ROGUES GALLERY #43: Winter Finales and Stories Retrod

We’re fully into mid-season finales, or winter finales, or whatever the spin doctors decide to call it next… Gotham and Supergirl had theirs last week, so we’ve just got the other CW shows to cover this week. And it’s hit and miss for those…

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The panel: Ann Laabs, Kathryn Sanders, Dave Margosian, Timothy Harvey, Jason Hunt

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Returns January 16, 2017

 

Returns January 16, 2017

 

Episode 309 “The Present”
Teleplay by Lauren Certo
Story by Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing
Directed by Rachel Talalay

Barry (Grant Gustin) figures out that he can’t face Savitar alone, so he bops over to Earth-3 to recruit Jay Garrick (John Wesley Shipp), who’s in the midst of capturing his Trickster (Mark Hamill in a throwaway scene). The two speedsters head back to Earth-1, where we get a reveal that Savitar was trapped inside the Philosopher’s Stone until unearthed by Julian (Tom Felton), who started having blackouts every time he was possessed by Savitar, becoming Alchemy in the process.

Having captured Julian and put him in the pipeline, Team Flash figures they can somehow tap into the technobabble energy of the stone and communicate with Savitar. He’s only too willing to chat, even if Julian has issues with the whole “magic” thing. Savitar proves to be yet another enemy of the Flash from the future.

Been there, done that.

In the end, Jay and Barry throw the stone into the Speed Force, trapping Savitar — at least until he somehow will eventually maybe escape. In the process, Barry gets thrown five months into the future, where he sees himself unable to stop Savitar from killing Iris (Candice Patton). A “possible” future, Jay says, because always in motion is the future.

And it’s the Christmas episode, so … Christmas cheer stuff. And Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) gets his Kid Flash suit.

 

 

Episode 509 “What We Leave Behind”
Written by Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz
Directed by Antonio Negret

This week: perhaps the best use of flashbacks all season, as Oliver (Stephen Amell) has to come to grips with his past as a serial killer. Prometheus lures him to the site of his kill involving a rich muckety-muck who was conspiring to make a bunch of low-income people sick with weaponized tuberculosis in order to gouge everyone on the price for a cure.

Team Flash has their own problems to deal with, as Curtis (Echo Kellum) deals with Paul (Chenier Hundal) learning his secret and leaving him over his vigilante antics. Also revealed: the betrayal by Artemis (Madison McLaughlin), who teams up with a killer of good guys in order to stop a killer of bad guys — makes total sense, right?

Then, to really dig at the Olicity shippers, Oliver accidentally kills Billy (Tyler Ritter), mistaking him for Prometheus. So one more wedge between Oliver and Felicity. Which is made even bigger by the last-scene-in-the-show return of a very much alive Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy).

Zoinks!

 

Episodes 208 “The Chicago Way”
Written by Sarah Nicole Jones & Ray Utarnachitt
Directed by Ralph Hemecker

Chicago 1927: Team Time Travel find themselves in the Prohibition Era, where the Legion of Doom offers to do business with Al Capone (Isaac Keoughan). When they go back in time to rescue Ness, they end up botching it. Ness gets injured and spends the rest of the episode in sickbay. So Nate (Nick Zano) pretends to be Ness in order to prevent Capone from becoming Mayor of Chicago.

The Legion of Doom is after the amulet currently in the hands of our intrepid heroes. They torture Professor Stein (Victor Garber), with Eobard Thawn (Matt Letscher) taking his place during the rescue. Sara (Caity Lotz) trades the amulet for Stein, and it turns out to be a map to the Spear of Destiny — so the show will copy The Librarians.

The new A.T.O.M. suit looks just as dumb as the old suit. And John Barrowman’s stunt guy is obviously a stunt guy, not Barrowman.

Easter eggs from The Untouchables:

• “The Chicago Way” – we start with the very title of the episode: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s… the Chicago Way.”
• interception at the train station – in which Eliot Ness stands in for the bookkeeper
• Ness makes a proclamation very much along the lines of Kevin Costner’s idealistic Ness
• Ray Palmer as Bob DeNiro – who played Al Capone in the movie
• Blake Neely channeling Ennio Morricone with some of his music cues, especially after the rescue
• Ray Palmer sort of quoting Sean Connery’s “brings a knife to a gun fight” line.

And Rip Hunter is a filmmaker in Los Angeles 1967, wearing the Tenth Doctor’s shoes…

 

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