Arrow 1x01: Pilot
Apr. 24th, 2017 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsAs the song says, let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start.
Arrow 1x01: Pilot
I don’t remember a lot about watching this for the first time. Green Arrow is not a character I know much about beyond 1) existing 2) kind of Robin Hood knock-off 3) bits and pieces I had picked up from Linkara which wasn’t much and mostly from his Cry For Justice/Rise of Arsenal reviews at the time (he’s done some more since, but those I remember probably seeing before starting this show).
I don’t remember much of what I had expected, but it was fall after the Avengers came out so I was kind of in a superhero mood and figured this deserved a chance at least and it was good enough to keep me around. I had other shows I was more into (at the time TVD mostly, I never claimed I had great taste in TV), and very little about this grabbed me at the start, but I stuck with it. And now five years, four or five series (depending on counting), 250+ episodes, and a multitude of dead characters and awkward plotlines later...well it’s kind of eaten my life as a universe, and here we go down the rabbit hole again.
If you really want to see my early thoughts on the series, I went back and found this lj post where I discuss my opinions through the first nine episodes. I definitely still agree with me o not quite five years ago on a lot of it, though we’ll see how that’s reflected in my actual reviews since I do have a lot more ground from which to judge things.
The Gambit
For the moment splitting these into flashbacks and “present day” stuff seems reasonable, especially since the flashbacks are...much less likely to be influenced by things we see later (there are at least a few episodes already that go back before this point, but you get my point).
The main problem with this one though, is that that’s not Sara. She doesn’t look anything like Sara and I suck at facial recognition (couldn’t they have at least had CL as a brunette when they redid these scenes?) and I know that when they redo these scenes the performances don’t match. Memory tells me that CL’s Sara seems a lot younger in these scenes, so I went and looked up the actress’ ages which are basically the same but I have a theory that this actress was playing Sara as her own age while CL was playing present Sara as her own age so 5-6 years ago Sara was made younger.
I seem to remember that Robert’s death was really surprising to me the first time, though I don’t remember if that was the method that it happened at all so soon. Obviously Robert was going to die, but I think I thought, once they got off the Gambit, that it would take a little longer before it happened. It’s also a very poignant scene and, especially at the time without the baggage of five years of flashbacks, begins to explain how Oliver became his present day self. While he is certainly upset by Sara’s death and even if that had been the end of their problems he would have carried the guilt of that with him, watching his father kill someone and then himself so that Oliver would live is a pretty defining moment.
Coming Home
The present day plot is split between the personal drama and the plot of the week, and I’m going to talk about them separately. Outside of a little awkwardness dropping in characters’ names (especially Laurel as Dinah), and the fact that retroactively the Tommy/Thea stuff is super uncomfortable, most of the personal stuff is off to a good start. Although before we really get into that, we do need to address some things with the benefit of hindsight.
Oliver lies to the audience a lot, to the point where I kind of wish he was talking to someone because him lying to people is just Oliver being Oliver. His opening narration mentions that he was on Lian Yu for five years. When he talks about not recognizing himself in the mirror...he hadn’t been back from Russia for very long and they have mirrors in Russia. When Laurel asks him about Sara’s death he flashes back to the one on the Gambit; which yes, is what he’s pretending was how she died, but seeing it replayed like that feels like a lie to us.
I did make a joke in my notes that the boat approaching the island at the beginning could have just been more mercenaries, since so many different mercenary groups have already come to the island it turns out. Also, when Oliver mentions missing tequila, I can’t help joking that he could take a break from vodka at some point (though in that case as least it just fits with the story he’s telling people about always being on the island). That and Tommy’s estimate of how long Oliver went without sex is wrong, but the story or maybe just I am a little vague on whether he’s actually been with anyone since Shado.
I wish I could remember if at the time Oliver’s homecoming worked for me, because at this point it’s weighted down with a lot of stuff we didn’t know about then, but I also know that the show wasn’t an immediate hit with me so I don’t want to say this definitely worked first time through. There was a happy medium at some point, where familiarity with the characters lent weight to what we see here, without buckling under too much backstory where if feels we are now. Moira’s reunion with Oliver seems very underplayed; it kind of works but maybe not in the larger context. By contrast Tommy is a little overplayed, but that also works in that he’s overdoing it to be the friend he thinks Oliver remembers and wants him to be; he is kind of still that person, so it’s only an exaggeration rather than completely playing at that role which Oliver does...sometimes, the rest of the time Tommy clearly doesn’t know what to do with the changed Oliver.
Outside of Laurel, Thea is the one most used to highlight how much time has passed while Oliver was gone; Tommy and Moira do what they can to make it seem like Oliver can just come home, that it’s just facts and things that he missed out on, but Thea and Laurel make it clear that it’s not going to be that easy. Thea was twelve when Oliver left, those are some pretty big years to miss, especially when she also goes through so many life-changing events like losing her father and brother.
I am pretty sure that even at the time I really liked Laurel’s big speech to Oliver about what she went through after the Gambit went down. That was interesting, and quite complex for what I was seeing on the CW at that point (again, TVD), that now that he was alive she could finally be angry with him in a way she hadn’t been able to before (and as confused as the point gets in s2, this is a factor when it’s Sara that comes back) and even more so because Sara is still dead. I’m not quite going to say this contributes to why I never shipped Oliver and Laurel, because if other things had been written/performed better this could have served as an interesting starting point to their inevitable eventual reconciliation, but I really like her attitude here.
Though I will say that I have never understood how Laurel didn’t hear about Oliver being back until she saw it on the news when she did (if she’d seen the first report fine, but this was later). Especially if the news was going to bring up Sara you’d think Laurel would have heard about it from someone (namely Quentin) before.
Speaking of Quentin, I always kind of forget that they don’t confirm he’s Detective -Lance- until so late in the episode. His early scene is played with that fact so clearly present that it seems backwards to try and make it a reveal at the end.
I have a few bits in my notes about Raisa, who disappears after this episode. I’m not sure what they ultimately could have done with her as a character, but her not being around has always made her role here really awkward. I also have about three notes that simply say “Oh Digg;” I apparently don’t have anything specific to say about Digg here but he was so likeable right from the start.
Adam Hunt
It is really a two pronged plot going on here, but they’re ultimately connected for all they never overlap here. Really even for the time I don’t think it would have been that hard to guess that Moira’s machinations were connected with Hunt’s bad deeds (not saying I guessed at the time, but I’m established as kind of slow). And can we just take as read that Moira’s scheme doesn’t make any sense? What instructions were the kidnappers given? They need to abduct this guy, threaten him a bit for a few vague pieces of information; not kill or even particularly hurt him or any friends he’s with but if anyone else gets involved kill without prejudice. If only they’d cast Malcolm at this point this would make so much more sense as his plot (he doesn’t want Oliver dead but not so invested in him not being hurt; don’t hurt Tommy but anyone else, whatever).
I don’t have any notes on Adam Hunt per se, just a lot of notes on Oliver setting up his operation. Since we’ve still got a few eps in s5 and we don’t know what s6 is going to do, maybe someday they’ll explain it, but how does Oliver get all this stuff? Logical choices would be ARGUS and the Bratva, with the Bratva second since he has to go and met the Starling City cell in a few episodes. Also, I can’t imagine Oliver is using non-lethal arrows at this point, even though they do say that Hunt’s men from the first attack are just ‘in the hospital’ as opposed to dead, it’s barely mentioned and not said about the later fight. The choice to have Oliver killing people was an interesting choice for the writers to make, one they have spent the last five seasons writing their way out of and finally dealing with the consequences of this year.
Also, where did Oliver have the arrow suit during the party initially or after the fact? He also has no voice changing yet.
As a last note, while you wouldn’t know it from my review, all my notes refer to Oliver and “Ollie.” Partly it’s easier to write quickly, partly it is what he’s called most in the episode (the rest divided between “Oliver” and “Mr. Queen”) where later he becomes “Oliver” to most people who talk to him. But also...season 1 Oliver is often “Ollie” to me, and I think that’s what I’m reflecting in my thoughts as I watch, even if here I’m more set with using Oliver.
Arrow 1x01: Pilot
I don’t remember a lot about watching this for the first time. Green Arrow is not a character I know much about beyond 1) existing 2) kind of Robin Hood knock-off 3) bits and pieces I had picked up from Linkara which wasn’t much and mostly from his Cry For Justice/Rise of Arsenal reviews at the time (he’s done some more since, but those I remember probably seeing before starting this show).
I don’t remember much of what I had expected, but it was fall after the Avengers came out so I was kind of in a superhero mood and figured this deserved a chance at least and it was good enough to keep me around. I had other shows I was more into (at the time TVD mostly, I never claimed I had great taste in TV), and very little about this grabbed me at the start, but I stuck with it. And now five years, four or five series (depending on counting), 250+ episodes, and a multitude of dead characters and awkward plotlines later...well it’s kind of eaten my life as a universe, and here we go down the rabbit hole again.
If you really want to see my early thoughts on the series, I went back and found this lj post where I discuss my opinions through the first nine episodes. I definitely still agree with me o not quite five years ago on a lot of it, though we’ll see how that’s reflected in my actual reviews since I do have a lot more ground from which to judge things.
The Gambit
For the moment splitting these into flashbacks and “present day” stuff seems reasonable, especially since the flashbacks are...much less likely to be influenced by things we see later (there are at least a few episodes already that go back before this point, but you get my point).
The main problem with this one though, is that that’s not Sara. She doesn’t look anything like Sara and I suck at facial recognition (couldn’t they have at least had CL as a brunette when they redid these scenes?) and I know that when they redo these scenes the performances don’t match. Memory tells me that CL’s Sara seems a lot younger in these scenes, so I went and looked up the actress’ ages which are basically the same but I have a theory that this actress was playing Sara as her own age while CL was playing present Sara as her own age so 5-6 years ago Sara was made younger.
I seem to remember that Robert’s death was really surprising to me the first time, though I don’t remember if that was the method that it happened at all so soon. Obviously Robert was going to die, but I think I thought, once they got off the Gambit, that it would take a little longer before it happened. It’s also a very poignant scene and, especially at the time without the baggage of five years of flashbacks, begins to explain how Oliver became his present day self. While he is certainly upset by Sara’s death and even if that had been the end of their problems he would have carried the guilt of that with him, watching his father kill someone and then himself so that Oliver would live is a pretty defining moment.
Coming Home
The present day plot is split between the personal drama and the plot of the week, and I’m going to talk about them separately. Outside of a little awkwardness dropping in characters’ names (especially Laurel as Dinah), and the fact that retroactively the Tommy/Thea stuff is super uncomfortable, most of the personal stuff is off to a good start. Although before we really get into that, we do need to address some things with the benefit of hindsight.
Oliver lies to the audience a lot, to the point where I kind of wish he was talking to someone because him lying to people is just Oliver being Oliver. His opening narration mentions that he was on Lian Yu for five years. When he talks about not recognizing himself in the mirror...he hadn’t been back from Russia for very long and they have mirrors in Russia. When Laurel asks him about Sara’s death he flashes back to the one on the Gambit; which yes, is what he’s pretending was how she died, but seeing it replayed like that feels like a lie to us.
I did make a joke in my notes that the boat approaching the island at the beginning could have just been more mercenaries, since so many different mercenary groups have already come to the island it turns out. Also, when Oliver mentions missing tequila, I can’t help joking that he could take a break from vodka at some point (though in that case as least it just fits with the story he’s telling people about always being on the island). That and Tommy’s estimate of how long Oliver went without sex is wrong, but the story or maybe just I am a little vague on whether he’s actually been with anyone since Shado.
I wish I could remember if at the time Oliver’s homecoming worked for me, because at this point it’s weighted down with a lot of stuff we didn’t know about then, but I also know that the show wasn’t an immediate hit with me so I don’t want to say this definitely worked first time through. There was a happy medium at some point, where familiarity with the characters lent weight to what we see here, without buckling under too much backstory where if feels we are now. Moira’s reunion with Oliver seems very underplayed; it kind of works but maybe not in the larger context. By contrast Tommy is a little overplayed, but that also works in that he’s overdoing it to be the friend he thinks Oliver remembers and wants him to be; he is kind of still that person, so it’s only an exaggeration rather than completely playing at that role which Oliver does...sometimes, the rest of the time Tommy clearly doesn’t know what to do with the changed Oliver.
Outside of Laurel, Thea is the one most used to highlight how much time has passed while Oliver was gone; Tommy and Moira do what they can to make it seem like Oliver can just come home, that it’s just facts and things that he missed out on, but Thea and Laurel make it clear that it’s not going to be that easy. Thea was twelve when Oliver left, those are some pretty big years to miss, especially when she also goes through so many life-changing events like losing her father and brother.
I am pretty sure that even at the time I really liked Laurel’s big speech to Oliver about what she went through after the Gambit went down. That was interesting, and quite complex for what I was seeing on the CW at that point (again, TVD), that now that he was alive she could finally be angry with him in a way she hadn’t been able to before (and as confused as the point gets in s2, this is a factor when it’s Sara that comes back) and even more so because Sara is still dead. I’m not quite going to say this contributes to why I never shipped Oliver and Laurel, because if other things had been written/performed better this could have served as an interesting starting point to their inevitable eventual reconciliation, but I really like her attitude here.
Though I will say that I have never understood how Laurel didn’t hear about Oliver being back until she saw it on the news when she did (if she’d seen the first report fine, but this was later). Especially if the news was going to bring up Sara you’d think Laurel would have heard about it from someone (namely Quentin) before.
Speaking of Quentin, I always kind of forget that they don’t confirm he’s Detective -Lance- until so late in the episode. His early scene is played with that fact so clearly present that it seems backwards to try and make it a reveal at the end.
I have a few bits in my notes about Raisa, who disappears after this episode. I’m not sure what they ultimately could have done with her as a character, but her not being around has always made her role here really awkward. I also have about three notes that simply say “Oh Digg;” I apparently don’t have anything specific to say about Digg here but he was so likeable right from the start.
Adam Hunt
It is really a two pronged plot going on here, but they’re ultimately connected for all they never overlap here. Really even for the time I don’t think it would have been that hard to guess that Moira’s machinations were connected with Hunt’s bad deeds (not saying I guessed at the time, but I’m established as kind of slow). And can we just take as read that Moira’s scheme doesn’t make any sense? What instructions were the kidnappers given? They need to abduct this guy, threaten him a bit for a few vague pieces of information; not kill or even particularly hurt him or any friends he’s with but if anyone else gets involved kill without prejudice. If only they’d cast Malcolm at this point this would make so much more sense as his plot (he doesn’t want Oliver dead but not so invested in him not being hurt; don’t hurt Tommy but anyone else, whatever).
I don’t have any notes on Adam Hunt per se, just a lot of notes on Oliver setting up his operation. Since we’ve still got a few eps in s5 and we don’t know what s6 is going to do, maybe someday they’ll explain it, but how does Oliver get all this stuff? Logical choices would be ARGUS and the Bratva, with the Bratva second since he has to go and met the Starling City cell in a few episodes. Also, I can’t imagine Oliver is using non-lethal arrows at this point, even though they do say that Hunt’s men from the first attack are just ‘in the hospital’ as opposed to dead, it’s barely mentioned and not said about the later fight. The choice to have Oliver killing people was an interesting choice for the writers to make, one they have spent the last five seasons writing their way out of and finally dealing with the consequences of this year.
Also, where did Oliver have the arrow suit during the party initially or after the fact? He also has no voice changing yet.
As a last note, while you wouldn’t know it from my review, all my notes refer to Oliver and “Ollie.” Partly it’s easier to write quickly, partly it is what he’s called most in the episode (the rest divided between “Oliver” and “Mr. Queen”) where later he becomes “Oliver” to most people who talk to him. But also...season 1 Oliver is often “Ollie” to me, and I think that’s what I’m reflecting in my thoughts as I watch, even if here I’m more set with using Oliver.
