Arrow: Home Invasion

Again with the assassins. Again with the problems.

Admittedly these guys weren’t as bad as the Chinese mafia that was unable to shoot their target while he was standing unarmed in front of them, but this episode still falls prey to what I’m going to coin The Assassin Paradox. In order to establish these characters as scary, as a genuine threat, the writing depicts them as brutally efficient. And yet in order to spare the protagonists (or cute little kids) from that brutal efficiency, they’re forced to become utterly inept when face-to-face with a character that cannot be allowed to die thanks to plot requirements.

In this case, Mr Blank, a.k.a. Charles Gunn, a.k.a. J. August Richards is an assassin hired by Edward Rasmus to take out a family (including a small child) that are about to testify against him for something or other. This seems amazing excessive, but whatever. It turns out that Mr Blank is actually pretty good at his job. He finds the family’s apartment, he gets in the door, and the parents are dead within a matter of seconds.

It was pretty intense actually.

But of course, the little boy has to escape, and what was a chillingly effective scene loses its edge once Mr Blank becomes too slow in reacting to a scared child, giving said child ample opportunity to lock the door, and then not even bothering to pursue him out the open window. Later on, he takes out at least three security guards (plus a delivery boy) at the Queen house before being subdued by Oliver – though at least this is an incredibly well-choreographed fight scene (perhaps the best of the entire show) that certainly doesn't depict him going down easily.

Then there’s Deadshot, who manages to get wind of an A.R.G.U.S. sting and turn up anyway in order to take out its agents with a sniper rifle. At least four are dead, but on meeting up with Diggle in the stairwell he inexplicably decides not to pull the trigger. The writing makes a measly attempt to justify this by having Deadshot state that he’s not being paid to kill Diggle (even though we’re led to believe that he shot the A.R.G.U.S. agents of his own volition) and walk away with only a brief taunt regarding his dead brother.

"Don't shoot!" "Eh, okay."

Please, any self-respecting assassin would have tied up the loose end and shot Diggle dead.

So yeah. The Assassin Paradox. They’re deadly and unstoppable until they’re not.   

But what I really want to talk about in this episode is its theme, one that carries over from the previous episode: that of choice and accountability. Last week Oliver expressed regret over not killing the Count when he had the chance, identifying him as the source of the drug Vertigo; the source of the poison that was killing innocent people. Even after the twist revealed that the distributor was Doctor Webb, the drug was still considered a symptom of the disease as opposed to its source.

And with not one but two assassins featuring in this episode, the question arises over who is more responsible for a death: the hit-man or the person employing him? Which is the symptom and which is the cause? Yet unlike last week, the answer seems to be – the assassins. Mr Blank continues to pursue little Taylor even after Rasmus instructs him not to, and Deadshot (at least from what I could gather) decided to take out the A.R.G.U.S. team on his own.  

Why the change? Seemingly to give Oliver and Diggle “ethical license” to take them out. Clearly no one can fault Oliver for defending Tommy, Laurel and Taylor in his own home, or for driving a poker through Mr Blank’s chest.

Diggle on the other hand... let’s try and unpack this a bit, because I’m struggling to see how Diggle’s desire to kill Deadshot is any different from Helena’s vendetta against her father. Like Frank Bertinelli, Deadshot has killed an innocent person who Helena/Diggle loved. Like Frank Bertinelli, Deadshot has plenty of blood on his hands, and is still a threat to other people’s lives. 

And let’s not beat around the bush here, Diggle (like Helena) incontrovertibly wants Deadshot...well, dead. When Oliver asks him about it he says in no uncertain terms: “I want to see him in a bag.” Later they reiterate this point when Oliver asks: “Do you want him arrested?” to which Diggle meaningfully answers: “No.”

Point is, they come to a clear decision to kill this man. Well, I hear you say, the difference between Helena and Diggle is that he isn’t prepared to harm any innocent people who stand in the way of him and his target.

Yet he is prepared to endanger them. By turning up at the place where the trap was set, he clearly meant to intervene in A.R.G.O.S’s attempt at taking Deadshot into custody with his own intent to kill the man. 

A thin line indeed. I don’t mind the show muddying the waters like this, or in making their leads morally fallible, but I do want them to be consistent about it.

In this case, I get the feeling that by making Diggle Oliver’s conscience, they’re not going to let him have his own shades of grey. Were we meant to think that Ollie made the wrong choice in going after Edward Rasmus? The guy who posed a threat to a seven year old boy as well as his best friend and ex-girlfriend? Cause I don’t, and I don’t believe that the decision was based entirely on Laurel’s safety.

But I get the feeling that the show wants me to consider it a straightforward case of Always Save The Girl. That Oliver was wrong in choosing Rasmus over Deadshot. That Diggle wasn’t crossing a line in his determination to kill Deadshot instead of letting A.R.G.U.S. arrest him. And I don’t.

Perhaps I should give the show the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re actually trying to keep all these life/death choices as ambiguous as they appear. After all, Tommy is dead-set against what Oliver is doing. And the Roy/Thea subplot, in which the two of them are shown a dead body in the morgue (courtesy of the vigilante) was fantastic.

Yet on the other hand, Ollie is still mowing down Mooks whilst letting the bigger criminals go free. Deadshot was on their hit-list, and Mr Blank was disposed of, but Edward Rasmus was only given a warning (meeting his demise at Blank’s hands).

Only time will tell I suppose, though at the moment trying to wade through all these moral implications and their relationship to the Doylist/Watsonian modes of storytelling are giving me a headache. I don’t ask for consistency on a Wastonian level (after all, people make mistakes/consider themselves the exception to the rule/make snap decisions without rational thought) but from a Doylist perspective, I expect the writers to hold all their characters to the same standards of right and wrong. And right now, it feels as if they don’t.

Then there’s the other big sticking point of this episode: Laurel. Namely, Oliver’s feelings toward Laurel.

I don’t hate Laurel. I don’t even dislike Laurel. I find the “she’s just a love interest!” excuse for hating female characters more tedious and annoying than female characters that are in fact just love interests.

But I’ll concede that when it comes to female characters that are disproportionately hated by fandom, it doesn’t always exist in a void. Ginny Weasley, Gwen Cooper, Lana Lang – the writing on these characters was far from perfect. The depiction of their relationships with the all-important male leads even less so. And in this case, the writers clearly don’t have a solid grasp of Oliver/Laurel.

They would have us believe that Oliver/Laurel are the Official Couple of the show, but they’ve done little in the way of showing us this. If anything, their decision to make Oliver cheat on Laurel with her sister is a huge reason not to root for this pairing. He doesn’t deserve her. There’s too much baggage. Add to that is the fact that Laurel and Tommy have a good thing going, and that Oliver is a night-time vigilante whose secret identity puts the lives of those he loves in danger. Oliver/Laurel is a no-no.

And yet the show seems to assume that because the audience “knows” that Oliver and Laurel will respectively end up as Green Arrow and Black Canary, they’ll be anticipating a hook-up between them. Well...I’m not. They have characters like Moira and Diggle talk-up the relationship, either positively or negatively, but I’m just not buying it. It’ll only lead to pain and unhappiness.

That, and the writers undermine Laurel in other ways. She got a great moment when she identified Mr Blank by his faulty police badge at the door, one that got even better when she darted into the back room and emerged with a shotgun. Brilliant! But then she immediately runs out of shells and has to rely on the vigilante to swoop in and save the day. Gah.

Why not let Laurel take him out? Where were the police while this was happening? Why is she still in that apartment anyway? Isn’t this the third time someone’s tried to kill her there? Doesn’t the landlord have something to say about all this?

In short, female characters get such a pounding in fandom that I make a very conscious effort to try and sympathize with them. In Laurel’s case, I can still enjoy her character while impatiently recognising that the writing isn’t doing her justice.

But on a final note, I’m really digging this Thea/Roy subplot. It’s a great way of exploring the influence that the vigilante is having in the wider community, particularly in Roy, who now has a vested interest in finding the man who saved his life. And of course, there’s delicious irony in Thea agreeing to help Roy track down her own brother.

Plus Quentin gets a chance to remind them, and the audience, about the very real stack of bodies that are being piled up in the city morgue.

Miscellaneous Observations:

For some reason, Diggle yells: “Hish! Hish!” when he’s training.

Mr Blank wasn’t the most interesting of characters, but J. August Richards is a pro, infusing him with a real sense of menace and intelligence. I found myself liking that odd little character quirk that has him “feeling” the vibes of a house, whether it be the love of the Moore apartment or the loss and regret of the Queen mansion.

Okay, you really expect me to believe that Shado would make a pass at Oliver after that sparring session with Slade? Or just with Slade in the vicinity? Does Ollie have to make out with every girl he crosses paths with? And yes, demanding that women (especially WOC) be “strong independent woman!” is just as awful as the “she’s just a love interest” excuse, but in this case I’ll make an exception since that scene was all about Oliver (and by proxy, Laurel). And I really think that Shado would have a lot more important things on her mind than making out with prissy little Oliver Queen. Like Slade her father.

C'mon, he's not even that hot at this stage.

Mr Blank’s death grip? Are you kidding? Couldn’t he have just had a syringe full of poison disguised as a pen?

Lyla Michaels was cool. I hope we see her again.