Tuesday, April 16, 2019

My Review of Legends Of Tomorrow's 4x11: "Séance & Sensibility"


Written by Grainne Godfree & Jackie Canino
Directed by Alexandra La Roche

Charlie: "Wait a sec, is this a Bollywood musical number?"
Zari: "You bet your ass it is."

Once again, we're mixing genres as this week's main mission involved both Jane Austen (Jenna Rosenow) and Hindu love god Kamadeva (Sachin Bhatt) in an episode that certainly aimed to put a song in people's hearts while doing something of a deconstruction on the nature of romance. The results are certainly an interesting bag alright.

We know that Mona was madly in love with the Kaupe because she's certainly not been shy about discussing it, so when things started going a bit too lust fueled in 1802 Bath, it didn't take long for the female Legends members to get themselves involved in a story where Sanjay was an unassuming coachman who Zari found a bit hot, only for him to be revealed as the main instigator of everything going awry this week.

It's hard to actually classify him as a baddie because technically, he wasn't. He was just a bit too keen on spreading the love and even when the Legends had him contained for a bit on the Waverider, it didn't stop him from getting nearly every one on the ship a little too hot and bothered before getting Zari to let go of her inhibitions, resulting a rather inspired but obvious Bollywood number. This also led to Mona being the one to save the day by breaking Sanjay's hold on Zari as well for good measure.

Of course before Mona became the sensible one in the group (even Sara and Charlie got drawn into the musical number) she was mostly in fangirl mode with Jane Austen, got into one hell of a spat with Zari, became Wolfie and needed her literary idol to talk some sense into her. I really do hope this is the last episode where Mona broods about the Kaupe, even if she did save the day with this one.

As for the boys, well they were mostly involved in the Hank plot of things. Ray wanted to be supportive for Nate and assume the worst in Nora but it didn't take much for Ray to stash her on the Waverider and the two of them also became affected by Kamadeva's lusty charms this week. While I do sometimes find it a bit much having real life couples playing a buddy couple on a show, I can't deny that Ray and Nora actually do fit as a pair.

Speaking of pairing, the show is really planning to go there with Zari and Nate. The flirting has been upped, we had Sara, Charlie and Mona all offering their own love advice to Zari on the matter and Zari did have a dream three way with Nate and Sanjay. You know what, I'm not going to complain about this Zari/Nate pairing. I'm just going to let it play out and hope for the best.

Keeping with the lovers bit, Constantine was the only one to notice that Hank's spirit was still looming around at the funeral and when he did make contact with him, Neron also made an appearance so excluding Mick (unless the guy's love of a good buffet counts for something), even those not involved in the main storyline had a love related plot this week. Now we just need John and Neron to actually interact with each other face to face but at least that's one more person to attest to Nora's innocence though.

- I could've sworn this episode had actually gotten Emerald Fennel for Jane Austen but nope, it was Jenna Rosenow who is something of a dead ringer for Fennel. Her English accent was good though.
- Constantine managed to get himself a black tie for Hank's funeral, making his look that bit more comic book accurate for this episode.
- Sara dreamed of Ava this week (who still didn't appear) and Charlie fancies a bit of David Bowie. As you do. The musical number was called Surrender.
- Chronology: 1802 Bath and 2019 Washington DC.

Séance & Sensibility was a bit of a step up from the previous two episodes. It's nice that Neron is out as the Big Bad and hopefully Constantine makes the rest of the gang privy to this as well. The episode looked gorgeously shot, blending two different genres pretty well and Kamadeva definitely can draw comparisons to the Music Meister from The Flash/Supergirl musical crossover two seasons ago.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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