[Review] Legends of Tomorrow Episode 3×02: “Freakshow”

written by Kate Danvers

SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. We’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside! There behind a glass is an immortal jackass, be careful as you pass. Move along, move along! Come inside, the show’s about to start. Guaranteed to blow the timeline apart. Rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth, the greatest show in Heaven, Hell, or Earth. So don’t call them heroes, they’re…Legends?

Sorry, I kind of ran out of steam there.

The episode opens with a flashback to six months ago when Amaya and Nate were living together in Central City. Amaya tries to make doughnuts for Nate’s birthday, but he suggests going to the store for them instead. While he’s gone, Amaya sees a news report about Mari McCabe, the modern-day Vixen – her granddaughter. Nate returns to the apartment to find Amaya has moved out.

In the present, Ray has reverse-engineered the Time Bureau tech Mick stole to give the Legends a way to track anachronisms. He’s also invented a shrink ray, but he doesn’t want to call it that. The anachronism map is daunting. The damage the Legends caused to the timeline is very widespread, with each one numbered on a 1-10 scale by its severity and difficulty. Sounds like a video game mission select screen to me. Level up on the little ones first. Ray would like to check out the Titanic.

STEIN: “Absolutely not! I refuse to set foot on the Titanic. Whoever built that ship ought to be shot.”

Meta!

They go for an easy one – a level 1 in Wisconsin, 1870 at P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome. They search the freak show first since that’s the most likely place for an anachronism. They find P.T. Barnum being played by Billy Zane, which I’d count as an anachronism since Zane is fifty-one and Barnum was sixty in 1870. But this is the network of thirtysomethings playing teenagers, so I’ll let that slide. Speaking of, turning Archie Comics into a murder mystery teen drama has to be about an 8 on the anachronism scale, right? [EDITOR’S NOTE: You leave Riverdale out of this IT IS AMAZING.]

Ray, Nate, and Jax find the anachronism – a saber-toothed tiger. Geniuses that they are, they open the cage before using the shrink ray on it. Shockingly, they manage to screw up and enlarge the thing instead and set it free. The anachronism elevates to a level 4. Sara calls in the big guns – someone who knows something about wild animals. She takes the jump ship to Zambesi, 1942 to pick up Amaya. After some reluctance, Amaya agrees to help.

Amaya and Sara go out alone to recapture the cat and Jax, Nate, and Ray go out for drinks from the Oddbins Vodka selection. Sara and Amaya successfully capture and shrink the saber-toothed tiger. The boys play with a smartphone in the middle of a bar in plain sight, because of course they do. Nate gets in a fight and reveals his powers, then drunkenly tells P.T. Barnum about Jax’s and Ray’s powers, which leads to Jax and Ray getting kidnapped by the circus.

Sara, Amaya, and Nate go searching for their missing teammates. Sara captures a time agent who is spying on them and takes him back to the ship. Nate bickers with Amaya about her leaving and then gaslights her when she correctly points out that he got drunk because she was back. This isn’t a good look for Nate. Amaya may have left without explanation or even a goodbye, but Nate is being a dick this episode. I’ll still take this over another Ray and Kendra “talk about our relationship” subplot like we had in Season One.

Back on the ship, Mick frees the house cat-sized saber-toothed tiger while trying to feed it, because the Legends don’t know how to interact with anything through the bars of a cage. Fun fact: if you shrink down a saber-toothed tiger, it meows like a kitten! Sara and Stein interrogate Special Agent Gary in the brig. Gary stammers that Agent Sharpe has him spying on the Legends and it’s a good thing because the level 1 anachronism is now a level 6.

Nate and Amaya find Jax and Ray, who Barnum has dressed up as conjoined twins. Nate can’t use his powers to free them because he’s dehydrated/hungover/whatever. Amaya hesitates to use her powers, but at that moment they’re ambushed and tranquilized by Barnum and his gang – including someone I think is supposed to be B’wana Beast. Now locked in a cage, Nate asks Amaya why she left. Amaya went to Detroit first to see Mari in action for herself. She went back to 1942 because, as Rip told her, Mari was present in 2017 because time hadn’t solidified yet. But the longer Amaya stayed on the Waverider, the more she risked Mari disappearing. Amaya’s reason for leaving without telling Nate was that she wanted him to hate her because it would be easier for him to get over her. That makes a certain TV-logic sense.

Agent Gary is forced at gunpoint by Sara to call Sharpe and tell her that it’s all his fault the anachronism has escalated to a level 8 because he interfered with the Legends’ mission. Sharpe suggests sending backup, but Gary quickly tells her not to after Sara cocks the gun. Gary ends the call and Sara knocks him unconscious. Jesus Christ, Sara! She then sends Stein and Mick out to rescue the team and get back to the ship before the tiger “embiggens”. She’s going to stay behind and deal with Agent Sharpe, who has arrived just like she predicted.

SARA: “You can do this. I have faith in you.”
STEIN: “Why?”

If the show gets any more self-deprecating it’s going to be writing my reviews for me.

Sara and Sharpe face off, fighting each other with those collapsible baton things. They hate each other, they take cheap verbal shots, they fight brutally – dey gonna fuck…or get tired of fighting and take a break for some water, sure, ruin my fanfic already. During their break, the tiger walks in and embiggens, chasing Sharpe out of the room. Sara saves her in time (HAH!) with the stolen time courier watch and portals them to safety in the brig along with Gary. Gary complains that he’s losing circulation and asks to be untied. I like Gary. I hope he’s a recurring character.

Stein poses as a clown to get close to “twins” Jax and Ray. Barnum threatens Nate with a gun to make him become the “Man of Steel” (which he thinks is catchy and makes a note of). Nate still can’t do it, but when Barnum threatens Amaya, Nate steels up. Barnum keeps shooting him over and over, so an enraged Amaya summons the spirit of a bear and breaks out of the cage. “B’wana Beast” moves forward to intercept. Aww yeah, B’wana Beast versus Vixen! This should be–okay, she backhands him away. Huh. Maybe he just looks like B’wana Beast.

Stein-Clown is found out and clowns gather to attack. I’m disappointed no one shouted “Hey, Rube!” Mick joins the fight, getting over his fear of clowns and hitting the other side of a seesaw that Stein is standing on, launching him into the ring with Jax. They form Firestorm and wow the crowd. Also the anachronism is now up to a level 9. The Legends have made their mark on history. I swear the Time Bureau probably uses “Legend” as a pejorative. “That Jenkins is a real Legend” or “Ugh, Gary really Legends’d up this mission.” Amaya is about to kill Barnum, so Firestorm tries to stop her and gets smacked out of the air. Nate talks her down and they hug. Barnum works the crowd, treating all of this like part of the show and promising more the next week.

After Jax and Ray shrink the tiger again, Sara takes Sharpe aside and asks about something she let slip earlier – about something more dangerous out there that the Legends can’t handle. Sharpe refuses to talk about it, but allows the Legends to keep their ship…for now.

Nate asks Amaya what happened to her. Amaya is losing control of her powers and gives the example we saw in the last episode when she brutally killed some soldiers. The animals are in control, not her. She decides to stay with the Legends until she can get her powers under control. Sara tells the others about the threat so massive that even the Time Bureau is afraid of it…which makes them all laugh, because what could be worse than an immortal psychopath or a killer speedster?

And because the editor is good at dramatic timing, we cut to an unknown place and time where a robed woman casts some sort of spell that makes water take the form of a woman named Kuasa. The robed woman identifies herself as a follower of Mallus. They have work to do.

Oh, I watched the credits – that actually was B’wana Beast. Neat!

I liked this one. It was fun and goofy – like this show is a lot of times – but in a good way. P.T. Barnum as the villain was a little odd, though. Still, I enjoyed Billy Zane’s performance as a desperate and somewhat sinister showman, and he has the charisma to pull it off. The presence of the Time Bureau was much better in this episode, with the neurotic Agent Gary and Agent Sharpe, who’s growing on me. I’m sure I’m reading too much into Sharpe and Sara but they do have an entertaining antagonistic relationship going on. Ending the fight with the two of them sitting down for a water break was just perfect.

The only big criticism I would level against this episode is that, like a lot of other episodes in the series, the plot doesn’t really give the other characters much to do. Stein and Mick are in the first few scenes, but then they sort of vanish for the rest of the episode until everyone else is captured and then they go on a rescue mission. At times I think they just don’t know what to do with Mick without Leonard around. With Stein, I think it’s more that they’re avoiding making Firestorm a push-to-win button, so they try to keep him and Jax apart. The problem with that is when there aren’t any science-y things for the professor to do, the writers seem at a loss.

Next week: to the future to face off against a hacktivist in an episode I’m really excited about.

Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays on the CW at 9 ET/8 CT. Kate can be reached on Twitter @WearyKatie.

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