Legends of Tomorrow Review: Freaks and Greeks (Season 5 Episode 12)
Legends of Tomorrow goes back to college and forms a sorority on Season 5 Episode 12, “Freaks and Greeks.”
There’s a kind of surrealist beauty to describing an episode of Legends of Tomorrow to someone. Sometimes, it’s pretty tame with an episode where they meet P.T. Barnham and also there’s a sabertooth tiger. That’s a fine, perfectly digestible summary, at least by this show’s standards, that don’t make you sound like a raving madman.
Then you have other episodes that do make you sound like an absolute lunatic, such as one that has a murderous unicorn at Woodstock, and that’s when people start to look at you like you’ve ingested hallucinogens. “Freaks and Greeks” is very much the same way in that it would sound utterly ridiculous if someone were to tell you about this episode.
If someone sat you down and described how, on this superhero time travel show, the team went to a college in order to get a chalice that will make them immortal enough to bring people back from the dead and has to create a sorority in able to do that, you would be well within your rights to say that is utterly ridiculous.
To be fair, it is truly a ridiculous plot but that is where this show thrives. It is a show that goes well out of its way to find a story that should be complete nonsense on paper and create something emotionally resonant out of that.
Ultimately, we get a kind of parable out of this episode of how, at its core, the Waverider crew has aspired to attain this kind of sorority atmosphere. It is shown really well through three sorority prospectives who, for one reason or another, do not fit into the mold for normal sororities.
Like the Legends, though, they strive to have this kind of community that can support them for who they are and what they bring to the table. That has always been the thesis statement for Legends of Tomorrow. Individually, they’re oddballs that don’t amount to much on their own or in other groups.
On the Waverider, they’re able to buck that and be who they’re meant to be and the way that’s translated to their sorority is rather lovely. They accept anyone, partly because they need people in their sorority, but also because the understated superpower of the show is seeing value where others wouldn’t.
That’s then taken a step further with Astra attempting to get folded into the group and her way not gelling as well. There’s conflict and explosive personalities thrown into it but that’s where the show excels. It takes these individual moving parts that some might say can’t mesh and makes them more than the sum of their parts.
When you get down to it, “Freaks and Greeks” is quietly a love letter to itself. It is this wonderful testament to the things that it does best and, even if it is rather ridiculous, that’s just a small part of what makes it so great.
What did you think of this episode of Legends of Tomorrow? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
Follow us on Twitter and on 
Instagram!
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.