Arrow season 4 – That Geek Thing

Arrow S04E09 “Dark Waters” REVIEW

December 16, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E09 “Dark Waters” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Wendie Mericle, Ben Sokolowski
Director: John Behring

Essential plot points:

Oliver’s campaign organises a Christmas clean-up event of Star City bay, which is going well until HIVE sends a drone to machine gun everyone. Felicity manages to hack the drone and stop it killing.
Diggle tries to talk to his brother, still locked up in a cell in the Arrowcave. The drugs Darkh uses to control his ghosts have worn off, but Andy remains loyal to HIVE.
Felicity’s mother is going through the decorations at the apartment to make sure there’s suitable Hanukah representation at Oliver’s campaign holiday party (Felicity being Jewish, remember) when she discovers Oliver’s engagement ring, hidden since the start of the season. She and Felicity think Oliver is going to propose.
Oliver calls a press conference where he reveals the attack was caused by HIVE, and outs Damian Darhk as its leader, showing a photo of him to the press.
Malcolm drops by to check Thea; she still doesn’t have any bloodlust, and thinks she’s cured. Malcolm is worried it’s because of a power he doesn’t fully understand yet.
At the holiday party, Curtis introduces Felicity to his husband, who reveals how he proposed, dismissing the “hiding a ring in the food” method of straight people. Felicity twigs Oliver was going to propose with the souffle back in episode one, and confronts him about not doing so.
Then Damian Darhk drops by, guns down the security guards, force-pushes Oliver through a window and abducts Felicity, Diggle and Thea.
Oliver goes on a rampage through the city, attacking ghosts to find out where his friends are, but getting nowhere until Malcolm gives him one of HIVE’s seconded radios. He makes contact with Darhk to make a trade: him for his friends.

Darhk takes him to a warehouse where he reveals HIVE was cultivating algae in the bay to be used to create a poison gas – which he demonstrates in a gas chamber.
He lets Oliver see Felicity, then has her put in the gas chamber with Diggle and Thea, before switching on the poison gas, telling Oliver that by killing his friends, he removes any need for Oliver to resist HIVE and he can be their puppet mayor. They’re rescued by Laurel and Malcolm, wearing the Green Arrow suit, just in the nick of time.
Team Arrow fights its way out of the warehouse with Oliver, as Oliver, and Malcolm, as the Arrow, pinning down Darhk before blowing the place up with explosive arrows. However, with no body found, the team believe he’s escaped.
He has indeed, and in another location takes HIVE’s leaders through an artificial cornfield to show how they’ve created breathable air, below a layer of poison gas – as part of Project Genesis.
Oliver switches on a Christmas tree in the bay as part of the campaign’s bid to unite the city, before proposing to Felicity. As they drive away, gunmen open fire on the limo. Oliver manages to drive them to safety, but as he pulls Felicity from the car it’s clear she’s been shot and lies bleeding and dying in his arms…
In flashbacks to Lian Yu, Taiana teaches Oliver how to dive, so he can swim to the wreck of the ship in the bay and retrieve its charts of the island. On the way back he fights a shark, before being discovered by Conklin and his soldiers.

Review:

Now all that Legends Of Tomorrow stuff is out the way (at least for the moment) Arrow can pick up where it left off earlier this year with the main season storyline: the battle with Damian Darhk for control of Star City. And with just one episode to take us into the mid-season break, it does so in assured style.

We take a big step forward in discovering what HIVE is up to, although the motivations aren’t completely clear yet, the methodology certainly is. Interestingly, it seems to bear a certain resemblance to Ra’s Al Ghul’s plot in Batman Begins too, not least because of an interesting line of dialogue, almost thrown away, about how humanity needed the Nazis as a “reset, a do-over” to make things better.

It helps with all this that McDonough is so damn good. As Arrow supervillains go, he’s the strongest of the four series: a creature of evil that not even the League Of Shadows wants to go up against properly, and McDonough is clearly having a ball playing the role, cranking up the villainy with knowing glee. It’s reminiscent, to some extent, of Michelle Gomez’s Missy in Doctor Who – a panto-esque bad guy who turns round and murders people in cold blood just to remind you that behind the OTT grinning is a genuine psychopath.

Interestingly, too, among all this is a story of parents and daughters, and of protecting those we love. We discover Darhk has a little girl and an almost picture-book domestic life which he returns to after committing atrocities, while the actions of Captain Lance and Malcolm Merlyn are done to protect those they love: namely Laurel and Thea.

There’s a knowing moment between the two fathers as Lance tries to explain his working with Darhk to Laurel which again helps to tie the thematic structure of the episode together.

As Laurel says, these are familial relationships that are “unconventional”, be it her and Lance or Malcolm and Thea, or even Felicity and Lance, which becomes a possibility as it emerges her mother and the captain are still in a relationship. The nature of unconventional ties and love sits alongside Felicity and Oliver’s relationship; with Oliver having not proposed because their lives changed and became dangerous again. Both Felicity and Laurel berate their loved ones – Oliver and Lance respectively – for taking decisions about their respective futures rather than letting the women decide for themselves, something that becomes a recurring message through the story and contrasted with the relationship Diggle has with his captive brother.

The ending of the episode’s as shocking as it is inevitable, as Oliver and Felicity’s limo is gunned down, although quite why the CEO of the city’s biggest company and its only mayoral candidate – who’s already been the victim of a drone attack a day earlier – wouldn’t be under heavy police or security escort’s a bit of a gaffe.

The clear implication is meant to be that it’s Felicity we see in the grave in the flash forward at the start of the season, and this is the moment that takes us there, although we’re not convinced yet, not least as the episode doesn’t dwell on a final visual of Felicity, crashing hastily to the end logo as Oliver takes her pulse. If this were truly the end, we’d presumably be getting the full On Her Majesty’s Secret Service treatment rather than a crash out and a cliffhanger.

We now get more than a month off until Arrow returns. A crossover wobble aside, the first chunk of series four has been superlative stuff. Here’s hoping it doesn’t indulge too much over the holidays and come back out of shape.

The Good:

The final sequence, as Oliver and Felicity are shot up while Damian goes home to his own domestic bliss – complete with open fire, wife and daughter, scored to “Little Drummer Boy” – is perfectly done, and leaves the show on a hell of a cliffhanger for its winter break.
Barrowman. Not only does Malcolm get to be a hero here (although with a glaringly obvious stunt double) but Barrowman gets the best lines after McDonough, to the point it properly teases a real Merlyn v Darhk face-off at some point. And who wouldn’t want to see that?

David Ramsay. The two scenes in which Diggle gets to face his incarcerated brother are the standout moments in an episode full of stand-out moments. Arrow is, at times, guilty of not giving Ramsay enough meaty moments but when it does he always delivers. Kudos too to Eugene Byrd, who plays Andy.
In an episode of high drama, there’s some beautifully played moments of comedy – especially at the party, as Oliver and Felicity meet Curtis and Paul, his husband, then Felicity stumbles across her mum and Lance cavorting. Awkward Christmas parties. We’ve all been there.

The Bad:

Right, let’s get this out the way first. The shark. At least they don’t actually show us Oliver fighting with a giant shark in the waters of Lian Yu, just him being chased by it and the aftermath with a nice bite out of his side. But it’s still an absolutely bloody preposterous moment.
On top of that, it doesn’t help that the CGI work for Oliver swimming underwater is pretty cheap looking. I kept expecting Darwin the Dolphin to pop up and swim alongside him. They’re not even shots that add anything to the story – just scene bridges, and could be cut with no harm done to the story.
The one problem with the closeness between Arrow and The Flash is that it exposes the moments when having someone about who can run at 500mph would save a lot of problems when going up against a super villain and his gas chamber, especially in a situation where time is of the essence. Given what a damp squib the crossover actually was last week, you’d have thought a call to Barry and co would have been more useful here…

Oliver’s plan to expose Darhk and HIVE is… odd. To say the least. Going on live TV the same day someone shot several people and saying the man responsible is someone nobody’s ever heard of, who heads up a gang of soldiers – and that coming from a mayoral candidate rather than, say, the police or the army – is pretty far-fetched. That the journalists don’t question it is even sillier. It’s not how any sensible, logical world operates.
IT’S ANOTHER DAMNED FIGHT IN ANOTHER DAMNED WAREHOUSE.

And the Random:

Director John Behring is a television veteran, having directed episodes of Roswell and The Cape for those of you with long enough memories. His association with Arrow goes all the way back to its sixth episode.
The music over the closing scenes is legendary Christmas carol “The Little Drummer Boy”, dating from the 1940s. It’s been covered a bunch of times, most famously by the Trapp Family Singers, but by artists as unlikely as Pee Wee Herman, The Jackson 5 and the Dandy Warhols. It also featured in one of the best moments in modern television: the finale of The West Wing episode “In Excelsis Deo”. Go check it out here RIGHT NOW if you haven’t seen it.

Presumably Oliver fished the engagement ring out the bowl he’d hidden it in, if it’s now back in a box and stuck away with the holiday decorations. Although now we know he can dive and hold his breath for ages, perhaps he’ll nick Curtis’ husband’s idea and hide the ring under water.

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

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

Arrow S04E08 “Legends Of Yesterday” REVIEW

December 9, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E08 “Legends Of Yesterday” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Brian Ford Sullivan, Marc Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti
Director: Thor Freudenthal

Essential plot points:

Team Arrow and Team Flash get out of the city to hide in a remote farmhouse while they plan their attack on Savage.
Oliver returns to Central City to speak to Samantha. He asks if her son is his child, but she denies it. However, Oliver sneaks a sample of the boy’s hair for DNA testing.
Malcolm Merlyn arranges a meeting between Oliver, Barry and Savage to negotiate. On his way there though, Barry is overtaken by a ghost version of himself running in parallel.
Savage gives the heroes 24 hours to hand over Kendra and Carter or he will wipe out both Central City and Star City.
Kendra doesn’t want to put people’s lives at risk, but Carter tries to train her to fight and to develop her Hawkgirl powers.
Team Arrow tracks down a tape from the 1970s that reveals more about Randall Savage – and how to stop him, using an object related to the calamity that created his immortality.
Oliver has Barry run a DNA test on the boy’s hair which confirms his parental status. He asks Barry not to tell Felicity what the results of the test were, claiming it’s to do with Damien Darhk, but Felicity sees the printout.
Oliver goes back to see Samantha, who reveals his mother gave her $1M to keep the child out Oliver’s life and not tell him about it. She never cashed the cheque, but has kept away. Oliver wants to be a father to the boy, but Samantha insists he can’t tell anyone about the child to prevent him getting pulled into Oliver’s destructive lifestyle.
But when he returns to the farmhouse, Felicity confronts him about lying about his son, and breaks off their relationship.

Barry, Oliver, Kendra and Carter go to confront Savage, but their efforts fail. He kills the reincarnated Egyptians, then vaporises the city with the energy staff. Barry outruns the blast, and goes so fast he travels back in time a day.
Barry tells Oliver about his travelling back in time, and that Oliver being distracted causes their defeat. Oliver decides not to have the test done just now, and focuses on how to beat Savage – and change the future.
Cisco speaks to Kendra and tells her not to focus on being a warrior – which failed to activate her powers in the alternate future – but on the priestess aspect of her past instead, as she’s a caring person. This triggers a flashback that reveals how the lovers originally died – and how to stop Savage.
This time the full team Arrow joins the fight to stop Savage, and the new plan works, with Savage being destroyed.
Oliver returns to see Samantha, but as per the now erased timeline she insists he can’t tell anyone about his son. He agrees, and lies to Felicity when they return home.
Kendra and Carter leave Central City to help others – Cisco gives her a GPS tracker so he can find her if she gets in trouble.
Malcolm Merlyn scoops up the dusty remains of Savage into an urn, as he will live on forever…
In flashback, we learn how Chay-Ara and Khufu were lovers in ancient Egypt, before being discovered in bed together by Savage. He killed them both with a sword as strangely radioactive meteorites fell from the sky.

Review:

Last year’s first big crossover between Arrow and Flash felt like a really big deal. The idea of them going head-to-head, then joining forces and cementing a friendship felt important. But since then they’ve been popping up in each other’s shows so often, it’s almost a regular occurance.

All of which makes “Legends Of Yesterday” feel, if not bad, then at least nothing special.

The problem with “Legends Of Yesterday” is that there’s so much going on in here that has to be resolved, it’s almost unwieldy. There’s finishing off the story started in The Flash, continuing the build for Legends Of Tomorrow, plus developing both the Oliver and Felicity relationship and – two years after it first was hinted at in the show – starting the “Oliver’s secret son” storyline.

The latter’s inclusion is almost too much for the plot to take. While it makes sense to develop it while most of the action is in Central City, and the time travel element allows them to use it as an extra factor in the defeat, it feels like a story that could have been expanded over another couple of episodes. The pacing of Arrow so far this season has been largely perfectly judged, with the plots unfolding at a good rate compared to last term.

But the whole “Oliver sees his ex, meets his son, gets sworn to secrecy and lies to Felicity for the first time (twice)” could have been spun out another episode or two, even allowing for the mid-season festive break coming up shortly. The interesting development it might bring – Felicity’s anger and upset – is instantly undone, too, undermining Emily Bett Rickard’s heartfelt performance in the scene.

Elsewhere so much time is spent developing the stories of Hawkman and Hawkgirl that the regular Team Arrow suffers; indeed, Laurel gets so little to do this week she could have been replaced with a shop window dummy and it wouldn’t have made that much difference, while Caitlin barely even gets a look in.

Of course, that’s not necessarily a problem if you take this in isolation as an episode of Arrow, but as the voiceover makes clear the shows, and especially these episodes, are supposed to be seen as a unit.

It doesn’t help as well that Vandal Savage is, well, just there. As a villain he’s not hugely compelling, as a threat he’s fairly well dispatched and as a performance he doesn’t feel anywhere near as dangerous or frankly as big as you’d want him to be. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by Neal McDonough’s presence as Arrow’s big bad this year, but Casper Crump’s Rasputin-with-kitchen-equipment feels distinctly small time.

Likewise our two relative newcomers – Ciara Renee and the appropriately named Falk Hentschel – don’t exactly overwhelm with charisma either. It doesn’t help that Hentschel looks uncannily like Coldplay frontman Chris Martin; reason alone to want Savage to beat him, surely?

This all sounds negative and it shouldn’t be. “Legends Of Yesterday” is a perfectly decent episode of Arrow, especially visually – not only do the trademark fight sequences work well, but the FX team deserve real credit for managing to make Carter and Kendra’s flight look real and solid, although quite why they’ve never worked out how to do the same for Ray Palmer remains a mystery.

The destruction of the city and the gruesome nuclear blast-esque deaths in the pre-altered timeline are spectacular, looking almost like Dr Manhattan’s exploding of people in Tiresome Hack Snyder’s godawful Watchmen film; appropriate enough, as the Hawk costumes look decidedly like Nite Owl’s outfit from that movie.

It says a lot about the strength of both series currently that even an average episode of Arrow feels significantly stronger and more enjoyable than some of season three’s shakiest moments, but “Legends Of Yesterday” feels distinctly average at times, when it should be a big, loud, blow-away moment in the show’s progression. If last year’s big cross-over event was The Avengers, this is decidedly more Age Of Ultron.

The Good:

It’s worth saying again, the effects for Savage destroying the city are astonishing; up there with the best Arrow’s ever done.
Thea makes a cheeky comment about superheroes hiding out in a farmhouse sounding like something she’s seen in a film. It’s a gag that seems especially pertinent given this seems to be a farmhouse owned by an archery expert with an apparently secret family…
Barrowman. Especially the scene where he threatens Oliver if any harm comes to Thea. Given his winter normally involves him doing panto in Glasgow with the Krankies, he’s got the better end of the deal this year. (Incidentally, Hasselhoff’s doing that panto this year…)
Director Thor Freudenthal grades the scenes in Ancient Egypt differently and brings the colour palette way down to washed out yellows, browns and greys. Given how colourful Arrow normally looks, it’s a distinct contrast, and makes the sequences as the rocks fall from the sky even more distinctive.

The Bad:

For all this is the big confrontation with an immortal waving about a magic staff to kill two reincarnated flying Egyptians, it ends with a fight in a warehouse. Again. I know the stunt team are good at this kind of thing, but occasionally a different kind of ending would be nice.

This feels more like a Flash story featuring Team Arrow, especially given it mainly takes place in Central City, but especially given the final shot of poor Oliver meeting his son, playing with Flash action figures, in a bedroom covered in Flash posters. Grief, how to give a guy a complex.
At the risk of this sounding skeezy, if you’re going to all the trouble of creating Egyptian costumes and sets for your flashbacks, having poor Chay-ara in very visible modern underwear doesn’t half ruin the effort. Design better costumes, for goodness sake.
Apparently Felicity’s magic laptop can stream betamax videos without any source of actual player? Aye, right.

And the Random:

Editor’s interjection: I wrote the review for The Flash half of this crossover without reading Iain’s review first and vice versa. It’s uncanny how similar some of the comments are, right down to the Age Of Ultron comparisons! Back to Iain now…
Arrow’s trend for turning to cinema directors continues with Thor Freudenthal returning to the show for his fourth episode (he did two of last season’s key stories, plus the season four opener). He also directed hit kids film Diary Of A Wimpy Kid and the second Percy Jackson film Sea Of Monsters – which was scripted by Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim.
The big confrontation (both times) takes place at Jurgens Industrial, presumably a reference to former Green Arrow artist Dan Jurgens.
The Staff Of Horus doesn’t appear to be related to the Orb Of Horus that Constantine was after on Lian Yu, even though he made off at the end of that episode with the shaft it was mounted on. If there’s more than one of these icons kicking about, then clearly Horus was overstaffed… (I’m sorry.)

Renee, Henschel and Crump aren’t the only characters from these episodes to cross over to Legends Of Tomorrow: Peter Francis James, who appears on the old conspiracy theory group video as Dr Aldus Boardman, will also be featuring in the spin-off.

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

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

Arrow S04E07 “Brotherhood” REVIEW

November 25, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E07 “Brotherhood” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Speed Weed, Keto Shimizu
Director: James Bamford

Essential Plot Points:

Team Arrow foil a raid by HIVE’s ghosts on a bank van full of money, but the soldiers blow the money up rather than stealing it, making Oliver realise they’re trying to bankrupt the city and bring it to its knees.
Felicity asks Ray for his expert help after it emerges the HIVE soldiers have somehow masked their DNA, making identifying them impossible. She also badgers him to come back to his old life and job, but he resists.
Oliver’s political fixer Alex wants Oliver to shelve his campaign pledge to clean up Starling Bay but Oliver thinks it will help regenerate the city and create jobs. He’s also worried Oliver’s worked out he’s dating Thea.
Ray identifies a chemical needed to fix the DNA masking, but when Team Arrow heads to the building to retrieve some, they run up against HIVE forces. In the melee, Diggle pulls the mask off one of them… and discovers it’s his brother.
Darhk tells Lance his security team doesn’t trust the captain, and thinks he lured Darhk out last week to allow Team Arrow to follow him. While in his office, Lance sees a note about something going down at the docs.
After giving a campaign speech at a police benefit, Oliver is approached by Damien Darhk who wants to support the Queen for Mayor campaign, if Oliver drops his plans to develop the bay.
A sleazy guy hits on Thea while she’s out on a date with Alex. The blood lust kicks in and she batters him senseless until a shocked Alex stops her.
Oliver and Diggle spy on Darhk at the docks and discover he’s giving his troops a yellow pill that not only masks their DNA but makes them susceptible to his will.

Ray tells Felicity he’s not coming back because he feels like he’s failed; with Star City in trouble and Palmer Tech going the same way, he blames himself and wants to find a new focus for his life.
The team tracks the HIVE soldiers to a former asylum and launches a raid to capture Andy Diggle. They retrieve him, but not before Thea runs into Darhk. However, when he tries to drain the life from her, he fails… and he drains her blood lust instead.

Thea asks for Malcolm’s help in recreating the effect, while Diggle confronts his brother about the claims he was drug dealing before his supposed death. Andy says the reports are all true.
Oliver gives his speech at the docks pledging to improve the bay and vows that the fight for the city will be held in the daylight, not in the shadows. It’s aimed at Darhk, who watches on from the crowd.
In flashbacks to Lian Yu, it emerges the slave worker that Conklin bribed to try and kill Oliver is the brother of Taiana, the woman he rescued earlier this season. Reiter determines through an apparently magical bunch of twigs that Conklin was responsible, and has Oliver whip him in front of the slaves as punishment.

Review:

Finding fault with Arrow at the moment is almost an exercise in nitpicking. The show’s found such a strong vein of form for its fourth season, with both arc plot and flashback progressing at a lick, a real sense of momentum and some genuine bravery in writing, performance and direction.

Writing these reviews is almost becoming dull; not because the episodes are bad, but because there’s only so many way you can say “Arrow’s really good just now, and this week’s no different”.

So, let’s not muck about. Arrow’s really good just now, and this week’s no different.

“Brotherhood” builds on the serial storytelling of this season, with seemingly small moments from earlier this term being the catalyst for key action this week. The apparently throwaway moment when one of the HIVE soldiers didn’t kill Diggle, and the fact that HIVE had Andy Diggle killed, turn out to have been building to this: the revelation that not only is John’s brother alive, but he’s working for Damien Darhk’s operation.

Family dynamics have always been a strong part of the show, with the relationship between Oliver and Thea, Oliver and Diggle, Thea and Merlyn, the Queens and the Lances at the heart of what drives Arrow. Now we’ve got the appearance of things that could upset those balances: Ray returning and clearly still smitten with Felicity Smoak (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?), and Andy Diggle returning from the dead to face his brother. Familial loyalties that can be tested, particularly by a villain who we know values loyalty.

Weed and Shimizu’s script rattles along with a sense of purpose which, coupled by debutant director James Banford’s bold visual choices, picks up the pace after a couple of weeks of the show taking its foot off the pedal. Kudos especially to them for finding a way of making the big set piece fight look and feel different to anything Arrow’s done before.

The expanded Team Arrow has at times felt like it’s struggling to give all the cast something to do, with the storylines having largely favoured away from Diggle until now, but this week’s episode means the always reliably excellent David Ramsey gets more to do. He doesn’t fail to deliver, especially in the closing scene with the Diggle brothers coming face to face, but also in a surprisingly touching and gently understated scene with Katie Cassidy when Diggle and Laurel discuss the nature of loss and recovering loved ones.

But most importantly, after a couple of weeks of being in the background, Neal McDonough and his terrifying eyes are front and centre again, and his presence as Darhk elevates “Brotherhood” from being a good episode to a great one.

The quiet menace and the politician’s charisma we see, even in the wordless look he gives at Oliver’s press conference, convey so much more than any ranting histrionics from Barrowman. He’s more like a modern Bond villain than a comic book one: urbane, witty, immaculately dressed and utterly menacing.

It also helps, oddly, that he’s shorter than most of the cast following three years of BIG big bads. As Danny Boyle famously once said, small psychos are the best…

The Good:

The direction around the fight sequence at the mental asylum during the bid to extract Andy is genuinely brilliant. For the fourth episode in a row the direction takes on a radically different feel. At times it almost feels like Peep Show, it’s so close to the action, and runs in single long takes; the sequence with Speedy in the lift especially.
Likewise, there’s a brilliant moment at the start of the raid when Black Canary drops two floors off the roof of a building into the action, with the camera physically following her all the way down. It’s a really cleverly staged and shot sequence that manages to look better than any of the “flying” stuff in Jessica Jones.
The Arrowverse has always had a tongue-in-cheek approach to pop culture references, but Damien Darhk nicknaming Thea Merida – after the archer heroine in Pixar’s Brave – is one of the most expected yet.

The Bad:

Right, lets get this out the way. Doing “flying” isn’t easy if you don’t have a massive CGI budget, complicated wire work and so on. The team that make Iron Man’s flight in the MCU look so convincing have all that. The team that does effects on Arrow really doesn’t, and it shows. Much as I love Ray, and the idea of the ATOM suit, the execution of it here basically feels like an animated gif being moved across the picture. It feels like they haven’t quite worked out what they want the ATOM suit to be, other than a Primark Iron Man outfit with a hockey helmet.
Disappointingly there’s no follow-up on last week’s flirting between Lance and Donna, or a place for Curtis – even if that’s understandable given just how much seemed to be going on this week.
More just unfortunate than really bad, but Darhk being revealed to use a colour-based mind control power’s really unlucky timing this week…
There’s not a lot to fault with Arrow this week, so let’s just say them taking a week off for Thanksgiving is a right pain given the momentum the show’s got at the moment.

And the Random:

Veteran stunt coordinator James Banford, who’s overseen action sequences since year one on Arrow, makes his full debut as a director on this episode and on the evidence here, should be asked back ASAP.

So. Andy Diggle then. In case you haven’t worked it out, John’s brother is directly named after the brilliant British comics writer, responsible for a number of great runs – but most significantly here on Green Arrow: Year One, which inspired the tone, bits of the storyline and the appearance of China White in series one of Arrow. John Diggle was always intended as a nod in a show that’s not afraid to make little namecheck to significant DC and Green Arrow writers and artists (not least Marv Wolfman in this week’s show) but this is the most blatant namecheck of them all. If you haven’t read any of this stuff, Green Arrow: Year One is great and the Losers (which ended up being a moderately fun Hollywood film) is bloody tremendous. Both see Diggle linking up with Scottish artist Mark “Jock” Simpson, with whom he’d also worked at 2000AD.
This week’s obligatory 52 references – Slip 52 at the docks and Channel 52 at the press conference.

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

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

Arrow S04E06 “Lost Souls” REVIEW

November 18, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E06 “Lost Souls” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writers: Beth Schwartz, Emilio Ortega Aldrich
Director: Antonio Negret

Essential plot points:

Six months ago, while tampering with the miniaturisation on his suit, Ray Palmer blew the roof of his building and was apparently killed. Except, as we now see, he wasn’t.
Fast forward to now, and Felicity is obsessed with finding Ray after decoding his message last week, an obsession that’s starting to worry Curtis and Oliver.
Oliver’s campaign manager Alex Davis asks Thea out on a date, but gets gently KBed.
Sara breaks the news of her latest return to her mother, but is struggling to adjust to being alive again.
Ray makes contact with Felicity and Oliver, and reveals the suit shrunk him down to about the size of an action figure – and is being held captive by someone who wants access to his powers.
Worried about Felicity, Oliver invites her mother, Donna, over to stay, which goes down about as well as you’d expect.
Team Arrow launches a raid on Kord Industries to steal a piece of equipment needed to restore Ray – but in their exit, Sara brutally attacks a guard and beats him to a pulp as the blood lust takes over
Ray is being held by Damien Darhk, who has overheard the messages to Felicity.
During a domestic, Felicity reveals she blames herself for Ray’s plight as she’d been too busy travelling and having a happy life with Oliver to save him. Both end up seeking support: Oliver getting relationship advice from Diggle, Felicity from her mum.
Lance asks Darhk’s help in dealing with Sara – but it’s a trap to lure Darhk out so they can trace where Ray is.
The team, with Curtis in tow, stages a raid on the building and restores Ray to full size, with Oliver and Darhk coming face to face for the first time since the train attack. Sara loses it again and kills a guard.
Sara decides to leave town while she works out how to deal with the blood lust.
Felicity and Oliver make up. Awwwwwww.

Darhk’s people reveal they’ve worked out how to recreate some of the ATOM suit’s power – which Darhk wants them to use to power up a strange circuit diagram-like design inside his mystical box.
In flashbacks to Lian Yu, Ritter uses the orb retrieved by Constantine to illuminate secret writing in the underground chamber, then sends Oliver and Conklin to lead a party of slaves to a cove on the Island to search for something. Conklin bribes one of the slaves to attack Oliver but he fends him off and kills him… as Conklin watches from the shore.

Review:

There’s a weird tone to “Lost Souls”, which on paper absolutely shouldn’t work. It’s a thrilling race against time to rescue a friend being held hostage by Team Arrow’s moral enemy. At the same time it’s an emotional drama looking at guilt and making the wrong choices in relationships. And there’s more murder.

But it’s also laugh-out-loud funny most of the time. There’s an incredible lightness about the script from regular series writer Schwartz and relative newcomer Aldrich, and in theory that should work against the subject matter. Somehow, though, it really doesn’t, and what we get is a charming, amusing, gentle episode of Arrow which feels oddly short on peril yet somehow feels all the better for it.

The steady unfolding of the storylines at a regular rate this series continues to be perfectly judged. Bringing Ray back – looking remarkably healthy for a man who’s spent the last few weeks locked in a fish tank – and advancing Sara’s resurrection storyline (she seem to be affected far worse than Thea ever was) are both obviously primers for the Legends Of Tomorrow launch. Yet those storylines also advance other aspects of the plot; notably Felicity’s guilt providing the first shaky ground for her relationship with Oliver and Lance getting dragged in deeper with Darhk.

There’s a sense of cause and effect to the plot; serial storytelling which is underpinning the coherence of this series compared to last year. Darhk’s wider scheme and the flashback plot on the island are on the back burner for now. We get glimpses of what’s going on, but not enough to judge yet, which feels right while the focus is on the Legends launch.

There’s also an interesting sense of them building up Team Arrow for a fall. They’re all supremely confident in what they do – launching a raid on Kord’s warehouse, rescuing Ray in audacious fashion – that it feels like something’s got to go wrong for them soon. And given what we know from the season opener’s flash forward, that fall will presumably have catastrophic consequences.

But all that’s to come, one would imagine. For now, we’ve got a show building somewhere, full of confident performances and with so far a season that’s not really put a foot wrong. The pacing for the last couple of episodes has notably slowed down from the frenetic opener, but again this feels deliberate; the producers are putting all their pieces on the board for the forthcoming crossover (two weeks and counting) when we can expect it to all kick off.

It’s also great to see Echo Kellum’s engaging Curtis Holt getting more involved. He’s already been a great addition to the cast but three little moments in the episode highlight why having Mister Terrific join Team Arrow full time would be no bad thing: his seeing Oliver for the first time (“Remember: I’m married and he’s straight”), trying to work out of Oliver’s the Arrow (“It’s not you, jaw’s not right”) and him joining in on the rescue. In a show with a whole bunch of great comic performers, he’s already stolen the show.

The Good:

Ray’s back. Brandon Routh’s lovably nerdy performance last year was such an asset to the Arrowverse that his absence has been felt this year.
Donna’s back. Charlotte Ross’s appearance as the brassy Mother Smoak last year was great fun, and there’s the tantalising prospect of her sticking around for a while this time, thanks to…

…That scene in the bar at the end with Donna and Captain Lance. What could easily have been played for laughs is a really sweet, touching, surprisingly grown-up moment in an episode that touches on love and relationships in an interesting way.
Felicity and Oliver’s first domestic, during the raid on Kord, is an obvious but really nicely done pull-back-and-reveal joke.
There’s some lovely direction from Antonio Negret in this episode, especially the transitions to and from the flashbacks. It’s a notably different feeling from the last two episodes too, which is ideal.
There’s also a nice callback back to Ray and Felicity’s relationship when Oliver won’t let Felicity do anything else until she’s had a shower and a nap.

The Bad:

Spartan? C’mon, Felicity, could you not come up with a better code name for Diggle than that? It’s pretty bland. Plus, if we’re being pedantic, there’s already one (sort of) in the DC Universe – Jim Lee’s one from WildCATS and occasionally Stormwatch.
While it’s heartening to know Kord Industries has improved its response time, would their security team really come in all guns blazing to a store room full of expensive high-tech equipment? P45s all round, I suspect…
In a world of magic and meta humans it’s a bit churlish to complain about the science around Ray’s miniaturisation, except to say it’s all rubbish and handwavey pseudoscience, and instead complain about the obvious: if he’s been locked in that transparent box for weeks, where’s he going to the loo?
Most of Curtis and Felicity’s scenes are played for laughs, and that’s fine because Echo Vellum and Emily Bett Rickards have great comic timing, but the plinky plonky music that gets wheeled out for every damn scene is now getting jarring. It’s like a bad ’80s ITV sitcom, for goodness sake.

And the Random:

Ray’s fascination with insects while being shrunk down with his super suit feels like a little nod of the titfer at a certain Marvel character who made the jump to the big screen this year.
Perhaps I’ve missed this in the previous seasons, but is this the first time we get an actual idea where Star City is? Felicity describes the building Ray’s being held in as once being the most secure on the West Coast, so presumably Central City and locally advertised tourist destination Coast City are as well. Oliver’s been bumming about Seattle in the comics recently, although it doesn’t rain enough in Star City to be Seattle.
Kord Industries is, of course, owned by Ted Kord – we first heard about him at a fundraiser in the first season. In the comics, Ted Kord is a genius, inventor and the second Blue Beetle…

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

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

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 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

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• Read our review of this week’s The Flash

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

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• Read our review of The Flash season two premiere