Arrow S02E20 – Review

By: Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz (story)

The Story: Long live the Queen.

The Review: I used to think of Arrow as having a very compact cast, but with all the new additions of this second season, the population is starting to get a little unwieldy. Despite efforts to give everyone his or her due in due measure, the show consistently struggles to find compelling things for certain characters to do. Two of them are featured in this episode, and by the end of it, the show chooses to continue investment in one and pull the plug on the other.

Had Arrow been an original series, I would’ve said the show had made a mistake in its choices. In any other circumstance, Roy would’ve been more suited for the chopping block, being the one-dimensional set of abs he is. Most episodes, he’s a foil for someone else rather than a distinctly motivated character, and here, he’s reduced to a plot device, a means to distract Team Arrow and the audience from the threat of Slade until the mercenary wrenches attention back on himself in the most shocking way.

Arrow S02E14 – Review

By: Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz (story)

The Story: Nothing like a tirade against your long-lost sister to ruin a family dinner.

The Review: Apologies for the lateness, but midterm duties called and I had to answer.  You know how it is.  But let’s not waste any more time than we have already.  This week’s episode finally puts a pin in the most troubled part of the show this season: Dinah, burgeoning alcoholic, pill-popper, drama queen, and all-around mess.  It’s not hard to see her trajectory towards rock bottom, but the ETA has been repeatedly delayed by new personal crises.

But then, Arrow has always struggled to find a place for Dinah, established early on as one of its major figures, but quickly overshadowed by the rest of the cast, even, lately, Roy.  At this point, Dinah is in a very risky position for a character in a fictional series: she doesn’t have a clear or secure position in relation to Ollie except as a romantic interest, nor does she have a purpose of her own to pursue.  The closest she came to either of these things was her untimely investigation into Sebastian Blood, which only led her further along her downward spiral.  Frankly, this was all starting to seem dangerously Mandy-esque.*

Arrow S02E11 – Review

By: Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz (story)

The Story: Dinah’s lousy, no-good, very bad day.

The Review: The moment Dinah took on this mission to discredit and expose a man with as much goodwill as Sebastian Blood, she should have known there was always a possibility that it would backfire on her.  Perhaps she can be excused for hoping that her father and closest friend might put more weight on her word than their own besotted view of Blood, but to do so without even a scrap of proof?  That’s expecting a bit much, especially for an assistant D.A.

Therein lies the structural weakness of Dinah’s storyline, or at least the show’s treatment of it.  It’s clear that the end goal was always to drive her into a corner then pull the rug out from under her.  Each episode has been systematically doing that from the season premiere, eroding away what little competence and confidence she had left after losing Tommy.  But even though the writers have accomplished their goal and finally left her reeling at rock-bottom, they had to take some major leaps to get there.

Arrow S02E04 – Review

By: Andrew Kreisberg & Wendy Mericle (story)

Spoilers ahead.  From the moment it was announced a Canary would be appearing on the show, speculation ran rampant as to her identity.  Quite a lot of people immediately insisted that it had to be Sarah, the younger Lance sister who ran away with Ollie, only to meet her watery death.  I, always hoping that a story won’t be tempted to take such an obvious route, thought there was at least a possibility not-Canary would turn out to someone no one expected.

Once again, however, I find my hopes ruthlessly dashed.  From the moment that Felicity and Ollie hypothesize that not-Canary has been following Dinah, not Ollie, all along, it pretty much clinches the Sarah theory.  I’ll say this for Arrow, though: it doesn’t tend to dance around the obvious.  Rather than spend an entire episode delaying the inevitable reveal, the show gets it all over with in the cold open, leaving us free to enjoy the fallout.

Arrow S01E22 – Review

By: Drew Z. Greenberg & Wendy Mericle (story)

The Story: Every good mother-son relationship is built on honesty—even if you have to threaten it out of them.

The Review: Last night I was talking to a friend online and when I mentioned that I watched Arrow, he asked, “Oh, yeah—how is that?”  I told him what I felt was the truth.  “It’s a truly mixed bag.”  And it really, truly is.  There have been some standout episodes this season, and ones that I could very easily forget, but overall, the average showing of Arrow is usually an uneven combination of high points and low points.

For example, can we be spared the pointless and awkward exposition already?  Dinah meets with Ollie at his club, then proceeds to give him a recap of what happened between them last week, starting, unbelievably enough, by saying, “Last week, I told you that I wanted to get back with Tommy—that I needed you to go to him and explain to him that you didn’t still have feelings for me.  But instead, you told me that you did.”  She might as well have preceded the line with, “Previously, on Arrow…”

Arrow S01E18 – Review

By: Drew Z. Greenburg & Wendy Mericle (story)

The Story: Proof that neglect of public transit will just come back to haunt a city someday.

The Review: Not that this show has shied away from violence, but it’s always been the kind of unalarming,* almost campy kind of violence where people tend to die suddenly or bloodlessly (unless, of course, one is being stabbed, in which case the actual piercing takes place off screen and only afterward do you see the bloody blade next to the crazed grin of the stabber).  In Arrow, as in comics, death has been taken for granted; it usually doesn’t have the force it should.

Greenburg-Mericle try to change that in this episode’s villain-of-the-day, another would-be vigilante who picks up various folk he believes deserve punishment, strings them up, then asks them for last words before shooting them point-blank.  What makes this otherwise melodramatic scene convincing is the fact that he actually broadcasts these executions to Starling City at large.

Arrow S01E12 – Review

By: Wendy Mericle & Ben Sokolowski (story)

The Story: No one tries to put Green Arrow’s little sister in the slammer—nobody!

The Review: Although it’s taken some creative fudging and narrative necessity, the show has finally established a somewhat enduring familial relationship between Ollie, Thea, and Moira.  Time will tell if the Queen family dynamics can carry the show over the long term.  For now, it’s enough that you get a sense of sincere affection among the trio, though tested by frequent, sudden switches in their personality or temperament.

Ollie’s vacillations between caring and coldness have become second-nature by now, but Thea’s unpredictable attitudes seem patented for the sake of injecting conflict and drama as needed.  She begins the episode pale and nervous about her court hearing, is visibly shaken when the judge rejects her plea agreement,* but all of sudden displays a rather condescending, jerky side to Dinah when the older gal offers her an alternative to prison time.  All this to get back at her mom, which only makes Thea seem a bit petty and lame.

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.