Welcome to Last Night on TV, our new daily column that looks back at what happened on television the night before. If we’re going to stay up all night and watch TV, we might as well talk about it the next morning.
Last night on TV, Legends of Tomorrow debuted with a clunky, but at times fun first episode; and Baskets was a surreal journey into the mind of Zach Galifianakis.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and The Unenviable Task of The Great Superhero Mashup
I believe that I’ve found the real problem with Legends of Tomorrow. And it’s hard to pinpoint this as a problem it will continue to have as the show moves forward, but it certainly does apply to the pilot. It all comes down to baggage. The premise of this show is to take characters who have been intermittently popular on two other shows — The Flash and Arrow — and throw them together in an expensive, time-traveling adventure story. That last part is going to be a lot of fun. As we experience in this first episode, it’s fun to see the team (and the behind the scenes teams doing effects and production design) explore the 1970s. The fact that this is something that will continue — the show moving backward and forward through time for its manhunt — is the most appealing thing about Legends of Tomorrow.
The problem is in the character work, especially at first. In order to understand the internal struggle of Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), we have to know a little more about her than “she was an assassin, and also dead.” There are numerous seasons of Arrow that cover Sara’s backstory. She “died” once because she was infatuated with Oliver Queen, she came back as a hardened assassin and spent time coming to terms with the fact that she could be on the right side of justice. Then she died for real and spent months in a grave, only to be resurrected by her grief-stricken sister (who had also taken up her Black Canary mantle) and the Lazarus Pit. She returned to life as a feral killing machine, something she still might not be over. Try as it may, Legends of Tomorrow doesn’t have time to present the depth of Sara’s history. So for viewers who aren’t caught up on Arrow, she might end up being a one-note character: the ruthless assassin. Will that be enough for Legends in the long run? Possibly. As the show spreads its wings, it may get to tell more of the backstory. But then you run into the problem of boring people who have already been through all of The Flash and Arrow. I know that’s where I found myself in the opening third of this pilot episode. It felt like an exposition-rally. I checked out a bit, but it was understandable.
This is all to say that the Legends of Tomorrow writers room is in an unenviable position. They have to make something that feels new to their dedicated Arrow and Flash audiences, but also something that doesn’t leave new viewers behind. The pilot sort clanks around between success and failure in this regard, at times simply folding under the weight of how much setup there needs to be to get this show off the ground. Though by the end, the gist of the show is clear. It’s a manhunt through time that involves a bunch of superheroes. And some of them are a lot of fun. The moment in the bar when Sara looks back and says, “I got this” before pummelling that creep. That’s the fun version of Sara Lance. The same goes for Arthur Darvill as Rip Hunter. Perhaps because he’s the only truly new character in the show and perhaps because he’s really channeling his old friend Doctor Who, Darvill is the standout performance. He gets the emotional weight of the episode and gets to be the guy who makes jokes about how no one else understands time travel. I look forward to spending more time with him.
On the whole, it’s an understandably rocky start for Legends of Tomorrow. This isn’t going to be an easy show to pull off. They’ve got the pressure that comes along with a much bigger budget, a much larger and more dynamic core cast, and all the baggage that Flash and Arrow audiences will bring along with them. The hope is that it will be a show ultimately defined by fun moments and action rather than its muchness. But for its pilot, the muchness weighs heavy.
Baskets is Supposed to Make You Feel Uncomfortable
Watching Baskets isn’t all that different from watching a Zach Galifianakis stand-up routine. It’s funny, but in a way that makes you supremely uncomfortable. Whereas decades of stand-up comedy have told us that with every punchline, there must be a compelling setup, Baskets sometimes just does the punchline. Or just the setup. Or something completely different and odd. If it had a rhythm, that rhythm wouldn’t match any other show you’re currently watching on television. But it doesn’t have a rhythm, it just sort of floats around being weird.
That’s ultimately what makes it so compelling. Galifianakis stars as Chip, a clueless American who just flunked out of French clown school and is forced to return to his taupe-hued hometown of Bakersfield, California. Styling himself as “Renoir” the clown, he gets a job working as a rodeo clown to support his French wife (who came back with him for a green card and the American promise of unlimited cable TV).
His journey from high-minded artist to a sad clown in a surreal suburban wasteland is abrupt and enchanting. On his own, Galifianakis’ Chip is just an idiot. But as the show begins to populate the world around him, we start to see where Galifianakis the producer is relishing in suburban malaise and mining it for offbeat laughs. Stand-up comedian Martha Kelly plays a bland insurance claims adjuster who takes an interest in Chip, despite his clear disinterest in her and his emotional hostility. She’s the perfect sort of flat personality that would find his buffoonery interesting. The other inventive bit of casting is Louie Anderson as Chip’s mother. He’s simultaneously out of place and mesmerizing.
The show, like Galifianakis’ long-popular stand-up, doesn’t have any interest in earning your laughs. It is existing at its own pace, in its own surreal, lowbrow way, only to really entertain itself. It’s the kind of show that brings in Kato Kaelin to sing the national anthem at the rodeo where Chip works. Why? Maybe because FX is bringing Kaelin’s 15-minutes back to life in February in The People v O.J. Or maybe because Baskets just does what it wants and doesn’t really care what you think. The whole point is that it’s an endlessly fascinating little experiment. And if we keep watching, sometimes dumbfounded and frustrated, then Galifianakis has us right where he wants us.
What did you watch last night on TV?
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