Legends of Tomorrow and the History of Big Belly Burger

| May ix, 2021 |

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Tala Ashe as Zari in Legends of Tomorrow — *Photo: The CW*

This DC's Legends of Tomorrow review contains spoilers.

In that location's a lot to like nigh "Meat: The Legends," the 2d episode in Legends of Tomorrow 'due south sixth season. The problem is the good bits are generally disconnected from the main plot of the episode, and the residual of it just wasn't very good.

Our first episode to really bound into the flavor's arc picks up correct where the final one left off: with an alien floating through the timestream, getting smushed on the windshield of the Waverider. From in that location, the gang picks upwards a sign of trouble from October, 1955, where they observe a newly retconned massacre in San Bernardino that points to an alien culprit. We encounter a local fast food joint that is rapidly taking off, and some people in town with very mysterious cravings for meat, so the team splits in two: Mick, Constantine, Ava and Spooner (who finds out backhandedly from Behrad that there's no conflicting communications device in her brain for Gideon to take out) head out into town to detect out more about the conflicting, while Nate, Behrad and Zari stay at the burger joint to see what they tin find.

Eventually they find out that the cravings are coming from the eating house's "underground sauce," and Ava runs it dorsum to the eatery owner's wife, where she discovers an alien cocoon, leaking pus through their business firm'southward air ducts, which the wife jars and hands off to her husband. This obviously outstanding idea ends up shockingly backfiring when a behemothic alien moth bursts out of the cocoon and eats the wife before bursting through the roof of the firm to go consume the residual of the boondocks, which it has intentionally been fattening up for the slaughter.

Honestly, I call back my biggest issue with this episode is how close it came to existence swell. The whole episode is laced with metaphors for the awfulness of unrestrained capitalism – there are MULTIPLE cracks almost wage slavery and fast food's awful history, and the restauranteur and his married woman are barely hanging on to work and each other because neither part of their lives is working on its own. Meanwhile, at that place's a predatory insect fix to devour everyone whole, and the only ones who tin terminate it are basically a space hippie district. But the private parts are all really clunky and on the nose, and at that place's nothing really knitting information technology together to form one cohesive, clearly stated point. The metaphor is completely undercut by two choices: the wife'southward performance leans into the crazy monster picture show homo enabler archetype, instead of pushing the quiet desperation of a collapsing suburban family that might have sold it improve. And Zari's weirdly yay-girlboss attitude through the whole affair but doesn't work. It'southward the one function of the story that is clearly stated, when she sees that the restaurant gets bought by the head waitress post-"butterfly assault" and turned into the eponymous Big Belly Burger and actually mutters "yous go girlboss."

There are still parts of the episode that worked. Nosotros go a decent amount of Behrad character development packed into a couple of interactions – we discover out that he wasn't happy living in Zari'southward shadow, and that'due south led to some reluctance on his part to give up the Air Totem. It'due south a dainty moment for him, some depth that we're certain to follow upward on after the end of the episode, where pre-Crisis Zari (at present living inside the totem) decides to make a copy for Instazari and then both her and her brother can be superheroes. And Sara and Gary – crashed on a planet and tricked into having dinner with an alien who appears to be Amelia Earhart – get a couple of nice, tranquility character moments too.

Unfortunately, those moments are also few, and too surrounded by inexplicable, ineffective choices (Where the hell does Mick wander off to? Why would they use the Godzilla noise for the alien? Why immediately lampshade that choice?) for this episode to be very expert.