Arrow Reviews – Page 3 – That Geek Thing

Arrow S04E05 “Haunted” REVIEW

November 11, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E05 “Haunted” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Brian Ford Sullivan, Oscar Balderrama
Director: John Badham

Essential plot points:

Someone’s on the loose around Star City, killing people. As the police hunt the mysterious blonde female killer, Lance works out it’s his daughter.
Thea’s hired a new political expert, Alex Davis, to work on Oliver’s Mayoral campaign. He advises Oliver to distance himself from the Lances, and especially Laurel, if he wants to be elected.
Felicity is having problems listening to Ray Palmer’s final message – the file is corrupted, and she needs Curtis to clean it up.
Oliver and Thea are called to a nightclub where the blonde murderer is attacking someone.
When they arrive, they find Laurel already fighting the woman – Sara. She escapes, and Oliver realises that the “spa” weekend Thea and Laurel went to was in fact a trip to Nanda Parbat to resurrect Sara in the Lazarus pit.
Damien Darhk asks Captain Lance to install a device at a server farm outside the city. Lance has Felicity look at it, but there’s too much encryption on it for her to work out what it does.
Instead, Oliver sends Diggle with Lance as backup.
Felicity and Oliver realise Sara’s victims so far all look like Thea. They try to contact her, but Sara’s already found her, and Thea barely escapes with her life.
Oliver confronts Laurel about using the Lazarus Pit, and she points out his hypocrisy, saying he didn’t tell her about it or Thea because he never saw her as an equal.

At the server farm, the device starts deleting files about military personnel. Diggle sees his brother’s name among those being erased, but before he can do anything, security arrives.
Lance improvises by knocking him out and claiming he was arresting Diggle to allay their suspicions.
Sara turns up at the hospital. Thea, knowing she needs to die to allay Sara’s bloodlust, is ready to give in but Oliver and Laurel stop her, and set a trap to capture Sara using Thea as bait.
Oliver reveals Sara’s soul has been left behind in the Lazarus Pit, and to restore her he needs a favour from a friend – John Constantine.
He performs a ritual that takes Oliver and Laurel to where Sara’s soul is trapped, and they battle to free her, bringing her back to normal.
Darhk passes information to Lance, who in turn passes it on to John Diggle, about why HIVE had his brother killed; it emerges Andrew Diggle wasn’t quite the military hero John thought he was.
Curtis fixes the audio file, which reveals that Ray Palmer is still alive.
In flashbacks, Oliver meets Constantine for the first time when he turns up on Lian Yu, hunting an artefact in a secret chamber under the island. Oliver saves his life, and Constantine owes him a favour in return…

Review:

So, the first big crossover episode of the Arrowverse gets underway this season and it’s not with The Flash, Vixen or, indeed, forthcoming spin-off show Legends Of Tomorrow. Instead it’s with a rival show from a rival network which was cancelled months ago. Ballsy.

Not that you need to have seen the short-lived NBC version of Constantine (available here in the UK on Amazon Prime) for any of this to make sense: the script boils his character, and his relationship with Team Arrow, down very quickly and sensibly to “dodgy magical bloke Oliver helped out once, who now owes him a favour”. It’s absolutely the right approach, and instead relies on the natural charisma and performance of Matt Ryan, returning to the trench coat as if he’d never been away.

Because this isn’t so much of a crossover as a guest booking, there’s no need for reciprocal storytelling. Thus “Haunted” gets to focus on Arrow’s ongoing storylines rather than wrapping up anything from the aborted Constantine series. I’ve seen people complain elsewhere that Ryan’s not in it enough, or doesn’t get enough to do, but that misses the point.

It’s like David Tennant’s Doctor popping up in The Sarah Jane Adventures; it’s lovely to see him, and it adds an extra dimension to the story, but ultimately it’s still Sarah’s show and the focus should be on her. Besides, Constantine’s in pretty much every flashback scene: what more do you want?

Instead, the focus is on what’s happening in Star City, namely Sara’s crazed rampage through the underworld in pursuit of Thea, Laurel’s relationship with Oliver, Felicity and Curtis’s investigation into Ray Palmer’s death and Damien Darhk’s plans for… well, whatever it is he’s up to. Each of those stories progresses apace, with Constantine’s presence touching three of them, but not overpowering them.

The Laurel and Oliver plot’s the most interesting. Laurel, as a character and Katie Cassidy as an actress have never been Arrow’s strongest selling point. In fact, she’s probably the least interesting or valuable member of the Lance family, and the most emotionally fragile, yet she’s very much the heart of what’s going on – be it the Queen campaign’s new political adviser telling Oliver to distance himself from her, Oliver’s anger and guilt over Sara’s resurrection, and Darhk using Laurel as leverage to threaten Captain Lance. In an episode where Constantine tells Oliver of nexuses where bad things are drawn together, she seems to be the Arrowverse’s embodiment of one.

And while it’s nice to see Caity Lotz back, to set up her new role as White Canary in Legends, the whole battle for Sara’s soul appears to be a couple of stuntmen on a redressed Nanda Parbat set dancing about while Olly and Laurel drag her out a swimming pool. It’s all a little underwhelming and worse, the direction of the action sequence, so often Arrow’s strong point, feels really flat.

It undermines what feels like a key part of the show, certainly over the last couple of weeks, with a payoff that could be from any Arrow episode. There doesn’t actually feel like any sense of danger or threat, and cries out for some kind of different approach in visualising the battle for Sara’s soul.

Actually, a word about the direction overall. It’s lovely to see John Badham, responsible for most of my VHS collection when I was about 13, pop up again. Arrow’s style of directing is usually very templated, not least because the action sequence unit are a very well-oiled machine, but he brings a lovely sense of stillness and calm to big dialogue scenes, especially Olly and Felicity’s heart-to-heart, and the big reveal for Diggle at the end.

Between Lexi Alexander last week and Badham this week, it’s nice to see the producers trying to bring something new to the visual palate of the show, and not drawing from the regular churn of TV directors whose names pop up so often on credits.

Next week, the focus switches to Ray, as the ramping up of the set-up to Legends Of Tomorrow progresses. But more importantly, there’s a sense of the pace in the Arrow universe picking up again after a couple of episodes to catch our breath.

The Good:

Matt Ryan. Let’s not beat about the bush here, there were many, many, many things wrong with the TV version of Constantine, but Ryan’s performance as John Constantine wasn’t one of them. He hasn’t missed a beat in picking up the character in the time since Constantine was axed, and it would be a crying shame if this is the “one-time only” deal the producers claim, especially since magic and mystical powers seem to be the key theme in Arrow this year. I can’t imagine anyone’d be adverse to seeing him pop up again in the future.
The peacock feather – and especially Felicity’s face when Constantine hands it back to her.
The scene where Oliver and Felicity realise who Sara’s hunting for is beautifully written and performed, with a very gentle and sadness-tinged discussion on the nature of grief and dealing with it between two characters who have seemingly risen above their emotional damage. In fact, performance wise, this whole episode contains some of Amell’s best work this series.
Finally, after weeks of ragging on Katie Cassidy, she finally delivers: the scene of her confronting Oliver at the hospital gets the tone and performance dead on.
Lance and Diggle as a double act’s a great idea, not least the implication that both men do what they do for one reason: to protect their daughters.
The cliffhanger ending. It’s not like the show hasn’t done them before, but Arrow this year just feels more connected, particularly in contrast to last year. This is a story unfolding at just the right rate.

The Bad:

So after weeks of build-up and roping in of magical dabbler John Constantine, Sara’s restored to normal by… a fight scene. Not even a big fight scene either, not by Arrow standards. That feels like a big old let down, and worse, the producers trying to shoehorn the Arrow format into something which really could have been done differently.
I know Thea’s young and a bit daft at times, but would she really not have heard of Chappaquiddick (even if the Harry Potter joke’s a nice line)? It’s something that likely changed the course of American politics in the ’70s and famous enough that even on this side of the Atlantic it’s pretty well known.
Baron Reiter’s dismissal of Conklin’s discovery of the parachute and equipment is bizarre. Surely, if he’s so worried about infiltrators – as with Constantine turning up – he’d be more likely to act, not less. Unless Conklin’s forever claiming people are traitors and spies and Reiter’s just got a bit bored with it now.
No ciggies. Okay, reformed ex-smokers might not complain, but the nearest we get to TV Constantine having a smoke is stubbing one out on the ground when Oliver phones. C’mon, I know it’s 2015 (and kids, smoking really IS bad for you, m’kay) but Constantine smokes like a chimney with a death wish and you’d think he’d at least nip outside for a crafty one once he’s brought Sara back to life.

New political fixer Alex Davis, played by Suburgatory’s Parker Young, doesn’t make much of an impression. Presumably the character will start to have an influence on Oliver’s campaign over the next few weeks but on first impressions, he’s not exactly Bruno Gianelli.

And the Random:

The director of this episode is veteran British-born helmer John Badham, and if that name sounds familiar, it’s because he directed some of the biggest cinema hits of the ’70s and ’80s, including iconic genre entries such as Blue Thunder and Short Circuit, Saturday Night Fever, Stakeout (and its ’90s sequel Another Stakeout), real-time Johnny Depp curio Nick Of Time and of course the pretty much untouchable WarGames. Despite being well into his ’70s, he was also a director on the TV series of Constantine, making him the obvious choice to take care of “Haunted”.
The idea of a crossover between the shows had been kicking around for a while, in fact, since the Lazarus Pit became a feature of Arrow’s mythology. Stephen Amell revealed earlier this year he was originally going to pop up on Constantine. With that show being axed, the writers seem to have shoehorned him into the flashback sequences as a set-up instead.
Constantine and Arrow shared the same studio building, so when Constantine was axed by NBC, the producers of Arrow snaffled the character’s costume from storage. Just in case…
The reference to him bringing back a soul a year ago is true: it’s the soul of his partner Chas’ daughter, in the Constantine episode “Quid Pro Quo”.
The Orb of Horus, eh? Horus the Hawk God. Suspect we might see that coming back again sometime soon…
Listen out to Blake Nealy’s score for the episode. He’s worked the five note harpsichord sting from Bear McCreary’s Constantine theme into most scenes featuring John, starting from the moment we see his face after being belted in the chops by Baron Reiter.
Writer Brian Ford Sullivan is an Arrow veteran, working on a number of series three’s key scripts, and also co-wrote cartoon spin-off Vixen. Co-writer Oscar Balderrama has been the show’s script co-ordinator pretty much since day one, and also wrote the episode in which Sara was killed. He’s also co-writing Arrow’s first tie-in novel.

Poor old Curtis. The comic book version of Mister Terrific is an Olympic Gold Medal winner in the decathlon. Arrowverse’s version only won the bronze in 2008. In the real world, Cuban athlete Leonel Suarez picked up the bronze in Beijing – a feat he repeated in London four years later. Gold that year was won by an American, Brian Clay. Still Curtis is, at least, wearing a jacket with Fair Play on the sleeve, just like his comics counterpart.

Review by Iain Hepburn. You can listen to his podcast at www.fromthesublime.com

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash
• Read our other Arrow season four reviews
• Arrow & The Flash Interview Double-Bill: Cynthia Addai-Robinson & Candice Patton

Arrow S04E04 "Beyond Redemption" REVIEW

November 4, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E04 “Beyond Redemption” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Beth Schwartz, Ben Sokolowski
Director: Lexi Alexander

Essential plot points:

Captain Lance asks Team Arrow to help investigate when two detectives are found shot, as budget cuts leave him without the resources to do so.
But the good Captain’s not impressed when Oliver announces he’s running for mayor. Team Arrow is also left stunned by the news, wondering if Oliver knows what he’s getting into.
Oliver introduces the team to their new base: Sebastian Blood’s old lair, which has been refitted by Cisco and Felicity into a high tech Arrow Lair.
The team track down a sim card from the crime scene to a storage locker containing an armoury… owned by Star City PD’s anti-vigilante task force, which is responsible for killing the cops and stealing drugs around the city
Curtis has been trying to work out who is sending messages to Felicity’s phone and recognises the code as being that used by Ray Palmer before his death.
Oliver tells Lance his cops are corrupt, and they set a trap for the task force; Thea buys a large amount of drugs to lure them out. But the task force is too well-equipped with anti-vigilante equipment. Worse, they recognise Lance at the scene.
In her basement, Laurel is keeping the resurrected Sara chained up. Sara still doesn’t know who she is, and when Captain Lance sees his resurrected daughter he’s heartbroken.
Lance asks Damien Darhk what to do, given his knowledge of the Lazarus Pit, but Darhk says the best thing Lance could do would be to put kill Sara for her own sake. Unfortunately, his conversation is overseen on CCTV by Oliver and Felicity. An angry Oliver confronts Lance at his home, saying he looked up to the cop.
Lance goes to Laurel’s basement, but can’t bring himself to kill Sara and breaks down in tears. As he walks out, he’s captured by the Task Force, who take him to the police contraband locker where they intend to steal the confiscated drugs and money before escaping the city.
Team Arrow turns up and takes out the task force, but not before Warner catches and threatens to kill Oliver. Lance talks her out of it, giving a moving speech about wanting to save the city.
Lance plans to turn himself in to the police for his corruption, but Oliver convinces him to become a double agent and help them spy on Darhk as the two, for the first time in years, make a kind of amends.

Thea forces a wobbling Oliver’s hand after a heart to heart talk on his running for Mayor issue by hiring a campaign staff (well, getting interns, so it’s not costing anything…) and writing an inspirational speech for Oliver to announce his candidacy for Mayor.
Curtis asks Felicity for the password to unlock Ray’s computer, which recorded his final moments, in the hope it might unlock the mystery of the messages to her phone. At first she doesn’t want to, because of the painful memories it will bring up, but eventually she enters the password.
In the flashbacks to Lian Yu, Oliver tries to convince the skeptical Conklin that he killed the slave worker from last week, who has been hiding out in the cave Oliver used to lurk in with Slade. He does so after putting her in a suspended animation state with his nerve pinch trick, but as he leaves, Conklin discovers the parachute and communications device Oliver arrived back on the island with.
And Lauren enters the basement to bring Sara her dinner… only to find that Sara has somehow escaped!

Review:

After the frenetic pace of the first three episodes, Arrow drops down a gear with “Beyond Redemption” as the repercussions of the first few weeks begin to be felt across Star City.

Series regular writers Schwartz and Sokolowski are between them responsible for some of the most important episodes of the previous three years, which perhaps explains why this episode feels so strong. There’s a lot going on here, some things more obvious than others, but still with the same sense of advancement in series four, and just enough subtle foreshadowing to hint at what’s to come.

The key plots continue to progress nicely, with Darhk and Team Arrow dancing around each other, and poor Captain Lance caught in the middle, while the resurrection of Sara as part of the set-up for Legends Of Tomorrow continues to unfold. But there’s some interesting stuff being set up in the background, not least the increasingly more astute Thea, who is not only recovering from her blood lust but recognising something’s not quite right with Oliver and Felicity (since Oliver hasn’t proposed yet).

Likewise the nice, if slightly obvious, touch of Oliver’s speech announcing his candidacy being a variation of the opening titles monologue from the first three years works well, but to have it come from Thea’s hand rather than his is a genuinely clever touch which comes at the end of an episode where Willa Holland, no longer having to play crazed blood-lusting Thea, turns in a brilliantly light performance, especially in the scene where Oliver reveals his doubts about running for Mayor.

But the real standout is Paul Blackthorne, who absolutely blows everyone away in a story which puts poor old Captain Lance through the emotional ringer. Faced with the betrayal of his officers, evidence of his own moral failings and the resurrection of his dead daughter, it’s a wonder he’s not dead or insane by the end of the episode; the script even lets him make a joke out of the way Oliver constantly surprises Lance in his apartment, pointing out, “Don’t you know I’ve a heart condition?”

Blackthorns’s performance is full of emotion and torment, and is utterly convincing at every step – most especially in the scene where he goes to “put down” Sara and can’t bring himself to do it. He might not have had a lot to do so far this season, but the production team make up for it here in spades.

Lexi Alexander’s direction is unflashy but carries a sense of style, not least in the reveal of the new Arrow HQ, giving the place a real sense of scale. It’s her first time out on the show but hopefully not her last; she brings a cinematic eye to the proceedings which Arrow deserves, particularly in the very creative use of lighting in scenes.

The only slight disappointment is how easily the task force, which we see completely shrug off Team Arrow earlier in the episode, get dispatched with the big climactic fight sequence at the end. It just feels like there’s a scene missing somewhere, where Oliver and co find out more about the equipment and tactics the task force use and how to overcome them, because we go from them being routed to running riot in just a few minutes.

But that’s a minor quibble in a great episode filled not just with great performances but wonderful moments of lightness among the sheer emotion being wrung out of everyone. Arrow’s always had a good dark/light balance, with a cast that can play comedy well, so it’s good to see them given the chance to play to their strengths.

It’s also pleasing to have an episode that’s not a DC-villain-of-the-week or guest metahuman affair and that feels important without being a huge arc plot moment. In that respect “Beyond Redemption” feels almost like a traditional episode of Arrow, dealing with the human repercussions of a city on the brink. And with a certain cocky British sorcerer popping up next week, it’s nice to have a bit of normality…

The Good:

Captain Lance’s speech to convince Warner to change her ways and not kill Oliver is almost Jeff Winger-esque, and gives the episode its title: “Living in this city, dealing with what we’re dealing with right now? We’re all desperate. We’ve all been made to do desperate things. Terrible things. But I got to believe that we are not beyond redemption. And I got to believe that this city can still be saved, cause once we stop believing that, that’s when this city really dies and us, us, right along with it. Maybe, just maybe, we start saving our home by saving ourselves first. And that means facing up to our mistakes. That means facing justice. You put on that uniform ’cause you believe in justice. Ask yourself, Warner… Is that still the case?”

Guest star Rutina Wesley, probably best known as Tara in True Blood, gives a brilliant performance as troubled cop Warner. She doesn’t meet an untimely end and hopefully this means a future appearance for the character.
The final moments, as Oliver unveils his campaign speech while flash scenes show us tantalising moments elsewhere – Darhk receiving a mystical-looking box, Felicity activating Ray’s password – is brilliantly effective, with a sense of danger, and sadness, unfolding over the uplifting speech. And just what is in that box…?

The Curtis and Felicity show continues to be great fun, with even Felicity being outnerded (“This must be what it’s like talking to me…”) but also with a touch of solidarity in tragedy as Curtis reveals he lost his brother to cancer.
Felicity not being used to her new chair in the Arrow Cave – something every office worker forced to swap seats will sympathise with.

The Bad:

There’s some horribly leaden dialogue in this week’s episode. The “You took a bullet for me” bit at the end just about works thanks to Ramsey and Amell’s performance, but some of the other supposedly banter-ish lines really don’t land.
I know it’s kind of the joke, but given Curtis is supposed to have used every trick in the book to break Ray’s old password, you’d think the fact it’s still set as PASSWORD would be less of a hindrance…
Shouldn’t someone who’s just been stabbed in the back close enough to their spine to threaten paralysis look a little more uncomfortable than Olly does? He’s been quite the human pincushion this season…
Admittedly they sort of address it on the show, but if I were a Palmer Technology shareholder, and the company was in the financial dire straits we were told earlier in the season, I’d not be impressed with the Chief Exec splurging money on her boyfriend’s Mayoral campaign. Or, indeed, buying a truck full of drugs for her future sister-in-law’s party…
I feel like I’m ragging on Katie Cassidy’s performance every week, but she remains hugely unconvincing as Laurel at the moment. She just feels disconnected from what should be a hugely emotional storyline. If as a performance decision it’s going somewhere then I’m happy to stand corrected but for now, it’s just not working.

And the Random:

It’s time for the new Arrow Lair, referenced last week, to be finally revealed. Perhaps asking for trouble, it’s under Oliver’s campaign HQ and Captain Lance is shown round within a day of it opening, but it’s a very elaborate, high-tech set. And one with the Salmon Leap fitness set-up, for those of you who’ve been missing Stephen Amell doing pull-ups…
We’re told the systems in the new base were set up by Cisco. And they keep breaking down. The implication’s meant to be that it’s The Flash’s Cisco Ramon that’s responsible, but you can’t help but wonder if it’s a joke at the expense of computing giant Cisco Systems…
Director Lexi Alexander takes charge of her first Arrow episode. She previously helmed the bizarrely award-winning football casuals film Green Street (you know, the one with Elijah Woods as a West Ham-supporting hooligan) and underrated Marvel sequel Punisher: War Zone. She’s also a champion martial arts expert.
If you aren’t aware yet, next week Arrow has off its first big crossover of the new season. But it’s probably not with the show you were expecting…

Review by Iain Hepburn.Listen to his podcast now at Fromthesublime.com

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash
• Read our other Arrow season four reviews
• Arrow & The Flash Interview Double-Bill: Cynthia Addai-Robinson & Candice Patton

Arrow S04E03 "Restoration" REVIEW

October 28, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E03 “Restoration” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writer: Wendy Meigle, Speed Weed
Director: Wendey Stanzler

Essential plot points:

Thea and Laurel travel to Nanda Parbat with Sara’s corpse to use the Lazarus Pit, and bring her back to life. But Malcolm Merlyn and Nyssa refuse to help her.
Back in Star City, Diggle and Oliver manage to briefly capture one of Dahrk’s ghosts – although he escapes, leaving behind his cyanide tooth.
Oliver and Diggle’s issues continue to make working together difficult, until Felicity orders them to work out their differences… or else
Malcolm tells Thea the blood lust the Lazarus Pit has given her can only be sated by taking a life, which will ease the effects for a few weeks at a time; then he sacrifices a couple of his guards to help his daughter.
Diggle gets a lead in who killed his brother when the woman who ordered his hit, Mina Fayad, arrives in Star City with a meta human assassin, Jeremy “Double Down” Tell, who HIVE has sent to kill the Green Arrow.
Curtis Holt manages to identify what Double Down makes his lethal throwing cards from: the same material homing pigeons use to find their way. Except Tell’s tracked him and Felicity down to Palmer Tec,- and to the Arrow Lair underneath the building.
After being routed by Felicity with a machine gun (no, really) Tell tries to flee to Central City but is caught by Oliver and Diggle. Oliver takes a couple of playing cards in the chest to protect Diggle, convincing him he can trust Oliver again.
Malcolm agrees to bring Sara back to life, and she emerges from the Lazarus Pit alive but feral. Nyssa, horrified, spikes the pit to prevent it being used again…
In the flashbacks, Oliver continues to work undercover on Lian Yu, which is being used to produce a new drug, Slam, by Baron Reiter. He helps one of the captive workers escape being executed for stealing the drug to give to her colleagues.
And Felicity’s phone is being hacked whenever she enters the Palmer Tech labs. By someone sending messages in a distinctive blue and red coloured text…

Review:

“Restoration” is one of those episodes you get sometimes. You know the kind: it feels like it’s absolutely vital to the season’s progression, yet it also feels lightweight in itself because so much of it is about progressing the arc rather than having a story in its own right.

With so many plates spinning already in season four of Arrow, something had to give, and while none of them have come crashing off their poles just yet, there’s a lot of running to and fro to keep them from wobbling too much.

In terms of progressing the series, we now know why Oliver was sent back to Lian Yu in the flashbacks, who had Diggle’s brother killed, what Darhk’s connection to HIVE is, seen Sara Lance brought back to life, found out there’s no cure for Thea, had Oliver and Diggle’s relationship restored AND seen introduced Curtis into Team Arrow proper. With all that to get through in 45 minutes, it’s amazing the episode has any kind of depth at all.

Framing all this is a by-the-numbers “DC villain tries to kill Arrow” storyline of the type we’ve seen a dozen or so times already over the last three years. Thankfully this one just about gets away with it thanks to the charismatic presence of JR Bourne as Double Down who, initially at least, seems to be a sort of Aldi version of Gambit but actually turns out to be the best villain of the week the show’s had in a good season or so.

The schizophrenic and blisteringly paced nature of the episode means that all the character stuff, which you’d hope would be played out between Olly and Dig as they look to put their friendship back on track, is underbalanced against the whole “restoring Sara” stuff elsewhere. It boils down to, “You took a bullet for me, dude, so we’re bro’s again!” It’s a shame: I know they want to get the status quo back, but it felt like there was at least a proper episode’s milage still to be wrung out of getting the two of them on the same page again.

That’s especially disappointing as we know both Amell and Ramsey are actors who can pull off emotional confrontation scenes well, whereas Willa Holland and especially Katie Cassidy – who are given the on-paper emotion-charged storyline around the resurrection of Sara – feel flat in this episode. There’s no sense of the desperation Laurel’s supposed to be feeling over the death of her sister, especially in the early scene where, of all people, Barrowman ends up doing a lot of the heavy lifting. These should be wrought, emotionally potent scenes but Cassidy feels like she’s sleepwalking through them. It’s not that she’s a bad performer – we’ve seen she can be great on Arrow – but here it just doesn’t work.

Three episodes in and Arrow’s come out of the traps running, but that pace feels almost unsustainable, especially with so many big storylines running simultaneously. This isn’t A-Plot, B-Plot, C-Plot stuff any more, but two big A-Plots running simultaneously, with a mass of threads being piled on underneath. It’s starting to sit quite unevenly. Perhaps once Legends is up and running it can calm down and start focusing on just one or two things thing again, ideally around Damian, since Neal McDonough is reduced here to just a couple of scenes (albeit one key one) and his presence is largely missed.

The big redemption in this episode, and indeed for probably most of Arrow’s run, has been Emily Bett Rickard, who’s performance turns on a dime from silly to funny to angry in the space of a scene. She’s been a hell of a find for the show since her first appearance in series one, and after Arrow finishes is the sort of actor you could build a vehicle around; especially a sitcom. It seems the producers have finally figured out she deserves more to do, too. About bloody time.

It’s rare you get a really bad episode of Arrow, and “Restoration” is by no means a bad one. It’s just a bit uneven in terms of pacing.

The Good:

The Felicity/Curtis double act works so well already; it’s basically a replay of the Oliver/Felicity relationship from the first series, but flipped round.
Also, Felicity’s meltdown at Diggle and Oliver over their failure to resolve their differences is fantastic. Emily Bett Rickards is often Arrow’s MVP but in this episode they really let her loose.
Barrowman’s back. Hurrah! It’s also a welcome return to recent serial MCM Expo guest Katrina Law as Nyssa, and Caity Lotz returns to action as Sara Lance.

Thankfully they don’t kill Double Down, but shuffle him off to Iron Heights’s metahuman prison instead. He’s a fascinating villain and an obvious candidate for a return in either The Flash or Arrow.
The arc plot seems to be progressing at a rate of knots this season. Three episodes in and we’ve already got so much going on. After the at-times ponderous progression of season three, it’s refreshing to see them ramping up the storyline.

The Bad:

The Arrow stuntwork is usually spot on, which makes it all the more jarring when they fluff something. But the John Barrowman stand-in for the sword fight at the start is about as obvious as the Cage/Travolta ones in Face/Off. Yes, that bad.
“Restoration” sexpose the three action sequence formula that Arrow and, to an extent, The Flash stick to. Big stunt/fight sequence for the cold open, fight sequence half-way through the story where Oliver (or Barry) comes off second best, confrontation and victorious fight at the climax. I know Arrow’s an action series, and the formula works for them, but occasionally it really does feel like a formula.

Dig’s helmet. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned it before, but “Restoration” really shows off how awful it looks. In fact, in a couple of close-up shots, it looks like it doesn’t actually fit David Ramsey properly.
We don’t get to see how Nyssa spikes the Lazarus Pit to prevent it being used, but the aftermath effect is basically some dry ice and a pink spotlight. Even Blake’s 7 would have thought twice about that cheap and cheesy looking an effect.
There’s some horribly leaden dialogue in this week’s episode. The, “You took a bullet for me” bit at the end just about works thanks to Ramsey and Amell’s performance, but some of the other supposedly banter-ish lines really don’t land.

And the Random:

You may have noticed I’ve been asking over the last couple of weeks where the new Arrowcave is. Well, now we know the answer: it’s in the basement of the former Queen Consolidated, now Palmer Technologies HQ. Although now it’s been compromised, Oliver reveals he’s already planning Lair 3.0…
Appropriately enough, Double Down’s favoured card of choice appears to be a Queen – we almost see him take out Oliver with it.
Director Wendey Stanzler is a regular on both The Flash and Arrow – but is now also directing Gotham.

The new communications devices Curtis shows Felicity sound and look uncannily like Mister Terrific’s T-Spheres from the comics.
Whoever’s been writing the dialogue for the flashback scenes on Lian Yu has been watching Aliens, by the sounds of it. There’s at least two lines that appear to have been “borrowed” from it this week.
This week’s Arrow build towards Legends Of Tomorrow sees the restoration of original Black Canary Sara Lance, who we know’s going to be White Canary in the spin-off show. And the messages Felicity’s getting on her phone in Curtis’s lab could only be from someone else who’s joining the cast of that show.

Review by Iain Hepburn

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

• Arrow & The Flash Interview Double-Bill: Cynthia Addai-Robinson & Candice Patton

Arrow S04E02 "The Candidate" REVIEW

October 21, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E02 “The Candidate” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Mark Guggenheim and Keto Shimizu
Director: John Behring

Essential plot points:

An old family friend of the Queens, Jessica Danforth, announces she wants to run for mayor of Star City.
Felicity is told by the Palmer Tech board she needs to make some redundancies.
As Jessica announces her mayoral candidacy, the press conference comes under attack from a remote controlled machine gun,
Turns out this is a distraction as the culprit tries to abduct her with a giant taser, but ends up empty-handed after being chased off by Oliver.
Oliver offers Captain Lance his help in protecting Jessica, but the Captain is, as you might expect, a bit sceptical…
While Diggle and Laurel stake out the police HQ, John reveals he’s been investigating Damien Darhk’s HIVE group for some time, as they murdered his brother.
Darhk hired Jessica’s attacker, Lonnie Machin, to stop Danforth’s mayoral bid. But he’s less than satisfied with Machin’s performance so far.

Felicity manages to get a lead on Machin’s identity, but when Oliver and Thea go to his last known location, Thea’s rage gets the better of her and she deliberately breaks a man’s arm during interrogation.
Back at the Arrowcave, Oliver provokes Thea to show her she’s out of control, and is rewarded with a beating from his wee sister.
Oliver reveals to the rest of the team that it’s an effect of the Lazarus Pit which brought Thea back to life – something Laurel didn’t know about before.
The algorithm identifying redundancies has picked out Curtis Holt, who created it, as one of those to lose their jobs. He tries to put a brave face on it for Felicity’s sake.
Oliver visits Jessica, who is under protective custody. She is insisting she will stand as mayor to give the city someone who can be brave for them, but it emerges that Machin has abducted Danforth’s daughter to force her to withdraw from the race.
Darhk warns Machin he has crossed a line, and gives Machin’s location to Captain Lance – after warning a furious Lance that his own daughter’s future is under threat if the Captain continues not to show deference to the HIVE boss.
Lance passes the details to team Arrow, who rescue Danforth’s daughter. In the fight, Thea shocks Machin with his own taser after he’s been knocked into a shelf full of spirits, burning him alive.
Machin escapes the ambulance, despite his horrific injuries, leaving behind an Anarchy symbol scrawled in what looks like blood on the side of the ambulance. And thus another DCU villain is created…

Felicity tells the board Curtis has come up with a new invention which will save the company’s future and mean she can reinstate the sacked staff – the board give them six months to prove it.
Laurel offers to take Thea off to a spa to recover from her “issues”, but in fact wants to go back to Nanda Parbat – with the corpse of her dead sister Sara.
With Jessica having decided not to run for mayor, Oliver decides to step up to the position in her place, to inspire people the way the Green Arrow cannot.
In the flashbacks Oliver is ordered to infiltrate an of armed militia making people work cultivating and harvesting a field of purple flowers on Lian Yu. Heading them up is a man called Ritter, who recognises Oliver and invites him to join them.
Oh, and now Felicity wants a codename.

Review:

The solid, if still slightly unspectacular, start to Arrow’s series four continues, with both the main and flashback plots taking significant steps forward this time out.

Most notably, though, this felt like the most grizzly episode of Arrow in a long time. We’ve got stabbings, child torture, beatings, people being set on fire, cops having their throats cut and a decidedly uncomfortable arm-breaking. This is the new brighter, cheerier Arrow in the same way that each Christmas is the happiest Walford’s ever seen.

The hardest bit to deal with so far is the stuff with Thea. A traumatised, PTSD-suffering, slightly lost-the-plot superhero is a great idea – albeit hardly original – and the fight sequence choreography pulls it off well, but the physical aggression from Speedy as a character, down to the nasty arm-breaking sequence, isn’t being matched by the acting and it makes what should be an unsettling storyline feel a bit blasé.

Likewise the financial problems at Palmer Tech. We’ve been through all this with Queen Consolidated – a couple of times, in fact – and another boardroom battle backdrop seems a bit blah. That said, it’s nice to see them giving Emily Bett Rickards an increasing amount to do, driving that storyline as first fiddle rather than standing alongside someone else. The introduction of Echo Kellum really benefits the show too – giving her someone to play off other than Stephen Amell.

More significant is the progression of the Damien Darhk storyline, as we see his combination of charisma, blackmail and downright villainy. The idea that even he has a moral code, which Anarky breaks, is an intriguing one, and you’re never quite sure if it’s because Darhk has a longer game he’s playing or if he’s genuinely hacked off at Anarky crossing a line. Having the villain be front and centre of the action from the off, rather than behind a mask or an army of hired goons for half a season makes a refreshing change.

Interesting too that we’ve got a plot that’s advancing rather than unfurling. Whether this is a side-effect of having to keep pace with The Flash for the impending crossover in a few weeks – and setting up Legends – remains to be seen, but we’ve got a story unfolding at a far punchier rate than the last couple of years.

The Good:

The opening narration’s changed, to: “My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell I returned home with only one goal: to save my city. But my old approach wasn’t enough. I had to become someone else. I had to become something else. I had to become the Green Arrow.”

Curtis Holt, played by Echo Kellum: we already know he is going to be a new version of DC superhero Mister Terrific, and Holt’s debut is perfect, effectively playing a series one version of Felicity to Felicity’s Oliver. He also looks uncannily like Moss from The IT Crowd. Wonderfully, too, they throw in that he’s gay and married, automatically circumventing any sexual tension with Felicity.
The opening fight sequence. The Arrow stunt team are so slick they can now toss off the sort of big fight that would normally be the high point of a show as part of the cold open.
Neal McDonough’s performance as Darhk remains, after three seasons of big panto villains, a thing of joy. What’s interesting too is how powerful a figure he makes him feel, despite being shorter than most of the main cast.
Olly’s flashback hair’s gone! He finishes the episode with a sensible trim rather than looking like Robbie Savage’s castoff.
The idea of Oliver running for mayor of Star City’s an interesting one, which offers huge potential, and puts him in the firing line.

The Bad:

Sloppy bit of (missed) marketing by the producers, but the JessicaDanforthForMayor.com URL you see on the screens and posters for the launch of the mayoral campaign doesn’t exist. Quick, to GoDaddy…

Not so much the bad as the absolutely grim: the reveal of Sara’s year-dead corpse at the end. What were they thinking?
Willa Holland’s really good at playing the physical, aggressive part of Speedy’s rage moments, but the emotional comedown’s definitely underplayed just now. Coupled with Katie Cassidy’s somewhat laid-back style, and the scenes of Laurel and Thea discussing her problems fall a bit flat.
Diggle gets very little to do other than stand around in the background.

Arrow’s played fast-and-loose with DC villains in the past, especially in trying to fit them into the show’s grounded universe, but this version of Anarky bears so little resemblance to the comics one, he may as well be a different character.
Jeri Ryan gets so little to do here, it seems almost a waste. She’s great – genuinely great, so much so you want to see more of her character. Hopefully we we will this season, because writing off Danforth off like that, almost off camera, feels weird.

And the Random:

Still no Barrowman. But probably next week, eh?
So Felicity wants a code name, then? Who wants to stick £50 on it being Oracle. If they’re not allowed to use Oracle because of the films, then how about calling her Ceefax?
The slow placement of pieces to set up Legends Of Tomorrow continues: we briefly see the ongoing work at Palmer Tech looking at the wreckage of the lab, and Sara’s exhumation. Coupled with the same moves in The Flash, it’s clear the reveal for the new spin-off show is coming sooner rather than later.
Still no indication yet where the new Arrowcave is. We know it’s somewhere isolated since Olly used to use it for a bit of me time, and we know it’s well-enough equipped to house a transit van and two motor bikes. Maybe it’s under a car park.

Review by Iain Hepburn

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

Arrow S04E01 "Green Arrow" REVIEW

October 14, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E01 “Green Arrow” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm

Writer: Mark Guggenheim & Wendy Mericle
Director: Thor Freudenthal

Essential plot points:

Oliver and Felicity have settled into domestic suburban life – although one of them’s more comfortable with being out of trouble than the other.
Thea, Laurel and Dig have been taking on the criminals of the newly renamed Star City in their absence, but a new, very well armed gang of “ghosts” which has stolen powerful military-grade explosives have left the trio out of their depth.
The leader of the ghosts is the mystical Damien Darhk, formerly mentioned rival to Ra’s Al Ghul, who assassinates most of the city’s leadership and can kill people with just a simple touch.
The constant attacks and trouble on Star City have left the place run down and impoverished, and now in the shadow of Central City.
Oliver and Felicity are brought back into action to help stop Darhk’s men from destroying the city’s new rail terminal, although both Dig and Captain Lance are far from pleased to see Oliver back.
Oliver’s attempts to propose to Felicity keep getting stimied.
Captain Lance looks to have made some kind of deal with Darhk, although he’s reluctant to give up Team Arrow yet.
The flashback sees Oliver abducted by Amanda Waller and forced to parachute back onto Lian Yu to investigate a new threat.
And a flash (!) forward six months sees Oliver and Barry Allen standing beside a mysterious gravestone, as a grieving Oliver vows to kill “him”.
Oh, and Felicity is a dreadful cook.

Review:

With the DC TV universe expanding again this year to include animated companion Vixen, live action spin-off Legends Of Tomorrow and – superficially, at least, Supergirl – on top of sophomore year spin-off The Flash, the fear is that last year’s patchy third season for Team Arrow was the start of a slide for the parent programme, with the already stretched creative and production team having to take their eyes off the ball to handle all these new shows.

Thankfully any fears that Arrow’s the forgotten old hand among all the shiny new toys are dispelled by a quietly confident opener that sets out not only the new principles of the emerald archer, but also the big bad from the opening moments. Indeed, there’s so much talk about Oliver leaving behind the darkness of his character that it almost feels like the producers are making as much manifesto announcement on the show’s u-turn from last season’s storyline as they are about the character’s personal development.

Four years in and everyone knows their role well on Arrow. The cast are all uniformly good, the stunt work is impressive and the show, by and large, looks its money on screen. Director Thor Freudenthal, who directed two of last year’s key episodes – “The Climb” and “Al Sah-him” – gets the best out of the domestic bliss scenes, which are largely shot outdoors in beautiful summer light, heightening the contrast between the suburban good life and the increasingly desperate, grim urban decay of Star City.

In a ballsy move, the script throws away what previously would have felt like a tense season finale moment – a train full of high explosives headed into the heart of the city – as its opener, with the emphasis instead being on setting up übervillain Damien Darhk and his relationship with the show’s various characters – with hints of involvements in storylines right through the show’s history, not just the cough and spit mention of last year.

Interestingly, while the comic version of Damien Darhk is largely about misdirection and trickery that make it appear like he has mystical powers, the TV version’s going in with that supernatural ability right off the bat; a move, presumably, designed to set up the presence of Vandal Savage in the Legends spin-off, and indeed the impending appearance by everyone’s favourite walking advert for Regal King Size, John Constantine.

It represents another slight shift in the world of the Arrowverse, which has gone from its Nolan-esque grounded-in-reality-and -cience first season to the metahuman and magical immortality backdrop it now exists within. About the only thing missing now is aliens, although with Supergirl and all the Green Lantern injokes, you sense that can’t be far behind.

If there’s anything disappointing about the episode, it’s that it’s slightly too quick to get Oliver and Felicity away from their domestic happiness and back into the thick of trouble. It’s six months for the characters, but only a couple of scenes for us. I appreciate this is an action show and as such getting back into the action is key, but after making such a big deal about walking away from the lifestyle last season, it just feels a big rushed. Besides, the potential for an Olly and Flick do The Good Life-style sitcom was huge…

There’s nothing particularly mindblowing about “Green Arrow” as an episode in itself but nor is there much to criticise. It does its job well: setting up the rest of the season, advancing the five-year flashbacks, reconnecting the ties with the rest of the show’s increasingly widening universe, and all the while managing to chuck in a couple of impressive set piece fight sequences and explosions. It comes with the confidence of a show that knows how to assemble all its components with a minimum of fuss. Whether it can maintain that confidence with everything else going on in the Arrowverse now remains to be seen.

The Good:

The opening scene with Oliver, in a green hood, sprinting through undergrowth and forest, before pulling out to reveal he’s just taken a short cut for his morning jog, is an obvious but nicely done reveal.
There are lots of little nods to the Nolan Batman trilogy in the episode but especially the killing off of the city leadership, which draws heavily from the Joker pulling a similar stunt in The Dark Knight; the idea that the presence of the vigilantes protecting the city has only made things worse; the villains using the railway to wreak havoc on an impoverished, run-down city; and Amanda Waller nicking Ra’s Al Ghul’s, “The world’s too small for someone like Bruce Wayne to disappear” when she finds Oliver.
In the “five years ago” flashbacks, Olly’s been hanging out practicing (badly) his hooded vigilante antics in Coast City, home in the comics of the Green Lantern. There’s even an advertising poster with the slogan, “In brightest day, in blackest night, come to Coast City when money’s tight”.
Damien Darhk’s villainy is revealed from the off. No mucking about, no false trails. Within the first ten minutes we know he’s the bad guy. Neal McDonough’s confident portrayal is brilliant too – helped by the fact he’s got some of the creepiest serial-killer eyes in Hollywood. Seriously, even all the way back to Star Trek First Contact (he was Lt Hawk) his eyes have creeped me out.
The repercussions of last year are still being felt. Thea’s a bit unhinged and blood thirsty, Dig can’t forgive Oliver yet, and the Arrow is still dead, as far as the world’s concerned. It’s nice to see the reset button isn’t hit at the start of the season, as happens all too often elsewhere.
The domestic bliss stuff at the start is great. Really, genuinely great, to the extent that another episode of the two of them in suburbia, having dinner parties and generally behaving like a loved-up couple wouldn’t have gone amiss. It helps that Amell and Emily Bett Rickards have great chemistry together, and both have good enough comic timing to pull off the silly stuff.

The Bad:

Oliver’s supposedly rousing, bring-everyone-together-and-inspire-the-city speech is actually pretty rubbish. His big declaration that “I AM THE GREEN ARROW” falls very flat: a rare moment of shoddy line reading from Stephen Amell.
We don’t see much of just how much Dig, Speedy and Canary are struggling. They manage to half-stop a heist, but everything else is off screen and suddenly they’re dragging Oliver back from domestic bliss to help out.
Felicity ends up being the catalyst to drag Oliver back to Star City as it turns out she’s been secretly helping the team out behind his back. It’s a weird u-turn given she’s always been the one who seemed most ready to put the superhero world behind her. Although the couple’s domestic about it is admittedly very cute.
The “death” of Ray Palmer seems largely forgotten, apart from a sign at the city limits saying that Star City’s rebranding is in tribute to him. Given he and Felicity were so close, and she’s inherited his company, you’d think folk would be a bit more bothered.
Dig’s new faceplate, to help conceal his identity, is halfway between a welder’s mask and Boba Fett’s helmet. It really doesn’t work as a visual.
You’d think a train filled with cluster bombs so powerful they’re almost nuclear, as Felicity claims, that gets blown up by Team Arrow, might make a bigger explosion. Given the hype around the bombs, you’d expect basically a recreation of Threads rather than the standard pyro we get.
There is some truly, and in this day and age unforgivably, bad rear projection going on out the windows in the limo scenes. Seriously, there are ITC dramas from the ’60s that would look at that scene and tut.

And the Random:

No Barrowman, despite appearing in the opening list of credits.
Continuity ties with The Flash are as tight as ever: as well as Barry showing up at the end, we’ve got Sisco having designed the new Arrow costume, and a reference to the Flash Day celebrations from that show’s opening episode.
This year’s opening/closing credits arrowhead under the show’s logo is bright green, to reflect the character’s new identity (and lurid weaponry. Even Hawkeye didn’t go for dayglo purple arrowheads…)
Have we been told the location of the new Arrow-cave yet? Obviously they can’t use Palmer Technologies’ lab any more (not least because Ray blew it up), and the old base under the club was turned over by SCPD. The new HQ is a bit more sparse – no Salmon Leap bars, for starters.
While the show’s been off the air, Stephen Amell’s been a busy lad, filming the Ninja Turtles sequel, and scoring a win at WWE’s Summerslam show tagging with British wrestler Neville against Stardust and Wade Barrett. He didn’t look that bad in the ring either…

Review by Iain Hepburn

Posts tagged: Arrow Reviews

Arrow S04E05 “Haunted” REVIEW

Essential plot points:

Review:

The Good:

The Bad:

And the Random:

Arrow S04E04 "Beyond Redemption" REVIEW

Essential plot points:

Review:

The Good:

The Bad:

And the Random:

Arrow S04E03 "Restoration" REVIEW

Essential plot points:

Review:

The Good:

The Bad:

And the Random:

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

• Arrow & The Flash Interview Double-Bill: Cynthia Addai-Robinson & Candice Patton

Arrow S04E02 "The Candidate" REVIEW

Essential plot points:

Review:

The Good:

The Bad:

And the Random:

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

Arrow S04E01 "Green Arrow" REVIEW

Essential plot points:

Review:

The Good:

The Bad:

And the Random:

• Read our review of The Flash season two premiere