Legends of Tomorrow - 'Night of the Hawk'

Aww yeah.

With Savage forewarned of the team's existence as of the 1970s, Rip follows clues in the Acheron's database to small town America in 1958, an idyllic time of cool cars, good neighbours, casual workaday racism and marauding hawk-mutants.

We open in-period, with a group of drag-racing kids encountering a glowing meteor and meteor aficionado Vandal Savage. There follow a series of slasher attacks which draw the team's attention and they show up with an actual plan. Oh yes, no random side missions this week; no scenes of people sitting around retaining series regular billing. It's not quite a heist, but we do at least have a team mission.

"While I have been working hard, you have been seducing 

that young woman."

"Not seducing; liberating. With an option on seducing."

Stein nets a job at the local asylum, with Sara as his faithful nurse, complete with little white hat and enough withering scorn to make Lady Bracknell think twice. He looks into the files of violent patients, while she hooks up with another nurse. Sara sees helping anyone look beyond the blinkered attitudes of their era to be a good thing, although Stein worries - not unreasonably - that it might be unfair to let her think that she is going to find other people like Sara in the 1950s.

This is part and parcel of the episode's overall deconstruction of the nostalgia for the 50s; something that Stein shares in, although Jax and Sara are oddly immune.

"You must admit, it is an idyllic time."
"Sure. If you're white."
"And a man. And straight."

Jax is detailed to get to know the girlfriend of one of three missing teenagers (a slightly risky proposition given that she is white and he isn't.)

Meanwhile, Snart and Hunter (sadly not attorneys at law) front as FBI agents to question the local sheriff, who rather tellingly insists that the violent shredding deaths of local residents are not the work of a serial murder, but rather a series of bizarre accidents. Their role is brief, but glorious, as they swagger in all trenchcoats and fedoras and sneering DC attitude. Love it.

Nighthawks at the Diner.

Jax raises eyebrows by sitting at the counter and teaches a 50s gal to dip fries in her shake (no, actually; I'm not being crude.) He sees off the designated racists by staring them down and takes the girl out for a drive to, you know, hold hands and ask questions about her missing friends. Stein rather touchingly warns Jax to beware of the racists.

In the part of the plot I found least interesting, Ray and Kendra also experience racism when they pose as newlyweds and everyone assumes that she's the help. They soon meet the neighbours, Dr and Mrs Knox. She's a housewife; he's an immortal warlord conducting immoral experiments at the asylum, and also makes a mean tuna surprise casserole.

And, lest we forget, a total creeper.

Out in lover's lane, Jax gets Lorraine McFly'ed, but the date is interrupted by mutant hawk men. The girl (man, I feel bad forgetting the names of the passing love interests here, but in my defence I can't remember the boys' names either,) is injured, but when Jax tries to get her to hospital the Sheriff stops them and kidnaps him, delivering him to Savage to be injected with Nth metal and mutated into a hawk beast.

Stein and Sara find the girl and take her to the Waverider, where they identify a mutagen and start engineering an antidote.

Ray swipes the Amen dagger from 'Knox's' man cave and Kendra decides she's going to solo Savage. Because that fits in with the Arrowverse's history of Great Plans (TM). It goes horribly wrong and Savage releases his subjects, then escapes when Ray blasts him out the window. Snart has a shot to kill hawk-Jax, but doesn't, which after they capture him and use the antidote resolves his lingering suspicions of Snart over the death of Roary.

They say goodbye to the friends they've made and it's off to the next PSYCH! Chronos attacks and blows a hole in the hull. Rip, Snart, Jax and Stein head for the Jumpship, apparently completely outmatched (in part because Firestorm's power would rip the ship apart,) and Ray, Kendra and Sara see the Waverider lift off without them.

With 'Night of the Hawk', the show nails its ensemble problem, but all is not rosy. Obviously, Savage has to keep escaping for at least another six or seven episodes (allowing that the last two might involve fixing a paradox caused by his defeat,) but it's managed here by deliberately choosing a bad strategy. Kendra is capable, but none of the team can solo Savage, that's why there's a team. It's not clear why they didn't have Sara and Ray go in to knock him down and hold him while - let us not forget this requirement - Kendra recites a poem?

Also, what is up with the hawkness? They got onto the idea that Che'ara was some sort of hawk goddess earlier, but here it is apparently a mutagenic side effect of certain kinds of Nth metal exposure. I'd assumed it was linked to Horus in some way, but who knows.