TV Review Round Up 1: Mostly Superheroes

Even my TV reviewing is behind schedule, and I don't watch any TV*! Here's part 1, which I call Mostly Superheroes.

* In fact I do watch TV as this post will prove.

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1. Legends Of Tomorrow

At the end of last season John Constantine managed to redeem Astra, rescuing her from hell, which might have continued Legends habit of softening the hard edges off characters as they become comfortable amongst their found family of time traveling idiots. Fortunately they manage to avoid that; Constantine loses his magic and betrays the team to get it back.

This drives the back half of the season; the front half is spent dealing with the consequences of the ridiculous cliffhanger at the end of last season, in which Sarah Lance, co-captain, was kidnapped by aliens after attending a punk gig in 1979 in the celebration at the end of the season finale. She ends up with season villain Bishop (someone for Constantine to betray them to). Bishop invented the Eva clones, including Eva Sharp, the other co-captain and Sarah’s lover (and fiancé, as it turns out Sarah confessed her intentions to propose to David Bowie at the punk gig). Eva sends the other Legends out on make work while she attempts to contact the DEO, the agency that deals with aliens in Supergirl now they are in the same continuity, only to discover it has been obliterated. (There’s no crossover because of COVID, reducing the fourth-wall meta-commentary, though Nate Heywood does attempt to explain what a finale is to some new team members).

If this sounds confusing, it’s worth noting that the show only makes sense on its own terms; they travel in time and space and the rules subtly shift but at the heart it’s that if you mess with time, especially for your own benefit, things go wrong. The team, and we, are distracted, by the weird scenario and costumes of the week, and held in by whichever super-soap-opera nonsense is befalling whichever characters get the sub-plot of the week. So for example we have 2040s-Social-Media-Star-Zari dating John Constantine, but within her totem is 2040s-Apocalypse-Zari who was dating Nate Heywood, and this is complicated by her brother Behrad, who, after she changed time in the Season 4 finale, has always been a Legend.

My point, such as it is? This show is too convoluted to be as actually stupid as it tries and too cute to hold down the emotional strands. In one episode four members of Legends get trapped in a cosmic bowling alley and have to defeat another team, and this is obviously dumb and an excuse to spend a lot of time on a bowling alley set for some reason, but it’s also one where groups get split off and work through their problems with each other, each group has to act to save the day despite being separated. Does that sound like something you want to see?

Watch This: Wild superhero time travel adventures, bold commitment to ridiculous setpieces
Don’t Watch This: None of this makes any damn sense

2. Batwoman

Thanks to COVID Batwoman ended early last season, and Ruby Rose, who played Kate Kane as Batwoman, decided to leave the show for what sound like excellent reasons. A challenge for the people making the show for sure, but one that’s an opportunity. Recast, fix the show's behind-the-scenes problems and changing the planned ending altogether has… possibilities?

They run with it. During the crossover Supergirl had entrusted Batwoman with the last bit of Kryptonite (probably, they have no need to be consistent after Crisis On Infinite Earths), and Kate had gone to National City to suggest destroying it. Then her plane comes down and she’s missing-presumed-dead, and Ryan Wilder, wrongly convicted, black, martial arts expert, mourning her foster mother who was killed by Alice, finds the batsuit. She becomes the new Batwoman.

Last season was dominated by family, Kate and Beth/Alice (twins, now villain and hero) and Jacob, father, and Mary (step-sister) and Mouse, the son of the man who kept Alice captive. This season we move through at least three sequences, all more or less trying to find out what happened to Kate Kane, orbiting the hole left by her departure.

We learn what Beth was up to five years ago, in a set of entertaining five-years-ago-on-an-island flashbacks, just like they did with Arrow, and link a semi-mystical cure-all to the drug trade in Gotham. With a new Batwoman we dig a bit into Ryan’s background, where she’s not a scion of privilege who decides to become a hero through noblesse oblige, but instead someone who grew up in the children’s service’s system and is just trying to survive. And reflecting current events, the show remembers that Gotham is a corrupt hellhole, on the ragged edge of anarchy, and the cops and the Crows, Jacob Kane’s private security force, are part of the corrupt hellholishness. They almost consider racism a couple of times.

A new bad guy, Black Mask and his gang appear, with a slightly confused plot to take over the city and also resurrect his daughter and corrupt Jacob Kane, and distribute Snakebite*, a drug that allows you to relive memories. Last season was laser-focussed on Alice vs Kate, so the villain of the week episodes were either over-shadowed by Alice, or ignored her and were uninteresting because of it. With everyone heading in different directions, either searching for Kate or trying to deal with their own problems (including Alice) the villains of the week come into their own, allying with one character or attacking another.

Which is not to say that this is great television, it’s about various women and sometimes men fighting, using gadgets, swapping cool quips, having memories erased and restored, occasionally kissing, trying to decide what the right thing to do is and taking, or not, revenge. It can’t quite reach the heights it wants to when it has a point, instead dropping back to note that family is important, even when messed up, and that revenge will cost you more than you can afford.

Watch This: If you want some occasionally queer bat-action, well put together
Don’t Watch This: If you want a superhero show that’s manages to say something more

* A sub-plot revolving around (re-)discovering the formula** is personally amusing as snakebite was a popular drink when I was a teenager, consisting of equal parts lager and cider
** Known, of course by Ryan’s ex and Alice’s ex, the whole thing is braided together a little too tightly, as though all of Gotham Citry's crime and law enforcement and vigilantism is run by the same twelve people who are all related or have dated each other.

3. Harley Quinn (Season 2)

In Season 1 of Harley Quinn, Harley puts together a crew of supervillains and more by luck than judgment takes down the Justice League, the Legion Of Doom and finally both Batman and the Joker as part of working through her problems from her relationship and break up with the Joker. Gotham City is in anarchy and is officially abandoned by the United States. Several supervillains divide it up, forming the Injustice League. They’re Two-Face, The Riddler, The Penguin, Mr Freeze and Bane (who they all treat with contempt, putting him, physically larger than the rest put together, on a small chair).

Harley doesn’t like this, especially as Two-Face tries to claim the abandoned mall that is her hideout. After they freeze her and make her a decoration in The Penguin’s nightclub, she is broken out and decides to take them all down, starting the main plot of the season.

I say this is the main plot of the season, in fact arguably it’s that Harley’s best friend Poison Ivy is getting married to Kite Man and that this, and their adventures, lead Harley and Ivy to have to re-examine their feelings for each other (hilariously ending up having sex – twice, or possibly more – during Ivy’s bachelorette weekend).

And side characters get their stories too, with Commissioner Gordon attempting to retake control of Gotham, Batman’s incapacitation, in Harley’s crew a bit of Killer Shark’s ridiculous backstory, and especially Dr Psycho. This D-tier villain had big plans, intending to sell the Earth to Darkseid, but he choked, and later was brought down after he called Wonder Woman the Last English Swearword and teamed up with Harley to launder his reputation. The most over-powered of her crew, at least one of his cock-ups turns out to have been deliberate.

It continues to be fun if you enjoy bawdy, ultra-violent jokes that dig into DC comics villains (and heroes). If it’s a little less condemning of the Joker than the first series, well, he’s also absent for a lot of it.

Watch This: Rude and violent cartoon fun
Don’t Watch This: If the punchline is someone being murdered is unfunny

4. The Champions

It’s the late sixties and Sharon Macready, Craig Sterling and Richard Barrett work for a Geneva-based United Nations associated law enforcement agency called NEMESIS (apparently not an acronym, so named by someone with a classical education*). In their first mission together (in the first episode) they are discovered in media res breaking into a Red Chinese laboratory to steal bio-warfare samples. Their plane crashes in the Himalayas where they encounter a mysterious civilisation who heal their injuries and also gift them superpowers.

They tangle with a wide variety of enemies, people stealing nuclear secrets (having built a submarine set and got some stock footage they have three episodes on subs), Nazis trying to resurrect various wartime schemes, fascist south American countries doing stuff, the Red Chinese of course, and a wide selection of mind control schemes. As they are physically powerful, with increased senses, have limited telepathy with each other and occasional flashes of insight into danger, the plots usually involve them being confused or captured so they can’t bring their full efforts to bear until the finale. Meanwhile their boss, Tremayne, suspects they’re leaving something out of their reports but can’t quite put his finger on it**.

Occasionally the limitations of 60s TV budgets become apparent (I note that the investigations set in England have longer and more convincing outdoor locations). Perhaps the best bits are the short introductions when one or more of the Champions are idly going about their day and play a prank or stop a runaway car or something with their powers, just enjoying themselves with them unrelated to the plot. The tone swings wildly, with some light buddy humour running directly into a sadistic villain.

Watch This: Fun and occasionally stylish 60s super-adventures
Don’t Watch This: Many of the episodes are a bit slow and contrived

* Briefly: Nemesis is the goddess personifying divine retribution, punishing those who are guilty of hubris, attempting to usurp the gods. Appropriate with some of the supervillains they come up against.
** Leading to one of the Champions being interrogated to determine if he’s a double agent.