Spoilers Arrow - Season 5

After being disappointed last night, tonight is showing why Arrow is the best of the CW Shows right now (not counting legends of course). That episode was awesome and Arrow delivered after an out of the ordinary issue show last week. I thought maybe my Arrow excitement would have died down a bit now that I'm on a weekly watch instead of a binge watch but that episode only made me more excited about what is to come.

Really loved the themes of this season, which is kind of echoing back to season 2 and Oliver having to face his sins not only of the Arrow but as Oliver Queen. We're also seeing the other characters having to do that, especially Quinten and Thea, who both had great arcs tonight.

Supergirl was fun. Flash I bought into the hype and was let down. Arrow is in the (historically) troubled back half of the season and is firing on most cylinders right now.

 

Arrow is the lowest rated of the four shows. The Flash is the highest.

 

What does that have to with anything I said? It's my favorite and the most consistent of the three each week.

 

I'm starting to get bored with the lack of progress with the Prometheus plot. Hopefully next week kicks it up a notch and doesn't fall back on political intrigue of a policy coverup

 

It's also the oldest so audience erosion is no shock to me (season 4 did a lot of damage obviously). Despite begin the most watched of the 4, The Flash suffered some sizable erosion in season 3.

One that bugged me was Olly as Green Arrow was stood to a degree in a spotlight of sorts and that you could see how clear his beard and face (despite the mask) was to the detective + using the same line about living with what he did, jeez talk about giving away your identity. I know all comic book secret identities take liberties but sometimes it seem like the writers aren't even trying.

Do you think the show will ever fully out Olly to the world?

 

@tomalak301, your enthsiasm just got me thinking about how the show is actually doing and I thought I'd post about it. It was surprising that the show that started it all is doing the least well, but then I came to the same conclusion that @Jax posted above.

 

I know..i wish they would have used Green Arrow's traditional beard as a "mask" to cover his facial features. Would've made a lot of sense...combined with the mask and vocal distortion, it would have been "believable".

But then, they have Quentin Lance out in the field with Arrow, so how no one has connected the dots....

 

A China White, Lady Cop and Cupid team up! Unexpected combo, but fun.

Surprisingly Lady Cop is the only one that had actual storyline relevance here, while Cupid was strangely non Valentiney even though 'tis the season, and little was made of China White's return even though it took ages to capture her and she was considered so dangerous that at one point Amanda Waller wanted to shoot down a plane full of civilians just to take her out.

When Oliver said something along "I have some experience covering up my identity" Thea obviously thought exactly the same thing that anyone who's ever watched Arrow and did what she did, and Oliver's comparison to their mother was spot on. I miss Moira.

So if/when Oliver steps down, is Thea gonna run for mayor?

I like that the rest of her is till in her regular clothes, but Dinah got a domino mask, I'd have much preferred if she went without it. I know they're going for the whole "protect the identity" thing, but they might as well embrace the comic-bookiness fully and just go with it. If Supergirl can get away with it in broad daylight, surely a pack of vigilantes fighting in the dark can get away it too.

Case in point, when Green Arrow talks to Pike after the final fight, "that's what the mayor said" and he's standing there(with the mayor's deputy nearby), fully lit up... c'mon. If I can suspend disbelief for that, I can for Dinah going maskless...

Insane numbers time, I already commented how $100 million dollars in petty cash was just a ridiculous amount to invest in street crime back when it was Church's idea to buy that much money's worth of guns. It's still a friggin stupid number, but it pales in comparison to Claybourne's mistress having over a petabyte of data? A petabyte? That's over five hundred 2TB drives stashed somewhere(in her basement?) Unless she's secretly hosting hundreds of thousands of pirated videos from her home why does she have so much data? You could literally fit the entirety of human literature in that much drive space...

BTW is her house the same house that Eobard keeps killing Nora Allen in?

 

That's what I thought too.

I also agree that it's disappointing how little China White was used. It was great to see Kelly Hu again, but she barely did anything. It was odd that there was an inverse proportion between how much we'd seen of the three villainesses in the past and how much they got to do here.


I was pleasantly surprised by how the Ollie-Thea subplot resolved. I expected him to fire her. I'm so happy that it went in a more nuanced, sensitive direction. Someone said above that the Mayor Queen arc isn't going anywhere, but I disagree. I think we're seeing Oliver finally succeeding at becoming the better man he's been striving to be for years, now that he's operating more in the light and can't just punch or shoot his problems.

 

Okay, they faked us out in a way that would only affect comics readers or people who follow online discussions about the show and its comics sources. In the comics, Adrian Chase was introduced in 1983 by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, as a New York City district attorney who became the Vigilante when his family was killed by mobsters. So those of us who knew that were supposed to assume that Chase was Vigilante -- which made it rather confusing that Vigilante was going after Mayor Queen for the coverup that Chase engineered. I was wondering if maybe he was doing that to gain Oliver sympathy, or if Chase helping Oliver was just a cover for Vigilante. But now it turns out -- gotcha -- Chase is Prometheus! So who the heck is Vigilante? Or is this another Jay Garrick situation where Vigilante is the real Adrian Chase and Prometheus has stolen his identity?

Weird for Oliver to lie about the Green Arrow's role in Malone's death rather than telling the truth about how the GA was manipulated into the act. I don't see how that really makes things better.

It occurs to me that Oliver could just retire the Green Arrow identity and just supervise the team as mayor. Spartan, Mr. Terrific, Wild Dog, and Black Canary II could probably handle the action well enough, especially now that the T-Spheres have been added to the arsenal. But they probably won't go that route, because the show is called Arrow.

I would've included Overwatch in that list, but I don't know where Felicity's heading, now that she's signing up with Helix and getting in even deeper. She's really heading in a darker direction these days, and unlike Thea, she's doubling down on it.

Interesting that Thea's cutthroat political tactics were presented as an evolution of her post-Lazarus Pit bloodlust. Glad to see her trying to walk away from that before it's too late. Maybe she should go to rehab. Do they have superhero rehab? (I was thinking maybe she should go to Central City and hang around with Team Flash for a while. Maybe they could help her get to a more positive place.)

 

Another week and Arrow continues to outclass Supergirl and Flash in every way. Loved the Prometheus reveal even though now I have the urge to rewatch season 5 and try to fill in the dots.

The stuff with Oliver as Mayor also continues to be interesting and this was a nice way to write Thea off for a while. She was really stepping into the Moira role moreso than last week.

I'm really interested in what happens next. Who the heck is Vigilante, and I'm glad as someone who doesn't read the comics that it wasn't Chase. It just would have felt anticlimactic for a tv series and it was nice to be pleasantly surprised at a revelation without coming into various message board threads and having it all figured out. I love these threads, but if things always go by comic books, there would be no room for surprises.

Speaking of surprises, I kinda want Vigilante to be Paul. It would be a nice explaination for him showing up and telling Curtis the news.

As for Felicity joining Helix, that can't end well but at least it gives her an arc for the rest of the season. For someone who felt like he was standing up for Felicity during my binge watch, there were times when I forgot she was even in this show this season.

 

I'm half-expecting it to be Susan Williams.

Anyway, there are four other people (one of them female) who've borne the Vigilante monicker in DC history, though the first was a '40s cowboy hero unconnected to the others (the version Nathan Fillion played in Justice League Unlimited -- and actually one of the first DC characters to get a movie serial adaptation, played by Ralph Byrd in 1947). I don't think any characters with those names have been introduced yet, but somebody could be using an alias.


As far as Paul divorcing Curtis, I think it's probably a good idea in the long run. I've never found the two actors at all convincing as a couple. Their body language in scenes together is so stiff and physically distant -- I don't think we've ever seen them hug or kiss, or even give the impression that they wanted to. I've suspected that was a network double standard, that they were more comfortable showing women making out than men, but Riverdale had no trouble going there with Kevin Keller and his new friend at the drive-in a couple of weeks ago. So maybe it's just that the actors don't have chemistry, in which case it's the best decision to split them up.

 

"Green Arrow's the hero Star City deserves, but not the one it needs right now."

That was an awesome episode, the misdirect was nicely handled, loving the growing Curtis/Rene friendship, glad that Oliver is still the mayor and it should be interesting seeing Felicity on the road to the dark side with evil mini-Felicity.

Thea leaving, but, but... we just got her back.

I liked how the reveal was done without any pomp, instead just matter-of-factly taking of the mask after the fight. It's also interesting that this week's Arrowverse rooftop fights didn't include heroes, we got a Solovar/Grodd fight on Flash and Prometheus/Vigilante on Arrow.

So is Chase supposed to be Claybourne's son then, or is he someone else... something else?

Really looking forward to the rest of the season, just... don't fridge Susan, please.

They had to throw somebody under the bus, and explaining the exact circumstances of Billy's death would beg the question of how exactly does the mayor know all this.

There is however another solution they hadn't considered. Earlier this season Green Arrow's arrows were stolen from police evidence locker, they could have built a case around framing Prometheus, claiming he stole the arrows, killed Malone and framed Green Arrow. A lie, obviously, but in a way true from a certain point of view...

Since Prometheus was the one in charge of the defense it makes sense they didn't go that way...

Maybe it's Earth-1's Jimmy Olsen?

 

I'm just glad it wasn't that same damn rooftop yet again...

That didn't stop Oliver from telling Pike the truth last week. And Pike was questioned by the committee. Why didn't he just repeat what Oliver told him about the Green Arrow being set up to kill Malone?

 

Maybe Pike is Vigilante?
He has been showing up with increasing frequency lately...

 

WTF I simply don't get why Ollie didn't just tell the truth at the conference, yes GA killed the cop but he was conned into it. I don't get why that over what he actually said would of helped him keep his job, which itself is stupid, he would of loss his job (this is politics after all). It's a stupid move and another example of making the hero of the piece, a fucking moron. The Green Arrow is now a criminal, making his job of keeping people alive that much harder.

 

Well, the explanation given in the episode was that the city council just wanted someone to blame, a sacrificial lamb to give a sense of closure to the scandal. It didn't matter who, as long as they threw someone under the bus. So once Oliver put the blame on the Green Arrow, it satisfied the need for a scapegoat and removed the need to impeach Oliver. After all, as they also pointed out, Oliver's been achieving some pretty good stuff and is a popular mayor, so there's a political incentive to keep him in office. The council just needed a way to pin the blame on somebody else. And so Oliver allowed them to blame someone else... something else.

 

Maybe so but this and the stupid resolution of the gun control episode leads me to believe the writers should just get out of the political arena because they clearly know little about it.

 

There's something interesting about last night's episode that nobody's mentioned, which is that Adrian, either unwittingly or unconsciously, 'tipped his hand' in conversation with Oliver, and Oliver totally missed 'red-flagging' it. At one point, Adrian talks about Oliver 'screwing his girlfriend', which is a clear reference to what happened with regards to Susan losing her job as a result of Thea and Felicity's actions, which Adrian attributes to Oliver, telegraphing that he knows things that aren't public knowledge, but his comment goes completely over Oliver's head and only becomes relevant to the conversation as far as the fandom goes once the reveal that Adrian is Prometheus happens.

 

Cops are trained to answer what was asked and nothing more. Volunteering information not asked can potentailly poke holes in a case. It would be hard for Pike to break that line of thinking.