Notes on - Legends of Tomorrows: Knocked Down, Knocked Up

 

Knocked down, Knocked up notes

Good that they didn’t even pretend that Gary wasa in Danger, and just showed him land

Unknown Location, 30,000 BC

Cavemen.  Does that time out right?

Also great scripting to set up that Gary has his key and just needs to find a door in an era that has no doors, which is a funny conceit

First weekly meetup for the retired Legends.  Still not sure hoe Wednesday evenings link up across the timelines, but who cares.

I like visually that they’re all coming un through different doors

Awww, other Zari sent a hug.

Nice that they all noticed Gwyn wasn’t there right away.

Mametz Wood, France 1916

Wouldn’t Gwyn finding z more tolerant time be technically breaking the terms of their retirement?

Having the robot Alun really does make a nice contrivance to saving the real one.  Gwyn is smart

Gideon is drinking wine alone and is hoping that the aberration is Gary.  Plus gets to wear fun outfits.  I kind of want her life right now.

Real Gideon gets that the time ‘criminals’ she’s stopping are

***  You haven’t written a word yet, have you.

Nate’s not ready to start writing because that would mean acknowledging his time with them is done.

Gideon is starting to lose her compassion for the time alterers.  Nicely handled montage

Ava and Sara are always the first ones to dinner

I like that they’re exploring the ways two women can have a child.  There are options.

It’s very in character for Ava to be this methodical about narrowing down sperm doners

It makes sense that they’d decide for Ava to carry the baby.  Pregnancy and ninja fighting don’t work well together.

And now Sara isn’t healing for some reason

Clever solution for Gary to build a door.  I wonder how long he’s been with the cavemen?  Long enough to bond a little.  How perfect a ‘door’ would he have had to build?  Would it need a real locking mechanism, or just a hole?  Doesn’t matter a bit, but I’m curious.

They do include the lock tumblers noise

Is it the same number of weeks for everybody?  Hads the key synched them?

Aww, Astra was hoping it was Gideon.

Astra:  Where’s Gideon?  Is she OK?

Gary:  Which one, the human one, or the computer one that tried to murder me?

Good plot breakout that Gary shows up at this point to tell them about the problems with Gideon

And now that they know about the robot, the real meaning of the note clicks

Nice that Zari is willing to be optimistic about whether Gwyn might have worked out just fine.

BUT – Gary knows and tells them that Alun’s death is a fixed point.  Which totally makes sense since his death directly creates time travel.

Brutal seeing Gwyn die, even though we know it won’t stick.

Also clever that the Legends can jiust look it up in a book.

Zari stole a time courier.  Convenient, AND makes sense in context

Gary can sense that Sara is pregnant with his Nacrian olfactory glands.

What kind of pregnant is Sara?  Didn’t we see Kayla impregnant  - Oh wait – Gary now conveniently mantions that she’s a cribilix, totally different.  All she has to do is want to have a child and she can be fertile for anyone with a kiss.  I really like that

Back to Mametz Wood, France 1916

At this point I’m really starting to wonder who the fixer is.  AAnd feeling validated by my wonderings about whether every fixed point had their own separate one

Behrad:  I appreciated the positivity

Zari:  OK, thank you so much, you can both shut up.

The Legends were trying extra hard to not get detected and Gideon found them in no time at all.  Human Gideon has gotten way cold and way severe

Astra is equal parts angry at Gideon for the beliefes she’s espousing and for having abandoned her with no contact.  That’s a nice intersection of plot and character

This is all nicely morally complicated.  Gideon’s not wrong, she did sacrifice her own future to save all their lives, but she’s sacrificed her humanity along with it.

Gary thinks for one moment that the revelatiuon that AI Gideon tried to kill him will get through to human Gideon, but she just immediately justifies it which is as bad or worse as if she had know all along.

God, they’re saying so much with the way Gideon is reacting to the looks in her friends eyes when they look at her.

Sweet that Spooner is the one to talk Astra into not giving up on her ‘daughter’.  Although the part about ‘I could sense he conflict’ was clumsy and unnecessary.  And I liked that Ava followed it up with the practical observation that they weren’t going to succeed without Gideon on their side.

It’s a little clumsy that we never saw human Gideon return to the Waverider

Being alone with the AI poisoning her humanity has been really bad for Gideon

Gideon:  The way they all looked at me tonight, with such revulsion…  That was unbearable. And I understand their disappointment.  I… I set up Gwyn’s death.  The man who’s given up everything to help us. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.  Who am I, Gideon?

Human Gideon is being offered the classic choice to give up her humanity in order to get rid of pain.

Also nice setup for having a spare Gideon body shell around.

Nice job building tension here, the race to save Gideon from destroying her own humanity.

Nice organic way to reveal that Sara has lost her healing powers.  Temporarily?  Or will they all go to the baby?

Gwyn is still looking at this as punishment for his cowardice

The Gideon Astra reunion is beautiful.  Who hasn’t had that moment of being forgiven by a friend you thought you’d driven away for good

Evil Gideon:  Don’t listen to them.  This is the sort of treacly drivel that polluted your mind in the first place.

Spooner:  I can’t believe you’ve been stuck on the ship with this bitch.

Evil Gideon:  We don’t use that word on this ship.

She made the mistake of having the human learn from the AI instead of the other way around.

Gideon:  You’re a big blue head, what the hell are you going to do about it.

I love that they’re back to the same essential concept of let’s skip the fighting and just sit down and talk.  Love that their first instinct is to just reach the fixer and talk instead of trying to con him/her

The star on the golf ball should have told me who this is, but I totally missed it

Also his color scheme.  How did I miss it

Gideon on Gideon action!

Nice setup for that body existing

AI Gideon is kind of making up rules to suit herself at this point

I really like the flipping through the floor effect

The time protector recognizes Gwyn.  Which makes sense, since he’s the only time traveller to ever show up.

In hindsight, the Fixer clearly makes up the name ‘Mike’ on the spot.

Sara:  You didn’t kill us!

Fixer:  Well, you said please.

‘Mike’ is from the future and knows all about the Legends, and demonstrates by knowing all their names.  But he doesn’t know Gwyn.  Interesting.  What does that mean?

It’s specifically Alun’s death that’s being protected

The reveal that nobody ever comes here because it’s a paradox is so well done

Fixer:  Those dicks put me here as a joke!

Spooner can sense Gideon.  Man her powers are vague and malleable

Super nice Gideon as Terminator skull moment, if a little on the nose.

Oooo!  Forcing Evil Gideon’s presence here to be the anomaly she has to fix is SUPER clever plotting.

But… it’s forcing evil Gideon to self destruct, taking Spooner, Astra and human Gideon with her.  I really thought they’d stop her before the explosion.  That was shocking

Is Astra saving and fixing the ship a little deus ex machina-y, or is it a nice resolution to the season opener failure to do same.

Sudden and inevitable betrayal by Mike to steal the Waverider

Surprisingly sad, seeing Gwyn’s time machine blown up.

Nate:  Nice, Mike.  Real Nice.

So they’ve resolved the main villain of the season with twenty minutes left in the episode.

OK, so the battle started early, so Zari and Behrad have to go take the fake robot to it’s assigned place.

Sara’s breakdown makes sense, but feels sudden in context.

Loved Ava’s surprise that Sara’s baby is hers

Nate is super thrilled about Sara and Ava’s baby and Gary basically says, ‘don’t worry about the logistics, ,just roll with it.  Which is the shows attitude in a nutshell.

So Sara’s sudden and abrupt breakdown reveals that her powers are gone, which triggers Nate to take the dangerous mission, which causes him to lose his powers, which resolves his leaving.  That all tracks, but this is happening at lightening speed.

Gwyn really is consumed with self loathing

Nate is the last invulnerable one, so he takes the mission to go rescue the real Alun from the middle of the battle which has started early.

Zari just totally killed those soldiers

The addition of Private Reece is an unnecessary confusion, and is added just to illustrate that Gwyn is capable of being braver and making better choices, which  helps redeem his self loathing in his present self.  I thought Reece was Alun for a bit of this

Matt Ryan can really rock a moustache

Apparently fighting in WWI really was this awful

Does Mustard gas really react to steel?  I always thought that Nate turned entirely to metal, not just developed a steel exoskeleton

Losing his powers in the middle really does make his final run out with Alun more heroic. 

So in universe, is Nate going to be mustard gas scarred forever?

Nate’s Sara’s oldest friend at this point.  That’s easy to forget.

He’s ‘used it up’?  How would Gwyn be able to diagnose that?  Ah well, it only exists to facilitate his exit.

Apparently this is basically what things were like behind the scenes as well.

Wait, does Zari not have powers anymore then either?

Nate just took the totem into the totem… How does that work?

It bothers me that this isn’t the original Waverider

**** I hope you don’t have any plans for the near future.