DC TV Weekly #42

Legends of Tomorrow 'Guest Starring John Noble' Review
Well that episode was all over the place...but kinda in a good way. I'm starting to understand why they gave it such a meta title because really there's no one plot to focus on, if anything this feels like three episodes all shoved together, but all of them are equally good. We've got Grodd, an evil psychic gorilla travel back in time to kill a young Barack Obama, and honestly that one sentence is the most Legends of Tomorrow thing that can be said, it's insane, it's goofy and it's fun as all hell. Then we have Amaya going back to save her village, leading to some good character development for her and Nata, also makes me think this might be Amaya's last season. Then finally we have Damien Darhk working with the Legends to prevent Mallus from escaping, giving us a lot of plot development. Three good plots achieving three different things, unfortunately each one is far too short to leave the impact it should do. The Obama stuff is fun but far too short, Damien's sudden but inevitable betrayal happens too fast, and Amaya's stuff...actually turned out pretty well, but to be fair they've been building it up all season. Some other things worth pointing out: I don't know why but I find it hilarious that Mick is a fan of Lord of the Rings, the cgi and fight during the Esi/Grodd throwdown was awful, yet again Wally is still getting underutilised because really the dude could solve all these problems in a literal millisecond. 7/10.

Black Lightning 'Black Jesus: The Book of Crucifixion' Review
Guys, seriously, you're really pushing it with the whole no one knows Jefferson is Black Lightning thing. His disguise is a terrible disguise that we only accept because superhero logic, when you draw attention to it, it makes it worse. At least this episode created someone of a loophole for them, people seeing Black Lightning when Jefferson is clearly in a different location so they can somewhat get away with it. But when your show specifically points out all the very obvious evidence to suggest Jefferson is Black Lightning, it means you're just not trying hard enough to hide it. Some positives on the other hand, it's nice seeing Henderson get some more development outside of just being the cop friend of Black Lightning. Well, technically it is still around him being a cop, but actually developing him into doing some actual police work and coming into his own obstacles. Also the Gambi/Jefferson relationship seems to have finally been repaired. And apparently Jefferson's Vice-Principal is an important character, even though she's been completely irrelevant for the entirety of the season until now. Meanwhile Tobias is nowhere to be seen and Lala is still completely separate from everyone else without his resurrection being close to explained. There are only two episodes left of the season and I am starting to doubt if everything will actually get resolved by the end of it, especially when very little of this episode seemed to have consequence, except that Henderson is now Deputy Chief (Why do we care?) and the Gambi relationship is restored, even if it had very little to do with this episode. 5/10.

Arrow 'Brothers In Arms' Review
How could an episode with so much emotional weight feel so boring? Yes, Arrow has had emotionally gripping storytelling wrapped in formulaic plots before, so why didn't it work this time? The debate between Oliver and Diggle has been building up for a while now, hell, you could argue all season, and it finally reached breaking point here, and the scene itself was really damn good. Both sides had solid arguments, the actors were giving 100%, even the way it was shot gave it peak tension and drama, but my god, I just didn't care at all. Perhaps it's because the rest of the episode building up to it was generic, maybe it's because I'm sick of all the arguments over "Oliver doesn't trust people" which has been done dozens of times, maybe it's because this season's main plot isn't even that interesting, or maybe it's a mixture of all three and more. Even if the one scene was really good, it's hard to care all too much when everything around it is just simply dull, even Diggle leaving the team I seriously doubt will last long. 5/10.