DVD Review of Arrow the Pilot Episode

I've heard nothing but good about the television series Arrow (2012 - ) for quite some time, but I rarely watch shows while they are current, so I have been missing out. I was considering renting the DVDs of the first season when I saw a discounted box set of season one in the store yesterday. Throwing caution and my budget to the winds, I bought it. Last night I watched episode 1 of season 1: The Pilot.

Assuming Stephen Amell, who plays Oliver Queen/Arrow, does his own stunts, I'm impressed. The episode starts out like a shot with this mad figure scrambling quickly over rough terrain, running up seemingly impossible angles, and then shooting an arrow an incredible distance down to the beach of an island to explosively ignite a wood pyre, signaling his rescuers.

The mystery begins from the very start of the show. Who is this guy? How did he get on the island? What happened to him there?

The story of Oliver Queen of five years ago is told in flashbacks, with just enough information to tell the audience this is no simple "stranded" story. There are actually multiple mysteries. Who is Oliver's father and why, after their yacht exploded in the South China Sea, was he willing to do anything, including commit murder and then suicide, to insure Oliver's survival? Why does Robert Queen (Jamey Sheridan) tell Oliver the truth only at the end, and expect his son to right all of Queen's wrongs in Starling (not "Star") City? How did he know that Oliver would not only survive, but that his spoiled, playboy son would take on the mission set before him as well as acquire the drive and the skills to do so?

As Oliver's doctor told his mother Moira (Susana Thompson), he may not be the same son she knew five years before. That's something of an understatement.

The original comic book story was very simple fare by comparison. Millionaire playboy Oliver Queen is shipwrecked on an island for some years and, in order to survive, he taught himself archery. After he is rescued, for no particular reason, Oliver takes on a ward, Roy Harper, creates identities for them as Green Arrow and Speedy, and recreates all of Batman's gimmicks and gadgets (Arrow Cave, Arrow Car, Arrow branded everything) redone in an archery motif, and then fights crime with a bunch of tricked out arrows.

Of course, this was back in the day when comic books were written primarily for children. The 1970s saw Ollie evolve after losing his fortune (Roy grew up, moved away, and became a heroin addict) into an angry maverick with a hyper-developed drive to help the underdog and massive distrust of the establishment. But that was then.

Green Arrow, prior to this series, was most recently featured in a live action show in the landmark television series Smallville, but Justin Hartley's emerald archer was no where near as dark as how he is played by Amell. He was still darker than the world's ultimate boy scout Clark Kent (Tom Welling), but in order to keep Smallville at a certain level of "goodness," Hartley's version of "Arrow" could only fall so far.

Not so this Arrow who commits cold-blooded murder because "No one can know my secret." I only know this person from one episode of the show, but I would guess that his secret isn't just that he plans to fight crime while wearing a green hood and shooting arrows.

In fact, with few exceptions, Queen's arrows have no gimmicks and they do what arrows are supposed to do: put holes in things and people, including fatal holes.

Oliver's family is just as mysterious and troubled as he is. His mother was remarried (presumably they had Robert Queen declared legally dead since there was no definitive proof -- that is "a body" -- he was deceased) to Walter Steele (Colin Salmon, formerly "Charles" in the Pierce Brosnan "James Bond" films), his teenage sister Thea ("Speedy") is into drugs, and his best friend and "wingman" Tommy Merlyn (Colin Donnell) has been spending time in the sheets with his ex-girlfriend Laurel Dinah Lance (Katie Cassidy).

But while re-connecting to his former life is heavily on Oliver's mind, the greater weight in contained in a small notebook of names, the first one on the list (actually, it's in the middle of the list) is Adam Hunt (Brian Markinson).

Oliver isn't after the common thug in the street. He's pursuing men formerly associated with his father, men who all had a hand in the ruin of Starling City, men who Oliver will make (literally) pay, and he'll do anything to succeed...anything.

Oliver's baptism of fire is a kidnap attempt by a group of thugs wearing skull masks. They seem to know more about Oliver than the audience does. Did Tommy wake up in time to see his best friend take these guys out with ridiculous ease or was he telling the truth when he later said he was still too drugged to see more than a blurred movement?

Five years ago, Oliver was on the yacht having an affair with Sara Lance, Laurel's sister. Laurel isn't the only one who blames Oliver for her death. The detective in charge of investigating Oliver's and Tommy's kidnapping is their father Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne). Starling City must be a small town for people to cross-connect so closely.

Oliver came back from that island with not only enhanced survival skills, but the ability to speak Russian. Also, he's not only scarred and burned (which didn't happen in the yacht sinking) but tattooed front and back. He couldn't have tattooed his back by himself, so he wasn't alone on that island for those five years.

By threat and brute force, "Arrow" (his alter ego isn't given a name in the pilot) extorts $40 million from Hunt but leaves him alive. His brand of justice or revenge doesn't demand death but it does demand a lot of money, which is funneled into the bank accounts of (presumably) Hunt's victims.

After the kidnapping attempt, "Mommy Dearest" assigns a bodyguard to Oliver, an ex-military type named John Diggle (David Ramsey). How is Oliver going to sneak out at night with his own personal shadow tagging along? You can only grab and knock out a guy so many times before he starts to get suspicious.

The pilot episode is full of surprises, particularly how Oliver's mother was the one who arranged for him to be kidnapped in the first place.

Nothing is as simple as it seems. What was Robert Queen, Oliver, Sara, and four other people doing aboard a yacht in the South China Sea? Did the yacht sink because it was caught in a storm or did something more sinister happen? The last we see of Sara, she's falling into the water and disappears. Robert, Oliver, and one other person survive the initial sinking. Did Sara really die or will we see her again?

It almost seems as if Oliver's destiny to become "Arrow" and to avenge the wrongs done in Starling City was set in motion even before the yacht sank. Is there a master player or organization manipulating events behind the scenes?

Laurel Lance is named after the comic book character Black Canary. Does she have a future as a superhero? Oliver called his sister "Speedy" which is the comic book identity of Green Arrow's teenage sidekick. Would this show create a brother-sister crime fighting team? Who is Tommy? There are indications he's not just the happy-go-lucky pal he seems to be on the surface. What does his relationship with Laurel mean? Why would Sara betray her sister by sleeping with her sister's boyfriend?

The pilot episode of Arrow creates a good balance of mystery and action right from the beginning. It's as if Oliver, in trying to rediscover his life in Starling City is also rediscovering himself. We have seen only a tiny fraction of what happened after the yacht sank five years ago and Oliver was inexorably swept to the island which would become his home, prison, training ground, and I suspect so much more. What else will the series reveal about the secret of Oliver Queen and the person who will be known as "Arrow"? I'll post my impressions as I continue to review the first season of this series.

Inconsistent Smallville

I'm so confused. In the recent Smallville episode Masquerade, two important (I think, anyway) events occurred. The first is that Clark officially took on "the glasses" as part of his "disguise", to prevent people from connecting him too closely to the Blur. He also agreed to take on a sudden personality transplant from dynamic, courageous Clark, to "mild mannered reporter for the Daily Planet." Oddly enough, it worked...at least in the one encounter he had to test the change, the guy he (literally) ran into bought it hook, line, and sinker. Even though the guy probably had known Clark for months, if not years, he didn't blink at the fact that Clark was acting in a very "unClark-like" manner. Oh well.

The second big event in this episode was we see, under ultraviolet light, that the Omega symbol is on Ollie's forehead, indicating that he's now an "agent of the darkness". Yeah, when he was beating the living crap out of Desaad (which that jerk totally deserved), the darkness took him over.

Now, in the very next episode, Fortune, two things happen that virtually un-create the events created in Masquerade.

First off, Clark isn't wearing glasses. Yeah, he was just among his friends and who would care, but if he's really serious about establishing Clark as separate from the Blur, and if the glasses are part of that disguise, he should wear them all the time, except for when he's being the Blur (or in the shower, asleep, being "conjugal" with Lois, and the like). It is a foregone conclusion that after he got smashed on the magic booze, he'd probably dump the glasses anyway, but he should have been wearing them at the very beginning of the episode (and by the way, if I were Clark, when all was said and done, I would track down Zatanna, spank her nasty, fishnet-covered ass..which would be fun..and make her wish she'd never heard of words like "magic" and "cigam").

The next is just weird. At the end of "Fortune", Ollie and Chloe apparently have a "happily ever after" moment, realize that, while under the influence, they really did get legally married (even though when Chloe called the wedding chapel, they told her the whole thing had been a gag and no one had gotten married), and (again, apparently) left Metropolis (and the show "Smallville") to go live in Star City, where Chloe would be a reporter by day and hero builder by night, and Ollie would...I don't know, practice archery or eventually be a stay-at-home Dad (once they start having kids).

But if Ollie is "evil", his evilness is a total waste as a story element if he's just left the show, unless off camera, the gang at Watchtower hear a few episodes down the road, that Ollie went on a rampage, skewered his blushing bride with his favorite arrow, and then mysteriously died.

It's like these two different episodes of Smallville didn't happen in the same universe or at least in the same year. I know that different writers write different episodes, and different directors direct different episodes, but they're supposed to at least create the illusion that they're telling one, large, overarching story about Clark and Co.

Is this just another Smallville writer's fubar or can Smallville pull these inconsistencies together in the final reel?

Supergirl? Not So Much

Ubergirl? Power Girl? Annoying Girl? What the heck was Laura Vandervoort doing on Smallville, anyway?

It's not that I don't think she's attractive or a good fit for the Kara/Supergirl role, but Smallville's recent episode Supergirl seemed like a jumbled mess.

OK, I get that Darkseid has come to Earth (though in a radically different form than in the comic books) to cause havoc and generally be a pain in the neck, but when did Jor-El suddenly start being Kara's promotional manager and turning over the safety of our planet to her?

Clark has been on Earth all his life. He knows who humans are. He knows what sort of hero we need. Kara grew up on Krypton and spent most of Clark's life in suspended animation at the bottom of a lake. She's had at most just a couple of years of experience with Earth and with people, and now she's an expert?

Also, Jor-El usually tells Clark when he's blowing him off and usually does something nasty like take away his powers, just to prove that dead guys still have pull. It must have been really painful to hear from your bratty blonde cousin that "Daddy doesn't love you anymore."

The writing seemed very inconsistent in the episode. The return of Lois to Metropolis and to Clark seemed more understated than it should have been. True, Lois was in fine form (literally) when she went after possessed "shock jock" Gordon Godfrey. She's normally that much of a pit bull and I have to admit, just dumb enough not to run with the pictures while the bad guy is still in handcuffs. I even liked the kinky outfit she chose to model, but it all seemed just a little too contrived. Does Darkseid really need to blow off some steam at the local S & M club while he's planning on taking over the world?

The whole "Kara bracelet repelling Darkseid" thing seemed to belong in a Saturday morning cartoon rather than a prime-time science fiction/fantasy program. Again, contrived. Oh, and why are both Kara and Lois (Lois?) "pure of heart" but not Super Boy Scout Clark? Don't tell me that Lois doesn't have conflicts and doubts and if Kara just came back from an unsuccessful trip to find her Mom, how can she not be experiencing internal conflicts and issues?

I can understand, given her "mission", why Kara would choose a costume to "perform" in public, but how did she end up at a photo shoot modeling the thing? She had time to go to a modeling agency, convince them to promote her, and do a shoot of Metropolis's latest superhero? That entire sequence was amazingly lame and designed only to show off her rather fabulous body. In other words, "eye candy filler" (not that I'm above such things, but it really contributed nothing to the story).

Hooray! Clark flew! Boo! It lasted about five seconds. Kara acts like it's some sort of Zen exercise to fly. It's just like any other power. He just has an Earth person's fear of falling, even though he's fallen plenty of times and knows it won't hurt.

Kara acts more like Jor-El than Kara, being punitive of Clark rather than trying to relate. It does make sense to have them both team up to defeat Darkseid. Bracelet aside, she might not be able to beat him alone.

Oh. Linda Lee Danvers. Clark Kent in drag. Laura Vandervoort looked like she was wearing a wig, fake glasses, and a frumpy costume straight out of wardrobe. I wasn't convinced for a second that she was a "real" person. No one else would be either. So much for having a "secret identity".

About the best part of the episode was the Green Arrow subplot. I know a lot of fans didn't like Ollie's presence and felt it was a distraction, but he was meant to mirror Clark's own doubts. Both Clark and Ollie were expressing worries and concerns about "working in the shadows" and the distrust the public has over "masked vigilantes" operating in Metropolis. Lois acted as the fulcrum between the two heroes and by the end of the episode, they had each chosen different directions. Clark will remain an unknown face as "the Blur", while Oliver at a press conference at the end of the episode declares, "I am Green Arrow".

The only "incredible" part of the GA subplot is how all of the reporters instantly believed Ollie was telling the truth. He didn't even produce his GA costume, bow, and trick arrows. It reminded me both of Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr) admission at the end of the first Iron Man film and of Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) "confession", "I am the Batman". Yeah, in the latter case, he was lying, but the reporters bought it then, too.

I watched Supergirl knowing it was panned in the reviews, but when you're a fan, you watch even the bad episodes, looking for a glimmer of hope.

Dear Smallville writers. We need a better episode next time, gang.