January 30, 2015 Kerry

The Black Canary Cries

**This post contains spoilers for episode 3.11 of Arrow, “Midnight City.”**

So last week I said I was pleasantly surprised by Arrow, and that on a scale of 1 – 10, I gave it a 5 while I fully expected a 2. Unfortunately, water always meets its level, so hopefully this week’s episode, “Midnight City,” is as bad as Arrow gets. Previously, I thought “Sara” or “Birds of Prey” were the worst episodes of this show. I was so wrong.

I’ll start with the good stuff: Maseo and Tatsu. I hate that we’re really only getting their story in drips, but that’s not a real complaint because everything else on this show lately has been in anvil form, so I’ll take any form of subtlety at this point. We got more of their flashbacks, namely that Maseo was willing to risk the lives of thousands of people for his family and that China White had anticipated that quality in him. Oliver looks a little unnerved by this kind of loyalty over all else, and of course it’s in direct contradiction to the Maseo we know in the present day, but that plotline continues to be one of the more compelling plotlines of this show.

In the present day, Tatsu is helping Oliver recover while Maseo protects them and prepares to return to the League. Oliver is overly concerned with his old friend’s fate, so Maseo fakes a cut on his neck to indicate Oliver fighting back. Oliver asks him to come back to Starling City with him, but Maseo chooses to go back to the League, leaving Tatsu in tears.

Speaking of anvil-like imagery, the episode starts out with a dream sequence, going back to the moment Oliver told Felicity he was leaving. In this version, he abruptly decides to stay because he loves her so much, and they kiss for one joyous moment before he leans back and starts spewing blood. They both glance down in shock to find a sword going through his midsection, and cut to — Oliver waking up. This is the sort of thing this show used to do really well, or at the very least, they did it with a little more finesse. This time it was just clumsy and shot weird and had odd emotional beats without any indication that it was a dream at all. It even seemed like it should’ve been Felicity’s dream until we saw Oliver wake from it. Just so strange. But it’s nice that he’s dreaming about her, I suppose.

Elsewhere, people are making — just — I can’t even talk about the stupid decisions almost everyone on this show is making. Just mind-numblingly stupid. The only people not doing dumb stuff in this episode are Oliver, who is healing, and Lance, who is being lied to by every single person in his life. I don’t even know where to begin, but since my ire with this show begins and ends with Thea Queen, I guess I’ll start there.

Malcolm is still lying to her. Roy is still lying to her. And now greasy grungy shady DJ guy is lying to her, because — surprise! — he works for the League of Assassins somehow. He’s Maseo’s man in Starling, I guess. We’ll get more on that later. But Malcolm spends the episode trying to convince Thea to leave the city and she tells him that they should be strong and face down their enemies, and Malcolm… agrees. So sending Oliver to his death was totally worth it.

Speaking of lying, Felicity (yes, Felicity, because as much as a certain faction of fandom would like to blame Laurel for this, it was actually Felicity who came up with this particular atrocity) had the bright idea to use old scans of Sara’s voice to have Laurel talk to Captain Lance as The Canary. Lance has been wondering why there are reports of a masked blonde woman running around town beating people up, but he hasn’t heard from his daughter, and somehow this little detail never occurred to Laurel as she was putting on the mask. After Felicity has a crisis of conscience about saving the city, she comes up with this awful idea and Laurel stands there in the foundry, talking to her dad as Sara as Katie Cassidy finally sheds a tear. I was too angry with the writers and show and the general production for pulling this stunt to really appreciate that she gave it her all, so props to Katie for trying to drag that scene out of the abyss that it belongs in, because it was terrible. I hated every second of that plot and I hate writing about it now.

But no! That wasn’t the only time she impersonated her sister! Later she stood on a fire escape four stories high to tell her dad, as Sara, that she couldn’t be in contact with him right now, and Lance looked devastated. It was bad enough when his daughter was lying to him, but now, thanks to Laurel donning the mask and Felicity rigging up her voice, the entire team has been pulled into the conspiracy, and it’s just terrible, you guys. It casts a pall over everything, and that’s saying something, because it’s hard to cast a pall over an episode where everyone still thinks the main superhero is dead.

Felicity continued her tour of bad ideas by figuring out the nanochip thing so that she could eventually send another billionaire to his snowy mountaintop grave. I guess I can chalk it all up to grief but it’s getting old.

Roy and Diggle contributed to the fiasco by not really trying to stop Laurel. We can’t blame them too much, Laurel’s gonna be Laurel, but after last week’s emotional scenes, they both just seemed off, like this show can’t carry storylines through multiple episodes anymore. There was a funny scene where Roy went to try to threaten Malcolm for lying to Thea, but I think Malcolm likes being threatened. I think it keeps him young.

And Ray Palmer still exists, because Brick didn’t do us a solid and just shoot him while he had the chance.

Eventually, it won’t be so painful to watch the Black Canary join the fray, but for the love of God, Laurel, train.

Other notes:

– This scene was fun:

– For most of the episode, it seemed like Laurel thought Oliver was dead after all; she had a couple lines alluding to that. I was initially bothered by her lack of a reaction to his demise, until she indicated at the end of the episode that she still wasn’t sure he was gone. Whew!

– Vinnie Jones was still great as Brick.

– Thea read a book in the dark. No, really:

– Felicity and Laurel finally, finally had a not-awkward scene of mutual respect and support. It was great, and it needs to continue.

– I miss Slade. Who else misses Slade? Things were so fun when Slade was around! Except for all the death and stuff.

Next week: three terrorist attacks on Starling City in three years! What will Joe West and Harrison Wells have to say about this?! Oh and I guess Oliver’s coming back, but that’s no indication that this show will get any better.

December 16, 2014 Kerry

“I wish that sounded more convincing.”

**This post contains spoilers for 3.09 of Arrow, “The Climb.”**

It won’t surprise you to learn that I did not like the mid-season finale of Arrow. The following post is depressingly negative. It’s rather unlike me, that’s how upset I am about the whole thing. I even debated just not posting and maintaining an austere silence, but I’ve been so disciplined about posting every week for each new episode that I felt like I owed you some closure.

This is difficult for me, because for over a year now, this show has been my bread and butter. Thanks to hours and hours (and hours) of scrubbing through footage to make videos, I know the canon and characterization of this show like the back of my hand. I want this show to be great, I want it to be as great as it was in season 2. I didn’t need it to get any better, I just wanted it to stay the same.

I can’t abide the ‘Death of Sara Lance’ story arc anymore. It was bad enough when we just knew she died. The promise of a compelling mystery surrounding it softened the blow a bit. I remember all of the speculation, all of the possibilities, ranging from Ra’s al Ghul himself to Slade Wilson breaking out of prison to exact his revenge. Then we had that episode where Roy had memories of killing Sara, which was hard to endure, because having Sara die thanks to a Mirakuru withdrawal felt cheap and hollow; it made her death meaningless to us, and to her. Thankfully that plot point was solved in one episode, and Roy realized he was hallucinating and conflating two separate events. We breathed a sigh of relief.

So imagine my horror on Wednesday night, as I sat sans red wine (I regret not having red wine) and watched as the most ridiculous, artless, meaningless plot unwound around Sara’s death. It turns out Thea killed Sara, something I’d actually heard before the episode aired, but I’d written off as so absurd and bad that it couldn’t possibly be true. But it was true, and that’s not even the worst part. Thea definitely did it — the DNA didn’t convince Oliver, but the video evidence sure did — but she has no memory of it. Why? Because there’s this magical herb that we’re only just now hearing about that makes a person highly suggestive with no memory later of their actions. Convenient, eh?

So yes, Thea killed Sara. And she did it with no knowledge of it. Almost like… she wasn’t a human person. Like she was a puppet on strings. Like she was nothing more than an object. Like Malcolm Merlyn was sacrificing his pawn to kill the queen. He used his daughter, who was looking to empower herself, and effectively erased all of her agency and most of her identity from this season. He did it for dumb reasons that I don’t even want to get into, because it’s so contrived and stupid and not worth the death of one female and the emotional and mental manipulation of another, but I have to because I want you to have full context of my rage.

See, he had Thea kill Sara because he knew the League of Assassins wouldn’t forgive the death of one of their own. He had Thea do it because he knew Oliver would do anything to protect her. And for some reason which he never divulges, he thinks Oliver, the skilled archer, would be effective in a swordfighting duel atop a snowy mountain. Malcolm thought it was perfect, like killing six birds with one stone, and once Ra’s was dead, Malcolm’s blood debt (the Undertaking, Thea’s murder of Sara) would be erased.

I’m not totally sure how succession works in the League, but I’m fairly confident that Nyssa, new leader or not, would never forgive Malcolm for killing Sara. So there’s the rather obvious flaw in that plan. Other flaws? How about Oliver taking the gamble of Ra’s being forgiving and ratting out Malcolm? How about Oliver actually telling Thea what she did and Thea deciding to duel Ra’s herself? (After all, while she didn’t make the choice to kill Sara, she did choose to go train with Malcolm, a man who unapologetically killed over 500 people.) This contrived and terrible plan of Malcolm’s had a lot of moving parts, and the one thing that could’ve brought it all tumbling down was Thea realizing her role in all of this.

Instead, what’s happened is yet another powerful white male has robbed Thea of her agency. Sure, it’s under the well-intentioned guise of protecting her, but Oliver never gives Thea the opportunity to make her own choice and deal with her own consequences. He hugs her and leaves to die in her place, never mind the fact that she has to live with that now, never mind that he’s leaving her in the disgusting hands of her father who just took a calculated risk with her life. You want to protect her, Ollie? How about you actually empower her and GIVE HER ALL OF THE INFORMATION? At least then, she wouldn’t trust Malcolm anymore.

What happened between the season 2 finale, when a female brought down the most powerful supervillain on this show with a single syringe stab, and the season 3 premiere, where a strong female heroine was mindlessly killed by another strong female who wasn’t in possession of her own agency? (Let’s not forget Ray stalking Felicity who seems to be flattered by the attention instead of grossed out, or the time Diggle basically blamed Felicity for Oliver not having his head in the game, or the fact that Laurel’s still spinning mindlessly into outer space as far as retribution and reasons to fight. And where the hell is Sin?) Does this show hate women after all?

(And oh, how sad that it’s not even restricted to women! Remember when Oliver tried to kick Diggle off the team for having a family? And instead of putting Oliver in his place, Diggle later apologized and basically admitted Oliver was right. HE WAS NOT RIGHT. Diggle is a grown man capable of making his own choices, so even if Oliver felt that Diggle was being reckless in his choice to continue his work on the team, he was not right to strip Diggle of the power to make that decision for himself.)

And yes, Oliver Queen appears to be dead. Diggle really Diggle’d it when he offered to go into battle with Oliver, but no, this is something he had to do alone. No wonder Stephen Amell seemed to be on an extended break during the holiday season. It also appeared that rather than finding an actor/stunt man who could fight better than Amell or his stunt man, they just decided to make Oliver look like a freaking amateur out there. Like really, I’ve never seen such shoddy stunt work, and I watch Once Upon A Time, so that’s saying something. It was really, really bad.

We also found out that Maseo is now a member of the League, complete with a new name, and I suspect he will be the one to restore Oliver when the show returns. That reminds me, I guess we get to see the Lazarus Pit, one of the few things I never wanted to see on this show.

Honestly, what do we have to look forward to now? A Black Canary arc with Laurel, who still doesn’t even know why she’s fighting? A bigger storyline for Roy, whom I like very much but who the Big Name Reviewers keep calling “useless” and “bland”? More of Ray Palmer pinging Felicity’s cell phone and intruding on her life, then buying her loyalty by giving her things and spinning tragic tales of lost love? Do we have to — ugh — endure a multi-episode storyline involving Ray and the ATOM suit?! Do we really have to watch Thea run around Starling kicking ass with a false impression of having a father who loves her?

(The way I see it, there are two options with Thea: She turns dark when she finds out about Malcolm’s treachery, turning into a supervillain of her own accord, OR the love and loyalty of her brother and his ultimate sacrifice is the one thing that keeps her light. Frankly, I’d stick around for the second story alone.)

But hey, Oliver loves Felicity. I guess that’s supposed to distract us from how awful everything else was, and in a vacuum, maybe that scene would’ve meant more. I wish I could say I have hope for the second half of the season (which was when it got really good for the last two years) but that’s not true. All I feel is dread.

There’s a very good chance I will not be recapping these in the new year. I’m tired of being negative.

On a side note: Are you guys watching The 100? The mid-season finale is tonight (Wednesday), and so far, this show has done very well by its females.

March 27, 2014 Kerry

Birds of Prey

The bitch is back, and unsurprisingly, she’s back with a vengeance.

With everything that’s happening lately — Oliver and Sara dating, Laurel in recovery, Slade showing up in Starling, Roy joining the team — it really seemed like a good time for the show to take a break and sort of bask in the world they’ve successfully created since Christmas. It’s a superhero show, and it’s been on full-throttle since Oliver returned to the city at the beginning of the season, but that could’ve easily translated into an episode that was essentially “A Day at the Office.”

Picture this: Sara and Diggle train in the background as Felicity does her tech stuff on the computers. Oliver continues to work with Roy on controlling his emotions. Everyone’s on edge about Slade, and the episode could’ve centered around running down the Deathstroke lead from Waller (as we just saw Oliver approach her in the last episode). Moira continues her campaign for mayor, maybe even with a brief glimpse of Kevin Alejandro (who we haven’t seen in a while). The flashbacks stay the same, with Slade demanding a trade from Sara as Oliver is tortured with electricity and a tattoo to match Shado’s. The episode could’ve been just as compelling, action-wise, but we would’ve gotten to see the day-to-day stuff, the new normal, and really begin to understand how the cogs of Team Arrow really fit together now that they’ve grown to a team of five.

Think about it: We don’t really know how they work as a group of five. The show is asking a lot of us to just accept the status quo without really showing us the fundamentals. Do Roy and Sara interact, ever? Does Felicity get along with Roy? Does Sara help train Felicity in self-defense? Does Diggle treat Roy like a little brother, or like a ticking timebomb? In fact, what does Roy do all day when he sits in the foundry? A year ago, we knew how Team Arrow worked, because it was just the three of them and we saw it all the time. Now, we have no idea. We have to assume that everything’s fine, and worse, we have to assume that they all truly trust each other even in these dire situations.

We haven’t seen Oliver at home except for the time Slade crashed his house (he apparently sleeps at the foundry with Sara). We don’t see him at work anymore (remember Isabel Rochev? Wasn’t she supposed to be a big deal?) and he hasn’t been doing any political campaigns thanks to his complicated family situation. So everything has been focused on Team Arrow work, and yet, we’ve seen very little of Team Arrow in action. Instead, it’s mostly been about Sara and Oliver as a dynamic duo, and that would be fine… if this show had established a baseline for the new Team Arrow by now.

As it is, Oliver asks Roy to do a huge thing in this episode and dump Thea, ostensibly to protect her. Instead, it causes her great pain and distrust, and we see Roy crush a piece of jewelry he’d recently given her in a spark of pure rage. Won’t that just build up Roy’s resentment toward Oliver? Wouldn’t it be nice to have had at least one solid episode of teamwork and trust before we went down this path?

So with all of that waiting in the wings, waiting to be explored and played for nuance, laughs, and new complications, the writers decided instead to bring back a so-called “fan favorite”: Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress.

While the rest of the season has been on a marked trajectory of leading up to an epic Arrow/Deathstroke showdown, Helena’s return is a bit of a head-scratcher. Her father, Frank, returns to Starling to collect some debts (genius!) but manages to get caught by Oliver himself, who was assisting Sara on watching over Beat Cop Lance. The police department brilliantly decides to dangle Frank out as bait in order to trap Helena. The worst part is, Assistant District Attorney Adam Donner, aka He Who Fired Laurel For Drugs and Stuff, specifically asked Laurel to come back and work the prosecution for this case because she was, in his mind… expendable. Real standup guy.

The trap goes about as badly as one would expect: Helena has a team undercover in the courthouse, and they take hostages as Oliver leads Frank outside to safety, leaving Laurel stranded inside the courthouse. That’s okay, though! Sara, as Black Canary, is there to protect her! And luckily, the inability to recognize masked loved ones even in close proximity is a Lance family trait.

Oliver spends his time angsting outside and getting a phone call to the Arrow line from right next to Beat Cop Lance, who just got done knocking Adam Donner’s block off for setting up his daughter. Oliver covers it smoothly, though — he has Lance in his phone as “Mom” and shows him the screen when Lance looks at him askance. Cute, I guess, but I’m not loving the idea that Lance still doesn’t know who the man under the hood is.

Laurel refuses to be rescued alone while there are other hostages inside, which sounds a lot more like Season 1 Laurel than the one we’ve been dealing with lately. She insists on helping the other hostages, and Sara goes with her. Of course, because this is a Huntress episode and somehow her brand of crazy makes her stronger than anyone else on the planet, Sara ends up on the losing end of what should’ve been a one-sided fight, and Laurel is trapped with the rest of the hostages.

Helena demands Frank for Laurel, and Oliver devises a plan with Beat Cop Lance to get Frank in the same place as Helena. Laurel tries to appeal to Helena’s human side, finally admitting the ways she’s messed up since Tommy died.

It’s a really great scene for her, up until Helena warns her, “Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.” It looks like this phrase will propel us through the rest of the season.

The rest of the hostages are rescued safely once Helena whisks Laurel to the swap site. Frank apologizes to Helena, but she’s having none of it. Just as she’s getting ready to kill her father, she’s interrupted by the special ops guy that seems to hate vigilantes, and she gets into a one-on-one fight with Sara, who isn’t holding back this time. Sara easily gets Helena into a choke hold, but that’s when Laurel intervenes and asks the Canary to show restraint.

Helena realizes her father is dead, but not by her hand, and that’s when Lance places her in cuffs. Later, in the interrogation room, Oliver goes to visit her, and she confesses that she doesn’t feel any better knowing her father is dead. She just feels lonely. It’s the only good scene Helena’s ever had, in my opinion, and I think now I won’t dread her return so much. I just think this appearance, in this episode, was incredibly ill-timed and unrelated to the larger arc.

Laurel ends the episode on a bit of an ambiguous note: She blackmails the District Attorney into giving her job back, and the DA remarks that she didn’t expect that darkness in Laurel. “Someone recently told me, ‘Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.’” So she’s back to being on a villain arc? Or are we embracing the dark sides of superheroes?

Thea, out walking on her own in the dangerous, Slade-filled city, is approached by a car. In a shocking twist, it’s Slade in the car, and Thea gets in willingly. Oh Thea.

Next week, Slade has a new hostage, and the promo department actually used the word “slayed” which makes me happier than I ever thought I could be.

February 6, 2014 Kerry

“We all have to keep secrets, Miss Smoak.”

**This post contains spoilers for episode 2.13 of Arrow, “Heir to the Demon”**

It was a Lance family reunion last night on Arrow, but it didn’t exactly go as Oliver (and Quentin, and Sara, and the viewers) had hoped it would.

Last episode, we saw Sara drawn back to Starling City by Oliver, who called her when Laurel showed up drunk and insulting everyone in sight at Verdant. Sara showed up just in time to watch Laurel collapse in a drunken (okay, poisoned) state and then boom, we were made to wait an entire week — seven whole days! — for sister reunions.

Well, the reunions went a bit out of order. The episode opened with a beautiful woman (Spartacus alumna Katrina Law, but I recognized her from Legend of the Seeker) at the Starling City airport, where her passport is flagged by A.R.G.U.S. She knocks out a bunch of guards and saunters through the terminals, and I actually wanted to see more of that. She’s Nyssa al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s (“heir to the demon”), and she’s here for Sara… but not for the reason we expected.

Yes, readers, Sara is a bonafide bisexual character! Her orientation might have been played as a twist for shock value, but the rest of the characters treat it like it’s non-news. Indeed, Lance outdoes himself for Father of the Year award by simply expressing his relief that she had someone to love during her six years of hardship. Hooray! This show did it right!

Sara admits that she loved Nyssa, and not just because Nyssa rescued her. But Sara asks Nyssa to convince her father to release Sara from the League of Assassins (we learn that he’s only excused one person before: Malcolm Merlyn). Nyssa doesn’t take this well, and decides to kidnap Mama Lance, who is in town to help care for Laurel after her apparent overdose.

The showdown is explosive and emotionally-charged: Lance and Sara bust in and rescue Dinah, who is shocked to see her daughter is alive. Lance drags Dinah out of the warehouse before they can have much more than a tearful embrace, and it turns out Sara’s taken a lethal dose of the same snake venom that Nyssa had used to poison Laurel. After Oliver appears and saves Sara’s life with his Magical Healing Island Herbs of Sunshine and Happiness, Nyssa releases Sara from the League of Assassins. That won’t be the last we see of her!

Speaking of the island, this week’s flashbacks go all the way back to six years ago, where we see the Lance’s side of the story of the week that the Queen’s Gambit sank. Last season, Quentin and Dinah’s relationship was so strained that it was hard to imagine them happily married, but in this episode, we finally got to see the Lance family together and happy, for the most part. Laurel and Sara get into a fight about Oliver, because Sara is flirting with him via text while Laurel’s trying to find an apartment for herself and Oliver.

Sara: “This is kind of assuming that he’s ever ready to settle down.”
Laurel: “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sara: “We both know at least ten girls that he’s slept with.”
Laurel: “Can’t you just be happy with me? If you met some amazing guy who wanted to spend the rest of his life with you, I would be so supportive and so happy for you –”
Sara: “I wasn’t trying to be a bitch.”
Laurel: “Title of your autobiography.”

It’s not exactly what we were hoping for in the flashbacks of Sara and Laurel. It would’ve been nice to see happier times between them before Oliver came into the picture, but clearly their relationship has always had an element of hostility. Sara leaves the room and texts Oliver, “See you at the docks,” and the rest is history.

Laurel drops a plate when she sees the news that the Gambit went missing, but it’s not until Moira rings their doorbell that they get the news about Sara. “The dock master saw her sneak onboard.” Paul Blackthorne deserves all the praise for his acting in that scene (and really, the entire episode.) It’s nice that Lance’s season 1 antics of drunkenness and tunnel vision vengeance was the anomaly, and that this New and Improved Beat Cop Lance is the real Quentin.

Elsewhere, the nonexistent relationship between Felicity and Moira took a huge hit when Felicity confronted Mrs. Queen about Thea’s paternity.

Her tactics work. She finds a pressure point and bears down (oh, too soon) with all of her might. That Felicity has a history of abandonment was just a bonus; losing Oliver is scary, but the fear of losing someone else was paralyzing enough that she kept that secret for a couple of days, aided by Moira’s constant side-eyes and threatening glances. (I half expected Moira to drag a finger across her throat in Felicity’s direction.)

It’s a natural course for their dynamic to take: Felicity and Moira have similar motivations toward Oliver, and both possess a deep loyalty to him, but their moral codes are wildly different. Moira will do anything for her children, even if it means selling her soul or coming off as selfish and conniving. Felicity has the capability to go that far for the ones she loves, but she has an innate sense of right and wrong that makes her question everything and everyone around her, even Oliver and Diggle. It would’ve been nice to get a storyline where Moira and Felicity team up to help Oliver before it took this turn, just to give them a bit more depth, but Moira showed her hand when she called Felicity by her first name. Felicity showed hers when she gave Moira the opportunity to tell Oliver the truth first.

And in defense of Moira Queen, don’t forget that this was a secret over which she was willing to go to jail. Not just jail, prison. For the rest of her life! So when this upstart blonde girl comes in, aggressively telling Moira she doesn’t trust her and that she needs to tell Oliver the truth, Moira essentially went Mama Bear on her. She saw, in her mind, a family torn asunder by a secret she had moved heaven and earth to keep under wraps. No way was she going to let someone as inconsequential as Felicity Smoak undo all of her hard work! (Unfortunately, she underestimated two things: Felicity’s importance, and the strength of the relationship between Oliver and Felicity.)

I’m not saying she was right to manipulate and threaten Felicity in such a way, but it was a great demonstration of the power Moira wields and how she’s made it this far in her life. If we want women on TV to be portrayed as powerful and varying, then sometimes, those strong women are going to clash. Moira fits that bill: Nothing she does is inherently evil, but in some cases, she’s not morally sound. If her every motivation in life is in the quest to protect her children, that makes her one of the most fascinating characters on television.

Because of her own family history, Felicity struggles with the secret. Oliver proves to be highly perceptive, and after two days of distraction and jumpiness, he finally corners Felicity at his mother’s campaign announcement rally (as she’s walking away, “Felicity? Fe li ci ty…”) and demands she tell him what’s bothering her. That’s when we finally, finally get a bit of backstory on Felicity: Her father abandoned her family, and all she remembers is how badly it hurt when he left.

Moira greatly underestimated their relationship; the moment he takes to process it is probably the most intimate scene he and Felicity have shared. If this were Gossip Girl, Oliver would’ve gotten up onstage and embarrassed his mother, but Arrow is not your typical CW fare. He does right by his mother, but ultimately, he keeps the secret for Thea’s sake. As he leans down to hug his mother, he tells her that he knows the truth.

That night, Moira’s worst nightmare comes true.

“Because Thea can never find out about Merlyn, and she can never know the truth about us, which is that as of right now, we have no relationship. I will keep up appearances for Thea’s sake. Publicly, I will support your campaign. But privately… we are done.”

Keeping in mind that she was afraid of this sort of thing happening back during the trial, and how happy she was when her kids reassured her that none of her secrets would make them hate her, this scene is particularly affecting. She should’ve taken Felicity up on her offer to tell Oliver herself, because it’s not the secret that he’s angry about, it’s the lie. The subtext is that he’s mad that she went to such lengths as to threaten Felicity, that he now has to keep this secret from Thea, that he can’t trust his mother anymore.

The question is, what does this mean in the war between Moira and Felicity? Is she going to give Felicity the respect she deserves, or is Moira going to try to squash one of Oliver’s closest allies like a bug?

Laurel spends most of the episode in the hospital, recovering from her poisoning (which was originally thought to be an overdose, so everyone was relieved to hear that it was just deadly snake venom that someone had slipped her, at least it’s not rat poison). She doesn’t turn up until the end of the episode, when Quentin and Dinah are tearfully hugging their recently revived daughter on the docks. She looks stunned and shaken before it cuts to commercial.

Later, at Laurel’s ill-fated apartment, three of the Lances are talking about how happy they are that Sara’s back and alive, but Laurel’s still boozing. Sara says Laurel must have questions, but Laurel claims she has none. “I already know all of the answers to them. How could you still be alive? Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you call us? And the answer to all of them: Because it’s Sara.” The fact that Laurel doesn’t even give Sara a chance to explain herself is evidence enough that she’s not ready to hear any hard truths. Laurel spends her days railing against the world that she perceives as unfair to her, but she insulates herself from the harsh reality that other people are paying for their sins, too. Sara’s paid for hers through six years of exile and captivity. Dinah pays for hers in loneliness and regret. Quentin pays for his by watching his daughter disappear into the same bottle he’d hidden in for five years. Oliver pays for his every single day, in ways that Laurel would notice if she’d just pay attention. Laurel wants to believe that her life is harder than everyone else’s because it’s easier to feel like the world’s victim than it is to admit that maybe she’s just weak. She doesn’t have to be weak, she’s demonstrated strength before, but her constant misplaced blame and isolation from the people who love her is a sign of hiding from the larger truth, and that will always breed weakness. Until I’m explicitly told otherwise, I’m going to start watching Arrow with the understanding that Laurel is on a villain arc.

Quentin starts to ask Laurel not to drink the wine she just poured, but Laurel’s already on the sauce and she snaps at her father, “Dad, I swear, if you say one more word.” Sara asks Laurel not to blame their dad, to blame her instead, and that’s all the invitation Laurel needs. She rattles off a list of ways that this is all Sara’s fault.

Given the story Sara told Oliver on the island a couple of episodes ago, it sounds like there’s equal blame to spread around here, but neither woman is blaming the real culprit: Oliver. It was that fateful boat trip that changed everything, he had cold feet about getting serious with Laurel, but he could’ve invited anyone. He chose to invite Sara, and both families were destroyed when the Gambit disappeared.

Laurel forgave Oliver, so why won’t she forgive Sara? It probably goes back to their deep sibling antagonism, and the fact that Sara never seemed to be happy for Laurel’s successes. Coupled with Laurel’s growing self-victimization and the fact that she’s emotionally compromised thanks to the alcohol, it was a tall order to expect forgiveness of Sara anytime soon. Laurel throws her out of her apartment, and Sara goes straight to the foundry.

Oliver loved Sara, that much was evident when she first reappeared and he nearly had a breakdown. He spent five years believing her to be dead, and he never hid his feelings for her, not even on the island (where he chose to save Sara over Shado). Their final scene is actually detrimental (and maybe a nail in the coffin) for the Oliver/Laurel relationship; not only did he not spent the five years of exile obsessing over Laurel as we’d previously thought, he spent a portion of it running around with Sara. When he came back to Starling seeking out Laurel, we know it was partially because of guilt… but could it also have been because he thought she was his last connection to Sara? (That makes Oliver the jerk, and it makes Laurel right about a lot of things, but still, it’s up to her to decide whether to move on.)

Either way, Oliver and Sara’s emotionally charged makeout (which presumably led to other things) at the end of the episode makes a lot of sense. Their shared history and shared double-lives make them naturally compatible, and the actors have a lot of chemistry. However, Sara’s always been portrayed as a free spirit, and I have a feeling she won’t stick around Starling City for long, especially after being rejected by her sister.

Finally, Slade Wilson watches news coverage of Moira’s campaign announcement as Sebastian Blood walks in to his office. “I warned you not to underestimate Moira Queen.” Sebastian asks what to do next, but Slade tells him to do nothing. “I’ll take care of it.” What does that mean?! I want nothing less than a scene where Slade confronts Moira in person.

The bad news is, we have to wait until February 26th (after the Olympics that no one is going to watch) to find out! How will we survive?

January 23, 2014 Kerry

“What color are your shoes?”

**This post contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Arrow, “Blind Spot.”**

This week’s Arrow was a Laurel episode, as least as much as any Arrow episode can be character-centric. It was also heavy on the Roy storyline (with bonus Sin!) as well as the island flashbacks. That means we saw a lot less of Oliver than usual (both in amount of screentime and amount of skin) and we really only got two good scenes of Team Arrow. But there was this:

This episode felt a little disjointed, especially given that we’ve been treated to tightly-plotted and fast-paced episodes since we met Sara. I saw it as a good thing; I think shows like this need to take an episode or two to step back and reconfigure their storylines, at least to establish a base line of normality so that we don’t start losing our connections to the characters. The alternative would be something akin to The Vampire Diaries, a show that went full-throttle with every episode, to the point that some beloved character had to die (and come back to life) at least once a week in order to maintain the momentum. Arrow is doing a better job of striking a balance, and a slower-paced episode couldn’t have come at a better time. Shado is dead, the Mirakuru is at work in the city, and we know that the end of this season is going to be explosive. It’s nice to watch an episode where Oliver spends most of his time in regular street clothes instead of in business attire or a hood.

Unfortunately, the slower pace happened during a Laurel episode. Her character has many detractors (sometimes including me) so it’s easy to pin this episode’s lack of action to Laurel. I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Yes, Laurel’s scenes could’ve been more dramatic and emotional, but she’s not a superhero or a villain. She’s a normal person struggling with addiction, so her scenes are going to be a little more human than the ones with Roy or the island flashbacks.

I will give Katie Cassidy credit where it’s due: her scene with Paul Blackthorne in the interrogation room is some of her best work. Even though she still doesn’t actually shed a tear onscreen, she looks absolutely wrecked, like a person going through the anguish of drug withdrawal. Her sobbing and begging to her father were heartbreaking, and Blackthorne in turn gave a deeply emotional performance.

In fact, if there’s an MVP in this episode, it’s Blackthorne as Beat Cop Lance, because he straight up Diggled this episode. (To “Diggle” something means “to make the most of one’s very limited screentime by being amazing.” I’m determined to make this an actual verb.) He had three key scenes: One in the interrogation room, one with Oliver, and one at the end where he debriefs with Laurel. The scene with Oliver, in particular, shows his growth as a character.

It also supports my theory that Lance knows Oliver is The Arrow, just because I want it to be true.

And Diggle also Diggled this episode big time.

But let’s get into the meat of the episode: Laurel is busted for illegal possession of narcotics. She’s busted because she’s getting too close to Blood, who kills his mother in the cold open. She went to Hooded Oliver for help, and they went on a wild goose chase for a file that would prove Blood killed his father, but the file turns out to be empty.

Present-day Slade gets on Blood’s case for being sloppy, so Blood has Daly ransack Laurel’s apartment with a warrant, which is how they find the drugs. This, plus the fact that Laurel’s kidnapper turns out to be Daly himself, effectively discredits Laurel’s increasingly screechy theory that Blood is a criminal mastermind, as everyone from her own father to ADA Adam think she’s lost credibility. In the end, she loses her job, as well as the trust of her closest ally: The Arrow.

But things aren’t looking so rosy for Laurel from a backstory standpoint, either. Sara tells a story about how she had a crush on Oliver back before he dated Laurel, and that her dear sister called the cops to bust a party so that Sara would be grounded. A month later, Laurel and Oliver were dating.

It certainly doesn’t excuse what Sara did, going on the Gambit and sleeping with her sister’s boyfriend, but… it certainly provides the motivation. And if the details are to be believed — if Laurel truly busted that party just to get Sara grounded so that she could take her shot at Oliver — it certainly changes the commentary on the elder Lance sister, doesn’t it?

The island flashbacks also explored Sara’s Stockholm Syndrome with Ivo, but she manages to separate herself from him at the end of the episode, just as he vows to find her and end her. Sara turns to Oliver and says they should find Slade. Hopefully they find him soon.

Elsewhere, Roy is dealing with his superhuman strength by trying to use it to make the city better. That involves getting Thea to dress up Sin in her “first date outfit” which of course makes Sin look like a prostitute. She’s able to lure someone called the “Starling Slasher” into Roy’s trap so that he can apprehend the guy, but Roy ends up losing control and beating the guy to within an inch of his life. The resulting angst sends Roy running from a concerned Thea, and he sinks against a hospital wall and cries.

Thea later tells Oliver about the man Roy nearly beat to death, and that finally compels Oliver to go to Roy and offer to train him to control his emotions. I’m not sure how Oliver knows how to do that, but I do think it will involve Oliver finally revealing his true identity to Roy in the near future.

Finally, after Blood has successfully discredited Laurel, sacrificed Daly, and taken the heat off of himself, Slade has a logical response: slaying all four of Blood’s henchmen. He’s wearing his Deathstroke mask and warns Blood that if he fails again, he will be the next to die. It’s pretty much the greatest thing ever.

None of that compares to the greatest scene of the entire episode:

That’s a scene you need to listen to in order to enjoy. Never has the question “What color are your shoes?” sounded so threatening.

Next week: Roy gets house trained! I mean… Roy gets trained!

January 16, 2014 Kerry

Shrapnel All Over the Place

**This post contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Arrow, “Blast Radius.”**

Oliver Queen is really stressed out, y’all. He’s worried about this Mirakuru that has resurfaced in Starling City, he has to keep an eye on Roy, he has to track down the man who is blowing up buildings all over the city, and His Girl Wednesday is still out of town tending to a lightning-struck Barry Allen. But he’s totally not jealous, okay? He’s just stressed!

It’s been five weeks since Roy technically died after being injected with the Mirakuru. Oliver’s been spending that time stringing up petty criminals and questioning them about the whereabouts of Skull Face Man. It’s probably earning him a reputation as a crazy person, but Oliver doesn’t really care — Diggle points out that Oliver’s got a bit of tunnel vision about this, and Oliver doesn’t deny it.

Barry’s been in a coma for all that time, and presumably, he will stay that way until his pilot airs in the fall. Whether Felicity will continue to split her time between Starling and Central City remains to be seen, but it’s still an effective way to raise Oliver’s hackles about Barry in general. The thing is, he’s not being jealous so much as he’s being selfish about Felicity’s situation; he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t sit at someone’s hospital bed as they recuperate, instead he’s out hunting down the jerk who put them there. He can’t wrap his head around the idea of spending day after day by someone who is comatose when there are lives to be saved elsewhere. In a way, it’s a sad commentary on Oliver’s current state of being. Will he ever get to the point where he can just press pause on the vigilante-ing and go sit by someone’s bed, just to be there?

I think it’s another good example of the perspective Felicity brings to the team. Diggle is a lot like Oliver, he’d rather be out in the trenches, bringing in the bad guys and making the city safer. Felicity still has the ability to put aside this aspect of her life and just be a person who cares about someone else, and I think that’s something that Oliver (and sometimes Diggle) needs to see.

Diggle: “I’ve just never seen you spooked like this before.”
Oliver: “That should tell you something.”

And with that, we flash back to the island. For once, I was looking forward to these flashbacks more than the present-day plot. It turns out… not a whole heck of a lot happens in this episode, island-wise. They bury Shado, which is so sad to watch because Slade’s basically weeping. He’s also not hiding his feelings anymore, and it’s likely a combination of the grief and the Mirakuru. Still, for now, he’s Slade at his very core, and he hands Oliver the Hood that we know so well.

And doesn’t that just break your heart? It breaks mine. Oliver is distraught over Slade not knowing the truth about Shado’s death, but Sara wisely tells him that dropping that sort of thing on Slade right now is not the best idea. Turns out, Sara’s done the research on the Mirakuru. The Japanese tested the serum on hundreds of people, and “the people who died? They were the lucky ones. The ones who survived, they were deformed. Either their bones or their minds. They became someone else.”

That’s sad for me, I got very attached to Slade, but I know this is also what I signed up for when I wanted him to survive the serum. As they wander around the island, Slade undergoes an obvious change: he becomes rage-filled and hell-bent on taking out Ivo, and it ends with him grabbing Oliver around the neck and lifting him up. It takes Sara actually beating him with a huge tree branch to get him to drop Oliver, and that’s when it becomes clear that Slade was not himself in that moment. Later that night, Ivo contacts them and says he plans to blow up the whole island, and they discover Slade has run away with the Mirakuru. That’s about it for the island.

In the present, Oliver is publicly endorsing Alderman Blood’s campaign for Mayor, while Laurel is pretending to date Blood in order to get information on him. She suspects he isn’t who he says he is, and she later tells Oliver that Blood reminds her a lot of him in that way.

Laurel actually has a pretty solid storyline in this episode! Her brand of non-emotion is a particularly good match for Blood, whose underlying sinister nature makes their scenes compelling. Laurel’s rightfully picking up on the thread of secrecy, but she’s hampered by her growing addiction to narcotics. Blood feeds her a sob story about his upbringing (his abusive father was shot by his mother, who ran away and left him an orphan) which she seems to buy until she sees the name “Maya Resik” on a bill on his desk.

She goes to her dad (who is telling Corrupt Cop Daly that he can’t find his pain meds, leading one to believe Laurel is swiping her dad’s pain pills) and asks him to dig up information on Maya Resik. Beat Cop Lance agrees just to humor her, but later he reveals that Maya is Blood’s aunt, who is in a psychiatric facility. Blood actually gets Lance’s seal of approval, just because on paper he sounds good, but he also advises Laurel to stop looking for reasons for this relationship not to work out.

To her credit, Laurel goes with her gut. (It is part of her characterization, to be so driven to find the truth that she loses sight of everything else. It’s actually refreshing to see her go back to that.) At the end of the episode, she goes to visit Maya, who grabs Laurel and warns her that Blood is a bad, bad man.

Anyway, back at the political rally at the beginning of the episode, Oliver asks Thea how Roy’s doing, and she basically says he’s fine.

Then someone blows up a building and all hell breaks loose.

Thank goodness Felicity gets a news alert about the bomb and arrives at Queen Consolidated bright and early the next morning, much to Oliver’s poorly-concealed delight.

He woodenly asks how Barry’s doing while Diggle makes sympathetic and observant faces at both of them. Felicity says Barry’s “still sleeping” because “‘coma’ sounds… not fun.” Then she ends the whole awkward exchange by going to contact Beat Cop Lance.

They meet on a rooftop again, because Oliver likes to be up high where he can see the city I guess, and Lance even comments on the absurdity. He gets close enough to The Arrow to ask about the mask, which just strengthens my hopes that he knows who it is under that hood. Plausible deniability is a strong motivator. Just ask Blair Waldorf.

Anyway, Lance brought over the sample that Oliver had requested, but not without his own request: phone records for everyone in the department. Oliver is incredulous at the idea that there might be a leak in the department, but as we know, Lance is right. It sucks that he’s finally becoming a good cop right when he’s doling out bad fatherly advice to Laurel.

“Your blonde friend, she’s pretty good with computers.”

Aw, Lance. She’s gonna blush when she hears that.

Oliver’s answer is interrupted by another explosion, which looks like it’s only a few blocks away. Felicity traces the detonator and Oliver chases it down on his motorcycle. But much like that episode where the bad guy was underground, Felicity loses the signal and Oliver nearly crashes into a bus.

Now, for some perspective: We have no idea what happens with Slade now that he’s been injected with the Mirakuru. It’s bad, clearly, because it has Oliver jumping at loud noises and raging without warning. To him, these are high stakes that could end up changing not just the city, but the world. To him, it’s not too ridiculous to expect the same sort of urgency from his team.

Except… he hasn’t told his team anything about this. For whatever reason, he’s keeping the exact facts about the Mirakuru (and Slade) to himself, so neither Digg nor Felicity know the gravity of the situation. So this might explain Oliver’s mindset in this next scene, but it does not excuse it at all, because in the end, it’s on him for not being forthcoming. (And it makes me worry about just what happened on that island.)

Oliver comes back to the foundry and snaps that Felicity was supposed to be the expert on electronics and tracking. Diggle is immediately on alert as Felicity comes back with an “Excuse me?” but Oliver’s on a tear. “People are dying. So I would like you to pull your head out of Central City and get back in the game.” She’s not having any of this, as she tells Oliver in no uncertain terms to get his head out of his ass.

How she managed not to punch Oliver right in the stubble, I’ll never know. Maybe I’m just more prone to violence than she is?

Diggle is such a calming presence in these situations. He gently but firmly tells Oliver that his theory of distraction is complete bull, and then he drops the truth bomb:

Oh Diggle. So much smarter and more observant than the rest of us.

Alderman Blood announces a rally at a downtown plaza, which Oliver sees as a suicide mission. He hoods up and goes to Blood’s office to try to convince him to call it off, but Blood refuses. It scares him, though — he reaches for a concealed gun, fearing that The Arrow has finally figured out who is behind the skull mask.

Oliver and Felicity continue to bicker the next day, and Diggle asks, “Is this how it’s gonna be with you two from now on?” But Felicity’s had a breakthrough — she knows who the bomber is. He’s active on forums and message boards, and he goes by the name Shrapnel. She traces his IP, and Oliver heads that way as Diggle goes to the rally.

At the toy store that Shrapnel owns, Oliver’s trapped by lasers as a recording tells him that the plaza is rigged with explosives. He contacts his team, and Diggle sets off to find the detonator as Felicity works to help Oliver out of the laser trap. “Are you sure you want me doing this? My head might not exactly be in the game.” He yells at her, but she points out a fuse box for him to shoot.

They get to the rally but just as they find the detonator in the sound system, Shrapnel appears and shoots Diggle in the shoulder. The shot causes chaos, and Shrapnel throws the detonator into the crowd. Oliver shoots it in midair and it explodes, causing a light tower to fall straight toward Moira, but she’s saved by Roy, who takes the hit himself. He escapes without a scratch.

Oliver corners Shrapnel, who says he has explosives all over the city, but Oliver simply cuts the wire to the detonator and punches him out. That was easy!

Thea’s figured out that Roy’s hiding something, he’s not scratched from the incident at the rally and he has no marks from when he broke a box of glasses during his and Thea’s makeout the other day. He runs away before Thea can ask too many questions, but she’s the inquisitive type, so he has that to look forward to next week.

Diggle’s wound is “just a through-and-through, a walk in the park,” he might as well have said “Tis but a scratch!” After Diggle leaves, Oliver considers Felicity and then does the one thing we’ve never really seen him do before: apologize.

He actually apologizes twice.

But it gets even better!

But he still wasn’t done!

He relies on her, on them, and even though we all knew it, it’s nice to see him finally admit it to himself and out loud! And it’s so sweet and real that even though Felicity might let him off the hook just a little too quickly, considering how he treated her the day before, it’s a fitting reward for the vulnerability he just showed.

He even talks about Barry without grimacing or clenching his fists!

Maybe he is. And maybe that’s an incredibly considerate thing for Oliver to say to her. She gets all science-y about dreams and hallucinations during comas, but Oliver puts his hand on her shoulder to stop her babbling and reinforce the nice thing he just did, and she smiles and thanks him.

It’s basically the second-sexiest thing to happen with shoulders on TV.

His last errand of the night is to visit Blood once more, to congratulate him on his rally. Blood offers an alliance of sorts — that they work together to save the city. How are these not red flags to Oliver? The last time he met someone who talked like that, it turned out the guy actually meant to save the city by using an earthquake to wipe out half of it. But maybe he’s shaking his hand in a “keep your enemies closer” kind of way.

Next week: Laurel takes her suspicions about Blood to Oliver. This should go well!

December 25, 2013 Kerry

Favorites of 2013: TV Characters

Merry Christmas (or as Penny from Miranda would say, “Happy What I Call Christmas”) to all of our dear readers who celebrate the holiday. Today is all about characters, so here are our favorite TV Characters of 2013!

Abbie Mills and Jenny Mills

{Sleepy Hollow}

Jenny: Corbin said, that one day, you’d be back. When you were ready. Asked me to find a way to forgive you. I said I didn’t think I could.
Abbie: I’m sorry that it took me so long to find you.

The Mills sisters, despite being estranged for years, manage to make working through their past issues while saving the world look manageable. That they’re quicker witted than their male counterparts is simply a bonus. —Moff

Alice Morgan

{Luther}

Yes, she may be a murderer, but her loyalty to Luther is wonderful. She is an intelligent woman, and she always makes an episode of Luther even better. —Becca

April Ludgate

{Parks and Recreation}

“Leslie said it was a ‘come as you were in the nineties’ party, I assumed it was the 1690s.”

April has slowly grown up over the past few years, and it has become more obvious over this last season. She still has her Keep Away demeanor, but the loyalty she has for her friends is genuine. —Becca

Carlton Lassiter

{Psych}

“I have one speed, and it is full throttle.”

Lassiter is finally a happy and well-adjusted adult, thanks in large part to Juliet and in small parts to Shawn and Gus. He’s more relaxed, open-minded, and willing to compromise than he was when we first met him, and he’s become an even better cop thanks to Shawn forcing him to stay sharp. —Kerry

Diane Buckley

{Trophy Wife}

“Oh, relax, it’s just some light catfishing.”

The wives of Trophy Wife are sort of like the Hogwarts houses: who you relate to says a lot about your personality. Most people seem to favor Jackie, the second ex-wife of leading man Bradley Whitford, but me, I’m a Diane girl through and through. (I’m also a Hufflepuff, if you were wondering.) She clearly loves her kids, but she also wants the best for them. She is passionate but calculating, strong but practical, and above all, she gets stuff done. —Kerry

Donna Paulsen

{Suits}

“If you were ever lucky enough to have me, you wouldn’t want to share.”

This season of Suits did some not-so-great stuff with Donna, but she still came out of it looking classier and stronger than any other character on television. —Kerry

Felicity Smoak

{Arrow}

“Never meet your heroes, right?”

It says something about an actor when a one-time appearance turns into a recurring role. It’s even more remarkable when that actor goes from recurring to series regular. The quirky, bright IT girl has won several hearts, saved countless lives, and helps humanize Oliver Queen. —Becca

Jemma Simmons

{Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.}

“I can’t be a part of your bad-girl shenanigans. I like following the rules and doing what’s expected of me. It makes me feel nice.”

When the show started off, the focus was on Fitz-Simmons, but the show gradually began to separate them. Now they are Fitz and Simmons, and Simmons has my heart. The episode “F.Z.Z.T” made me cry (which I hardly do) because of the way Elizabeth Henstridge plays her role. —Becca

Joan Watson

{Elementary}

“I think it’s sad that you’ve given up. I think you have a lot to share, if you cared to. I shouldn’t be the only one who knows you.”

Joan Watson set herself apart from traditional representations of the World’s Greatest Sidekick in season one, but she’s quickly becoming the fulcrum around which the show revolves without being anyone’s girlfriend, wife, mother or mistress. That’s nice to see both for Dr. Watson and for a woman in a mostly male ensemble. —Moff

John Diggle

{Arrow}

“I’ve been meaning to tell you, it really weirds me out to no end the way you refer to yourself in third person like that.”

Any scene with Diggle in it is a good scene. —Becca

Leslie Knope

{Parks and Recreation}

“No one achieves anything alone.”

It’s difficult to picture a scenario in which Leslie Knope doesn’t top my list of favorite characters. —Kerry

Marcus Bell

{Elementary}

Sherlock: “Have you always been this observant? I’m asking that quite sincerely. I was wondering if exposure to my methods had helped you in any way.”
Bell: “Actually, before you came along, I had never closed a case before, neither had the rest of the department. Most of us were thinking of packing up, leaving, letting the city fend for itself.”

Bell is such a great detective that Sherlock has taken to referring to all other detectives as “Not Bell.” Two of my favorite episodes of Elementary are Bell-centric ones (“Details” and “Tremors”) and I always look forward to his one liners to Sherlock. —Kerry

Oliver Queen

{Arrow}

“The world doesn’t work anymore. It broke a long time ago, but it was like you were the only one who noticed. That makes you angry, and you’re afraid that that anger is going to burn you up inside if you have to live in the world one second longer knowing that you could do something to fix it.”

Oliver’s really come into his own since Tommy’s death, choosing now to save the city through non-murderous means. He still lives two (sometimes three) lives but now that he’s more removed from Laurel, he’s more three-dimensional and sympathetic. He’s still struggling to trust people, and thanks to the flashbacks to the island, we’re starting to realize why. —Kerry

Robin Scherbatsky

{How I Met Your Mother}

“I’m Sparkles, bitch!”

I love Robin, and I relate to her so much this season. I just wish we didn’t have to see every excruciating hour of her wedding weekend, but hey, that’s not her fault. —Kerry

Rosalee Calvert

{Grimm}

Rosalee Calvert may have started as a one-off, but the decision to make her a series regular was inspired: She’s a source of wisdom, knowledge and reason on a show that routinely asks its audience to suspend disbelief. —Moff

Sara Lance

{Arrow}

“No woman should ever suffer at the hands of men.”

Sara Lance managed, in a handful of episodes, to make a memorable impression as a variation on a classic comic book character normally inhabited by her sister, Laurel. But Sara made the role of Black Canary her own, and I can’t wait to see her return to Starling City. —Moff

Sarah Manning

{Orphan Black}

“Art, if you’re hearing this, you found a body. It’s not Beth. It’s me. My name is Sarah Manning and you’re about the only person I trust to figure the whole thing out.”

Sarah is the most practical and level-headed of the clones, focused solely on keeping her daughter, Kira, safe. I think she’s my favorite because her main instinct is survival. She’ll do anything to protect the ones she loves. —Kerry

Slade Wilson

{Arrow}

“I’m sorry… for not telling you how I really feel.”

Former A.S.I.S. agent, island survivor, unlucky in love, and that accent? What’s not to love?! —Kerry

The Cannon

{Back in the Game}

“No, Gannons, we inflict pain, and then we laugh!”

Rude, brash, drunk, and definitely not in touch with his feelings, The Cannon was an oddity on TV this season. There was no one quite like him, because while he said and did all these terrible things, he knows it’s his fault that he’s unhappy. He clearly loves his daughter and grandson, so I’m sad we won’t get to see what happens with them. —Kerry

Tinker Bell

{Once Upon a Time}

“I may have lost my wings, but I haven’t lost my dignity.”

There hasn’t been a whole lot for me to love on this season of Once; I was never a fan of Peter Pan in any of its various forms, so the idea of a whole arc set in Neverland made me wary. I especially dreaded the introduction of Tinker Bell, because I was sure this show would ruin that sort of complex female character. While this Tink has a backstory firmly entrenched in the Enchanted Forest, she still manages to be the best side character to join the show this season. The actress who plays her, Rose McIver, deserves most of the credit. —Kerry

Later today… Our favorite supporting characters from movies!

December 12, 2013 Kerry

“What’s the matter, kid? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

This post contains spoilers for the mid-season finale of Arrow, “Three Ghosts.”

When we last saw our heroes, Felicity was begging a recently-drugged Barry Allen to “Save my friend,” as Oliver lay unconscious on a table in the foundry. He’d been injected with two different needles during his fight with a scary superhuman, and while Diggle had frantically dialled 911, Felicity had made the executive decision to call Barry instead.

You know how in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Toula’s dad thinks Windex cures everything? Did you think that was ridiculous? Well then you’re not prepared for Barry Allen, who cures Oliver with rat poison. Diggle, the entire time, defers to Felicity to make all of the calls, and she decides that rat poison is the way to go. Diggle’s implicit trust in Felicity with regard to Oliver’s life is so fantastic, I can’t even put it into words.

When Oliver wakes up, he’s livid. Not because Barry, you know, technically poisoned him, but because Felicity revealed Oliver’s secret to Barry. It’s probably 50% disorientation from his current condition, 40% jealousy because it’s Barry, and 10% justified because Oliver is an intensely private person. He tells Felicity that he only brought in her and Digg after he did his research on them, but honestly, Felicity only needed to retort “Helena!” to shut down that line of self-righteous yelling. As Oliver and Felicity bicker, Diggle’s in the background rolling his eyes like “I told her he would react this way, no one ever listens…” and Barry tries to intervene on Felicity’s behalf: “You don’t have to thank me, but you should thank her instead of being kind of a jerk.”

You just know Oliver’s picturing at least seven different ways to disable Barry in that moment. Really, Oliver is a jerk the entire time, but it’s also great to see him be emotional and unreserved around Felicity, and it’s nice to see her hand him his behind in return. Oliver stomps away without a thank you or an apology, and Felicity quips to Barry, “Never meet your heroes, right?”

Oliver “Scrooge” Queen has also forgotten it’s Christmas for the second year in a row. Last year’s festivities ended with his stepfather getting kidnapped, so this year is bound to go better, right? Well not for Oliver Scrooge, who is in for some pretty trippy hallucinations thanks to ol’ Barry and his rat poison; italics are always necessary. (Okay, I’ll level with you: it turns out that hallucinations are psychological, but still, it probably started with the rat poison, right?)

This episode is surprisingly well-crafted. On the surface, it’s a nonstop thrill ride of action, suspense, agony, joy, and even some hilarity. It’s kind of like a regular Arrow episode on steroids, or on the Mirakuru that Blood’s injecting into everyone. But when you break it down and consider that Oliver Scrooge was visited by three “ghosts” at Christmastime, the structure becomes a little more elegant.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is Shado, who we see is killed in the flashbacks to the island. Professor Ivo, with no explanation, tells Oliver to choose who will live: Sara or Shado. Oliver can’t choose, so when Ivo turns his gun on Sara, Oliver leaps in front of her, sacrificing himself. Ivo takes that as Oliver’s choice and shoots Shado instead.

Today, as Oliver recovers from the effects of the mysterious injections and the rat poison, he begins hallucinating, and the first phantom to appear is the most inexplicable death in Oliver’s past: Shado. She begs Oliver to stop fighting, to put down the bow and take off the hood, or else everyone he loves will die. We also got confirmation that Oliver wears the green hood to honor Yao Fei and Shado, which is unbelievably sentimental for him. I need a moment…

The Ghost of Christmas Future is Slade, who first appears on a rooftop as Hooded Oliver is talking to Beat Cop Lance. He only stands there silently the first time, but it’s enough to freak out Oliver. Later, Oliver’s shooting tennis balls in the foundry when HalluciSlade catches an arrow and snarks, “What’s the matter, kid? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

In the flashbacks, Slade wakes from the injection fully healed from the burns on his face, and he roars outside to save Shado. He’s completely primal as he breaks guns in half and rips out hearts, but he sobers when he finds Shado shot dead. He vows to Oliver and Sara that “Whoever did this to her is going to suffer.” In the present, HalluciSlade yells at Oliver for not being a hero, friend, or brother. He harbors a lot of bitterness against Oliver, saying “The island didn’t make you strong, kid. It revealed you to be weak.” (It’s a fantastic scene for Manu Bennett, who has tears in his eyes throughout.) Oliver ends up “fighting” him and ruining the lair.

The fun thing about this particular “ghost” is that Slade is actually alive and well and living in Starling City. He’s the Ghost of Christmas Future because he has a lot of nasty stuff planned for Oliver and his friends, stuff that will run the course of the second half of the season.

“I am going to tear everything that he cares about away from him. Destroy those who choose to follow him. Corrupt those he loves. Once he has lost everyone and everything he values, I will drive an arrow through his eye.”

Fans got really excited that the camera panned over Felicity when Slade said “Corrupt those he loves.” After sweeping up the lair and sharpening his arrowheads for battle, Oliver asks Diggle if he’s lost his mind. Diggle, ever the soldier, says that we’re all a little crazy anyway. He tells Oliver he’s just suffering from survivor’s guilt, something Digg himself has gone through, and he advises Oliver to listen to what the ghosts are trying to tell him.

This scene is lost in the hustle and bustle of the rest of the episode but it’s probably the most important thing that’s happening for Oliver on a personal level. In a lot of ways, Digg is Oliver’s present-day Slade: he’s military trained, he has an instinctual understanding of Oliver, and he’s Oliver’s closest ally. All along, we’d assumed Oliver had lost Shado and Slade to death and nothing more, but now that Slade’s back with a vengeance, Oliver’s friendship with and trust in Diggle is even more noteworthy. Oliver is at his most vulnerable when he asks Digg how to get rid of his ghosts, and Digg, true to form, handled it like a pro. These little moments are going to become more and more important as we get closer to the day that Oliver discovers Slade is alive.

The Ghost of Christmas Present was a terrible, powerful punch of feelings to the viewers. Oliver ambushes a masked Brother Blood and his cronies just a minute too late, as they’ve already injected Roy, whom they captured earlier, with the Mirakuru serum. He dies as Oliver tries to fight off Cyrus Gold, and that’s when Tommy Merlyn appears.

Tommy says the things Oliver needs to hear: that he’s a hero, that he beat the island and his father, and that he needs to fight back. He’s the Ghost of Christmas Present because he represents the normal life that Oliver should be fighting for. Shado reminded Oliver of everything he’s lost in the past, Slade reminded Oliver of everything that’s at stake, but Tommy reminded Oliver that he needs to fight every day because there’s no other way to survive. Oliver jumps up and fights off Gold as Blood runs away. He starts yelling the same sorts of platitudes at Roy, telling him he’s a strong kid and that he needs to fight, and Roy finally wakes up… with superhuman strength, presumably.

Does Oliver ultimately learn the lessons that his three ghosts were setting out to teach him? I think so. Then again, they were all hallucinations, so maybe Oliver just needs to lay off the eggnog for a while. I hear Barry spiked it with rat poison.

Outside of the demons that Oliver’s fighting, there’s a lot going on in Starling. Originally, Roy was recovering from the arrow shot to the leg in the privacy of Thea’s room. Oliver helps out (with a rather sweet and awkward “Hi” to Sin, suddenly I need them to be in more scenes together) by pulling out the arrow and then telling those meddling kids to stay away from that blasted vigilante. His poker face is a thing of beauty throughout the entire scene. Later, Roy wakes in the Haunted Queen Mansion after his ordeal with the Mirakuru, and his leg is fully healed. Oliver tells Felicity and Digg that they need to keep an eye on Roy for the time being.

Oliver also hands over his information on Cyrus Gold to Beat Cop Lance after a failed recon mission by Diggle. Unfortunately, Lance recruits the wrong people to accompany him on the bust–namely Officer Daly, Blood’s right-hand man. The bust ends up being an ambush, and everyone except Lance is killed, including his former partner, Lucas Hilton. Hooded Oliver visits Lance at the hospital and apologizes for the deaths, but Lance sagely tells him “Not every death in this city is on you.” It’s the nicest thing Lance has ever said to him. (I really, really hope it turns out that Lance has known it’s Oliver under that hood since “Broken Dolls.”)

And yes, Laurel was floating on the periphery of this episode, barely crying over her father’s injuries, chastising Oliver for not decking his Haunted House halls with boughs of holly, falalalala lalalala, and awkwardly hugging Alderman Blood in the hallway of the hospital. Where every other character got a great setup for the back half of the season, Laurel got nothing.

Felicity and Barry share some really great scenes, the best of which is when Barry tells Felicity that if she likes Oliver, he would understand why. “I just have a little experience with liking someone who doesn’t see you the same way.” Felicity never concedes the point that she likes Oliver, but she and Barry seem to have a sort of mutual understanding of where they stand.

She also has some rather intense scenes with Oliver; when he prepares to go after Gold, Felicity begs him not to.

Barry looks like a sad puppy as Oliver walks past him, but he doesn’t let it deter him later when he calls Felicity and asks her to give him a ring if she ever decides that Oliver Queen is not the man for her. Felicity, meanwhile, is incredibly relieved that Oliver is back safe and sound from his encounter with the superhuman.

Thanks to a combination of a malfunction with the oft-discussed particle accelerator, a bolt of lightning, and a mess of chemicals, we see Barry go from Barry Allen, Fake CSI, to Barry Allen: Probably The Flash. Don’t worry, bro, I’m sure some rat poison will set you right in no time.

That brings the count of potential superhumans up to three, with only two of them potentially being on The Arrow’s side. We already knew that Roy and Barry were destined to be superheroes, but the fact remains that Oliver is still just a mortal man who is a good shot and happens to like parkour. The danger now is that he’s descending into a world where other people have “powers” and he does not… unless you count the rat poison, of course.

Finally, earlier in the episode Barry had asked Oliver why he wears grease paint instead of a mask, and Oliver snapped, “Find me a mask that conforms perfectly to my face and doesn’t affect my ability to aim while I’m on the run.” Nice try, Oliver, but at the end of the day, you’re still wearing eyeshadow. Just own it. Anyway, the episode ends with Oliver opening a Christmas gift from Barry: a mask!

Felicity puts it on and Oliver asks how he looks. “Like a hero,” she says. And she’s right: Tommy said so.

No new episodes until January 15th, but I think this one gives us enough material to last until then, don’t you?

November 7, 2013 Kerry

Like a Bird on a Wire

**This post contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Arrow, “League of Assassins.”**

Sara Lance can’t sleep. Possibly it’s because she’s trying to sleep in the Haunted Queen Mansion, in an actual California King bed with silk sheets, while Haunted Oliver Queen watches basketball like it’s homework in a room I’ve never seen before. Or maybe she can’t sleep because we started this episode with a flashback-slash-dream of the night the Queen’s Gambit sank, in which Sara survived the debacle and still wakes up breathing heavily from the memory. (Perhaps, upon spending your first night in Haunted Queen Mansion, you re-live memories of your most recent shipwreck. After all, Oliver’s first night back home was marked by him taking his mother to the ground after she woke him from his own shipwreck nightmare. If you’ve never been in a shipwreck, then that’s one less #whitepeopleproblems for you to deal with.)

Sara talks to a surprisingly relaxed and barefoot Oliver about insomnia and the weird reasons she has for not telling Beat Cop Lance and DUI Laurel about her existence. Oliver admits that the Lances were less than thrilled to see him upon his return a year ago, but things aren’t so bad these days. Sara remarks that she can’t believe Oliver and Laurel didn’t pick up where they left off, then ends the scene with, “I guess some things, you know, are just better left in the past.”

{Was Sara friends with Tommy? Does she mourn his death? I often wonder about this.}

Speaking of the past! Laurel isn’t done making terrible decisions, because a DUI (and the blasé attitude regarding said DUI) weren’t bad enough! That’s not rock bottom! No! Now, Laurel is assisting on the one case she probably should’ve avoided: State vs. Queen. Moira’s lawyer argues that Laurel’s presence is a conflict of interest (it is) as Oliver gives Laurel the most tragically confused expression ever seen on a face that does not belong to a puppy.

This was almost exactly his expression. No one actually made gifs of it, though, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Three-quarters of that expression has to be playacting, to get a reaction out of Laurel, but I bet at least part of him is genuinely surprised at her coldness.

It’s nice that Laurel is doing her best to get Moira off of the death penalty, instead advocating for a plea deal that gives her a life sentence with a possibility of parole, but it still doesn’t account for her poor decision to join this case. As Moira’s lawyer later points out, there’s enough evidence and material to make a case that Moira was acting under duress, therefore there’s no need to take a plea deal. I could probably believe that Laurel purposefully asked to be on this case in order to help Moira in any way she possibly can, if it weren’t for the scene immediately following the plea deal.

Oliver corners Laurel in the prison yard (as you do) and she insists that she didn’t have the power to back out of this case, because it was assigned to her. She then points out the plea bargain and it makes it seem like she’s not doing it to help Moira, she’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation. We’re also supposed to believe that despite Laurel’s well-touted newness and her lack of courtroom experience, she is the only person available to assist the D.A. on this high-profile and far-reaching case. There’s just so much about this show that the writers get right, it’s frustrating that they contrive the stuff around Laurel to make her seem a lot worse than she has any right to be. Even now, hours after watching the episode, I’m having trouble believing Laurel Lance couldn’t stand up for herself and say, “Hey, I shouldn’t be on this case, I’m practically Moira’s surrogate daughter.”

Oliver asks Laurel again if she’s all right, and Laurel shuts him down again, which means she has absolutely no right to whine about how alone and forgotten she is in the foreseeable future, right? Okay, glad we’re in agreement.

Sara’s hanging out in the Haunted Queen Mansion front entryway, where anyone could see her, reminiscing about that time she was floating on a door Rose DeWitt Bukater-style before she was rescued by a formidable-looking ship. Her reverie is interrupted by Oliver, who struck out in his first attempt to connect with a Lance sister, but this time he’s bound and determined. He asks again why she’s keeping herself a secret, and they try to get down to the heart of the matter, but Oliver’s will gets weak and his thoughts seem to scatter, but he thinks it’s about forgiveness, even if, even if, some dude crashes through his second-floor decorative window and interrupts them.

Oliver thinks it’s Malcolm Merlyn, back from the dead, but really it’s some other sword-wielding psychopath in the same outfit. This episode pretty much confirms that Malcolm was at least trained by the League of Assassins and might have even been part of it, though I think The Undertaking was a rogue event. Anyway, Oliver and Sara fight off the baddie in a spectacularly choreographed scene that basically ruins half of the downstairs of Haunted Queen Mansion, and they don’t even kill the guy to make all the damage worth it. Good thing Thea never comes home anymore.

Oliver and Sara go to hang out in the lair like proper superheroes and Sara mentions that she remembers first seeing Oliver’s hood on Shado. That means Shado has probably survived the bombings on the island, that remains to be seen. It’s also interesting that Oliver hasn’t invested in a new hood–that one’s lasted his four years on the island plus his past year of Hood adventures, but before Shado or Oliver wore that hood, it belonged to Yao Fei. I’d like to know the hood’s material, for future reference.

Then Sara meets Team Arrow, and oh, it’s glorious. Felicity rambles about being glad Sara is alive, and Sara can only reply with, “You’re cute” in the most non-condescending way possible. (That phrase will always have a note of condescension, but really, when Sara said it, it was the bare minimum.) Before the two ladies can be more adorable together, lest Oliver’s brain explode, Oliver informs his team that Haunted Queen Mansion was breached by a Malcolm lookalike. Diggle’s immediately concerned (where has he been all episode? I’m picturing him listlessly driving the Queen cars around Starling City in order to keep up his cover) and confirms that everyone on this show believes Malcolm Merlyn to be dead. Oliver then hands Felicity a soil sample (“Gee, I didn’t get you a bag of dirt!”) and asks her to run tests on it. We’re veering into Sherlock Holmes territory here, but if anyone can handle it, it’s Felicity Smoak.

Sara takes this opportunity to reveal that Copycat Merlyn was actually after her, because surprise! he’s part of the League of Assassins, and surprise! so is she. Oliver freaks out, because apparently he’s familiar with the League, and Diggle expresses his surprise that it’s a real thing; he’d heard it was an urban legend while he was in Afghanistan, “An ancient sect of assassins, deadly warriors, that killed and vanished like ghosts.” By the time Diggle’s done talking, he’s grasping the seriousness of the situation while Oliver’s fighting tears again.

Copycat Merlyn’s name is actually Al-Owal, which sounds like “LOL” whenever anyone besides Sara says it, and he’s coming to get her because she left, “And there’s only one way that you leave the League.” She describes a gruesome mission she did on behalf of the League and emphasizes that her family could never accept her for what she’s done.

Oliver runs off to Iron Heights Prison, where he finds out that Moira’s going to accept the plea. Thea is beside herself with anger, but Oliver and Moira have a very sweet scene about secret-keeping. Back at the lair, Sara’s apologizing to Felicity for possibly upsetting her, but Felicity’s basically like “Eh, this is old hat for me, I found that guy bleeding in my backseat, and weren’t you here that time I was bait for that creepy doll guy? Let’s be real, Canary, I’m pretty tough even if I can’t get out of gym memberships in a timely manner.” I share that trait with Felicity, by the way.

Sara thanks Felicity for “not making me feel like what I am,” which I suspect is very revealing in Oliver’s relationship with Felicity as well; she even brings that out in Diggle. Sara adds that Oliver’s lucky to have friends like Felicity and Diggle, because he hasn’t always had great friends. At first you think she means back in the day, like Tommy, but no, she’s probably talking about Slade and/or Shado. Oliver comes storming in at that point, asking Felicity to direct him toward the nearest punchable person (Sebastian Blood isn’t in this episode, otherwise I’d suggest him) and she points him toward an abandoned plant that is probably the home base for League of Assassin-type misadventures. Sara rightly points out that Oliver will get killed if he goes alone, but instead of bringing his bodyguard who always comes equipped with a firearm, Oliver opts to bring Black Canary, who comes with a collapsible staff. This may not seem like an oversight but…

Oliver sneaks up on Al-Owal and thwangs an arrow right to the back of his head. Oliver was seriously going to shoot him silent-style, with no fanfare, no song and dance, no ominous voice-changer decrees of “You have failed this calculus exam!” So it’s lucky for us that Al-Owal straight up catches the arrow sight-unseen and smirks. “Arrows! Such an ineffective projectile!” If Oliver had brought Diggle, that would’ve gone like this: “Arrows! Such an ineffective–oh God! You shot me! You shot me in the stomach! Who shoots a man in the stomach when he’s monologuing? It’s professional courtesy, always let the villain finish his monologue! Crap! Do you know how much my medical insurance is going to skyrocket now? I have to buy my own plan, you know, the League of Assassins is a small business! Thanks a lot, Obama!”

Oliver and Sara flank Al-Owal, who tells Sara he’s bringing her back to Ra’s al-Ghul, or else. He also has fellow Assassins hanging out in the rafters, waiting for their cue to ambush Sara and Oliver. The two zany superheroes barely escape the expertly-choreographed fight with their lives, and as Oliver lifts them out, Al-Owal threatens the other Lances if Sara doesn’t come willingly. She should’ve left Starling a long time ago to avoid such a danger, but man, she’s so great, I want her to be around all the time.

Back at the lair, Oliver stitches up a wound on Sara’s spine as Felicity tries not to vomit, then goes to whisper-growl to Diggle about the League of Assassins.

“Why wouldn’t she tell me what happened to her all those years?”
“Probably the same reason you wouldn’t tell us what happened to you on that island.”

There’s not a lot for Diggle to do in this episode. I’d be sad about it, except he spends his limited screentime being right about everything, so I’ll take it. Oliver’s having none of it, and he shifts his focus to protecting the Lances. “I’ll take Laurel.” (If Diggle had done one of those “Typical!” coughs in the background, I wouldn’t have blamed him.) Felicity volunteers to go talk to Beat Cop Lance, and assures Sara that she can keep a secret.

This helps to bring a bit more dimension to Felicity, because up until now, we could’ve just assumed she’s keeping this secret for Oliver because she has feelings for him. And even though Sara is important to him, therefore she is important to Felicity, it still says a lot that secret-keeping is just part of who she is, and not a byproduct of her relationship with Oliver.

I’ve been skipping the flashbacks, because there’s not a whole lot happening in them plot-wise, whereas present-day is a little overwhelming with the plot stuff. The flashbacks are notable because they show Sara’s incarceration and we’re introduced to Professor Ivo, aka Doug Witter, of the Capeside Witters. It’s also worth pointing out that Caity Lotz does a fantastic job of portraying Sara as a hysterical and terrified party girl who has found herself in a bad situation. She’s wildly different from the toughened and coarse Sara we are seeing in the present day.

Felicity corners Lance outside his roach-infested residence and tells him he’s in danger, but it falls on deaf ears. Not only is Lance a tough cop who is in danger every day, but there’s nothing scary enough in the world that can make him leave town without Laurel. It doesn’t help that Felicity brings up the League of Assassins, and she can’t convince him that he’s a target without spilling Sara’s secret. That’s okay, though, because Sara finally realizes she needs to tell her dad the truth in order to protect him. Diggle tries to go with her as backup, and they have an incredibly compelling exchange in which Sara calmly threatens to flatten him if he doesn’t let her go alone.

“It’s your funeral, Sara.”
“It wouldn’t be my first.”

Poor Digg. It’s exhausting, being right all the time.

Beat Cop Lance ends up pulling his gun on his daughter, because she approaches him in the street out of nowhere. They both start crying, and it’s another scene where Paul Blackthorne knocks it out of the park. They retreat to a Chinese restaurant, where Lance asks all the questions you would expect, but Sara’s still crying and jumping into defensive poses at loud noises. He deduces that she sent Felicity to warn him to leave, which means Sara knows the Arrow, which means she’s the masked girl who’s been running around The Glades. You can see his heart breaking when he realizes she’s been back for weeks and hadn’t come to see him. Then he asks a question that has callbacks to 1.16, when Tommy Merlyn’s standing in the hallway outside of his father’s hospital room. His only question for Oliver was, “Were you ever going to tell me?” Oliver’s reply: “No.” Now, Lance wants to know the same thing: “If these assassins, if they never had shown up, would you have let us know that you were alive?” Sara’s reply: “No.”

Oliver, meanwhile, has to work really hard just to get past Laurel’s defenses and take her out to dinner. As he walks her all the way to her door, Oliver points out that Laurel didn’t have a drink at dinner. She gloats that he and her father were so wrong about her, she doesn’t have a problem and Oliver basically says he’s not going to apologize for caring. Unfortunately, Laurel misreads the entire evening and leans in for a kiss, and Oliver has to push her away. Then we’re treated to the Laurel Lance Pity Party; one boy doesn’t want to kiss her, so that means no one cares about her and she’s all alone in the world. Never mind that she’s not returning her father’s calls, that she’s pushing Oliver away all the time, that she’s taking the side against his family in court, that Tommy died saving her from a collapsing building. “Run, run, run away from Laurel, run as fast as you can… What is so wrong with me that everybody leaves?” I don’t know, Laurel, but I bet talking to damaged, brooding, emotionally-unavailable Oliver Queen isn’t the best start. Perhaps a shrink? The best part is when Oliver vows that he will never leave her, and I actually believe him because he seems like he means it and he did spend those five years regretting leaving her in the first place. Laurel’s response to that? “Until you do.” No wonder people leave you, Laurel, you’re practically shoving them out the door.

Speaking of doors, hers is ajar (she should’ve moved by now, that apartment’s been broken into so many times that I’ve lost count) and Oliver investigates it and finds a threatening knife in a wall. He rips it out before she sees it, but after he’s gone, she takes some more pills. Because she doesn’t have a problem.

Sara takes her father up to her clock tower lair and spouts some stuff about forgetting people’s voices before you forget anything else. I have not found that to be true, I remember the voices of the people I’ve lost very clearly, whereas other details, like movements and mannerisms, have evaded me. But I suspect the voices thing is a precursor to the Canary cry or something of that sort, so I’ll give Sara a pass. Al-Owal is not giving her a pass, though, as he and his two rafter-dwelling minions ambush Sara and Lance.

Lance fails to shoot a guy who is flipping through midair, but Sara holds her own pretty well against Al-Owal for a few minutes until he catches her at swordpoint. (A dude with a sword is not allowed to chide Oliver for his outdated weaponry, okay.) Oliver crashes in through the clock face, saving Sara’s life and knocking out a minion while the other minion calls guns “a coward’s weapon” right before he gets shot and killed with one. They really need to decide on their weapon snobbery, if we’re going to split hairs about efficiency and laugh about arrows, then you don’t get to be all hoity-toity about guns. Anyway, Sara snaps Al-Owal’s neck, but she allows a minion to live so that he can go back to Ra’s al-Ghul and tell him to leave her family alone.

After the minion leaps out of the shattered clock face, Sara turns to her father and apologizes for what he just saw, but Lance isn’t as horrified as she’d feared. “I think you’re a survivor, I think you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever known.” Imagine what this scene would’ve looked like if Lance hadn’t been dealing with the Arrow for the past year; would he have been so open to the change in Sara? Would he have seen his daughter as negatively as he saw the vigilante last year? I like to think Oliver helped Lance accept Sara for who she is. The hard part, now, is letting her go.

She tells him she has to leave, and Lance is downright heartbreaking when he says, “I’ll protect you, we’ll protect you, tell her it’s safe to stay,” as he turns to Hooded Oliver. Not only does he believe the Arrow to be capable of protecting her against the League of Assassins, but he doesn’t even bat an eye when he asks for Oliver’s help. Sara rightly points out that her mother and Laurel would be too driven to find her if they know she’s alive, and that would put them in danger. She hugs him one last time and then leaves, telling Oliver to keep them safe.

“Detective, she’s right. You have to keep her secret.”
“It’s already the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. How do you live like this?”

It’s scenes like this one that make me suspect Lance knows exactly who Arrow is.

Back at Iron Heights Prison, Oliver and Thea have banded together to tell Moira that there’s nothing she can do to make them love her less. Oliver’s arc in this episode elegantly ties into Moira’s, because he knows what it’s like to be afraid of your loved ones discovering your darkest secrets. Moira bravely decides to reject the plea bargain, and it is brave. It’s scary what she’s about to do.

Beat Cop Lance goes to visit Laurel at her office, where she tonelessly apologizes for not calling him back. She cries that she’s not sure things are ever going to get better, and Lance is about to wig out from all of the emotions he’s feeling as he hugs her. It would’ve been nice if Laurel had just cried and said, “I think I have a problem, Dad!” but that might not be on the horizon. I don’t know, readers; the further we get into this season, the more it seems like Laurel’s not on an arc of a future hero, but of a future villain.

I told you. This was pretty much just a fighting episode with Diggle standing in the background saying “Don’t do this stuff, I’m right about this, you’ll regret not listening to me.”

At the lair, Oliver pours two glasses of vodka from “an old friend,” and hands one to Diggle. Oliver admits that he can’t keep his past from creeping into his present, and he doesn’t want to fight it anymore. “The five years that I was gone, I wasn’t always on the island.”

Does this mean he only tells Diggle about the boat arc? Does Diggle already know about Year One? Why isn’t Oliver telling Felicity? Is it because he still wants to preserve some of that innocence?

The episode ends with a scene we’ve seen before: Oliver discovering Sara on the ship. She kicks him and says, “Prisoners do not speak,” before leaving him there, confused and injured.

Next week: Deadshot! Diggle! And hopefully the return of this guy:

October 31, 2013 Kerry

We Need to Talk About Laurel

**This post contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Arrow, “Crucible.”**

As an episode about revelations, coming to terms with past actions, and choosing between what is easy and what is right, this episode was solid. Stephen Amell did some of his best acting opposite Caity Lotz, and she in turn delivered a very memorable and likeable performance as the Black Canary, who turns out to be Sara Lance.

If this episode were an after-school special about the perils of drunk driving, I would have to call it a resounding failure. In fact, I think the episode failed on all fronts regarding Laurel. The last thing anyone wants to watch on TV is a perpetual victim, it’s not exactly an attitude or frame of mind that viewers will rally behind.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s kind of unfair, that sometimes happens with grief, people react in different ways. It’s realistic.” That might be true, but it’s not like Laurel is brand new to tragedy. She survived the death of her sister and her boyfriend and the indignity that their deaths occurred while they were sneaking around behind her back. Instead of spiraling out of control, Laurel worked hard to become a respected lawyer in the wake of her personal tragedy. Now, we are made to believe Laurel was in denial about her role in Tommy’s death, and she only realized last week that it was largely her fault he died. (It’s a point of contention, but let’s call a spade a spade: Tommy wouldn’t have been in the Glades if Laurel hadn’t been too stubborn to leave before the earthquake.)

I’ll also concede the point that she went through a very traumatic ordeal last week; “Broken Dolls” was considerably darker than Arrow’s usual fare, and Laurel came dangerously close to death. It would be enough to send anyone on a spiral, and I would understand it if Laurel had chopped off her hair, quit her job, and moved to the Amalfi Coast. I even understand her hitting the wine bottle pretty hard; it’s not a healthy way to cope, but we all have our ways of dealing.

What I can’t understand is Laurel, former CNRI lawyer and current employee for the district attorney, slamming back glass after glass of wine and then getting behind the wheel of a car. As if watching her drive drunk wasn’t enough cause for outrage, Laurel then proceeded to use her position at the D.A. to try to get out of trouble, and when her father, who watched as his daughter almost died a week ago, showed up to take her home, she was not at all apologetic for her actions.

Even then, maybe I would’ve cut her some slack for still being drunk and full of the nasty emotions that usually accompany inebriation when you’re in a state of grief. Surely the next day, when she’s sober, she would be more reasonable, right? Well, we aren’t that lucky. Instead, when a concerned Oliver turns up to check on her, Laurel trots out her list of woes and holds her unapologetic line regarding her DUI before blowing Oliver off.

I don’t understand the endgame here with Laurel. Each week, she becomes less relatable to a fanbase that is already predisposed not to care about her. I actually started watching this show solely because I was a fan of Katie Cassidy, and for a good part of the first season, I was invested in Laurel’s life. Now, I don’t even know if I care whether she gets her life back on track. She doesn’t serve as a love interest or a nemesis of Oliver, and as of this week, she’s not even hell-bent on catching his alter-ego. The lack of Tommy means Laurel now lacks softness or nuance. She’s no longer serving as a mentor to Thea, and her only interactions with Felicity have been perfunctory. Her only scenes now are with her dad (who delivered much better scenes with Hooded Oliver last week than Laurel has thus far) and with Adam, a character we don’t know enough about to really form an opinion. I know people are speculating that she will somehow become the Black Canary, and I guess the logic is that Laurel needs her own darkness to match Oliver and Sara’s, but her coping mechanisms appear to be different from theirs. So what are they attempting to do with Laurel?

This episode wasn’t all about Laurel, though. Arrow continued its tradition of fast-paced reveals by unveiling Black Canary as Sara Lance, Laurel’s sister. Fortunately, Sara is engaging, entertaining, and equally as tortured as Oliver. Her scenes with Stephen Amell were fraught with emotion, and her concern for her sister and father was evident.

The second revelation came from Oliver, who confided in Diggle and Felicity that he’d lied about Sara’s cause of death. It turns out, Oliver had seen Sara after the shipwreck, and we get a glimpse of that at the end of the episode, where a flashback reveals Oliver coming face to face with Sara on his mysterious captor’s ship. We’ll find out next week about Sara’s role in the flashbacks and how she survived the shipwreck, and hopefully we’ll get some clue about what’s going on with Slade, who was tragically absent from this episode. (Sidenote: Is that the last we’ve seen of Shado? Did she die in the bombings?)

It was this second revelation that produced the best scene of the night: Diggle and Felicity confronting Oliver about his decision to keep Sara’s real cause of death a secret. Thankfully we have Diggle there to muddle through Oliver’s half-truths and omissions as he focuses on the fact that Oliver hasn’t told them everything (or anything) about the island.

Diggle: All right, so just to make sure I understand this correctly: After not drowning when the Gambit went down, Sara didn’t exactly make it to the island with you, where you would see her die yet again. Feel free to fill in the blanks.
Oliver: Not right now.
Diggle: You mean not ever, don’t you, Oliver?

Obviously, Oliver is not forthcoming with fill-in-the-blank details because otherwise we would have no fodder for flashbacks for the rest of the season. The real problem is that Diggle and Felicity have been following Oliver blindly for almost a year now, and neither of them know what it is that made him into the man he is today. Diggle’s been noticeably short-tempered since his breakup with Carly, and that probably has to do with the fact that Oliver still refuses to confide in his team. They’re not ones to sit around and tell sob stories, but Diggle and Felicity deserve at least morsels from Oliver regarding his time on the island. We know all about Oliver’s first year on the island, but that’s because we have the advantage of the show telling us about it in backstory form. There’s no evidence that the name Slade Wilson is familiar to Diggle, much less Felicity.

Speaking of Felicity, her concern in this conversation has more to do with the Lance family and what it means for them that Sara is alive; her secondary concern is for Oliver, who openly cries during the entire scene. “Laurel and Mr. Lance, they both blame you!” Oliver, with the proper amount of angst, says it was his fault she was out there anyway, so why torture her family with the truth about Sara’s death? But it’s after Felicity points out that the Lances deserved to know the truth that Oliver finally explodes: “These were five years! Five years, where nothing good happened! And they were better off not knowing!”

Diggle asks the toughest question of all, “Do they deserve to know now?” but Oliver deflects, focusing instead on the Crime of the Week: stolen assault rifles. The Baddie of the Week is known as The Mayor, and he’s not long for this world or episode. The gun problem brings Oliver into an alliance with Alderman Sebastian Blood as they do a gun buy back, during which Oliver confides in Sebastian about his problem with the Lance sisters (though he doesn’t name names). Sebastian’s advice is convoluted and a little alarming:

“Sooner or later, we all go through a crucible; I’m guessing yours was that island. Most believe there are two types of people who go into a crucible: the ones who grow stronger from the experience and survive it, and the ones who die. But there’s a third type: the ones who learn to love the fire, who choose to stay in their crucible because it’s easier to embrace the pain when it’s all you know anymore.”

Oliver was pretty distracted, so I guess that’s why he didn’t recognize that for the scary declaration that it is. Their conversation is interrupted by The Mayor, who ambushes the gun buy back. Sin, the Canary’s sidekick and a new friend to Roy, sustains a gunshot wound to the gut, but she survives it thanks to Roy’s quick aid (and Oliver’s anonymous financial aid).

Toward the end of the episode, Sebastian visits Oliver at Queen Consolidated to thank him for his help during the ambush, and he delivers another chilling line after Oliver suggests he run for mayor: “There is more than one way to save a city.” Hey, didn’t Malcolm Merlyn spout the same sort of propaganda during his ramp-up to the Undertaking?

Oliver encounters Sara at the hospital as she tries to check on Sin, and he pleads with her to reveal herself to her family. She insists that she’s a ghost, “We died on that island,” but Oliver argues that they both lived for a reason. Sara rightly points out that if her family found out the truth, they’d never speak to Oliver again, but he says it’d be worth it. The gravity he has with Sara is the sort of thing we expected to see in his scenes with Laurel last season, which is a good case for keeping Lotz as the Black Canary. It serves as a nice balance for Amell, who gets to show his lightness and smiles in scenes with Rickards’ Felicity, and now we get to see his turn in equally charged scenes with Lotz’s Sara.

Paul Blackthorne also delivers two very emotional scenes; the first is where he seeks out Oliver at Verdant and asks him to talk to Laurel. He admits that he drank pretty heavily after Sara died, and that he is afraid of the same thing happening to Laurel. It’s a big moment for Quentin, and probably the closest thing Oliver will ever get to forgiveness from him. The other scene is at the end, when he talks to his AA group over shots of Laurel downing glasses of wine as she takes pills. It’s a tough scene given what he went through last week, the fact that he sacrificed a lot by asking Oliver for his help, and considering that he’s only recently started coming to terms with Sara’s death through healthier means.

As for the Slade-less flashbacks, Oliver sits in a prison cell and gets shot by the man interrogating him. They provide the tools for him to patch himself up, and his cell neighbor tells him they do it to test his strength. “Living is not for the weak,” he says, which is a practical motto for castaways and prisoners.

This episode was not short on reveals, though; at the very end, Sebastian unmasks himself (literally) as Brother Blood, and he’s trying to raise his own army of superhumans to help free the city from its chains. He tries to inject The Mayor, with a serum, but The Mayor dies almost instantly. The fact that The Mayor was taken into SCPD custody but somehow ended up in Brother Blood’s hands is telling: the police department is deeply corrupted.

A few miscellaneous notes:

– Oliver’s most heartbreaking line is when Diggle says, “You know, Oliver, someone once told me that secrets have weight. The more you keep, the harder it is to keep moving.” Oliver is choked up when he replies, “You see how hard I work out,” and poor Diggle doesn’t know how to argue against that. It’s hard to tell if Oliver’s doing it because he still doesn’t fully trust them, or if it’s for the same reasons he won’t tell the Lance family the truth about Sara: They’re better off not knowing.

– During Oliver’s recount of Sara’s survival and subsequent death, Felicity’s expression is tragic as she asks, “Do you have any happy stories?” It’s heartbreaking in an entirely different way.

– Summer Glau reprises her role as Isabel Rochev, but she only seems to chide Oliver for his lateness and continually ask him where he’s going to get money to fund his pet projects. I hope this show has better stuff planned for her in the near future.

– Sara and Sin have a great scene in the clocktower early on in the episode. We learn that they met when Sara saved Sin from a group of guys, and Sara sagely says, “No woman should ever suffer at the hands of men.” It’s clear these two women already have a shared loyalty to one another, even though they both have their secrets, which is why it was nice to see Sara sneak into the hospital to check on Sin at the end of the episode.

Next week, we get to meet the League of Assassins, and hopefully we’ll get to learn more about Canary’s Gotham roots and her connection to Ra’s al Ghul.