Arrow S01E05 – Review

By: Wendy Mericle & Ben Sokolowski (story)

The Story: If you’re facing prison time, there’s only one thing to do—party!

The Review: The maintenance of a secret identity has been the meat and potatoes of comic book drama for years and years now.  I really don’t know how readers in the fifties and sixties bore with Superman’s constant finger-biting all those years over Lois possibly finding him out.  Anyway, every hero still comes pre-packaged with that particular conflict, though it’s almost guaranteed everyone he tries to keep his secret from will find out eventually.

I don’t even begin to understand how someone so much in the public eye can possibly fool himself into thinking a secret identity can work.  When you’re being monitored that closely, even if no one catches you doing your caped-crusader thing, the pattern of disappearing at opportune times, only for some costumed vigilante to show up on a repeated basis, seems pretty obvious.  Ollie has it even worse; the timing of his return and the appearance of the Hood should be clear to anyone with a brain, and consider how often he’s showed off high-class fighting ability.