Legends of Tomorrow Review: Ship Broken (Season 5 Episode 11)
Legends of Tomorrow Season 5, Episode 11, “Ship Broken,” gets up to some true tomfoolery as they combat a saboteur and some unexpected developments with Sara.
Having a saboteur within a show’s setting is a tried-and-true trope that so many over the years have taken a swing at. By this point, it’s difficult to find a new way to do that. With a show that already has one shapeshifter on the roster, it would be all too easy just to have the villain be another one, as well.
Legends of Tomorrow is not that show, though. Not only is it one that avoids an easy answer at all costs, but it also goes well out of its way to find the weirdest one. Any other show could have a villain that is a lookalike or a mind reader but this one has much grander and strange dreams than that.
Sure, the baddie could have been a shapeshifter but what does Legends of Tomorrow do instead? It brings in the Son of Sam dog to control the team. Is “Ship Broken” all-around one of the better episodes that the show has done? Not necessarily but it is a quintessential episode for this show.
It does so many things, has so many excellent moments, that are simply absurd and strange with this patented emotionality — that Legends of Tomorrow is so good at — that it is the perfect summation of everything the show does so well. It might not have Beebo, but “Ship Broken” is everything that makes the show what it is.
It’s all kind of dumb and ridiculous while also being excellent, at least in its sheer entertainment. You get these scenes of Gary Jr., the dog that Gary adopted from Hell (but at least he didn’t buy from a breeder), telling the Legends crew to kill each other while also having Sara stuck in Birdbox cosplay and Mick trying to figure out how to connect to a teenager.
Sara’s plotline is an interesting wrinkle, in part, because the show has never really wrestled with the reality of disability of any kind. Anything that the Legends have suffered from has been of an emotional nature as opposed to anything all that physical.
True, you have original Zari stuck inside the totem and Charlie last season being unable to shapeshift, but this is perhaps the first time that something truly handicapping has come up on the show.
It’s also new for Sara because she has always been this hyper-competent individual and she’s never truly had any limitations that weren’t her being bloodthirsty as a result of either her resurrection or Mallus. Even if this isn’t a plotline that will stick around — and it likely won’t — Sara now being blind would be a fun thing to see the show tackle for a while.
On a similar note, it’s interesting to see Mick try to tackle fatherhood in a practical way that isn’t merely him trying to get out of it in some way. The show doesn’t normally give him a lot to do besides drink a beer and growl, but this is something really tangible that he can tackle now.
It isn’t something he can light on fire or scowl at to get his way. He has to confront it head-on and that’s kind of new territory for the character, at least this version of him within the show.
Is this the best episode? No. Is it the most Legends of Tomorrow episode imaginable? In every respect that matters, yes.
What did you think of this episode of Legends of Tomorrow? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
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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.