It does seem some of those early reports about series-wide contracts were a bit misleading about what that really meant.
Spoilers Arrow - Season 5
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Wait, so Captain Cold won't make an appearance nearly every week in any one show then?
Don't shatter my hopes like that!
Damn, sounds like Captain Cold has made an appearance in this thread.
5x13...
They wasted no time in bringing Thea back. Guess they heard our cries.
Tonight's episode was called "Spectre of the Gun".
When I saw Rene's daughter, I knew this would be a tragic episode, but I thought it would be more tragic, if you know what I mean.
And how about the strong gun message? The quality of the writing was certainly different. Very "after school special" in spots. And Ollie reminded me of Captain Kirk when he was talking the guy down. Great flashback though with Rene's story. This is what they should be.
They wasted no time in bringing Thea back. Guess they heard our cries.
Tonight's episode was called "Spectre of the Gun".
When I saw Rene's daughter, I knew this would be a tragic episode, but I thought it would be more tragic, if you know what I mean.
And how about the strong gun message? The quality of the writing was certainly different. Very "after school special" in spots. And Ollie reminded me of Captain Kirk when he was talking the guy down. Great flashback though with Rene's story. This is what they should be.
I was more than a little skeptical about tonight's episode because it seemed, on the surface, to be out-of-place for this particular corner of the Arrowverse, which hasn't previously touched on anything even remotely "issue-oriented", but the way the show handled things made for one of the best episodes not only of the season, but of the series.
I thought it was refreshing to finally see Oliver Queen doing some political activism, though this version was a lot more centrist than the leftie Green Arrow of the comics. I feel the resolution was a bit wishy-washy -- I would've come down a lot stronger on the gun control side -- but I like it that they're trying to be about something. As a lifelong Trekkie, I feel that SF/fantasy is best when it's a commentary on social and philosophical issues, and I've been glad to see the Berlanti shows doing more of that over the past couple of years. And of all the DC characters they get to use, Green Arrow is the one who should be the most politically activist, so it was annoying that last season they had him run for mayor without ever actually taking a position on any issue beyond "crime bad, hope good." Hopefully this isn't the last time Mayor Queen will stand for something.
If anything, I think Rene has a pretty strange interpretation of the events leading to his wife's death. He said he could've kept her alive if he'd had a gun, but he did have a gun, and it was his shooting of the drug dealer that caused him to shoot Rene's wife by accident. I guess his thinking is that it would've been different if he'd had the gun on him to start with, but he can't know that.
Honestly, I was expecting him to come home and find that his wife had used his gun to commit suicide. Nearly 2/3 of gun deaths in the US are suicides, and suicide rates are significantly higher in areas where gun ownership is more common. That's the one key part of the gun-violence issue that keeps getting left out of the debate, even though it's a huge, huge part of the death toll.
I think my favorite part was Curtis and Felicity lamenting how afraid we've become to have healthy debate, how it's just become shouting at each other instead of listening and disagreeing respectfully. Although it was weird to have such a commentary on our world when it's been made so clear in recent months that Earth-1 is a pretty different world from ours in a lot of ways (like having a black female president).
Oh, speaking of the Earth-1 POTUS... I rewatched last week's episode earlier today, and it struck me as odd that Dinah was surprised by Diggle's mention of facing aliens. How could she not know about the aliens? The Dominator invasion was worldwide and very public. They assassinated the President. I know Dinah was off on her vendetta, but it's hard to believe she didn't hear something about the alien invasion.
If anything, I think Rene has a pretty strange interpretation of the events leading to his wife's death. He said he could've kept her alive if he'd had a gun, but he did have a gun, and it was his shooting of the drug dealer that caused him to shoot Rene's wife by accident. I guess his thinking is that it would've been different if he'd had the gun on him to start with, but he can't know that.
Honestly, I was expecting him to come home and find that his wife had used his gun to commit suicide. Nearly 2/3 of gun deaths in the US are suicides, and suicide rates are significantly higher in areas where gun ownership is more common. That's the one key part of the gun-violence issue that keeps getting left out of the debate, even though it's a huge, huge part of the death toll.
I think my favorite part was Curtis and Felicity lamenting how afraid we've become to have healthy debate, how it's just become shouting at each other instead of listening and disagreeing respectfully. Although it was weird to have such a commentary on our world when it's been made so clear in recent months that Earth-1 is a pretty different world from ours in a lot of ways (like having a black female president).
Oh, speaking of the Earth-1 POTUS... I rewatched last week's episode earlier today, and it struck me as odd that Dinah was surprised by Diggle's mention of facing aliens. How could she not know about the aliens? The Dominator invasion was worldwide and very public. They assassinated the President. I know Dinah was off on her vendetta, but it's hard to believe she didn't hear something about the alien invasion.
I just read an interview with Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle where Guggenheim explains that they left the specific details of the Star City Firearms Freedom Act intentionally vague because said details really weren't the point of what they were trying to deal with. As Guggenheim put it, he's " not interested in the verdict. I’m just interested in both sides in the case having equal arguments." (the 'verdict' in this instance being the SCFFA and the 'case' being the question of gun control and gun violence)
I have not watched the Invasion episodes since those aired. So my memory might be wrong. I thought it was clear the government covered it all up to the public? Which is why the new President's speech in the Hall of Justice was not seen by anyone outside that building. It made no sense that all that could be covered up but I thought that was what the writers were going with.
I thought the episode was going to be about gun control, but that was not the case. And they didn't really go into detail as to how the new city ordinance would benefit both sides. It was just like sitting on the fence.
I've seen so many movies and TV shows with the protagonist defusing a potentially deadly situation. "Put the gun down. You don't want to do this." And of course, the angry shooter is subsequently disarmed by dramatics. Frankly, I was unphased, but impressed by Ollie's delivery, or I should say, Stephen Amell's performance.
I've seen so many movies and TV shows with the protagonist defusing a potentially deadly situation. "Put the gun down. You don't want to do this." And of course, the angry shooter is subsequently disarmed by dramatics. Frankly, I was unphased, but impressed by Ollie's delivery, or I should say, Stephen Amell's performance.
This was my favorite part of the episode too, but I totally forgot something that should have been addressed. If anyone should have had an opinion on this gun Debate, it's Felicity, considering she was paralyzed from the waist down by gun shot wounds. It was a shame that never was brought up and for someone as opinionated as Felicity, that thought actually made me not like the episode as much as I originally did.
Other than that, it was decent. I liked that a show like this is tackling an important issue of our times, but it does kind of feel like an out of nowhere thing, considering how much gun use is actually in this show. I do hope we get back to the Prometheus storyline soon though. Also, it was great to have Thea back.
I was thinking about that scene too but what if Rene couldn't see his wife from where he was and from his gunfire maybe didn't hear the gun go off as the guy fell? so I guess Rene thought maybe his wife had been shot at the start when the guy fired several rounds. It's even more tragic if that's the case as Rene thinks guns save lives when infact all they do is take them including his wife. Failing that version, I guess Rene was like, if I had my gun on me from the start then things might of gone differently.
There were large Dominator ships hovering in the sky over multiple major cities. In the final sequence when Supergirl and the Flash were speeding across the world implanting the nanotech on the Dominators, we saw dozens of Dominators walking around openly on city streets in broad daylight. It's impossible to cover up things that were directly witnessed by millions of people, no matter how many "alternative facts" you try to spin.
It would've been easy enough for the medical examiner to figure out what happened afterward, from the position of the gunman's arm and the wife's body and from the angle of entry, etc.
What I found surprising is that they actually followed up on Quentin's line to Rene last week, "When did you become my assistant?" I thought that was just a joke, but they've actually made Wild Dog into a member of the mayoral administration, and that is freaky.
Okay, so now one deadly, extralegal vigilante has gotten a cushy job in the mayor's office, and another (Dinah) has just gotten a job at the SCPD, despite having committed two premeditated murders just two weeks earlier. Don't they have background checks in this universe?
Okay, so now one deadly, extralegal vigilante has gotten a cushy job in the mayor's office, and another (Dinah) has just gotten a job at the SCPD, despite having committed two premeditated murders just two weeks earlier. Don't they have background checks in this universe?
Yeah, I thought that was the whole point of the episode. The actual argument over gun control was very centrist and didn't take a strong position on either side, but it emphasized that things really aren't working as intended, that it can't go on that way, and that a civil conversation needs to start happening.
She wasn't elected though, an old white guy was, so their Earth might be just as crappy as this one...
Anyway, as far as "Very Special Episodes" go, this one was rather good, I've got no major complaints to make.
In other notes, Dinah settling down and getting a job means she'll have to get into costume soon, which is a shame, because I kinda liked her kicking ass as is.
Regarding the job itself, when she mentioned an apartment with a garden, I expected she'd say she's opening a flower shop, so just returning to the police force was a bit underwhelming after that.
Great to see Thea back, but considering the recent actors contracts talk, it's time to start thinking who'll be a regular next season because the cast has gotten huge. I've seen many people predict Rene will die prior to this episode for that reason, but I think getting back to raising his daughter would be a nice way to end his story.
By the way, is Curtis' lawyer friend Matt Murdock perchance?
Vice presidents are elected, with the understanding that their primary function is to take over as president should the need arise. Our Earth's United States has never even had a female vice president yet, and only twice has there been a female VP nominee for a major party.
I felt the opposite -- when I saw her standing there in civvies while the rest of the team was masked, I thought "She needs a costume, quickly."
Although it's too bad that, when Dinah was introduced to Quentin, they didn't have time to get into the fact that she was intended as the inheritor of Laurel's mantle -- or that she was the namesake of both Quentin's wife and his daughter (Dinah Laurel Lance).
I leaned forward to get his reaction to that.
Her civvies aren't that far off, had she just swapped jeans for shorts+fishnets she would be in her current comics costume.
I am curious to see what they'll go for, less leather I hope...
I agree. The tragedy does not really work as a justification for Rene's anti gun control stance. If he did not have a gun at all and was helpless to stop the robber then I could see why he would believe in the right to bear arms for self-defense. But in his case, he was armed and did try to stop the robber. If anything, his tragedy serves to illustrate that having a gun for self-defense is no guarantee that you will be able to keep yourself and your family safe. It actually disproves the argument that the right to bear arms folks make that we just need to let responsible gun owners have more guns to protect themselves and everything would be fine.