Episode 14: The One Where We’re Trapped on TV

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May 30, 2020 by Meghan J

(aired 5-26)

Nate’s tipsy mix-up of the Spear of Destiny and the Loom of Fate was very understandable, because the Fates seem to have rewritten reality much like Doomworld.

The general population has become virtually mindless drones clad in jumpsuits, marching in lines, eating government-issued mush, and muttering praise to the Fates. If someone so much as entertains a suggestion that things aren’t how they should be, the now-omnipotent Atropos cuts their thread and they die on the spot.

Luckily, there are a couple of Legends-adjacent people who have an inkling that there was another reality, much like Nate in Doomworld: Gary, who’s alive again, and good ol’ Mona!

GARY: “Do I know you? You look familiar!”

 

But Mona doesn’t quite see the light just yet. She walks away from the creepy guy and goes home to watch TV. That’s right, the Fates haven’t completely nixed entertainment. TV is still a thing in this world, and one of the most popular TV shows is one called “Ultimate Buds” that stars some familiar faces: Nate, Zari, and Behrad!

So they don’t have an exact recreation of the Friends theme (like this super not official Avengers version), but they have an intro ditty and title font that are distinctly similar.

And the show itself is similar too. Nate is a struggling actor who starts sentences with “Could I be…?” and the laugh track is almost constant.

But then the Legends starts to creep out of the Friends. Zari has the Air Totem, and when Nate accidentally touches it, OG Zari “resurfaces” and starts speaking through New Zari. And she’s not brainwashed to think they’re on a TV show. She even hears the laugh track.

But neither Nate nor Behrad has any memory of the Legends—even when Zari name-drops the Season 4 gang.

“Where’s Sara, and Mick, and John? Ava Sharpe? Mona Wu?”

 

So now Mona, who’s watching, starts to think that maybe Crazy Man was onto something. She finds Gary and they decide to investigate Clotho Productions, the TV studio.

Zari takes matters into her own hands, striding over to a door in the Friends Buds apartment that no one has ever opened and opening it. This generates some TV static, and when it clears, the foyer of John’s house appears. The trio walks in.

But they’re not free—far from it. John’s house is now a set for another TV show: “Highcastle Abbey.” Trapped indeed!

The basic “plot” of this mini-episode is that Lady Astra—encouraged by her very much alive mother, Natalie—is assessing the marriageability of Lord Behrad. Astra is fully in character, but Behrad still has sitcom-brain (same goes for Nate). John, who’s the butler, is also fully in character.

But Zari’s not giving up. Still OG Zari, she tries to convince John that he’s actually a 21st-century magician, and even coaxes a spell out of him.

John doesn’t remember, but offers to help Zari and co. find the “captain” Zari keeps talking about. He performs a spell to find Sara, Astra joins at the last second (Lady Astra is tired of being confined to this house and wants to see the world), and they’re all very distinctly “beamed” out of the abbey.

So Captain Lance is still Captain Lance—but not of the Wave Rider.

Guys, the Star Trek spoof is glorious. It’s not just a casual spoof; it’s a full, wearing-Starfleet-uniforms, changing-just-enough-words-in-the-intro-monologue-so-that-it’s-not-copyrighted spoof! Ava is the Spock to Sara’s Kirk, and the impersonations are not at all subtle.

The evil-alien-race-of-the-week is even called the “Gromulans,” and their leading squadron is the five Legend escapees from the other two shows. Short story shorter, the Gromu-Legends save Sara and Ava from the destruction of their ship. The co-captains quickly realize that something’s up with these aliens, one of whom is insisting that reality is broken, two of whom are speaking in fancy British accents and offering tea, and two of whom are bro-ing out.

AVA: “You’ve been trapped in some sort of…prison dimension. Which calls the question if we ourselves are existing in a prison dimension. It’s perfectly logical.”

 

After all, weirder things have happened on Star Trek.

Ava locks on to a mysterious radio frequency—it’s playing the “Mr. Parker” theme song. And now we’ve come full circle.

Meanwhile, Mona and Gary enter the control room of Clotho Productions, where they see several life-threads hooked up to the monitors. Yup, there are actual people trapped in these shows.

On “Mr. Parker,” the Legends are blue-collar workers for an educational segment (but still retain the personalities from their shows of origin). Sara manages to convince Mr. Parker to “take a walk around the block” (“Actually, it’s a cul-de-sac!” LOL) while she and the others talk things out.

Zari, getting frustrated, just begs them to remember who they are. Luckily, Mona can help with that. Inspired by Zari’s Motivational Hero Speech, which is still being broadcast on the Fates’ TVs, she commandeers the teleprompter, typing, “The Legends remember who they truly are.”

And lo and behold, they all begin to have flashbacks of the events of this season. And it’s a double whammy—because the memory-dump restores everyone’s memories of OG Zari’s existence, too! (Except for Behrad, who doesn’t have any memories of OG Zari and misses the sister he knew.)

Ava realizes that this TV stunt must be Charlie’s way of keeping the Legends safe from the other Fates. And it is—as Nate and Zari are mid–reunion kiss, Charlie bursts into the control room and sees what’s going on.

“I can’t let the Legends escape!”

 

So she deploys Mr. Parker. He comes back inside, sings a song about how you should repress all your bad feelings instead of dealing with them that’s far more disturbing and relevant than I’m sure they planned while filming this episode, and snaps them all back to their original shows.

“I just pulled the plug on this crossover!”

 

Astra’s the only one who’s somewhat cool with this, though—because her mother is alive on “Highcastle Abbey.” She begs Lady Natalie to remember her real life. She doesn’t—but Astra hugs her anyway, just happy to have her.

And John says that he’s okay with staying here. What he’s longed for for so long—a happy ending for Astra—has come to pass. Plus, he can’t hurt anyone here.

Ava, too, is arguing that maybe “Star Trip” isn’t so bad. After all, in the real reality, Sara was murdered by zombies and they all took a serious beat-down. But Sara lays down some realness about how escaping is not a solution.

And then our missing Legend appears on the starship’s viewscreen—it’s Mick! He’s a hilariously over-the-top Trek villain (with a full, luscious head of hair!) named “Dhan.”

Sara takes a gamble that if they put their lives in danger, Charlie will have no choice but to pull them out of the show, since keeping them alive is her whole game. So she stands, inactive, as Mick fires on the ship, even giving Ava an epic mid-explosion smooch. Sure enough, just before the explosion can kill them, Charlie cancels “Star Trip.”

Zari, Nate, and Behrad get “Ultimate Buds” pulled off the air, too, by delivering an anti-Fate manifesto and telling people to take their lives back. Even Astra and John eventually come around, when Astra’s fake mother tells her that what she wants is for her daughter to leave Highcastle Abbey and see the world.

The “cancellation” sends them all to a run-down sound stage, where Charlie’s voice booms at them. She gave them everything they could want! Sara had her sight, Mick was a bad guy, Behrad was alive.

JOHN: “You just used us to keep people under control!” CHARLIE: “Well, it’s better that than you lot dead!”

 

Charlie starts to panic. She grabs Zari’s life-thread and peels it into two halves, and OG Zari, red plaid and all, wisps into appearance next to New Zari, who regains her own consciousness. Now both Nate and Behrad can have the versions of Zari that they love.

Even then, though, the Legends have no desire to be back on TV. (How meta.) Charlie says that leaving TV is a death sentence, but they’re done listening to her and stride out the door of the sound stage.

THOUGHTS:

Well, Legends did “The Experience Machine” at a time when we could all use one. So there’s that.

What a strange, thought-provoking, equal-parts-hilarious-and-grim penultimate episode! Let me just say that the Star Trek scenes were absolute GOLD. I’m so glad I’ve watched that show, because the knowledge of all the jokes and nuances made the love letter to the show that much better.

OG Zari is back with a vengeance! After being erased from the timeline, she was the hero of this episode—as was Mona, in a really great use of the character! (No Wolfy in sight!) I wonder if the double-Zari will stick. (Place your bets one of them leaves the team.)

Also, question: Why are the Legends all furious at Charlie but don’t seem at all upset with Astra? Astra betrayed them first, putting this whole mess into motion, and they don’t even know that she relented! But speaking of Astra, feminist noblewoman Astra delivered some of the best lines of the episode.

ASTRA AS A “GROMULAN”: “It is grand to see lady adventurers in pantaloons!”

 

This episode is just begging to be compared with “Doomworld.” It absolutely was the same basic concept, but with some key differences. For one thing, while in “Doomworld” we didn’t get to see much of the world as a whole, just what the Legion had done to the Legends, this episode showed us quite a bit of the outside world. And it was a heck of a grim dystopia. (Did that Fate-ified intro give anyone else a serious case of the willies?) We even saw Lita and Ali in the Fate-ruled world; Ali called Mick’s “Star Trip” character hot and Lita was appropriately skeeved out.

More significantly, though, “Doomworld” was a superhero showdown, packed with fight scenes. This episode, on the other hand, had virtually no superpowers at all—a microcosm of the earlier seasons/later seasons contrast on Legends as a whole—and clearly had a much more pointed message.

In that same vein, we saw a whole lot of the Legion of Doom in “Doomworld,” and it was a very clear heroes vs. villains dichotomy. But in this episode, we really didn’t see the non-Charlie Fates at all (just a brief projection of Atropos when she killed a dude at the beginning), and the “villain” was more like…the thankless void of existence.

Again, it is fascinating and weird that this episode dropped right smack in a time of, well, collective worldwide misery, and as such, it’s hard to consider it in a vacuum. But hey, at least now I’ve got a catchy song about emotional repression stuck in my head.

NEXT WEEK: “Swan Thong”

Well, how’s that for a crazy episode title? And it’s not just a crazy episode title, it’s a crazy season finale title. That’s right, next week is our season finale. And it’s called SWAN THONG.

*watches trailer*

No swans or thongs, just the Legends doing what they do best and saving the world. Is that…Astra, Sara, and John going to (presumably) work the Loom at last? And Sara and Nate are back in their super suits!