Another week, another wacky time escape for the Legends.
Like last week's "Dancing Queen", "Wet Hot American Bummer" was relatively low-powered on the wackiness scale. There were funny moments and over-the-top moments: anything with Matt Ryan from Constantine's godawful counselor uniform, to reacting to Ray, to drinking from his flask while Ray plays Kid Counselor, is always good. And it's almost a meme by now that they can't show Constantine actually smoking a cigarette. Even if he keeps taking out cigarettes and asking for a light.
It's also nice to see Ryan can do comedy: something he wasn't required to display in his previous Constantine appearances.
Jes Macallan gets in on the fun as the woman-without-a-childhood who brings discipline to a cabin of girl campers. I don't see how she puts up with Gary if she has that kind of attitude toward discipline and regulation. But oh well.
So what did Constantine and Ava have to do with what happened this week? Let's check it out. Ava and Sara are in bed watching a cheesy 90s horror movie, Swamp Thaaaang. It has four As in it because it was the fourth movie in the franchise. And speaking of "Swamp Thing", we then get a cute nod to it when Constantine says he knows a swamp thing.
Gideon picks up a magical spike in 90s Maine at Camp Ogawa (nod to producer Carl Ogawa), and the team heads off to the camp to investigate the disappearance of four kids. Which I guess is a matter of historical record, because nobody has disappeared when they get there. The four kids disappear after the Legends get there.
The team is underhanded, which wouldn't be the case if they had two Legends guarding the captive Charlie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers, back to being a series regular). A pity, too, as I would have liked to have seen Mick as a camp counselor. At least he'd be good a starting campfires. Even having Zari as a camp counselor would have been worth investigating: she didn't exactly have a normal childhood.
Ava tags along, so Ava, Ray, Sara, and Constantine end up infiltrating the camp as newly arrived counselors. The male camp counselor, Chad Stephens (Mason Truebood), is like Gary in Addams Family Values. However, since Ray is a big summer camp fan, he and Chad get along great. There's also an obnoxious older woman (Trish Allen) who is the camp director.
These two suspects are soon swept aside as the male and female Legends pair up and adopt a boys and girls cabin respectively. Ray holds a circle of trust, but Constantine uses hypnotism to get the boys to tell them... nothing really. Ava is a martinet at the girls cabin, and Constantine provides a potion that will turn Ava and Sara into 12-year-olds (Emily Morden and Vanessa Przada). They take the potion, Ava gets to have the childhood she never had, and eventually the girl campers reveal there's a place in the woods where boys and girls meet to kiss.
On Waverider, Charlie bonds with Mick over the fact that they're both criminals. Charlie eventually comes around and tells the team they're facing a shtriga, which feeds very slowly on the life force of children. Ray and Constantine track down the four missing children to a cabin, and Constantine tries to revive them by transferring their life force back.
After Charlie says the shtriga is a young male witch, Young Ava and Sara end up facing Chad. Sara manages to kill him, and the life force flows back to the kids. One doesn't quite take, and Constantine sacrifices some of his life force to bring the kid back to life. After the spell on Ava and Sara ends, they take him back to the ship where Gideon says it can't do anything for him. Ray figures they need Nora and her magic to cure him. And in the last scene she's revealed to be posing as a witch at a ren fair making soup. Because... well, it's Legends.
Oh, and Charlie has decided to stay with the Legends as long as they don't try to put her in a cage. I'm still not sure what she brings to the team or the adventures. A certain amount of knowledge of what was imprisoned in the inter-dimensional prison. But the team got through the first two episodes this season without her. and finding out Chad as the shtriga didn't really help Ava and Sara.
Overall, "Wet Hot" was a good episode. I don’t think Legends can produce a bad episode these days, now that Vandal Savage and the Hawks are waving to us in the rearview mirror. I wouldn't call it a great episode. "Legends at a summer camp" got the requisite laughs, and the bits with Sara trying to recapture her childhood were good if a bit out of left field. Nate wasn't in the episode, and I can't say that I miss him. It works better having the cynical Constantine paired off with Ray than having Nate and Ray doing their time bros routine.
The performances were good to excellent all around. And the creative team always seem to get into poking fun at the (19)80s and 90s. Next week, it's off to the 50s as the Legends take on a kaiju while residents run around Tokyo screaming at the top of their lungs, in "Tagumo Attacks!!" Which promises extreme levels of wackiness if the preview is anything to judge by. And that's what we tune in for, right?
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Nov 13, 2018
Best episode this season so far, a fun reminder of all those 80's and 90's camp horror movies.