hearing the ABBA song “Waterloo”, or the team playing as a band. Maybe for the best?

–“You know what they say: ‘happy captain, happy ship’!” “No one says that, but whatever.”

–“Kill me now.”

–“Who knew you were such an evil genius? And a bit of a perv.”

–“This says ‘bosoms’ way too much to be a manifesto.”

NEXT TIME: The Legends become pirates (of the sea kind), The Flash deals with a metahuman fiddler, and Black Lightning goes after Tobias Whale!