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5 months later (Premiere Spoilers)
posted by stargazer1682STAFFMOD on October 13, 2017 at 1:56 AM
I swear, I try to watch these episodes with an open mind, but the writers make it difficult...
So, five months after the cliffhanger and..... no one of great significance to the show is dead. I'm not surprised, but still disappointed. Don't bring the hype if you're going to pull your punches. They couldn't event commit to the impression of Thea being dead in the flashback. It would have been nice if they made it a little more touch and go, and show them earning their survival. As elaborate death traps go, Chase somehow only managed to apparently kill one person, and put another in critical condition after blowing up a freaking island. Everyone else, besides Thea and William's mom, was walking around without a scratch, looking for other survivors. Chase probably would have fared better if he had just lined Oliver's friends shoulder to shoulder with him when he shot himself. I really hope they're not going to spend the next eight months flashing back to the previous five... As much as I have a crush on Emily Bett Rickards, I was kind of hoping against hope that Felicity would have died; if only to set the stakes, and especially since Stephen put so much weight on Oliver's opening narration spoiling things. Some type of narrative trick could have been interesting, like one or two of Oliver's team turns out to be a figment of Oliver's imagination, clinging to someone from the team he feels should still be there, but never made it off the island.
What gets me are all the things that have apparently been loose threads since the explosion - John is just now having trouble with his arm, five months later. Slade has just confirmed Oliver's information on his son and is going to track him down. Quentin is just now struggling with shooting Laurel-2; or has been for months, and no one else has picked up on it.
And why even lie that Lance shot Black Siren to save Dinah? As if they would all be aghast that he shot someone to save an ally. Of course it's going to be hard on him to even face a monster that is something short of being his daughter back from the dead, much less shooting her and leaving her for dead, but teasing out that, that's what he did, with it being a secret between him and Laurel; the reveal was so dumb, you could see it coming a mile away.
The whole thing with William identifying Ollie as "the bad man" felt forced, and could have been done better; the two major fight scenes with Team Arrow against Darken Siren's team didn't seem blocked very well. Siren calls Dinah a bitch, and Dinah's pithy retort is, "takes one to know one".... [sigh]
Reply by Taylorfirst1
on October 15, 2017 at 7:52 PM
Agree with all. Also, I am not looking forward to Oliver's kid being around all season. The show really doesn't need a kid.
Reply by poit57
on October 16, 2017 at 12:08 PM
I agree with the OP's assessment of how the cliffhanger was handled. There were several things that I was left scratching my head about.
With Thea, I was hoping they wouldn't resort to killing her off, but it just seemed odd the way they framed Oliver seemingly finding Thea's dead body, and moments later Samantha stumbles back to the same location and dies in Oliver's arms.
We find out shortly before the cliffhanger that the entire island is rigged to blow, suggesting that there will be little chance of survival if Adrian dies due to the dead man's switch. He kills himself and all the rigged explosives go off. Seemingly, the only two people actually harmed by the explosions are Samantha who ran off to find her son and Thea who chased after her.
Why did Samantha run off to find her son, anyway? They just confirmed moments before that Oliver had rescued William and had him safe on the boat.
Why did Dinah confront John about not firing his weapon during the attack? We clearly saw him shooting and missing at close range, so I thought she was going to reveal that his gun was loaded with blanks. Is the audience supposed to believe that we are seeing John's point-of-view from his PTSD that he is firing his gun at the enemies while in reality he is never actually squeezing the trigger? That doesn't make sense. In the battle on the bridge, the rest of the team clearly saw that he fired and missed his target, so loading his guns with blanks, while a strange choice, would have actually provided a better narrative explanation for why he was missing his targets than not shooting at all.
Reply by Taylorfirst1
on October 16, 2017 at 2:11 PM
Agree with all points. I don't mind if a show is written for 12 year olds but this show seems to be written BY 12 year olds.
Reply by GForce59
on October 16, 2017 at 2:29 PM
They seem to believe they need to write a complex and confusing show to leave you thinking about it for a week until the next episode, when for every question that is ansered, there are five new ones. Why? Why do we have to rewind scene after scene to get what's going on? Why is everything so dark it's hard to see what's really going on. They're purposely trying to confuse us. Why not just write a good comic book story? Don't try to complicate it, especially when you're not good at it.
Reply by Taylorfirst1
on October 17, 2017 at 1:48 PM
I agree completely.
Reply by poit57
on October 23, 2017 at 12:40 PM
After watching episode 2 and finding out that John has nerve damage caused by shrapnel from the island explosions, I'm still confused about the portrayal of his gun usage, or lack thereof.
In 6x01, Dinah specifically says that his gun wasn't fired during the Laurel's attack. I can't find a clip online, but at the 38 minute mark of the episode, this conversation occurs between John and Dinah.
Dinah: Anything, um, missing?
John: No, it's all accounted for.
Dinah: Including your gun? Not that you seem to be using it much these days. (reveals Johns gun) I checked it after the fight down here.
John: You checked my gun.
Dinah: You didn't even fire it, and none of the guys down here got hit, either.
John: Yeah, Dinah... (Dinah returns John's gun to him by aggressively shoving it against his chest. She shakes her head disapprovingly as they are interrupted by Curtis)
This clip showing the fight in question proves that Dinah's assessment of John's gun is incorrect. It shows him firing 7 times before looking at his shaking hand in disbelief that he missed his taget.
In this scene from episode 6x02, after John discloses his nerve damage to Dinah, she again insinuates that she has not only observed him failing to fire a shot, but that he is leaving his gun holstered altogether.
Dinah: That's why you haven't been pulling your gun.
John: Dinah, I have this handled.
Dinah: Yeah? You should tell that to Rene. He ended up in the hospital because you couldn't even get a single shot off.
Her last statement contradicts her own observation from the previous episode. Here, she states "I saw you take the shot at that merc... never seen you miss."
The only two times we see him refuse to fire his gun are when he holsters the gun to take on the guy with the knife and then again when Dinah is attacked with a garrote from behind during the final fight with the Bratva in episode 2. The dialogue is telling a completely different story with this subplot than what we are actually being shown during action scenes.
Reply by GForce59
on October 23, 2017 at 12:49 PM
Hmmm...either the writers are making these stories so complex they can't even remember what they write, or there are multiple writers and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Don't actors usually say something when there is a blatant error like this? They seem to catch things like this.