Arrow continues to rebrand itself by bringing in a new team, focusing on Ollie’s position as mayor, and attempting to learn from the mistakes of its past. It is borderline successful in that navigation, but there’s still a lot of work to do.
1. From the Mayor’s Office
This week, the show took three steps towards shifting more focus to the mayoral office: it gave Thea a political foe, it established Adrian Chase as the new DA, and it saw Quentin Lance accept the job of deputy mayor. Let’s tackle them in that order:
– Thea’s tiff with a TV reporter had two purposes: to establish Thea as having some sort of actual role in Ollie’s life, aside from the nebulous ‘press secretary’ role, and to act as an object lesson on trust. The latter worked far better than the former.
– Adrian Chase, who many folks will know as Vigilante in the comics, was established as the new District Attorney, essentially a replacement for Laurel. Laurel was the show’s moral center for much of its run and, even if Vigilante doesn’t join Team Arrow in quite as full time of a role, it is nice to see a character be so straight forward in their embrace of the law.
– Quentin as deputy mayor makes no sense in any way, except that the show wants to keep Paul Blackthorne on the air, and this was the best way they knew how. Remember his vigilante-ish task force? Yeah, the writers don’t either, so now he’s deputy mayor. I hope that the city has a large furniture budget, because he’s gonna be chewing all the scenery in the municipal buildings.
2. So, Super Joker?
Full disclosure: I thought it was fun bringing pro wrestler Cody Rhodes in to the show, having him sell a product called “Stardust,” and giving him the ability to do, essentially, wrestling moves. I’m fine with the show having a little more fun with its villains and this, on paper, would seem like a fun pairing.
To paraphrase Frank and Nancy Sinatra, then the writers had to go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like having Rhodes fall into a vat of chemicals, essentially making him the Super Joker, minus all the stuff that people like about the Joker. Y’all know that song, right?
His character, Derek Sampson, was essentially an unstoppable killing machine who, with the help of Team Arrow 2.0, Ollie was able to incapacitate (in a pretty chilling way, cutting tendons in his arms and legs). The episode ends with talk of him being arrested, but let’s unpack this for a second: if he can’t feel pain and is super strong, when he heals, will they have to give him a weekly tendon slashing or whatever? Can he even heal?
I’m not advocating for the show tying up every single story with a bow, but this seems to have been dropped out of the episode for more boring Russian shit and Diggle’s story. Speaking of Diggle…
3. Diggle’s seeing shit
So, Digg is going a bit nutty in military lockup, which is understandable given his circumstances. He was set up for a terrible crime (I think? This story is so dull I have a hard time remembering even the broad strokes), and he’s in distress, so he begins to hallucinate. Specifically, he starts to hallucinate Deadshot – and not the quipppier, Fresh Prince-ier one from Suicide Squad, but the one that was presumed dead from last season.
I want to get to Deadshot in a minute, but this episode also confirmed that The Flash‘s fucking with the timeline is sticking here, too, and now John’s daughter, Sara, is his son, John Jr. I said last week how this feels like a mistake, how Sara was named for the (then) fallen Black Canary, and how the show was honoring its dead by having her name live on. Yes, this ties into an episode of Legends of Tomorrow from last season where there was a John Diggle Jr, but this seems like the laziest possible retcon for something that didn’t even need to be changed.
Anyway, Deadshot: I get why Diggle would fixate on him, as he thought, for years, that he killed his brother, Andy, and since John actually did kill Andy, he sees the self-hate he feels towards himself manifest as a vision of Deadshot. Or something. I don’t know.
Continued belowWhat I do know is that the scenes, while fine, didn’t really do too much except illustrate that jail was messing with John’s mind, which could have been illustrated in many different ways. I actually like Michael Rowe in the role, but if you’re going to bring him back, give him more to do than just lie in Diggle’s cell and be sort of a dick.
4. Mister Terrific
I loved the introduction of the “Fair Play” jacket, and didn’t even mind the T-mask that was given absolutely no explanation, because it felt true to Curtis’s character. The name drop of Terry Sloane, and making him a professional wrestler who Curtis loved growing up, was also a fun touch. I wish the show had taken a little more time getting Curtis from where he was at the end of last season to painted face, hair slicked back superhero, because there was time for that, time that, instead, went to boring, insufferable flashbacks. I know this is something I harp on all the time, but giving Curtis ten minutes this episode to better develop into Mister Terrific would have been absolutely worth the time. Seeing Ollie talk about trusting Russian mobsters and then get cut on the back did nothing for the series. Nothing at all.
5. High quality action
For all the shitting on this show that I do, I must say that the action continues to be handled really, really well. This show, essentially, has better action sequences than most non-Jackie Chan film before the mid-90’s. The standoff between Sampson’s folks and Team Arrow at the end was really, really well done, and utilized each member of the new team quite well.
If the show could find a way to let the episodes, as a whole, spotlight each member as well as that fight sequence did, it would be a far more enjoyable show.
What was your favorite part? Let me know in the comments!
