Reading/Watching Log #53

Lockdown has finished in New Zealand, and hopefully we’ll be moving into Level 1 soon, which means a loosening of the social distancing and ongoing disinfecting regulations we’re currently living under (and subsequently, an assurance that we’ve flattened the curve on the spread of Covid-19. At the time of this writing, there’s only one active case left in the country; everyone else is recovering).

With the end of lockdown, I moved back into my New Years Resolution of focusing on women-centric stories, though a few variations on this rule slipped by during quarantine, in which I returned to a lot of my favourite films from childhood/adolescence. Some I hadn’t watched in years, and it turns out I had great taste in my younger years, considering they all hold up extremely well today. It got a little surreal at times actually, as watching things in isolation that were so formative to my childhood (which already managed to mess up my sense of the passing of days) was like stepping into a time vortex.

So in here we've got treasure islands, secret gardens, stage magicians, wild swans, Greek gods, magic carpets, sentient robots and undead mummies. Plus, another win for LGBTQ happy endings. Man, a part of me is going to miss having all the time in the world to race through so many books and shows...

Arrow: Unthinkable

I made it, I finally made it! Season two of Arrow is in the bag. I started watching back in October 2014, which is much longer than I thought it would be, and certainly not at the same pace as weekly viewers.  

As a season finale, this was pretty much what I expected. All the main characters are given a moment of heroism, a bevy of guest stars brought in to assist or hinder, the overarching themes wrapped up, the villains defeated, and the hooks established for next season.

To kill or not to kill: that is the question of this episode.

Arrow: Streets of Fire

Penultimate episode! And yet strangely enough, this felt very patch-work-y (sorry, that's the best word I can come up with to describe it), with a lot of subplots haphazardly grafted onto the main narrative thrust of Oliver trying to track down the mirakuru cure.

It's not that scenes involving the Lance family drama and Thea's reunion with her biological father are bad, only that they have very little to do with the most important thing that has to happen in this episode: Team Arrow getting their hands on the cure sent in from Star Labs.

It involves a lot of shuffling around of the various characters, but this close to the finish line surely it's time to draw them all together, not pull them apart.

Arrow: City of Blood

This ended up being something of a Breather Episode in the aftermath of Moira's murder, but with a low-scale twist halfway through. Oliver doesn’t appear for a significant portion of the episode's length, but in all the time we think he's out there getting ready to unleash hell on Slade, it's eventually revealed that he's slipped into a Heroic BSOD, with no plan that goes beyond giving himself up to Slade.  

Arrow: Seeing Red

I'm so close to the end I can taste it...

This episode is essentially forty minutes of misdirection before it swerves into a game-changing murder. While the audience is distracted by Roy and the effects the mirakuru have on him, sending him rampaging around the city and focusing his hyper-rage on Thea, the episode is all the while setting up Moira Queen's swansong.

Arrow: The Man Under the Hood

To borrow a quote from Gandalf: "the board is set, the pieces are moving..." which is an appropriate summation for this episode, and the last episode, and quite possibly the next episode as well (I haven't seen it yet).

Though I can get a bit snarky in these reviews, I do enjoy Arrow (I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't) and I'm in it for the long haul. That said, there's been some tripping up on the way to this season's finish line, and this episode in particular felt very "bitsy" in terms of what it was trying to do.

Which was to move things into position for the finale, deal with the fallout of the last episode's revelations, introduce two new characters for the spin-off, present the possibility of a mirakuru cure in the flashbacks, and bring back Roy. There's no thematic or narrative unity in any of those tasks, and as a result this episode felt like a checklist of things that had to be ticked off in order to proceed to the next one.

So, let's go through them all one by one.

Arrow: Deathstroke

I will get through this season, so help me!

This was a fairly pivotal episode, one in which secrets are revealed and agendas become clearer, though at the same time the main storyline was complete nonsense. In order to recruit a bunch of convicts being transferred to a newly rebuilt wing at Iron Heights, Slade stages a diversion that involves kidnapping Thea off the street, sending a live feed of her to the mayoral candidacy debate, and leading the police and Oliver on a merry dance around the city.

Arrow: Birds of Prey

Yes, I'm still chugging along with Arrow, though at this stage I'm at least one whole season behind. Apparently season four has just started, though it feels like only yesterday that season three aired. Is it just me or do hiatuses feel shorter when they're for shows you don't regularly watch?

As the title would suggest, this is a female-centric episode, and for the most part they deliver on that implicit promise. And surprise, surprise, taking the focus off Oliver actually makes for a pretty good episode – as Suicide Squad already proved, the last episode I watched over two months ago.

Arrow: Suicide Squad

What do you know, a Diggle-centric episode! Not to sound too cynical, but this show doesn't have a stellar track-record with Diggle. It's usually content to have him expound exposition (when Felicity isn't around) and ask Oliver if he's sure this is the right thing to do – and that's about it really. When he does get some attention it's usually in a romantic subplot that falls flat (sorry Carly) or feels incredibly retconned (hey Lyla).

And yet his rapport with Lyla certainly has more chemistry and potential than his awkward attempts to date his brother's widow, and the fact that she's embroiled in some pretty dodgy government dealings means she can bring some interesting storylines to the table. As in this case.  

After a booty call is nearly interrupted by Amanda Waller, Diggle is roped in along with Lyla to oversee the first incarnation of the Suicide Squad. Now, I'm not well versed with the DC comic book verse, and my familiarity with this unit is confined to what I saw of it on the animated Justice League and the recent movie trailer. But I do know it's a team made out of bad guys that are considered totally expendable, and that's it's a fairly popular component of this particular franchise.

Which means that this Diggle-episode not only gives him the honour of introducing the Suicide Squad to the audience, but lets him do so in a way that doesn't include Oliver in any capacity (him being too preoccupied with his own broody subplot). Heck, he even gets the flashbacks all to himself!

Arrow: The Promise

I feel that this is an episode the show has been building up to for a while now: the one in which the flashback sequences take over the bulk of the episode's run-time, while the contemporary scenes make up the framing device. By doing so, it amplifies the importance of what happened on the freighter; not only in providing a turning point for Oliver's transformation into Arrow, but also in setting up the root of Slade's vendetta (which I still have problems with, but  we'll get to that).

Arrow: Time of Death

Yikes, it's been a while since I last caught up with Arrow! Since then the third season has ended, the fourth been announced, and a second spin-off commissioned (technically two if you count Vixen). But Arrow remains my "enjoyable enough when nothing else is on" show, which may not sound like high praise – but I wouldn't keep commenting on it if I wasn't engaged.

Arrow: Heir to the Demon

So the big draw-card of this episode was naturally: NYSSAAAAAAAA! Suffice to say I was very excited about her appearance, though I know very little about her comic book incarnation (I'm more familiar with Talia al Ghul, who I'm guessing is not making an appearance in Arrow because of her prevalence in The Dark Knight trilogy? Maybe?)

In any case GIF sets of Katrina Law as Nyssa al Ghul have been all over my Tumblr dashboard for a while now, and were in fact part of the reason why I decided to watch this show in the first place. I knew about her role as Ra al Ghul's daughter, I knew about her relationship with Sara, and I knew bits and pieces of what to expect from her.

Unfortunately, this episode in which she first appears is more than little ridiculous, with the emotional impact of Laurel and Dinah discovering that Sara is still alive somewhat squashed by the contrivances that get them there.

Arrow: Tremors

One of the best things about this show is that it isn't stingy about The Reveal. When the time is right for characters to learn the Arrow's identity, they find out and the story commences with this new insight shaping the course of the cast dynamics. Tremors finally brings together Oliver and Roy as partners and allies; definitively drawing together two plot-threads that have been running parallel to each other since Roy's introduction, and introducing Roy to the rest of the team – no take-backs, no psyche-outs, no back-pedalling.

For all its faults, Smallville didn't dither over "the secret" either, but after five years of Merlin I'm certainly not used to this!

Arrow: Blind Spot

It's a Laurel-centric episode (for the most part) and personally, I think the writers did a pretty good job with her this time around. Not a great job, but definitely better than usual. This character's real potential lies in her relationship with her family and her tenacity when it comes to doing her job (whatever she considers that job to be). With the Laurel/Oliver soap opera put on the backburner, she emerges here as less of an accessory to his story and more of a main character in her own right. And though the writers still couldn't bring themselves to forego yet another kidnapping, it was Laurel's actions and decisions that drove most of the action throughout this episode.

Arrow: Blast Radius

As the name might suggest, this episode is all about the consequences of last episode as well as set-up for future ones, all structured around a fairly basic plot involving a mad bomber. As with James Callis and Ben Browder of past episodes, they bring in a recognizable sci-fi alum to play the Villain of the Week, presumably in a bid to make a fairly flat character interesting by dint of the actor playing him.

This time it's Sean Maher, a cheerful little bomber with some sort of anarchist creed – but let's be honest here; these guys are never that interesting and are mainly treated as tools to get the plot rolling.

"This is for what the government did to my sister!"

Arrow: Three Ghosts

So should I start with the angry rant or finish with it? Okay, I'll save it for the end.

Arrow: The Scientist

Well, that title leaves us in no confusion over who this episode about, and yet despite this being a Poorly Disguised Pilot (don't be fooled by the wording, it's actually a good thing) for the impending Flash spin-off, there's a ton of material in here that makes this one of the juiciest episodes yet.

It's also the first of a two-parter, ending on a cliff-hanger that involves yet another person being brought in on Oliver's secret. That person is Barry Allen, the guy who will become The Flash, and when we first see him stepping off the train and into Starling City, the whimsical tootling music tells us that this is a super-special guest.

Face hidden for maximum suspense.

There's been a burglary at a Queen Consolidated warehouse, in which a super-strong man has made off with a centrifuge for reasons unknown – and (I assume) killed two security guards after one of the fakest-looking gunfights ever committed to the screen. Barry Sherlock Scans his way across the crime scene, posits a theory that we know is correct, and starts cozening up with Felicity to figure out how exactly the assailant managed to tear up the place with his bare hands.

Arrow: State v. Queen

I'm going to keep this one brief, because to be honest – not a heck of a lot happened here. Well, I suppose it did, but not in a way that's open to much discussion.

Arrow: Keep Your Enemies Closer

So remember that time in season one that Oliver called upon the help of the Russian mafia? Remember how funny that was? Well, the show has decided to fill in a few gaps and provide context to some throwaway lines of dialogue, leading to an episode that has a lot of exciting name-drops in what is otherwise a filler episode.

Arrow: League of Assassins

So here's an interesting fact: becoming a superhero makes your voice drop. It's apparent in any half-way decent portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman, Christian Bale's Batman took it to absurd levels, and Oliver even uses a voice modulator to help him out. It seems that Caity Lotz also got the memo, as the clearest difference between pre and post-freighter Sara is to be found in how deep her voice sounds.

This episode tackles the job of filling in some of the blanks of Sara's survival story, and how she went from one of Oliver's ditzy Girls of the Week to a stone-cold assassin who doesn't hesitate to kill a man.

Trigger warning: This review has a brief discussion of rape implications.