Arrow Season 2 (Green Arrow show on CW)

Cafe Society
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So what does everyone think of this week’s episode?

Some developments:

River was a Slade mole and now owns Queen enterprises
Thea knows who her father is
Everyone apparently knows Slade is the bad guy now
Despite this, Sarah and Laurels father was arrested for reasons?
Officer Lance’s boss could be working for Slade too, because…
Laurel knows who the Arrow is now and may presumably spill the beans to get her father out.
Roy is pissed off and left town

What’s Slades game plan? He wants Oliver seriously distracted, and is succeeding in that.

I liked the episode due to all the twists set up

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Well, let’s see…

[spoiler]Slade’s aim is to destroy everything and everyone around Oliver’s life, create maximum chaos and resentment and destruction, and then probably leave him permanently crippled. (I think the whole “Shado was my fault” thing is ridiculous; even the deranged Slade should have understood what the real events were. If they really wanted to give Oliver responsibility they needed to make his role more active - that he did make a choice instead of just passively let Ivo act.)

Detective (and they keep calling him that even though he was busted to blues and the specific demotion was mentioned again tonight) Lance is being busted for his continuing aid to the Arrow. From a realism standpoint, it’s about time.

Laurel is now Oliver’s enemy because the Arrow is the reason her father is under arrest and in some deep doo-doo; not sure how they’ll play that one out. Thea and Moira are now the only main players who don’t know the Arrow’s identity. (Well, Lance for at least a little while longer.)

Roy is headed out to become another superhero, probably based somewhere else… as I’ve asked before, is there any good 2/3/4 string DC hero he could become? Red Arrow, maybe, meaning Oliver would finally have to become Green Arrow to the public?
[/spoiler]

63

I guess I’ve lost interest in this series, but I’d like to ask one question about the source material: do they ever explain how Oliver and Sarah, who before the shipwreck were just stupid party people, became super-heroes? I thought when the mirakuru stuff showed up that it would turn out that they took that, but evidently not.

I know they showed Oliver doing some jogging and target practice on the island, in between getting the crap beat out of him every couple of weeks, but it seems like it would take more than that to make him better than a gold medal Olympian in both archery and unarmed combat. And Sarah is not only a combat expert, but in at least one episode seemed to be as knowledgeable about forensics as that blonde computer chick.

So is there something yet to be revealed that explains this, or is it just the usual movie thing of you have a two-minute montage of training scenes, and you become the world champion?

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Sarah left the island and somehow joined Ras Al Ghul’s League of Assassins (sometimes called League of Shadows) as the lesbian lover of one of his daughters; basically, she’s got the same physical training as Batman (in the first film). In the DC-verse, Black Canary is considered one of the top people at hand-to-hand combat, probably second only to Lady Shiva (the Paper Monkey) among women. I just don’t know if that’s supposed to be Laurel or Sarah.

Ollie spent two years on the island trained by Shado’s dad and then Shado, as well as Slade, and another three years developing those skills as a castaway.

In neither case have they been presented as training for a month or two and kicking everyone’s ass. The Arrow wasn’t as good as Malcolm Merlyn in either encounter.

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I feel like what we’ve seen so far is the beginning of their transformation, more so for Oliver than for Sarah. Remember, Oliver was trained both by the old chinese super-fighty guy and his super-fighty daughter, and, this being a comic book show, he learned super-fighting from them, at least in part. And there’s plenty of time before the flashbacks catch up with the present, since he hasn’t yet joined the Russian mafia.

The one thing that bugged me about this episode was Thea somehow blaming Oliver for what she learned about her parentage. How is it his fault more than tangentially?

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I seriously don’t get the Det./Officer Lance storyline. He’s taken tips from the Arrow, true - which makes the Arrow a confidential informant. Yes, he’s a criminal, but most of them are - it’s why their info is good. And since he’s getting anonymous phone calls (as far as anyone knows), he can hardly be taken to task for not arresting the guy on sight.

And politically, it really makes no sense. How do you face the press and say you’re demoting the one officer who gave advance warning of the earthquake devices and prevented one from activating? And now, after demoting him, the guy who took Thea’s kidnapper into custody is the one in trouble rather than the leadership that let the guy go?

It’s not realistic that the Chief of Police or the DA would want to deal with the political fallout that comes with persecuting a guy that looks like a hero to the public, despite his actions being illegal.

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Too late to edit, but I wanted to add: my favorite line was when Thea started to warn Slade away from her family and he interrupts her with “Please, go on - I’m curious what sort of threat a 19 year old girl will come up with.” It always gets me when people say this, almost always while they’re being held hostage. :rolleyes:

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Not much love for Arrow on this board? I’ve got to say it’s been the televisual experience I look forward to the most in a week, despite having a few “better” things to watch, because Arrow has just been a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah it’s kind of ridiculous, but we are in comic book land. I don’t hold its silliness against it.

Mirakuru Slade is kind of an arsehole, isn’t he? I quite liked Vanilla Slade, but now I’m looking forward to a big showdown. Maybe he’ll get an arrow through his other eye. Someone might need to grab the shaft and kind of push-wiggle it a lot to make sure he stays down this time.

I’m not even sure how exactly Oliver “chose” Shado to die. I thought it was just some psychology crap based on how he reacted to Ivo pointing the gun at Shado and Sara. It seems a little unreasonable of anyone to hold it against him, and to go to such lengths to get revenge, but I’m hoping there’s more to it than this. I mean, he didn’t get rich and powerful just to hurt Oliver, did he? Fingers crossed for wooly eyes.

On the subject of Slade: Summer Glau. I thought she would get people talking a little more. I was surprised by how her character started as the Ice Queen of Queen Consolidated (and rarely showed up), but should have known she’d turn violent. I was almost getting to like her when she was being so helpful, but the fighter version of her is appreciated too. Shame she wasn’t a little less helpless on Angel.

I suppose I’m not interested by the Island flashbacks as much as I was. It was intriguing before when we knew less, but not so much any more. I don’t dislike them exactly, but there were a few times back in season 1 when I just wanted to see the flashbacks rather than the present. They need a new twist to make them interesting again, because right now it’s more explanation than excitement - regardless of the fights, we already kind of know what’s going to happen to the key flashback characters now.

I’m also looking forward to some more Diggle/Deadshot intereaction. Things between them are looking a lot less black and white after the Suicide Squad episode.

Lastly, I’d like to see some more of Felicity Smoak. Actually, all of her really, but that would be crass, so I won’t say it. I’d like to get to know her more, though. We know very little about her, and her motivation for turning her life upside-down so far seems to be “Oliver is awesome”. Diggle is similar, but at least he’s ex-military with not much else to do and a grudge. Felicity had/has more to lose, but she never seems to doubt that spending all her time helping Oliver is a good idea. She deserves an episode, at least.

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Because he didn’t tell her. She made a big deal about how no one was straight with her except Oliver, and then within an episode of two she found out he knew her biological father was Malcolm Merlyn and never said anything. Yeah, we sympathize with Oliver because he was in a difficult position knowing what he knew, but I can see how Thea might not feel reasonable in the face of such knowledge.

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I follow the show but I don’t love it. I fast forward whenever the little sister opens her mouth, whenever Oliver has a serious relationship talk with his girlfriends, mom, etc. The little sister’s rage filled boyfriend irritates me.

I also agree the whole plot about Slade hating Oliver for “choosing” Sara over Shado is lame. The little sister getting upset over anything is lame. Seems like most of the big dramatic deep dark secrets make me think, “so?”

But anyway, I follow it. It has its moments. Sometimes the flashbacks are better than the main story, and I prefered Diggle’s solo adventure more than the regular material.

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Well I didn’t say “lame”, exactly. I’m willing to accept a lot when it comes to Arrow, for some reason that is not entirely clear to me - my criticism is usually merciless. Actually, I don’t mind Thea, either. I tend to hate “kid” characters - my biggest criticism of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which I otherwise loved was the lack of painful death for Dakota Fanning. And my mind has recently been occupied by wondering whether it’s Dawn or Connor that most need a long acid bath. Perhaps it’s because of this that I find Thea surprisingly reasonable. Even when she was supremely pissed off in the latest episode, she didn’t do the “I’m not talking to you” or “fuck your legal documents” thing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her become a contributing member of the team at some point.

On that subject, respect to Laurel for her reaction to finding out that Oliver is The Arrow, even if she has been pathetic lately.

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Well, that’s why I don’t participate in the thread much. To me, Thea needs to be shot into the sun, but then she’d start whining to the sun about not meeting her needs, and not being there for her and her needs, and not caring about her emotions, and the sun would spit her right back to Earth. :slight_smile:

73

Amen.

Black Canary is hot. Love Felicity. Arrow, Diggle and Detective Lance are cool. The rest could be ditched. Especially Thea and her whining. Yech.

Would love to see Blue Beetle and Firestorm! (I know Ted Kord has been mentioned in the show.)

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Thea’s character has long been the weakest point of the show, which is saying something when you consider Laurel’s storyline. The thing with Thea is there are all sorts of obvious responses to her whining that no one ever says. During all of the “no one is straight with me” speeches you want to scream “Looking at how you react, why would we ever tell you anything!?” The original edit to A Few Good Mean had Jack Nicholson saying “The truth? Thea, you can’t handle the truth!”

As far as the other characters’ motivation, Felicity and Diggle were quicker to get where Det. Lance is now - they saw The Arrow was good for the city. Of course, this glosses over the fact that the Queen family has been involved in or drawn most of the disasters The Arrow fights against…

75

Dude, I did not actually think he would kill the Mom. Cool, I didn’t much care for her storylines, anyway.

I couldn’t help watch the mom without thinking of Lucille Bluth.

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Oh, just inject her with some drugs. She’ll be fine.

I swear the writers personally hate me. Kill Thea! Kill Roy! Nooooo!

Oliver has a 7 year old kid.

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This show is objectively horrible.

I love it.

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I enjoy this show quite a bit. It’s often silly and stupid and the melodrama at times threatens to overwhelm everything, but on the whole it’s solid fun with decent production values.

A bummer about Moira, though. She had actually become one of the more interesting characters, not good exactly but not irredeemably evil. Revealing that she knew Oliver’s secret and that from now on they would be completely honest with each other was roughly equivalent to saying she was taking one last case before retirement. It would have been interesting to see what sort of lengths she would go to to protect Oliver’s secret, but I guess we’ll never know.

How could the show redeem Thea’s character? Assume they can’t just put her on a bus, if you were a writer what would you do with her? Bring her in on Oliver’s secret and force her to mature rapidly?

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At this point isn’t Thea about the only one left who doesn’t know who her brother is?

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Lance still doesn’t know either, but I’d say he’s pretty close.

Man, I was never too big on Moira, but I’d so much rather Thea bought it. Ideally, during the autopsy they’d discover she wasn’t Thea Queen, and had been switched at birth with Sarah’s sidekick Cyn. :slight_smile: