The Legends of Tomorrow pilot attempted to hit every tired old trope in the book. It was as though someone pulled down a trunk from their attic full of clichéd plot points that one must shove into a pilot otherwise, ‘emegherd, we’ll have to actually tell a story, and those impatient viewers won’t stick around’ (because someone somewhere said so) … and shoved them all into the pilot.
The whole thing felt like they were trying too hard.
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If you haven’t seen it yet and you going to, (I’m going to watch a few more episodes in ‘wait-and-see’ mode) … this is your five second warning …
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Time lord/captain/master bloke is all vengeful ‘cos the bad guy murdered his wife and kid – tick.
Time lord/captain/master emotes by swirling his long coat and speaks in staccato bursts of expository dialogue, and twitches a lot – tick.
Bad guy is evil, but also evil because of jealousy – tick. How many bad guys have been set off on their path to the dark side (including the original Dark Side guy) because some darn woman done him wrong?!!! (hell, Padme even died in childbirth, a double whammy)
The hawkish couple who aren’t sure they’re a couple (and the actors have even less of a clue) are motivated by the death of a child too – tick.
A couple’a do-good-dudes want to achieve more than footnote status in history – tick.
Jaded criminals ‘ain’t got nuthin’ better to do’ – tick.
The list goes on, and on.
As pilots go it wasn’t terrible …
And I’m sure hope that as the season goes on the show will hit its stride, much like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did.
I think shows like Sense8, Daredevil, The Blacklist, Jessica Jones, House of Cards, have shown that you don’t have to throw everything at the audience in the first episode for the show to work, especially if you already have an audience willing to go the distance or at least willing to give the show a chance, already built in, as these shows that are part of greater film and TV universes do.
… it just could’ve been a lot better.
However, White Canary busting up a 1975 bar was worth the wait. 🙂
Sounds very tiring to follow. I went to see who the cast of characters are and none rang a bell. This must’ve been when I stopped reading comic books. That doesn’t matter. I was skeptical when I watched Ant Man and now can hardly wait for the sequel.
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Yeah, Ant Man was fun. I haven’t seen a Marvel Universe movie I didn’t like. 🙂
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I don’t know this show, but based on your review, it sounds like I may not have missed much. Okay, next! 🙂
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They’re going to have to work hard in the next couple of episodes to keep me around.
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I haven’t watched it… I find so many of these shows hard to follow for all the reasons you mention. Television seems to extract all the nuance out of the stories and reduce them to cliches that lose my interest in the first episode. 😦
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The few I mentioned got it right, but they are few … and far between.
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I’ll wait until you recommend it – if it gets better. No point in both of us wasting our time, and you already said you’d stick around a few more episodes.
In exchange: we are watching Boss – Kelsey Grammer as mayor of Chicago – and it very House of Cards-y. I like him in it – which I didn’t expect, and Connie Nielsen is gorgeous as his wife.
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I will go forth and check it out. 🙂
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