Wednesday, October 24, 2018

My Review of Legends Of Tomorrow's 4x01: "The Virgin Gary"


Written by Phil Klemmer & Grainne Godfree
Directed by Gregory Smith

Gary: "I don't want to die a virgin."

Well as soon as that line got uttered, I knew what quote I was going to use for the review of this particular episode. Gary's lack of sex life might not be much of a shock and you could argue that it's played for cheap laughs but at the same time - Adam Tsekhman's flair for physical comedy and making Gary sympathetic enough does help the character a lot.

In this episode, Gary played the role of bait, so that a heart eating unicorn that sneezes out rainbow snot that will get you high as a kite before killing you. On any other show that sentence would sound ridiculous. Four seasons in and on this one, it's par for the course with the main action being placed at Woodstock.

The era of free love became the place for mass slaughter, until our Legends and Gary and Constantine actually stepped into save the day and for one of them, also lose a nipple. Of course, this wasn't enough to motivate John into joining the Waverider so an unpleasant night call after Sara has probably got him changing his mind going by next week.

When killers unicorns weren't the course of the day, you had the gang fixing one last anachronism before having the Time Bureau throwing the Legends a party in their honour and for the AvaLance shippers, some nice moments of domestic-ish bliss (when John wasn't paying them a house call). For that particular ship, this episode was certainly an angst free zone though I can't see that being maintained all season long.

Outside of the domestic bliss, the episode had Nate and Mick embark on a little bit of a robbing spree of the former's parents - Hank and Dorothy Heywood as played by Tom "Biff" Wilson and Susan Hogan respectively. Nothing about Nate's family issues seem too original but I am interested enough to see more of him and his father, which this season seems to be intent on exploring and both Nate and Mick's trippy moments in this episode were highly amusing.

As for Ray - he spent this episode pining for Nora and being chastised by Zari for it while at the same time, seemingly relieved when the killings at Woodstock were also not caused by Nora as well. I'm really liking the banter with Ray and Zari and the latter had a beautiful moment in this episode when she took a little trip into her own past as well. This episode certainly wasn't short of lovely little character beats for everyone concerned.

- Matt Ryan has the Special Appearance credit and it's implied that while Gary might be a virgin, both him and John have done other stuff off screen.
- Gideon did the recap at the start of the episode. I'm hoping we get another physical appearance from her this season.
- This episode had the Legends briefly protecting the Beatles as well as the gang stealing stuff from Jerry Garcis, Jimmi Hendrix and Janis Joplin for Constantine's spell against the killer unicorn.
- Chronology: 1969 Woodstock and 2018 DC as well as well as five months since The Good, The Bad And The Cuddly.

The Virgin Gary certainly had it's trippy moments as an episode. A killer unicorn is the sort of thing that later seasons of Charmed would've done and not particularly well but here it actually worked a treat. However, it's the attack that Constantine suffers at the end of this episode that hinted at some darker material due to come to the surface as the season progresses. Meanwhile next week's episode seems rather apt for Halloween.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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