Just when you thought this show couldnt fall any lower in quality….
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Marvel/DC
baronofspades — 9 years ago(November 10, 2016 03:51 AM)
episode 5x06 (So it begins) airs.
Let me state right now that this was one of the worst episodes of the entire show if not THE WORST! Allow me to explain why (SPOILERS BELOW).
The episode starts with Oliver and Diggle arriving at a scene where a massacre by Prometheus took place. There they see a message Prometheus left for the Green Arrow. The message is basically a decleration of war against Green Arrow. Olver and Diggle return to base to discuss this with Felicity. And this is where the fall starts. Felicitys jokes are annoying right now and feel forced. First negative.
Second negative: Diggles character is butchered. To explain what i mean by that i need to go back to season 1 when Diggle first joined Oliver. Now Diggle knew that Oliver was keeping many secrets. He wanted to know about those 5 years Oliver was MIA but he respected Olivers privacy and the fact their partnership was recent and thus didnt pressure Oliver. Though he didnt fail to mention him that trust is important and that he wanted Oliver to be honest. And in this weeks episode we see a completely different Diggle. Prometheus has his sights on Green Arrow which means that he may target the recruits. So it would make sense to let them know that an enemy targets Green Arrow specifically. BUT NO! DIggle says that they need to keep it hidden from them cause they do not know if the threat is valid. Diggle who was against keeping secrets and who went rage mode on Oliver in season 3 for pulling an undercover with the LOA now agrees to keep secret from the recruits (who are team members) the fact that they may be targeted by a killer archer. Not only that but he is also way too hard on Wilddog. Dont get me wrong. I still hate Wilddog a lot [he gave a reason this episode to hate him more] but Diggle is unfair to him. The guy spilled information but he was tortured a lot. Its not like Diggle hasnt done mistakes. In season 2 he was supposed to headshot Slade but ended up being KOed by one of Slades underlings. So yeahDiggle my once favorite character of the show was once again butchered in this show.
After some mayor business scenes we have Prometheus making the first move by killing a civilian. An innocent civilian. And soon after he kills another one. He leaves the murder weapon (star) at the scene. Here comes the 3rd negative. At the hideout DIggle says to Felicity that they need to get their hands on one of these stars. Now i dont see what information it can provide. A picture of it since there are no prints on it should be enough. But for some reason they think they must acquire the whole thing. And Diggle suggests Felicity steals it from her boyfriend. Now Felicity objects by saying that it is illegal. SO IN SEASONS 1 AND 2 AND 3 THE COUNTLESS HACKINGS she performed were legal??? And she steals the item and guess what. IT REVEALED NO INFORMATION!! What a schocker that was???
Moving on to the 4th negative. Prometheus was announced to be a serial killer by the media. Apparently at some festival or something sightings of him are being reported. And suddenly all hell breaks lose and random people pull guns out and start randomly shooting. I can understand panic but this is redicilous. Seriously all this chaos was caused by a whisper that the killer was there. No one suddenly dropped dead.How does that make sense? So the team arrives at the scene to quell the chaos. Question. Isnt there police for that? Since when are vigilantes responsible for fixing every chaotic situation that occurs?? It is lame! It is foolish. I have seen it happening on Supergirl and it has been happening on Arrow since season 3. The fantasy level has gone way over the top and apparently the world cannot function without vigilantes or people with costumes. Someone should mention that the world was working long before vigilantes appeared and will keep on working long after they perish. Not only that but there is a saying:<(i know this isnt exactly the saying but you get the core idea).
5th negative. The people that caused this chaos and broke the law are being disarmed and released by the team. They broke the law. There should be some punishment. But i guess outlaws should stick together.
6th negative and this is a big one. THe team returns to the base and a computer program has found a connection between Prometheus victims. Each name if it goes through an anagram it forms a name on the List. To those that dont remember: The List was the book that Oliver got from his father and held the name of all of the corrupt individuals operating on Starling City and who participated in the Undertaking orchestrated by Malcom Merilyn. So the recruits at that point make a SHOCKING discovery. Green Arrow was a serial killer. They are shocked. They didnt know that. Curtis thought the Hood and Green Arrow were different people. And they blame Oliver for not revealing that to them? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? ARE YOU REALLY KIDDING ME? DO THE WRITERS THINK THEIR AUDIENCE IS A BUNCH OF MINDLESS BAB -
sanddragon939 — 9 years ago(November 10, 2016 04:56 AM)
I don't agree with your pronouncement that this was the worst episode, or even a bad one. So far, NOTHING in Season 5 even remotely approaches the nadir which we saw in Season 4. ('Beacon of Hope' will always remain the worst-ever 'Arrow' episode to me).
That said, 5x06, while a good episode in many respects, did have some issues. Its the first Season 5 episode where I observed some obvious flaws.
First let me address the areas of disagreement-
As far as Diggle goes - well, I actually liked the tension between the OTA and the new team. It seemed like something that would naturally arise given the circumstances. I can understand Diggle not being fully on board with the new team and wanting to compartmentalize the intel. Diggle is Oliver's first partner. Team Arrow actually began with him. So he feels a sense of kinship with Oliver and an ownership of the crusade which he feels the recruits haven't earned yet. Maybe Diggle is wrong about not roping the recruits in ultimatelybut it doesn't mean he doesn't have a valid point. Or at any rate, I totally get where he's coming from. Hell, maybe look at it from a military perspective - in Diggle's mind, Oliver's the CO, he and Felicity are second-in-command and the recruits are privates.
I don't think Felicity had a problem with the legality of stealing evidence. Its more about her not wanting to steal from her boyfriend and get him involved in this aspect of her life. Having said that, the notion that Felicity would have to literally swipe evidence from Malone's desk (or that it would just be lying on his desk unattended AT ALL) is silly. A scene with Oliver, Diggle or one of the recruits stealing the start from the evidence locker, or perhaps Oliver as Green Arrow meeting Malone and asking him for the star would have worked much betterbut they needed a way to force this subplot about Felicity confiding in Malone so this is the somewhat ham-handed excuse they got for it.
Now on to the other stuff.
The freak-out over the List was particularly problematic for me. Well not so much the freak-out on the part of the recruits, but the fact that Oliver, Diggle and Felicity did NOTHING to refute the claim that Oliver was a serial killer and the List was a 'kill list', both of which are untrue. Also, Curtis not knowing that Oliver had been the Hood stuck out like a sore thumb to me - given that he knows about Roy. They could have avoided the issue by maybe making it about Oliver having spent a year killing criminals, something he now tells them to avoid. A lot could have been done with the 'Oliver used to be the Hood' revelation (not with Curtis, but for the other three). The idea is solid. The way it was executed was kinda shaky and explicitly contradicts how Season 1 actually went down.
I didn't care much for the riot scene. It was only marginally better than the riot scene in the Season 4 finale. You'd think that a city that witnessed four terrorist attacks wouldn't suddenly descend into random chaos with an ALLEGED sighting of a single serial killer, but no. Not that Star City going into a panic because of a serial killer on the loose and the problems for the team and SCPD caused by false alarms isn't a legitimate plot point (Season 5 has so far done a great job showing us more of the city)again its a question of execution rather than ideation.
The biggest gripe for me though was the Quentin Lance 'reveal' at the end. Here, its the opposite - the execution was actually good, its the idea itself that's laughable at this point. The 'Quentin Lance might be a bad guy' reveal was done just LAST SEASONso to recycle that plot idea now is just stupid. Along with the fact that Lance has already flip-flopped WAY too much on the 'friend and foe' scale as far as Oliver is concerned. This is such a blatant red-herring, and one we KNOW is going to be resolved pretty soonso it really defeats the purpose of having it. Unless something more intelligent is going to be done with this idea of Prometheus possibly 'gaslighting' Lanceframing him to play games with Oliver.
There's a lot to like with this episode. The return of the List. An explicit call-back to Season 1. The new tense team dynamics in the lair. But there's a bit of the old bad writing from the last two seasons rearing its ugly head as well.
Formerly sn939 -
Darrylmurphy — 9 years ago(November 10, 2016 06:26 AM)
No offense but a fair few of these issues aren't really a problem, Dig not wanting to give out too much intel makes sense, Dig has always thought trust should equal honesty, and there is the rub the recruits have not proven themselves trust worthy, they quit almost as soon as they started, disobey orders constantly, turned on Oliver just because Felicity said so, one gave up Oliver's ID.
Dig saw last season what blindly trusting people too easily gets you, also Dig's always known their is a difference between what is and isn't need to know intel, he didn't tell Lyla about Barry for example, like I said Dig knows the difference between what is and is not need to know.
Now you could say they do need to know which is fair, but so is the idea that telling them is more dangerous given how Wild Dog already ran off half cocked taking Artemis with him and they created a meta-human, telling them about a serial killer looking to screw with GA is just as likely to cause one or more of them to run off head first looking for a fight and getting themselves killed.
But despite the recruits whining they are just recruits and the fact Oliver & Dig refer to them as such should spell it out to them, they are not full members of the team yet, essentially they are prospects they need to earn their patch not the other way around.
As for the train stuff the whole train scene was idiotic, like you said how did he plant C$ without anyone noticing him, or get on without a sign of how, here's another thing how did parachuting out of the train, floating to the ground some how allow them to overtake the train, you know so it put them ahead of the said speeding train so that it had to pass by them before it blew up? overall that scene was one long prolonged wet fart.
Oliver continuing to eat beep is par for the course at this point, but atleast he has Dig backing him up which makes for a nice change, another stupid thing is how did a list of dozens possibly hundreds of names only produce anagrams or 6 people in a city of 100's of 1000's? should have had an added element to them to narrow it down such as age or DOB corresponding, or something else.
I didn't mind the Felicity BF stuff because I'm hoping it will lead to character development, as it was didn't you notice how shocked Felicity was that he forgave her for lying, she expected a response similar to how she responded to Oliver last season, now it's stupid given Oliver showed the same response to her as the cop did when he found out she had been lying to him for months also but hey take what you can get, Olicity is clearly still in the cards and if they want to put them back together they need to fix a problem they created in the Felicity character, this looks like a step in that direction, which I would rather them do than have them make Oliver nothing more than her living ken doll, but that's just me.
Also the throwing star did reveal key piece of intel they needed so moaning about it being pointless to steal it is pointless, they now know Prometheus either is or has ties to the SCPD, unfortunately that feels less important given how corrupt they made sure to point out the police have become as of late, but they know more than they did before so it's something.
Also I hated how Oliver didn't call Artemis on her crap when she questioned why it was ok for him but not her to kill when she was killing for revenge, Oliver killed out of self preservation doing the mission they now want to do and believe it is ok to kill to do so, Church's goons are no more guilty that the hired thugs from S1, hell S1 saw people hiring assassins and black op mercs, all Church had was 1 hired hitter the rest were mere street punks.
It was an Ok ep imo, could have been way better but also could have been far worse, the lance fake out at the end was meh because it's not believable for him to be Prometheus, so it's either a lame red herring or the writers are bat crap crazy 50/50 as to which one it is atm. -
dmole-90902 — 9 years ago(November 10, 2016 08:50 AM)
It wasn't C4 that Prometheus used to escape, Oliver shot an explosive arrow into his back, he takes it out, takes a good look at it and knows it's about to go off so he quickly chucks it into the ceiling of the train car.