Arrow- Detective Lance vs Oliver Queen/Green Arrow

[Othello]

Anyone else here find themselves rooting for detective Lance over Oliver Queen/Arrow? I personally find that Oliver is still a self absorbed jackass after the island regardless of whether he feels he's "pretending" now or not. I root for the man who sees a self absorbed jackass who cheated on his daughter with his other daughter who was killed while doing so and still sees a self absorbed jackass. And Oliver is still a jackass cause, to my mind, he's more interested in USING Lance's dislike of him than anything else. He tells himself he cares about what happens to others around him but it's another self absorbed lie.

[Christopher]

Clearly this isn't meant to be a clear-cut good-guy/bad-guy narrative. Oliver and Quentin Lance are both flawed and multifaceted characters. Oliver isn't the most likeable person right now; he's psychologically scarred from his ordeal and on a dark path, and he's cold, manipulative, and ruthless in pursuit of his mission. But it looks like the story of the series, or at least of the first season, is about his journey of redemption, as the people close to him help him to rediscover his humanity. Quentin is also starting out scarred by the same tragedy, and similarly driven and obsessed as a result of his pain, so they're kind of mirrors of each other. They both have journeys ahead of them, and that's part of what makes the show so interesting.

[sojourner]

Yep, at some point in the series I think Ollie will go through a course correction and become more hero and less vigilante.

[Icemizer]

Please its not like Lances daughter was a twelve year old or anything. Dad should realize she is as much to blame as anyone in that situation. Detective Lance is just being dragged down by her death and the fact the he failed his wife when she needed him the most. Probably more the latter than the former as that is something that is directly his fault.

[sojourner]

^You don't have kids do you?

[Othello]

Christopher wrote:

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Clearly this isn't meant to be a clear-cut good-guy/bad-guy narrative. Oliver and Quentin Lance are both flawed and multifaceted characters. Oliver isn't the most likeable person right now; he's psychologically scarred from his ordeal and on a dark path, and he's cold, manipulative, and ruthless in pursuit of his mission. But it looks like the story of the series, or at least of the first season, is about his journey of redemption, as the people close to him help him to rediscover his humanity. Quentin is also starting out scarred by the same tragedy, and similarly driven and obsessed as a result of his pain, so they're kind of mirrors of each other. They both have journeys ahead of them, and that's part of what makes the show so interesting.

Don't get me wrong- I love the show and see what they are going for. That said, I find Oliver extremely unlikeable now and almost, and maybe even to, the point where I'd consider him irredeemable.

And they also better take a REALLY long time before they put him and Laurel together. I find her closeness to him now pretty unrealistic. You can only suspend disbelief so much.

[Christopher]

Oliver's no saint, to be sure. But we saw in the flashbacks this week that he was willing to endure torture to protect a man he barely knew, and that was when he was still the spoiled rich kid and had yet to endure most of the hardships that changed him. That shows he has some basic decency.

[LaxScrutiny]

sojourner wrote:

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^You don't have kids do you?

I have kids. I love them unconditionally, but I also have to respect that they make their own decisions, they make their own mistakes, sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are jackasses. If they break the law, or screw someone over, or make a choice to fuck someone they shouldn't, they aren't "right" because I love them, and I don't stop loving them because they did something wrong. So I think Icemizer makes a good point.

[sojourner]

What did she do wrong besides dying? Who is Lance going to blame for her dying?

[Mach5]

It's kinda hard to really root for Oliver, because he keeps acting as the judge, the jury, and doesn't hesitate to go for the capital punishment. Sooner or later, he's gonna murder a man, jut to find out that he was actually innocent.

But this does give his story some spice. It's interesting to see a show about an anti hero for a change.

[Christopher]

Yeah, I don't think we're supposed to be rooting for Oliver per se, at least not yet. He's starting his journey in a dark place and I think he has some learning to do yet.

But the ending of this week's episode is really the first time we've seen Ollie "execute" someone as punishment for their crimes, and even that was only implied. We've seen him kill to protect his anonymity, and we've seen him kill in self-defense, although the majority of the henchmen he's shot were reportedly only wounded, according to both dialogue and common sense. (Arrow wounds are typically survivable unless you're hit in a vital area or fail to stop the bleeding. Even fiction, which usually treats shooting or stabbing wounds as far more instantly lethal than they realistically would be, frequently portrays arrow wounds as survivable -- how many times have we seen heroes pulling arrows out of their shoulders/legs/etc.?) Usually he just threatens or coerces the bad guys into confessing, replaying stolen money, or the like.

[Eduardo]

So, to nitpick...

Oliver's plan... so he knew the camera in a previous episode was there, and decided to get caught in film, so the police would suspect him, arrest him and Diggle would be able to cover for him proving he wasn't Arrow...

And he decides to put this plan in motion BEFORE he recruits Diggle at all... a recruiting that was motivated by having to get him to the "Arrowcave" after being shot with curare bullets by Deadshot.

All of which happened AFTER he set "the plan" in motion.

Either Oliver has clairvoyant powers or an incredible amount of dumb luck.

[Christopher]

^Or he intended to bring Diggle into his confidence all along, and what happened with Deadshot only accelerated his timetable.

[Lost Periphery]

Christopher wrote:

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Oliver's no saint, to be sure. But we saw in the flashbacks this week that he was willing to endure torture to protect a man he barely knew, and that was when he was still the spoiled rich kid and had yet to endure most of the hardships that changed him. That shows he has some basic decency.

I don't believe it was due to decency. I think it was an extreme form of dependency and even insanity. Ollie's whole world was turned around so violently and so quickly that when the first person to help ease his mental burden came around he submitted to him fully.

Even after being tortured then rescued he still wanted to go out to protect/fight along side the only stability and hope he had in his life at that point.

Dying for your rescuer is not a sign of anybody operating with a high moral grounding but a very case book example of Dependent Personality Disorder.

[Lost Periphery]

Eduardo wrote:

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So, to nitpick...

Oliver's plan... so he knew the camera in a previous episode was there, and decided to get caught in film, so the police would suspect him, arrest him and Diggle would be able to cover for him proving he wasn't Arrow...

And he decides to put this plan in motion BEFORE he recruits Diggle at all... a recruiting that was motivated by having to get him to the "Arrowcave" after being shot with curare bullets by Deadshot.

All of which happened AFTER he set "the plan" in motion.

Either Oliver has clairvoyant powers or an incredible amount of dumb luck.

Christopher wrote:

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^Or he intended to bring Diggle into his confidence all along, and what happened with Deadshot only accelerated his timetable.

I think getting Diggle into his plan, um planned or not, was the first sane thing he did since coming back from the island. Even if Ollie kinda messed it up at first by trying to get his help by deceit. He knows enough to know that a lone gunman approach will never work.

I do wonder if Diggle wasn't forced on him by his family, would he have gone to Laurel with the same purpose?

Ollie is on the starting path of balance, and I love this show because, so far, he is stumbling to it.