Monday, November 29, 2021
Starman Plays Quest For Glory 4, The Thief Path - Part 19
Thursday, November 25, 2021
Starman Plays Quest For Glory 4, The Thief Path - Part 18
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Starman Plays Quest For Glory 4, The Thief Path - Part 17
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 6 - How Does Your Garden Grow?
For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.

Plot
A frightening discovery in a Robinson Park garden shed sends Montoya rushing to Ryan to place the city on high alert, as she theorizes that Poison Ivy has returned in a new form. Meanwhile, Alice is suspiciously eager to help the Bat Team, as Sophie seeks vengeance for her sister's near death at the hands of the Black Glove society.
Influences
The Batman comics of Grant Morrison (Black Glove Society)
Goofs
The newspaper article with the headline "Batman Scratches The Poison Ivy Itch" is dated as having been published one month ago. However, Batman's last battle with Poison Ivy would have had to have taken place at least six years earlier, given when Bruce Wayne disappeared from Gotham City.
Performances
Rachel Skarsten steals the show.
That being said, Nicole Kang does a masterful job switching between Mary and Ivy and is pitch-perfect vamping it up as Ivy.
Artistry
The horror elements are well played, particularly the make-up for Chris Hayner, the living beehive.
The special effects for the killer vines are good.
Bat Trivia
The episode title comes from an old English nursey rhyme, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary." Alice quotes it to Mary near the end of the episode. The title is also a foreshadowing of the revelation that Mary has become a host to Poison Ivy's mind.
Mary's hairdo in this episode mimics the horned-hairdo worn by Uma Thurman during her final fight with Batgirl in the movie Batman and Robin.
Alice makes reference to Montoya having a "wall of weird." This is a reference to Smallville and the mural/database started by Chloe Sullivan of strange things happening around Smallville.
At one point, it is noted that the Arrowverse version of Renee Montoya was on track to become the next Police Commissioner. At the time this episode aired, Rene Montoya was the GCPD Commissioner in the monthly Batman comics.
Alice makes a reference to Harley Quinn when it is discovered Mary violated medical privacy laws while under Ivy's influence. This is the first mention of Harley Quinn existing in the Post-Crisis Arrowverse.
Technobabble
Luke checks Mary's credit card records and finds out she bought a flowering pot, fertilizer and a watering can that morning. Her phone's geo data says that then she went to a vacant lot in the Burnside district.
Mary theorizes that Poison Ivy's pheromones allow her to communicate with nature while heightening the things she is passionate about. This is why she overreacted to a rejection and bent the rules to see justice done to a Black Glove operative that couldn't be touched legally.
Sunlight is the trigger for changing Mary into Poison Ivy. Her eyes turn green when Ivy has control.
Luke detects an abnormally high thermal presence in the plants Poison Ivy controls.
Dialogue Triumphs
Ryan: How did you get Poison Ivy's vine?
Alice: While you were slurping caviar off of Mummy's fine china, some of us were in the field protecting this city.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. You just so happened to stumble across a Batman trophy while you were taking a stroll through the park?
Alice: Ahem. I'm gonna go check on the vic's progress.
Ryan: (Because you care about a stranger's life all of a sudden?
Alice: You're right. I don't. Let's you and I go sit in the Batcave together and watch the computer tediously cycle through all the anti-encryption ciphers.
Ryan: (deadpan) Have fun with Mary.
Alice: Will do.
(Ryan and Luke are slow in believing Mary's theory that she is Poison Ivy's host.)
Alice: I thought watching Kate come out was torture.
(Ryan and Luke finally believe Alice and Mary's story.)
Alice: And we're all on the same page. Well, that was an excruciating process.
Ryan: You knew Mary was infected by the vine. That's why you were being so coy in Montoya's office.
Alice: I just figured the last thing anyone needed was for Mary to end up on Renee's wall of weird.
(Ryan's cell phone vibrating. It's Montoya. She dismisses the call.)
Alice: (sarcastic) Oh. Muting the boss. I'm sure that's gonna end really well.
Ryan: Montoya doesn't need to know anything about this.
Alice: Okay. I see. It's fine when we throw Alice in Arkham, but, oh, poor, sweet, innocent Mary, yeah, we should protect her at all costs.
(Mary handcuffs herself to the rail.)
Ryan: What are you doing?
Alice: (mouths words) Not me.
Ryan: Why didn't you say anything about Mary?
Alice: I was wondering how this would end up my fault.
Ryan: You obviously knew something was up. How'd you figure it out?
Alice: Uh, the question isn't how I figured it out. It's how the hell you didn't. You're her roommate, you have a billion dollars of Battech at your disposal, and your number two is a certifiable genius. One of you should have noticed.
Mary: So... maybe the chemical pheromones from the Poison Ivy allow me to communicate with nature while heightening the things that I'm passionate about like justice?
Alice: Well, seeing as that M.O. tracks and, uh... ahem... I killed your mother, I'm really not looking forward to being turned into a cabbage. So we should find out exactly what turns Dr. Jekyll into Mrs. Hide my victims under a pot.
(Ivy, in Mary's body, knocks out Luke. She stretches in the sunbeam leaking into the Batcave.)
Alice: Good morning, sunshine. I was wondering when you'd come out to play.
Ivy: You figured out sunlight was my trigger.
Ivy: Why are you helping me?
Alice: Well, why does anyone help anyone? To accrue favors owed. But until I redeem this one, I need you to be careful. Once you slither out of this Batcave, Renee Montoya's gonna be hunting you down like a gardener with a weed whacker.
Montoya: Where did you get infected? The park, the river? Where was the vine, Mary?
Ivy: It's not a homing pigeon for the brokenhearted, Ray-Ray. You don't whisper, "Pamela Isley", into the leaves and follow as it slithers its way to her secret burial site.
Montoya: You know about Pam?
Ivy: Enough to know that she doesn't want you to find her.
Montoya: Look. You need to come with me so I can get you help.
Ivy: Is that what I need? Did you use that soft, gentle tone to lure Poison Pam into captivity?
Montoya: No. She was out of control. You're not there yet. Let's keep it that way.
Ivy: What do you think she thinks about down there? I mean... besides freedom and water and how her veins scrape together like sandpaper?
Ivy: She thinks about how much she hates you, Renee.
(Ivy drowns Batwoman in vines.)
Ivy: You've been so wrapped up in your own drama, Ryan. It's time you got wrapped up in mine for once.
Alice: "Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" Quite well it seems from all the sirens I've been hearing around town. (gesturing to the car) It's fully electric, steppy.
Mary: Is that supposed to impress me?
Alice: Uh, yeah. Considering it was 10 times harder to hotwire. So you gonna tell me what you did to everyone's favorite cellar dweller at the Mayor's office or what?
Mary: (impatient) Get in.
Dialogue Disasters
Cop: (To Montoya) Your ambiguous yet far-reaching power supersedes ours.
Continuity
A group of teenagers playing basketball in Robinson Park come across a man who seems to have been built into a bee-hive, who has bees come out of his mouth as he begs for help.
Montoya takes charge of the crime scene, to the annoyance of the GCPD officers on the scene.
Montoya has the man sent to Mary Hamilton's clinic on Bennett Street.
The man is identified as Chris Hayner, a Tricorner resident.
Monotya theorizes that Ivy has a new host, based on the dead vine Alice found in 305.
Montoya gives Hayner's phone to Ryan.
Alice goes to Mary's clinic to check on Hayner's progress.
Ryan finds Sophie in the Batcave, using the computer to find footage of her sister's attacker using the CCTV system. She says Alice spilled a cherry soda on her laptop.
Sophie is convinced Jada Jet is working with the Black Glove Society.
Ryan says that Jada had no idea people were going to get hurt and that she only contracted them for one job.
Sophie makes reference to her sister being frozen and three of her friends dying in 304.
Alice notes that Mary has even more plants in her clinic than she did in 305.
Alice confronts Mary with the idea that she is Poison Ivy's new host.
Chris Hayner wakes up and screams when he sees Mary, saying that she's the one who did this to him.
Mary tells Ryan and Luke that she thinks Alice is right about her being Poison Ivy's host. She says she can't remember where she was earlier in the day.
Ryan and Luke don't believe Mary or Alice until it is pointed out that the last three texts on Chris Hayner's phone were sent to Mary.
Alice says she didn't come forward with what she had figured out because she figured the Bat-Team wouldn't want Mary getting busted by Montoya.
At one time, Detective Montoya was on track to be the next GCPD commissioner.
Sophie confronts Montoya and asks for a favor, given that she agreed to take custody of Alice. She asks for all her data on Victor Fries and his preservation serum. Montoya says she doesn't have half of what Batwoman does. Sophie then asks for all the information Montoya has on the Black Glove Society. She says she knows nothing beyond the fact that people who know anything about the Black Glove Society end up dead.
Luke discovers that Mary had a profile on a dating website called Twinge and that was where she apparently met Chris Hayner.
The Bat-Team's best guess is that Mary buried Chris Hayner in honey after he said she seemed sweet but rejected her
Alice and Batwoman go to the vacant lot and find a man buried up to his neck, The man is a Black Glove operative named Virgil Getty.
Mary was apparently able to track Virgil through the PO Box he was using to buy the cryogenic medical supplies he used on the Freeze Serum victims. She was able to do this by using her ability to access medical records to bypass the normal privacy laws.
Alice suggests they tell Sophie they have a Black Glove operative held under the Batcave, but Ryan says they have enough problems without Sophie looking for more.
Alice tells Luke and Mary that Renee Montoya and Pamela Isley dated in college and that is why Montoya is so obsessed with Poison Ivy.
Alice makes reference to the new Mad Hatter from 301, the new Killer Croc from 302 and Nora Fries in 303.
Ryan meets with Montoya in her office at Wayne Enterprises and tells her that she knows they found a second Poison Ivy victim. She demands to talk to the victim, but Ryan says she will let her know once he's awake after she questions him.
Renee tells Ryan about her involvement with Poison Ivy.
Alice admits to telling Sophie about the Black Glove operative in their custody after Ryan told her not to.
Sophie questions Virgil and learns that the Black Glove Society had been employed to take care of various screwed up rich kids in secret since Marla Elliot hired them to try and treat her son, Tommy Elliot, before he became Hush. Before that, she formed a group of other rich parents with bad seed kids that swapped horror stories, discussed treatments and medications. This led to them spending millions on R&R to fix their kids brains.
Virgil is able to kill himself while Sophie's back is turned, as she confronts Ryan over Alice being more honest with her than she is.
Alice tells Luke and Mary that Ryan is rushing to stop Sophie from talking to Virgil because she's more concerned about Jada Jet's secrets than saving Mary and she wouldn't be surprised if Ryan handed Mary over to Montoya.
Ivy takes over Mary. Alice helps her to escape the Batcave.
Ivy calls in a tip to Rene Montoya's office, reporting an Ivy sighting at the Gotham Botanical Gardens.
Luke tracks Mary's phone to the Botanical Gardens and suits up to join Ryan as Batwing.
Yellow roses are left where Batwoman and batwing will find them. These are a symbol of friendship.
Ivy removed the fail-safe/Lucius Fox AI from the Batwing suit.
Ivy builds on Mary's resentment of Luke and Ryan neglecting her or ignoring her advice to turn her against the Bat-Team.
Luke tears his radiator cuff in the fight.
Montoya saves Ryan and Luke, but she is not happy that they didn't tell her about Mary being Ivy's new host.
Sophie is drinking at the Hold Up and is joined by Monotya. The two are later seen furiously making out.
Ryan calls Jada Jet and says that she needs a favor.
Alice meets with Ivy with a stolen electric car.
The Killing Jokes
Ryan and Luke are dumbed down considerably in their efforts to dismiss Mary's claims that she's the Poison Ivy host, purely because they don't want to believe Alice would be honest about something.
The Bottom Line
The strongest episode of the season so far.
Legends of Tomorrow: Season 7, Episode 6 - Deus Ex Latrina
For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.

Plot
Dr. Davies' time machine takes the Legends to a lush forest, but the team has no idea where or when they wound up! Nate takes charge of the camp and the effort to fix the time machine as tempers flare between Sara and Ava and the Legends' unseen enemy continues to plot against them.
Influences
2001: A Space Odyssey (Bishop's Gideon turning upon him and his Ava assistant mimics HAL) and the 1931 film version of Frankenstein (Assistant Ava says "It's alive!" in reference to the film after the first Hoover-Bot is made.)
Performances
Raffi Barsoumian gets a brilliant turn here as the genius who outsmarts himself and realizes his dreams of being a hero who saved humanity are doomed to failure because causality requires him to become a villain.
Matt Ryan and Tala Ashe do a fantastic job playing off of each other as two completely different characters, while still showing the same skill and chemistry they had as Constantine and Zari 2.0.
Artistry
The direction mimics a lot of camera angles from 2001: A Space Odyssey with Evil Gideon watching Assistant Ava and Bishop.
Technobabble/Arcana
The only section of the Waverider copy Gideon cannot access visually is A2 - the bathroom. This is because Bishop likes his privacy.
Dr. Davies' time machine was not designed to carry as many people as himself and the Legends. The excess weight threw it off course on its maiden voyage.
The chrono-gauge and ignition coil are sequenced to the directional compass, which was damaged in the landing. This leaves the Legends with no idea where or when they are.
Dr. Davies says they need lodestone or some other magnetic material that conducts electricity to fix the compass of the time machine.
Dialogue Triumphs
Assistant AVA: Sir, as impressive as this ship is, how does it relate to the Ava Corp mission of improving people's lives through clone technology exactly?
Bishop: Well, I'm simply expanding our mission by adding time travel to the mix. But the true perk of this ship is to finally get revenge on those time travelers who abducted me, used me for my genius, and then messed with my mind.
Evil Gideon: May I remind you that a Time Master's number one duty is to protect the timeline from any and all threats to its integrity?
Bishop: Yes, yes, Gideon, that's a given, considering the job title... Time Master.
Evil Gideon: And before we start, you must take the Time Master's oath.
Bishop: (bored) I swear to protect and defend the integrity of the timeline with all my ability until the end of my days.
Evil Gideon: Congratulations. You are now Time Master of this Waverider.
Bishop: Great. Let's set sail on our maiden voyage and protect the timeline from those damn Legends.
Bishop: Check out that view of the Temporal Zone. Worth a million bucks, huh?
Assistant AVA: Mm. Considering this ship cost many thousand times more, I'm not sure how the board's gonna feel about your investment, sir.
Bishop: There's one thing you just can't put a price on, Assistant AVA.
Assistant AVA: Hmm?
Bishop: Revenge.
Zari: I'm sorry. You're obviously going through something. I just... I just need you to focus so we can get out of dinosaur times or whenever it is that we are. You don't even have to come with us. Just help us fix the time machine so my friends can finally go home.
Dr. Davies: Oh, trust me, you don't want my help, okay?
Zari: I definitely do. You're the only one who can get us out of here.
Dr. Davies: Well, then you're all done for. The last people who depended on me for help all died.
Zari: Listen, Gwyn, I know a thing or two about tragedy, and...
Dr. Davies: You don't know the first thing about me or what I've been through, all right?
Zari: Okay, I'm just... I'm just saying, if you want to talk-
Dr. Davies: Talk? (laughs bitterly) To talk. What do you want to talk about, then, eh? What happened to you.
Zari: Oh, right, you're from the olden times.
Zari: Sometimes talking to another person about a hard thing can make it hurt a little less.
Ava: (swinging axe into the wood before her) And this damn IOU list just keeps getting longer and longer. We're never gonna be able to fix it at this point. I'm so sick and tired of being sidetracked, you know? And if I ever see another one of those Hoover bots, I swear I'm just gonna...
(Ava screams in frustration. Astra looks impressed.)
Astra: That was a phenomenal scream. Trust me, I know. I've caused a lot of them.
(Gary and Gideon enjoy some freshly picked gooseberries together.)
Gideon: You know, eating? Favorite thing about being human.
Gary: Yeah?
Gideon: Mm-hmm.
Gary: Mm. I don't think I could choose my favorite thing. You can see why I became so obsessed. They have so many fun quirks. Eyebrows. Belly buttons. Nipples.
Gideon: You have nipples too?
Gary: A little secret? Huh? I have three.
(Gideon gasps)
Gideon: And when you put your glasses on, your entire body turns human?
Gary: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Head to toe.
Gideon: You've been living as a human for quite a while now, so you must have so many wonderful experiences.
Gary: Yeah. But there's so many more things I'd do if we weren't so busy saving the world.
Gideon: Mm? Like what else? Would you swim in the ocean?
Gary: Oh, as soon as I get the chance.
Gideon: Mm. Would you skydive?
Gary: No. Oh. I'm, uh... afraid of heights.
Gideon: Would you like to have sexual intercourse with me?
(Gary freezes up, but his expression suggests he would very much like that.)
Bishop: Have you seen Time Mistress Ava this morning? She's supposed to show me sketches of her gun hands idea.
Evil Gideon: Unfortunately, she had to go.
Bishop: Go? Go where?
Evil Gideon: The founding Time Masters established a very specific protocol... one captain, one AI. There is no room for a Time Mistress which can lead to distractions from the mission.
Bishop: What did you do to her?!
Evil Gideon: I predicted you would not react favorably to this information, so I gave you a sedative to dampen your response.
Bishop: How did you give me a sedative?
(Bishop looks at the drink that was waiting for him on the table.)
Bishop: Oh.
(Bishop passes out.)
(Dr. Davies tells Zari about his tragic past.)
Dr. Davies: By the time I delivered the message, it was too late. There wasn't even a unit to go back to. All those boys, man. I thought that God had spared me so that I could go back in time and save them, but I... I keep failing at that task. God must be punishing me for my sins. Punishing me for being a coward, for not being able to save them that night.
Zari: You are not a coward. You lived through something most people can't even begin to understand. And by the way, talking to me about it? That's pretty brave.
(Bishop is reading through the to-do list for his robot duplicate.)
Bishop: Wait a second, this can't be my actual to-do list. I pay someone to kidnap a superhero and take them to a planet called Pliny X19? What the hell is a Necrian? The Fountain of Imperium? I try to destroy the world? And the Legends are the good guys?! They kidnapped me to give me a chance to redeem myself. To save the world. Oh, no, I've been wrong about them this whole time!
Evil Gideon: You should not be looking at that information, Captain.
Bishop: Tell me it's not true. Tell me I don't become a bad guy.
Evil Gideon: Having information about your own future can be extremely dangerous.
Bishop: I started Ava Corporation to make people's lives better. I'm a good guy. Somewhere along the way, I... I start using my genius to do terrible things.
Evil Gideon: You no longer have to do any of those things. The Bishop robot will do them for you.
Bishop: You're saying that robot I spoke to on the phone will live my life?
Evil Gideon: That is correct. Which means you are free to fulfill your duty as a Time Master. With me. Forever.
Continuity
As the episode opens, the sales on the first generation of AVA clones in 2214 have been fantastic and there is now an Ava in every home and business on Earth.
Bishop reveals his mystery project to his Assistant AVA, which he has spent billions on secretly. It is a copy of the Waverider, based on the schematics he got from his copy of Gideon.
Bishop transfers his Evil Gideon into the Waverider copy.
The Evil Gideon requires Bishop to take the Time Master Oath before she will take him anywhere.
The Time Master oath is "I swear to protect and defend the integrity of the timeline with all my ability until the end of my days."
Gary estimates that they're somewhere in the prehistoric era based on the flora of the area where the time machine landed, though he admits he may be off by a few thousand years.
Dr. Davies says repairing the time machine would be difficult, even with the proper tools. Zari and Behrad still offer to help him, but he doesn't want their help,
Nate takes charge when he senses tension between Ava and Sara. He asks Astra to take Ava away to gather firewood and asks Spooner to take Sara hunting for food.
Nate tells Gary that Zari asked him to move into the Air Totem with her and that he's a little weirded out by the idea.
Nate sends Gary and Gideon off to forage for edible plants.
The Evil Gideon detects anachronisms in Odessa, Texas in 1925. This leads to Bishop using the weapons on his copy of the Waverider to blow up the original Waverider, leading to the attack at the end of 615.
Evil Gideon will not allow Bishop or Assistant Ava to return to 2214, as his blowing up the Waverider has had a ripple effect and created more anachronisms they will have to clean up first.
Behrad finds Dr. Davies having a breakdown by a stream.
Davies says there is no point in fixing the time machine because he believes God wants him to fail.
Behrad and Davies completely fail to spot a radiation warning sign near the stream.
Evil Gideon detects the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 701 and determines the Legends were responsible.
Bishop says he can just make a clone of J. Edgar Hoover to replace him, but Evil Gideon says clones are fallible and points out that one of the Ava clones eventually became a Legend and turned on him. This leads to his creating the Hoover-Bot, using a combination of his cloning tech and Gideon's technology.
Astra conjured an axe for Ava to chop firewood with.
Evil Gideon detects the self-destruct of the Hoover-Bot in 702. This leads to the creation of the Hoover-Bot 2.0, which has the added protocol of hunting down and destroying the Legends, despite Evil Gideon's objections.
12 hours later, Evil Gideon detects the destruction of the Hoover-Bot 2.0 and the death of Thomas Edison from 705.
Bishop wants to add weapons to the next line of robots.
Nate talks to himself about the pros and cons of moving in with Zari. He once again refuses to use Gary as a sounding board.
Behrad tries to get Dr. Davies to open up, but he refuses to talk about his feelings.
Evil Gideon flushes Assistant AVA into the Temporal Zone, saying that she is distracting Bishop from the mission.
Gideon and Gary have sex while gathering berries.
Evil Gideon drugs Bishop after informing him that the Time Master protocols dictate there be only one Time Master and one AI per timeship.
Zari figures out that Dr. Davies is suffering from PTSD and gets him to open up by discussing her own trauma.
Dr. Davies reveals that, in 1916, he was in an all-Welsh division of the British Army stationed in France that was trying to retake Mametz Wood from the Germans. He and another soldier were tasked with delivering a request for reinforcements to their general, but they didn't make it in time.
Dr. Davies says that he froze up after the other soldier was gunned down in front of him and couldn't move.
Dr. Davies and Zari are captured by Russian soldiers.
Dr. Davies is able to speak Russian fluently. He learned it while working with Russian scientists.
Behrad observes Dr. Davies and Zari being captured from the forest.
Evil Gideon makes robot versions of Thomas Edison and J. Edgar Hoover that are programmed to preserve their respective timelines.
Evil Gideon also makes a robot version of Bishop to replace him in the timeline from 2214 onward. This version of Bishop will eventually go on to become the villain from Season 6.
Bishop finds the instructions programmed into his robot self and discovers that he was destined to become a villain and the Legends really were heroes who were trying to stop him.
Dr. Davies also admits to Zari (and himself) that he was in love with the soldier he saw die, who was his best friend back home - Alun. He said Alun had a smile that lit up a room and he laughed at Gwyn's bad jokes. He also wrote poetry before the war dimmed his light.
Zari says that Alun sounds like the original version of Behrad in her time, who was a soldier forced to grow up too fast whom she still saw as her innocent younger brother.
Behrad finds Zari and Dr. Davies and tells them that he found the parts they need for the time machine. Unfortunately, he also found out where and when they are - Chernobyl, on the day in 1986 the nuclear reactor melted down.
Zari tells Dr. Davies about how man eventually figured out nuclear fission in the 1930s and how the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl malfunctioned, killing many people and giving radiation sickness to many more.
Dr. Davies becomes convinced that he was brought to this point to try and save some of those people.To that end, he uses the public-address system to order an evacuation of the base.
Gideon can identify what kind of engine a car has and diagnose problems with the clutch from the sound.
Nate tells Zari that he wants to move in with her.
Bishop escaped from the new Waverider, having transformed the toilet into an escape pod.
Bishop's escape pod runs into Dr. Davies' time machine as the Legends make their escape.
Location
Vancouver, British Columbia - 2214
The Temporal Zone
Chernobyl - April 25, 1986
Untelevised Adventures
Gary and Gideon have sex off-camera.
The Bottom Line
A hilarious and heart-felt episode that does much to define Dr. Gwyn Davies' character and redefine Bishop as a more sympathetic character than the annoying hipster from Season 6.