Arrow S3E5 Review: Brother Eye, the digital Sauron

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 5: The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak

It's a Felicity-centric episode, as the title probably shows. Not that it's a bad thing -- Felicity is one of the most fun characters in Arrow, and I'm all up for it. It's mostly a filler thing, though being a bit of a DC geek I was a bit over-excited when the episode goes 'I am Brother Eye'. I honestly thought we were getting an adaptation of Brother Eye, possibly as a co-arc-villain alongside Ra's al Ghul for season three, but alas, it's not meant to be. Though with ARGUS and Amanda Waller already in play, I thought it was a shame to waste Brother Eye on a filler episode like this. I've always thought Brother Eye was a cool concept, even if it wasn't handled exactly well in the comics.

Also this time around, Sheldon Cooper's Brother Eye is shaped like a Sauron eye. Oh you geeks.

Of course, the episode centers on Felicity, and like last episode where the flashbacks focused on Thea, in this episode the flashbacks focus on Felicity... which I thought was an awesome way to give the show more variety whilst still keeping to the 'Flashback B-Plot' format of the episode but not burning through too many Oliver scenes and inconsistencies in characterization, which I thought was one of the bigger weakness of the first two seasons.

Felicity herself is pretty charming in the present day, and I think this is the first episode that truly focuses on Felicity... ever? She's never truly thrust into the spotlight like this, Flash episode(s) notwithstanding. I do like how the normally perfect-and-innocent Felicity has to deal first with being an ungrateful daughter, and secondly dealing with a hidden demon from the past. And having her as having created this super-virus in the past is certainly befitting of her more mundane backstory as opposed to Diggle or Oliver. It's nothing particularly spectacular on her part, just your average Felicity antics, but I do like it nonetheless.

Felicity's mother is sufficiently embarrassing and a bit of an annoying woman, and for a moment I thought we were going to have her be this overbearing bitch that barges into Felicity's life and generally be this massive overcontrolling woman... though Felicity's comments about how her mother is a stripper in Vegas and generally been disparaging about her family in the few times she's spoken about it before this certainly doesn't help. But no, she's just like any average mother, very poorly-versed with technology and trying their best to be a good other and generally being, well, a bit of a dumb blonde, but a good mother. At least she's putting an effort. That line where she's talking about how Felicity got everything from her smarter father yet the father's the one that left, while she's trying her best to scrounge up money to raise her child in the only way she knows, well... the fight that Felicity has screaming at her mother is pretty well-written too. It's generally something which I thought would be annoying but ended up being pretty sweet.

Ray Palmer gets a few nods in this episode and dude just can't catch a break. All he wants is to talk to Felicity about this Co-Dependence project and generally be this swell guy, but he keeps getting interrupted by Felicity's mother. I mean, coming into Felicity's apartment so early in the morning is a bit stalker-y, but considering what we see Montoya did in a recent episode of Gotham I watched, it's quite tame. Ray Palmer's still quite a nice guy, and he shows to not be just a businessman but smart enough to understand the scientific angle of the stuff he is doing, which certainly is in keeping with his comic-book counterpart's role as a scientist. I don't think he's particularly going to be really important to the plot, though, other than giving a watch that served as a Chekov's Gun.

Goth Felicity! Felicity apparently is a goth with black lipstick, purple lines down her hair and has this... goth necklace thing. She's actually a shoo-in for Death from DC's Sandman title, though it's a relatively pretty generic gothic look. Anyway, we learn that Felicity dyes her hair blonde (possibly to match her mother?) and its natural colour is black. She used to be part of a hacktivist group in college... which, yeah, what with the boyfriend being evil and she being this awesome hacker, is a bit too similar with Skye's backstory in Agents of SHIELD for me. But eh.

Felicity's boyfriend is named Cooper Sheldon... which is one of the most groan-worthy, eye-rolling pop culture jokes ever. Especially since, to my knowledge, the Big Bang Theory is still running strong. But Cooper is a bit of an overtly-assertive boyfriend and is trying to hack into school loans even in college, taking advantage of Felicity's virus-creating skills to get in and basically claim credit. Reality ensues and the dude gets himself captured for breaking into a secure national site.

There's a bit of a detective thing going on where Felicity believes, in the present day, that Cooper had killed himself, but I don't believe it for a second. As it appears, NSA offered him a job and he faked his death... and apparently just let him go? In a world with Amanda Waller, I actually find this part implausible. But whatever the case, Cooper is behind the Brother Eye persona, causing blackouts and threatening to fuck up bank accounts and steal money from an armoured truck. Fucking hacktivists, man. He's a massive hypocrite, and gets all creepy with Felicity near the end. Though he gets totally beaten up by a girl despite having a gun and a hostage. That's what you get for being stupid enough to leave Felicity near a computer and going off to do whatever you did.

Overall pretty great on the Felicity end, as I keep saying.

Roy Harper gets quite a fair amount of screentime in here in his Red Arrow getup, and he gets another action scene separate from Oliver, this time actually, y'know, shooting arrows at people. I thought the arrow-through-the-RPG scene was hilarious and cool at the same time. Roy could afford to have less of a confused expression on his face all the time, but all the same I like him. And then there's the reveal right at the end about the episode with him having nightmares of... lobbing arrows like darts into Sara? What in the fuck is going on? I didn't really think that this was going to be the case, firstly because we already did Evil Roy last episode and secondly because it seems to be just a red herring, no pun intended. Plus the Ra's al Ghul setting it all up to remove a distraction from Nyssa makes so much more sense and has more potential for Nyssa turning against Ra's... but then again, might that be the red herring? It certainly makes Roy's earlier line about not getting enough sleep feel a lot more chilling in retrospect, where I initially thought that was just Roy being a lovesick bird over Thea. Certainly interested to see why Roy was the one behind Sara... is it more Mirakuru-related madness? He's certainly throwing those darts. Or is there something more to it?

Fucking confused and puzzled. And that totally came out of nowhere.

Diggle, as usual, gets less scenes than the others though he gets a really hilarious scene where he has to babysit baby Sara because Lyla is off on a mission and the nanny called in sick, whereas Oliver doesn't want to let baby Sara into the Arrowcave because reasons. I mean, there's a shit ton of pointy things and things that go boom down there, so it's definitely not the best place to put a baby, but I'm surprised Diggle doesn't argue the point more.

Laurel gets a couple of bit scenes where she's just lashing out in Ted Grant's boxing gym and later barges in like she owns the place and orders a riot unit to get to the bank. Granted it's a bad decision and Laurel is all about shitty, bad decision, but this time I don't think it's entirely that terrible. We get Quentin lashing out on her later on for nearly causing a gigantic clusterfuck, which I thought was well-deserved even if it's on the best of intentions. Though at least she doesn't throw a tantrum and be an emo self-deprecating bitch but rather actually talks to Ted Grant about it, and Ted Grant knows just how to train her. There's probably not an actual boxing training course for 'When Your Sister Has Doth Been Murdered', but hey. Oh, and Laurel chooses the black training clothes. Naturally. Because, you know, Black Canary and all.


Oliver takes the backseat in this episode. He's doing the normal Green Arrow stuff, shooting people in the face and actually taking on three machineguns. I'm not quite sure how rappelling up and doing some acrobatic things saves him from machineguns, but he's the god damned Arrow so he's allowed to do these things. There's also him finally pulling out the 'YOU HAVE FAILED THIS CITY' catchphrase which is absolutely brilliant to hear. I love that catchphrase.

Oliver and Thea get a couple of confrontations to parallel Felicity's struggles with her mother. We get confirmation that Thea still isn't aware of Oliver's double life, or at least is being a good actress about it. Oliver and Thea get into some confrontation with Thea using Malcolm Merlyn's money, which I don't think is really that big of a deal since Oliver assumes Thea hasn't been contacted by Merlyn anyway. It's just a small B-plot running in the background so it doesn't get too much attention, but they do make up at the end which is sweet, and the popcorn scene is pretty funny. Oh, and there's Merlyn looking in jealousy at Oliver and Thea eating popcorn, of course.

What else is there about the episode? Other than me getting a bit disappointed over how mundane the Brother Eye explanation is, there are a couple of other DC comics references. Sheldon Cooper was wearing a shirt with Starro the Conqueror on it when he was arrested, and Lyla was on a mission to Santa Prisca, the (I think) fictional country that Bane hails from. (Are we getting a Bane?)

I also do like the opening training sequence where Oliver and Roy are training with twin sticks, Merlyn and Thea are training with samurai katanas, Laurel is trying his best to train with Wildcat... and Felicity is just at home doing five sit-ups and being proud of herself for that... and the kicker is that the television announcer is at ten.

Overall a pretty nice episode. It's pretty filler-y and self-contained, and I'm certainly interested in the whole Roy-Sara thing which I hope will be addressed in the next episode.

training sequence opening

Agents of SHIELD S2E7 Review: Finally some answers

Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 7: the Writing on the Wall

Finally, after a rather wobbly episode and the big untwist about Simmons' Hydra-ness that went absolutely nowhere, we get back into the plot. Both the more interesting sides of the plot: Coulson's big alien carving thing, and the whole Grant Ward/Hydra side, are explored here, which is neat.

So, of course, it stars mainly Phil Coulson, which is nice. For supposedly being the lead actor of the show Coulson doesn't really get much love lately beyond 'oh I'm carving and maybe going crazy'. In a sense that's what kickstarts this part of the plot, since Coulson's carvingness is getting worse, and Skye finds out about some lady, Rebecca Stephens, that was murdered with the alien carvings etched to her body... and Coulson recognizes her as a SHIELD agent, and they find out that she's supposed to be dead. Do like the wham line about how this seems to be just a psychopath's murder (we get the chilling description how the victim died of pain, not blood loss) and then when Skye says about how she used to be dead, oh damn the Tahiti project is larger than we thought.

As it turns out, Coulson has salvaged the mind-memory machine from Raina and Fitz-Simmons had worked on it off-screen for a while, which isn't that big of a surprise, and he intends to dig inside his own head to search for what the hell's going on and why he recognized the murdered lady. I think it's partially driven by his own guilt for being involved in the Tahiti project, and partially driven by his own compulsion to find the answers. He's being shown to starting to unravel and is generally fraying apart, and I do like how newcomer Mack is actually pointing it out.

I'm also a bit weirded out by just how the memory machine operates, and why it's only showing memories selectively and stuff, but I guess it has to do with Coulson's brain being completely fucked up by Tahiti.

A good chunk of the episode is spent in a quasi-flashback as Coulson returns to the past where he's overseeing the Tahiti program... and there's the big reveal that the Tahiti project has been done before. Multiple times. It's a nicely-crafted set of scenes as we go from these agents dying from cancer and whatnot all thanking Coulson for giving them a second chance, and as Coulson tries to describe the scene, one of the women starts going up as if possessed and carving the alien carvings all over the table. What follows is a series of pretty disturbing images as the Tahiti patients just babble and shout and drool and hit the table and we've got this woman's wailing constantly in the background and when this crazy woman tearing at her long hair is being forcibly pulled away by the guards it looks like something straight out of a horror movie. Truly unsettling.

And then there's the scene where someone's on the operating table and I was led to believe it's Coulson, reliving his brain being picked apart by the Tahiti project, but no, apparently every single one of the revived agents all had their brains picked apart by this crazy CGI robot... which looks a lot less fake-CGI than when it first appeared in season one.

And then mixed in-between the crazy people, there's the tattooed man from last episode, who we know was the one behind all the murders. He seems to be the only stable one who doesn't go crazy, but we know that's not the case. We get a scene of Coulson discussing with another SHIELD agent I don't think we've seen before about shutting down the project, and the other SHIELD agent makes the compromise of wiping their memories, allowing them to live a normal life. And like the little we see from the painter lady in the beginning of the episode, she seems to be doing relatively well. I mean she's still drawing the alien markings and calling it 'a Magical Place', but she doesn't seem to be acting as if she's harboring an evil angry demon from hell or going completely mental like Coulson was.

It's a bit of a hard choice, and we see how the tattooed man, Sebastian Derek, go all 'Coulson, you don't need to erase me' but in reality he's just as crazy as the others, if not moreso considering he's carving on his own body. We see him as he's dragged away screaming and cursing at the world and basically going all 'I want to know I want to know' or something along those lines, which is like a madness mantra to both Sebastian... and Coulson, as it turns out, since we get this powerful scene as the Sebastian in Coulson's mind transforms to a second Coulson ranting about how he needs to know the answer and everything. He's basically like a crazed drug addict because after he got out of the memory machine he proceeds to lock Skye up in Ward's old prison cell and head off to catch Sebastian all by his lonesome.

The confrontation between Sebastian and Coulson is not really anything to write home about, but Coulson's heart is definitely in the right place since he's more concerned about protecting the mindwiped agent, Hank Thompson, than finding the answers. I mean, there's the point where he pressures Thompson about whether he's seen the drawings, but he moves on quickly after that.

I thought it was rather obvious from the very first shot of him with that gigantic train model that that is the full form of the alien carvings.

And it is! As the confrontation between Coulson and Sebastian ensues, Sebastian tells Coulson that pain is the way to unlock his own memories so he reverts to his original, psychotic self, and he just tries to cut so deep. Both Coulson and Sebastian are pretty crazy at this point, though Coulson obviously more sane than the villain. We get a little tense face-off, but once they've seen the true, completed form of the carvings they both mellow out.

We get an apology from Coulson for focusing too much about the alien carvings without telling the team what it really is all about, but it's all and well since it happens to tie in with the whole Diviner-Hydra thing.

All throughout the episode, the Shield is divided into two groups, one handling the Coulson situation and another hunting down Grant Ward. Skye gets the most screentime and characterization for Team Coulson, being the one that interacts the most with Coulson, but beyond being ever-loyal and making a couple of deadpan jokes and the prison scene, I don't think there's really much to talk about. I guess she's kind of trusting enough in Coulson's judgement to use the machine? Though I suspect a harsh talk-down from May once she gets back. I think the scene where Mack goes 'man, a half-alien' and Skye just makes an awkward face also warrants a mention. Oh, and obviously the nonchalant way she goes 'hail hydra' at the end.

Fitz, Simmons and Mack make up the rest of Team Coulson. Simmons gets the least screentime, being mostly functional -- do the autopsy, Simmons. Handle Coulson's vital signs, Simmons. And there's a bunch of moments where she makes little jealous glances at Fitz and Mack, and I think she makes a sarcastic comment at Mack one time? Girl's jealous of Mack taking her man, which is funny because that's what Fitz was worried about in season one, just with a different black dude. Also, I do like how Simmons basically does what Coulson, Skye and May did in three or four episodes in under a minute, deducing practically everything about how the carvings, hypergraphia, Garrett and GH-325 were connected. I think if Coulson had brought in Simmons instead of Skye, the mystery might be solved a lot earlier.

Mack's basically the only sane man in the team, playing along with everything he's ordered to do but not particularly happy about the whole insanity. There's a hilariously stupidly incompetent moment where Fitz and Mack are playing on Koenig's X-Box while Skye is just being trapped in the cell... where did Koenig disappear off to, by the way? Did I miss something? We get the fun moment where they apparently waltz in and steal a corpse off-screen. Fitz goes on about how an agent's memories cannot be deleted, they can only be hidden or archived or something, going on about backup memories... and the camera lingers on his face long enough to be some kind of foreshadowing.

Hopefully Fitz makes a discovery, or maybe Simmons will take it upon herself to find that discovery. The two haven't exactly been handled well all throughout season two, beyond the big bomb in episode one that Simmons has left, which, as I kept mentioning, doesn't amount to jack shit. Maybe Fitz will use the GH serum on himself? Certainly would be an interesting development.

Anyway, the carvings are apparently a map to some kind of super-complex alien city, and it's curious just what the blue alien is. The alien is apparently really old, predating the Pyramids, so how is that going to tie in to everything? I mean, the Asgardians and the Jotuns have visited Earth before, and there's the Ravagers from Guardians of the Galaxy... would certainly be interesting to see how this will tie in to the whole overreaching plot. Is he a Kree? A Jotun? Or whatever race Yondu is from, which isn't the Kree but he's blue-skinned anyway? Or something new?

We also get a reminder that the Tahiti project was built in case of a fallen Avenger, so maybe that's a way out if Captain America or someone does actually die in Age of Ultron? Extremely interested in all these stuff, though knowing Agents of SHIELD, we probably won't get to find out about a lot of them until the halfway mark

The other team, made up of May, Mockingbird, Hunter and Triplett, are hunting down Grant Ward. Triplett finally gets some dialogue and some extra things to do beyond just standing in the background, which is cool. We get a scene between Mockingbird and Ward on the bust that drags on a bit too long, and kind of plays down Mockingbird's superspy status by having her not turn a page... and that hilarious scene with Hunter in a cowboy backup... I guess Bobbi's being deliberately subtly misleading to get Ward to be suspicious and therefore let his guard down from the second agent? There's otherwise nothing remarkable from any of the SHIELD agents here, though.

Grant Ward gets the biggest spotlight as we are left to wonder just what his big agenda is. Initially he meets up with Sunil Bakshi in a bar, talking about how he can bring Bakshi close enough to Coulson to put a bullet in his head... and instead of working together with Hydra again, Ward apparently kills everyone present, offscreen, and leaves Bakshi with 'For Coulson' on his mouth for May to find. It's a funny scene, I grant you. Pun not intended.

We get a few more nods to how Von Strucker is higher up the Hydra food chain than Whitehall, which has been a question that's bugging me... why are there two Hydra leaders? Now we know. Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker is like absolute supreme commander of Hydra, and Daniel Whitehall, the man from the past, is second in command to him, just a bit more active at the moment.

I thought the scene with Ward talking to the mother-and-child ran on a bit too long, but it shows just how Ward, and in extension his actor, can put up that mask that fooled his team and the audience for half of a season.

The stinger reveals that Ward is gunning for Big Brother Ward, of course, which doesn't really come as a surprise, and seems to deliver Bakshi for... reasons? I mean, one of it is so that he can give Skye a call like the creepy-ass stalker that he is, but I'm curious to see just where the show-writers will take Ward after this.

Overall a nice step-up after a series of relatively disappointing episodes. I do like how the constant theme of a 'missing piece' is simply the addition of a third dimension. I just hope all this stuff being built up over time doesn't all fall apart when the big revelations start to come.

Gotham S1E3 Review: The Frikkin' Balloon Man

Gotham, Season 1, Episode 3: The Balloon Man

Well, that was a lot better than the first two episodes! It's the first Gotham episode which I would say that's actually good, or at least up to my standard for an average, not-particularly-good, not-particularly-bad episode. It certainly was entertaining, for one.

This episode stars the Balloon Man, who, to my knowledge, isn't an existing Batman villain. Five minutes of looking it up in the interwebs, I can only find a reference to a giant balloon robot enemy of the Metal Men, so yeah, the Balloon Man is presumably a brand-new character in the Gotham series. And, wow, they really went for a strange direction with this villain, didn't they? A freaking psychopath who kills people by handcuffing them to weather balloons and letting them float up, screaming, still alive, and either die because of the extreme cold or from the fall all the way up from the stratosphere. That's not a nice way to die, and I really feel sorry for the jerkholes as they scream and sob while the balloon slowly lifts them up to their eventual deaths.

And at the same time it's freaking hilarious, because, come on, you freaking kill people with balloons. How can that not be anything but hilarious?

I think the dude's called David Lemont or something, and he's basically sick of the corrupt everythingness of Gotham City, which is fair since practically everyone in Gotham that's not Gordon, Allen, Montoya, Alfred or Bruce are technically criminals of varying degrees. And it ties in actually quite well with last episode's sending-orphans-to-upstate, which kind of ties in well with how Gordon's interactions with Selina early in this episode kind of pays off when they track down the Balloon Man.

Also, I do like how the Balloon Man is targeting a bunch of influential corrupt people at random and not just working on some big overreaching vendetta like most villains in these kind of crime stories do, which I thought was a nice little variation from formula.
 
Man, a villain themed on balloons. I never thought I'd see the day that something so ridiculous would be featured on an actual live-action show. Granted it's not exactly the best thing to do this early on when it's trying to gain all the viewers in can get, but you know what? It sold me that Gotham isn't afraid to tackle the more ridiculous aspects of the franchise, unlike a certain overhyped and so-quote-unquote-realistic film series that adapts Batman. But that's a rant for another time.

The episode is basically your average 'track down whoever the villain is' which is all fine. We've got the Balloon Man successfully killing three of his four targets -- some Ponzi scheme dude, this bitch-ass cop Bill Cranston who gets a short scene early on brutalizing a poor sap, and a pedophile priest. How Gordon and Bullock just get to reach the Balloon Man is pretty okay, moves from one setting to the next without lingering too much and making it boring. I don't think whatever the explanation for that yellow strip was clear, or if I just missed that entirely.

Throughout the episode Gordon's conflicted about the whole state of Gotham. Throughout the entire series it's been hammered, perhaps a little too anviliciously, that the city of Gotham's administration is filled with corrupt assholes from the bottom to the top. We've got arguments between Bullock and Gordon, both on differing sides of the black-gray-white scale of goodness. And I do like that! It makes me think a bit. There's the whole 'he deserved to die, the fucking bastard' logic with the first victim which Bullock says. And I think I agree with Bullock; Ponzi scheme people are pretty scummy bastards. And Bullock does affirm that there's a bunch of people who even committed suicide thanks to the Ponzi Dude, and as the show establishes, he's about to pay off everyone involved in his trial and get away relatively scot-free.

And I thought that was a nice way to get members of the audience to agree to the 'kill them if they're evil' logic that Bullock and the Balloon Man employs, and kind of illustrates the need for someone who refuses to budge in their morality like Gordon and Bruce Wayne. I thought it was neat about the theme concerning how criminals need to be punished, not murdered. And I do like the disgust that Gordon exudes when the police department starts to go all-hands-on-deck when it's not a corrupt businessman that gets killed but this superviolent douchebag of a cop.

Barbara also actually serves as a nice little thing to bounce dialogues back so Gordon gets to think a bit, and I do like how Barbara goes all 'Gordon you're a hero, do you know what catching the Wayne Killer means?' while Gordon knows he caught and killed the wrong guy. It's a nice little touch there. We've got the whole 'everyone must matter, or nobody matters' logic that Gordon's working, which is naive but definitely fits Gordon (and Bruce). It's a shame that the philosophical debate is wholly interrupted by the Balloon Man just flipping out in the end and trying to kill Gordon and Bullock anyway.

Also I do like how neither Essen (who gets more screentime even if she does nothing) nor Bullock really denies just how dirty the police department is.

Bullock is still fun. He's got some of the best lines, and considering that I agree with him regarding the whole 'they're bastards who can cheat the system, they deserve to die' logic... he's still funny. There's the fun little montage of Bullock looking for information from hookers, from beating up random people in the street, and just approaching Gordon with a shrug, and the short montage ends with Bullock eating a hot dog. It's long enough to be funny, but not too long so as to drag on forever.

There's also this scene where they're arresting this one dude where Bullock gets beaten up by a woman while trying his darnedest to just get her to stand down, and finally having to ask Gordon for help, which I thought was fun! It's the pacing that's been my main problem with Gotham for the first two episodes, and so far they're doing well with fixing it.

Gordon also gets some nice characterization throughout the episode. It's nothing new, being the only cop that's clean in the city doesn't really lend to much chances, but I thought this episode does it pretty well. I do think that the final scene with Gordon trying to free the Balloon Man as Bullock sends him up into the sky 'hoisted by his own petard' and yelling at Bullock to shoot the balloon? I thought that was a pretty powerful scene that shows just how much better Gordon is than people like Bullock or the Balloon Man.

We get a short scene with Selina in the first half of the episode, which I still thought should've happened in the previous episode and give it a little bit more meat. It's no fault of the actors playing Selina or Gordon, because I do like both of them, but I thought the scene ran on for a bit too long. Basically Selina demonstrates a bunch of her pre-Catwoman abilities like apparently being able to see in the dark, being a bit of a kleptomaniac and being able to break out of handcuffs. Selina tells Gordon some information about the Wayne murders which doesn't really go anywhere but just a build-up, and Gordon is at least not naive enough to trust Selina that much. It's a bit of a distraction to pad out the time, which at least makes the main plot move faster so there's that.

We get a fair bit more Alfred and Bruce, and at first I thought Alfred was actually training Bruce in the art of fencing, but no, it's just them having a good old time. I do like how Alfred's finally not being a constantly-angry old man anymore, and there are scenes where Alfred's shown to really care for Bruce. We see a bit of Bruce's rage problems where he just snaps and lashes out at Alfred, which could just be him letting out the rage from his parent's murder or something. We've also got Bruce apparently attempting to investigate the murders of his parents himself, and I thought the line with 'I'll have nightmares anyway' when Alfred tries to dissuade him from doing so is a powerful one. We've got some moments with Bruce refusing to eat and finally deciding to do so at the end, which I thought is a nice callback to how Alfred and Bruce is often shown to interact in TAS, whether intentional or not.

We get a few nice nods to Bruce's future role as Batman, with Alfred calling him 'Detective' at one point which is nice... it's been so long since Batman's been called Detective. Bruce is shown to have as good a heart as Gordon, going all 'he killed people, that made him a criminal too'. Well done, Bruce, that's why you're Batman and not me. We get a nice lingering teasing shot at Bruce's face when the news reporter goes 'who will defend the people of Gotham?' And I thought it's nice how there's a vigilante that goes too far as a comparison for who Bruce Wayne will eventually become.

We just need, you know, a god damned Batman TV show because it's never going to amount to much since Bruce's never going to be Batman based on this show's premise.

Again, I'm still not sure what Bruce and Alfred have to contribute to the show, but for now they don't bother me. They just feel out of place compared to the other secondary characters like Barbara, Oswald and Selina who at least still somewhat have relevance to the main Falcone-Maroni gang war plot at the moment.

Fish gets a couple of scenes, of course. She tells Montoya and Allen, who's investigating Cobblepot's disappearance, that she 'heard' Gordon was hired by Don Falcone to kill Cobblepot. And she burns any sort of sympathy the audience may have onto her by basically playing the cops against each other, and telling his men to get rid of Lazlo (who's just worried for her, poor sucker) and arranges an 'accident' for Falcone's girl Nadia or Natalia or whoever she's called. Man, Fish is a bitch.

Falcone, of course suspects Fish, but can't really prove much. We see a small confrontation between Falcone and Fish and it's definitely tense even if they're both civil. Don't think there's much to talk about on this end.

Oswald! Oswald is still a riot, and he finally returns to Gotham. He's clearly got some screws knocked loose in his head, rambling about how he sees what's coming, how he's Gotham's future, and the actor certainly does an excellent job at portraying this sniveling, fast-talking little wretch who can easily snap and turn into a psychopath in the next minute. It's a nice take on the Penguin character which I heartily agree with. I do like the scene where he just looks at all the bribing and the pickpocketing and the whores and whatnot and feels home. I do like the scene where he seems to just be begging to be spared when one of Fish's goons sees him, before suddenly just slicing and murdering the dude. And then promptly uses the dead guy's money to buy a tuna sandwich.

What is it with Penguin eating sandwiches right after killing people? He did the same thing in episode one, in a hilarious manner how the scare chord builds up as he's buying/eating food. I thought it's funny.

And we get some rather filler-y scenes of Oswald trying to get to work at an Italian restaurant and I thought it was a bit too much and was wondering where it's about to go, and the the twist that he's working at Don Maroni's restaurant! Maroni finally makes his debut, and it's certainly not something I saw coming. It's a nice twist, and a nice way to reintegrate Oswald into the plot again. We get Maroni being a nice big hammy dude who bribes 'Paulo' with some money to keep quiet.

Maroni, obviously, is going to go head-on-head with Falcone, and there's apparently some big change involving Arkham Asylum. It's been hinted since last episode, and I think either Fish or Falcone or both mentions it as well. Quite curious. And at the end of the episode, Oswald shows up at Gordon's doorstep! That was fun and unexpected too. Oswald's easily my favourite character among the cast.

Barbara gets a bunch more scenes in this one compared to the last. We've got her going all 'you can tell me everything' to Gordon, which is mind-numbingly annoying and stupid considering just what she did last episode when Gordon off-handedly tells her something. What a bitch. Again, she's actually useful to bounce off dialogue from Gordon and give Gordon some nice moments, but Barbara herself is pretty shitty. Oh, and she snorts coke and apparently had a bit of a quasi-abusive relationship with Montoya, and thankfully they broke up.

Her main point of interaction is with Montoya. Montoya and Allen are investigating Cobblepot's disappearance and while they don't have much proof beyond Fish's words, they confront Gordon about it anyway. And then instead of, you know, conducting an investigation or whatever about it, Renee Montoya, the Alpha Lesbian Bitch, just breaks into Barbara's house and goes all 'your boyfriend is a murderer I mean I don't really have solid proof but he is I can feel it you are better off without him' like some clingy jealous stalker ex. And I don't really have a problem with homosexual characters, but Gotham's Montoya is just a massive bitch. It's one thing if she actually is working to find the truth like how Gordon is portrayed, she's just being a bitch and only using the information to get Barbara and Gordon to break up. I mean, she breaks into Barbara's house uninvited -- she could just wait outside the door like a normal person. She could've waited until Barbara freaking got out of her bathrobe. But no. What a bitch. Man, no wonder Barbara broke up with you.

And this was what I was worried about in season one: Barbara and Montoya being ex-lovers seem to just be a cheap way to ramp up the drama needlessly. And I personally hated how they fucked Montoya up in this show -- back in TAS Montoya is just... this cop. This nice, upstanding cop that just happens to be both a minority and a lesbian. It's not stated outright, it's not made a big deal of, it's not a big hissy fit drama like this, and she's a wholly likable, if slightly flat, character. Gotham's Montoya, on the other hand? She's just this big angry alpha bitch and it's just annoying.

Other than Montoya and Barbara, though, the show's starting to gain traction. Looking forward for more, actually.

One Piece 767 Review: Hopefully the end of the flashback

One Piece, Chapter 767: Cora-san

Hopefully it's the end of the Law flashback. As much as I like Law and I'm interested about finding out about his backstory, it's been dragged on for a bit too long for my tastes, and this is the second flashback sequence in the Dressrosa arc after Rebecca's. I certainly can't wait to get back to the present-day timeline... and not only see the Luffy and Law vs Doflamingo fight, but also see all the other dudes. Zora vs Peeka, Kairos vs Diamante, Franky vs Senor Pink, Robin, Kinemon, Gladius, Lao G, Dellinger, Baby 5, Fujitora, Sabo, all those dudes... is Buffalo dead? What about Team Sanji and Big Mom's ship? What's up with those, it's been close to a year too!

I mean, Law's flashback's been pretty cool, seeing the Donquixote Pirates in their prime, but considering that a good chunk of the Donquixote hasn't done much in present-time other than show off an ability or two, it's hard to really get excited for the stuff they did in the past when we could've cut the flashback short and saw what the could've done in the present instead.

The cover story is basically Jinbe discovering more disappearing things and whatnot. I'm not particularly interested, really.

We first open the chapter apparently with a series of disjointed frames from what I assume are younger versions of Vergo, Trebol, Rocinante, Doflamingo and what I think is Diamante, which I don't think really makes sense and are just images from Doflamingo's past... I just hope we don't spend another chapter seeing, oh, how Doflamingo gathered his allies or some shit, which would take a huge amount of time and be unnecessarily annoying.

And then we see young!Doflamingo, being the massive jackass that he was, pointing a gun at his father's head while he's hugging Rocinante, and then Doflamingo pulls the trigger. The death is off-screen and the panel breaks up as Rocinante does the One Piece crying face.

I'm not quite sure how the Donquixotes broke free from the angry pitchfork mob, but from Trebol's words in the series of frames I guess Doflamingo activates his Conqueror's Haki and knocks everyone out, and Diamante for whatever reason hands Doflamingo a gun? I guess the Executives are relatively involved in Doflamingo and aren't just yes-men but are actually involved as kind-of equals during Doflamingo's growth. Or something. Though assuming Vergo takes Corazon's place as the Heart seat, then that means that Peeka is just... absent? Or if that's Diamante even, it's not really clear.

Anyway, we know what happens after this bit -- Doflamingo goes off to Mariejois or whatever with his father's head and basically tells the Tenryubito, the Celestial Dragons, to piss the hell off.

We cut back to the young!Law flashback where Doflamingo has just activated Birdcage. Doflamingo's doing his Parasite thing where he gets the pirates to kill each other. Apparently some kid with powers named Dory manages to escape Birdcage and runs off or something? Doflamingo basically kills everyone and he's pretty pissed off.

There's a theory going around where Dory seems to be a young X-Drake. Which it could be, since the chapter's going on about how the kid also had powers and he meets the Marines and it kind of fits, so yeah why the hell not?

And then we cut off to a shot of Diamante, Trebol and Machvise just looting treasure happily, which I thought was funny until it's an actual plot point later on. Buffalo (who's grown gigantic to match his present-day size) and a still-tiny Baby 5 are patrolling the skies looking for Rocinante-slash-Corazon, and Baby 5 intercepts a transmission from the marines saying they got a little kid.

Meanwhile, Corazon, the idiot that he is, is just running with his hands in the air straight into Gladius. You stupid dumbass, Corazon. Also it's no longer funny when Doflamingo's all serious-looking and angry and shit.

We then see Law hidden in some place, unable to get out. We later find out that it's a treasure chest and Corazon placed him there, and it's a very effective scene as we hear the various words of Corazon and the Donquixote pirates as they gang up and beat up Corazon as a horrified Law can only listen in the darkness.

As everyone gathers around the bloodied Corazon, we finally get the confrontation between Doflamingo and his brother, and Doflamingo is pissed. Apparently in the past, Doflamingo... straight-out abandoned Rocinante, and he's found by... a young Sengoku, I guess? It looks like Sengoku. Corazon pulls out a gun and goes 'M.C. 01746, Commander Rocinante', which is a pretty badass scene where despite being bloodied and surrounded by a group of powerful super-powered pirates, and he's still trying to bring down Doflamingo.

We have this moment where Corazon distinctly knocks the chest where Law is hiding in, and apologizes for lying -- something that would also sound natural when spoken to Doflamingo. It's a One Piece flashback so there's a lot of sadness going on, and we know Corazon flipped out when Law asked if he's a pirate. Apparently Law knew all along? Corazon tells Doflamingo what happens, how Law ate the Ope-Ope Fruit and bluffs that Law made it out of the Birdcage before it was activated.

And, lo and behold, how fortunate that Baby 5 happens to intercept the Marines coming into custody of a boy moments earlier!

Doflamingo gets ready to undo the Birdcage and sends off his troops to search the marine ships for what he thinks Law has hidden, and he says that he plans to teach Law the importance of dying for him and doing that super-awesome operation that will make him immortal.

Doflamingo then pulls out his own gun and goes 'why do you force me to shoot another family member?' Yeah, as if shooting your own brother is his fault... Law keeps hitting the chest and trying to get out and help Law, naturally, but we get to see a mini-flashback where Corazon stuffs Law into the chest and uses a 'Calm' spell to make all the noise he makes unable to be heard from outside, before telling Law that the pirates will take the loot to their boat, ensuring that Corazon's bluff will work. Corazon also tells Law that his brother won't kill him... yeah, I'm sure he knows full well that Doflamingo's a family-killing bastard. He does this one last smiling 'I love you' funny face and Law laughs.

We cut back to Corazon standing up, telling Doflamingo defiantly that Law is fucking free, how he won't bow down to some 'heaven-send child that has strayed from the path' like Doflamingo and it's a cool if tragic scene, while Law is just banging noiselessly on the chest going all 'this isn't how it's supposed to go!'

Doflamingo then shoots Corazon and it's a poignant death as it's just two silhouettes shooting each other with the sound effects, followed by a series of shots, including Doflamingo's grimacing face and Law's noiseless screaming clinching the moment and a couple brief flashbacks of Corazon's antics from the past few chapters.

As the Donquixote pirates carry their loot back to their ship, Corazon hangs on to what's left of his life to preserve his 'Calm' spell on the crying Law, who manages to later shamble away into the snow while the pirates are loading their cargo into the ship. Tsuru's marine ship arrives just in time for the 'shi~in' silence sound effect to move from Law to the dying Corazon, which I thought is a good usage of the storytelling format, and at which point Law's audible crying mixes together with the sound of cannonballs and stuff.

It's still a well-written flashback, Corazon's death is pretty sad and depressing and it's cool to see Doflamingo just be a massive dickbag douchehole about everything and some confirmation on just what went down on this. We're probably going to get another chapter, or half a chapter, of Law getting cured and shit. Though I think we can just leave it like this and please please please get back to the present-day? I want to see Luffy and Law and Doflamingo in the present day!

The Flash S1E5 Review: Of Bombs, Generals and Monkeys

The Flash, Season 1, Episode 5: Plastique

It's still a solid episode, sticking with the guest-star-of-the-week formula. It felt a little slower than the previous few episodes, though considering all previous episodes featured villains (Captain Cold, the Mist, Multiplex) which made the episode more tense and fast-paced, whereas the main guest star here is an anti-hero, I guess that makes sort of sense?

Of course, this episode focuses on the Flash meeting Plastique, a minor villain-slash-antihero who I am only vaguely aware of. I think she's a Firestorm villain too? Whatever the case, Plastique was a soldier undergoing an operation to remove a shrapnel after a bomb accident when the whole reactor thing went kablooey. I'm still a fan of how this TMNT/Static Shock style 'big vaguely-defined accident at the start of the series' nicely lets a lot of characters get their powers without it having to explain too much beyond 'you had shrapnel in your body, so you get bomb powers' and 'you were inhaling some poisonous gas, so you get gas powers'. Anyway, prior to watching this episode I previously thought Plastique was able to turn any part of herself into a bomb (don’t know where I got that, or if it's even a power a DC character has at all), both in the comics and the show Plastique actually has the power to turn anything she touches into the bomb, with a purply effect not dissimilar to X-Men's Gambit.

Side-note: if anyone involved in the X-Men movies is reading this? Bring Gambit back. He's too cool to only have one minor appearance.

Anyway, I do like Plastique, or Bette Sans Souci. We get several nice questions asked as she keeps trying to keep herself together thanks to her army training, and unlike Barry she definitely is traumatized by her power and doesn't want to keep it. Doesn't mean that she's not afraid to use it, but she wants to get healed. I also do like how she's savvy enough to blame General Eiling (more on him later) for her powers, and considering what we know of the dude, it's unreasonable to think that he's the one who ordered the experimentation. Overall Plastique is a pretty interesting character, but not particularly too memorable, making her perfect as a disposable character.

I honestly didn't expect that they were going to kill her off at the end of the episode; I thought she was going to survive, a la Huntress or something. But no, she did die and pretty suddenly too. Plus she didn't succumb to her rage or hatred or anything, making her death a pretty poignant and tragic one.

Barry's still pretty strong and likable as a main lead. He's still angsting about how Iris won't return his love which gets a bit annoying after a while, and that's my biggest problem with the series so far, I guess. Firstly, it feels a lot too similar to Oliver and Laurel in Arrow's season one, and second... yes, they're not related by blood, but they were sort of raised in the same house since they were children. I'm on Iris on this on them being more appropriate as siblings. All that aside, though, Barry's still likeable to make this part work.

And I do like how Barry's still trying to discover the limits of his powers. 'Can I run on water?' 'How fast do I go to run vertically up a building?' 'I can't get drunk!' It's all good and makes it feel a lot less like padding, and also does make sense considering his superhuman body. He does the face-vibration thing when he talks to Iris that he does to his father back in the Mist's episode. We also see that Barry can pull off an Arrow and vibrate his vocal chords to make his voice sound different, which is funny! It's not quite as narmy as when Arrow does it, as even Barry and Joe laugh it off as unintentionally hilarious.

I am also fond of the mundane usage of superpowers to search for the missing file in this massive room full of bookshelves.

Overall Barry and Better are pretty great characters, but I think the two that steal the show this episode are Harrison Wells and the newcomer, General Wade Eiling. Wells first... there are more subtle hints about Wells being from the future, or at least having been in contact with someone from the future. 'The technology has not been invented yet', for one, and already knowing the speed Barry requires to do his stuff, and knowing what Plastique's powers are only by listening to the barest hint of the conversation. I also absolutely like how all this is easily justified in-universe by Wells being a little kooky.

And there's the whole thing where he talks to Platique and sort of... convinces her somehow to get to Eiling? It's definitely sinister, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to look into it more beyond Wells being a good talker, especially considering the stinger. Also the promises to end General Eiling and not his career, and that unsettling conversation with Plastique, makes this guy really really interesting!

A newcomer to the show, and one I hope stays for a long long while, is General Wade Eiling, otherwise known as the General from the comics. He's less a super-powered unkillable Hulk-ripoff monster here, though, and more of an obstructive military general with psychotic agendas, making him somewhat similar to General Ross from the Hulk movie or Talbot from Agents of SHIELD. Except Eiling is absolutely evil. And awesome. He's awesomely evil.

And he's played by freaking Clancy Brown, a.k.a. Lex Luthor from the TAS, which gives him the perfect voice. Also Clancy Brown is a great actor as well. I never really give much of a shit on actors, but this is one I can get behind. Eiling is awesome, and I'm highly curious of the backstory between Eiling and Wells. Hopefully Wade Eiling hangs around for a while. I do like him quite a bit.

Iris is... getting annoying. What is it with these superhero shows and main love interests being a freaking pain in the ass? I mean, yeah, the old-style Superman interview with the Flash was fun and all, and while it's partially Barry and Joe's fault for hiding the truth from her, she's so freaking stubborn about writing her blog and putting her name on it... for no good reason other than 'BECAUSE IT IS IMPORTANT BLAHGLABLAH CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND'. I thought there was going to be a reason why she does it, and while the show does give us 'because Barry believed in the impossible' during the interview scene, which I thought was sweet, when Barry calls her out on it she just throws a tantrum. And, uh, Barry goes 'we shouldn't see each other for a bit?' Um, first, you guys aren't even seeing each other. And secondly... all this for a blog? Really? Her whole character just feels flat and doesn't make a lot of sense.

The secondary characters... Joe is still cool. He's being helpful, being a cool father figure (other than shipping his daughter and basically-adopted-son together, but that's beside the point) and I do like how he laughs so hard at the 'I can change my voice you know' scene. Cisco gets his 'you blew up my suit!' freak-out, and kinda fawns all over Plastique, and Caitlin gets that fun Felicity line and the whole alcohol thing, but other than those Cisco and Caitlin don't do much. Oh, and the boomerang, which is fun! Eddie does even less, basically disappearing from the episode after the initial scene in the bar.

Oh, and Grodd! We already had Grodd foreshadowed in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it closeup of his broken cage way back in episode one, which I really appreciated, and I liked how Wells hinted at Grodd's powers when he said that he and Eiling worked on mind-reading. And certainly Grodd as a lab animal genetically engineered by Wells makes a shit-ton more sense than adapting freakin' Gorilla City. Ripping off Rise of the Planet of the Apes? Absolutely. Does anyone care as long as it's cool? Nope.

Highly anticipate the involvement of Eiling and Grodd into the grand scheme of things, and I do hope we get more intrigue and answers about freaking Harrison Wells as well. Fun show. Fun episode.

Gotham S1E2 Review: Don't title your episode with the name of someone who only gets eight minutes of screentime

Gotham, Season 1, Episode 2: Selina Kyle

Man, now I know why Arrow keeps putting all those flashbacks in their episodes, and why Agents of SHIELD has so many characters. It's because, well, without either of them, you could compress an episode like this easily into half its length and it's still a palatable episode with action scenes and whatnot. Episode 2 isn't quite as bad as episode 1, but it's still boring to watch. There's a lot of padding scenes that could really be shortened. I'm not even talking about cutting scenes, there's a lot of padding that could've been edited and the episode would've had the same amount of impact.

Like, for example, the scene with the initial kidnapping of the street urchins. Did it need to be that long? The evil lady looking for Selina in the bus, did we really spend half a minute just seeing the two muck around with chairs? Bruce listening to metal music, what was the point of that? Jim's fight with the random cop, felt a bit too long, and Bullock interrogating people also felt too stretched. So did the scene of Selina talking to the police dude near the end, which was stretched out a fair bit. Or the gunfight, which also felt a bit too long than was necessary. Or the scene where Fish is just brooding and reaffirming that she won't change the status quo two episodes into the show.

Also, remember how I kept talking in Arrow reviews where the flashbacks are kind of devoid of tension because we know who's going to survive and who's not? Well, with Gotham, the entire cast is going to survive, so good job in making the show tensionless. Man, why can't we have a Batman show? Freaking Agent Carter gets her own show, and Batman doesn't rate it? Damn whoever is making these decisions.

The main plot is that two thugs working for the Dollmaker -- who's that one creepy Z-lister Batman villain that Arrow borrowed in season two -- kidnapping street urchins and whatnot. And to be fair, the two goons working for the Dollmaker were sort of funny. They use a pin and the lady keeps doing these old-fashioned 'oh gosh' and 'oh fudge' which I thought was a bit entertaining, but it's otherwise pretty m'eh and they don't really have much to them beyond having this unfazed cheerfulness in almost everything they do. There's the point when the lady seems to... mercy-kill the dude whose eyes Selina gouged out? But other than that...

There's also this pharmacist guy that takes up a fair amount of screen time doing nothing but being just the middle step to get to the Dollmaker duo who's another one that sucks up screentime like a sponge.

Why can't we have the Dollmaker himself as the villain? I mean, it's not like Batman has a shortage of super-minor disposable villains...

Anyway, for an episode that's titled 'Selina Kyle', Selina shows up for ten seconds in the opening, and then disappears until the thirty-minute mark, giving her around a grand total of eight minutes of screentime. And most of her screentime is pretty boring stuff. She is played by a not-shitty actress, though, so there's that. We get to see some offscreen awesomeness as she gouges out a dude's eyes, but otherwise beyond knowing that she will become Catwoman one day there's nothing that really makes her interesting. She's looking for her mother, doesn't want to go upstate or whatever, and keeps wanting to talk to Gordon with the big 'oh gasp' moment at the end of this episode is the fact that she saw who killed the Waynes, something that has absolutely zero impact thanks to the audience already knowing this.

Why can't ten minutes of this episode spent briefly showing the stuff in episode one (Selina doesn't need to show up in that episode) from Selina's point of view, trim out the middleman bullshit in the kidnapping plot? Would make this episode more of a Selina spotlight that would fit the title of the episode better.

Gordon's still pretty m'eh. There's really nothing that I can describe about his character beyond 'straight cop', 'unafraid to speak his mind', 'whipped by his woman' and 'lacks a mustache'. He's the main lead and while he's not a shitty main lead the fact that I can't tell you what is interesting about him as opposed to, say, Oliver Queen or Barry Allen who are actually interesting.

Though Gordon kills a dude this episode, shooting the pharmacist's lackey into a bottomless pit without losing much sleep over it. Why the hell does a pharmacist or chemical company have a bottomless pit in their basement anyway? Also, Gordon totally killed that dude. I mean, it's for a good cause and he saved those kids, but, you know, he's not 100% an angel. I think I like that, sorta?

Bullock is still pretty entertaining even if he's a bit of a jackass. The coffee bit in the opening was the only thing that made that scene bearable. We get to see some conflict between Gordon and Bullock, and I do like that one scene where he goes 'Saint Jim here will shut up until you tell us what you know'. But otherwise, Bullock's only marginally more interesting than Gordon and that's only because jerkasses are funny.

We get to see Essen for more than a second, and she seems to be a dirty, if reasonable, head cop lady. I don't think there's anything particularly interesting about her.

Mayor whatshisface gets introduced and he's your average corrupt mayor as expected, definitely being more concerned about his image than of the children's wellbeing. I do like that Gordon immediately calls it out to his face and he just shrugs it off. He's basically putting all the homeless kids in prison-in-all-but-name and that'll probably make petty crimes go down. In a fashion I kind of agree with him, but of course it's ethically evil to do so.

Riddler gets a short scene where he, uh, gets to be weird and stuff. Is he developing an obsession for Gordon?

Barbara is a bit of an idiot. If most of the cast is pretty wooden, Barbara is an idiot. She feels a lot like Laurel Lance from Arrow, except a bit more irritating. And that's impressive since she only has a short scene here compared to Laurel, who's a main character in her show. Gordon basically goes 'oh, here's the stuff I have on investigation, blah blah blah', and without even confirming just how much of the story is true, and even when Gordon tells her that it'll probably get him in big doo-doo (and this is Gotham City where the cops are shitheads as the show keeps whacking us in the head with), Barbara just... calls the goddamn newspaper and calls it in like a crazy lunatic gossiper, with the extremely childish reason of 'well it's the right thing to do!' She's a stupid, flat character and I dislike her.

Don Falcone makes a short appearance, and I do like Falcone! He just walks into Fish's club and basically dominates the scene. We get some foreshadowing about the Maronis as the second powerhouse in the city, we get to hear him talk about the Waynes' death and how it'll upset the balance of the city, and he and Fish seems to reach some sort of understanding. The bit about asking for Fish's lover is a bit puzzling, but I get it... Falcone is basically making the statement to Fish that 'this guy I'm beating in front of you could be someone you care about, or it could be you, and it's by my grace that you survive despite all the shit you've done'. Falcone's awesome. Poor Lazlo, but that's what you get.

Fish herself is also pretty unlikable, but she's meant to be a bitch. She's trying to sweet-talk Falcone and while Falcone's civil it's evident that Falcone's got Fish by the figurative balls. She's still trying to take over, which won't bode well for her, and she's sorta made up with Gordon and Bullock... even though she doesn't deny that she's the one who ordered the hit. Frankly I'm surprised Gordon doesn't try to arrest Fish then and there. She's pretty annoying, though, and I eagerly anticipate her character's death.

The Waynes get some backstory, and we are told that Arkham Asylum has been closed for 15 years, and the Waynes are trying to rebuild just that. Thomas Wayne apparently gave Alfred strict orders on how to raise Bruce if he dies, and that apparently means 'no psychiatrists' and 'let him find his own way.' Well, with parents like that, no wonder Bruce Wayne will spend most of his life running around with a bat mask and throw bat-shaped boomerangs at clowns and claypeople.

Alfred's still pretty rude, and not at all what my mental image of the kindly foster father Alfred would be, but he's got a fair bit of Alfred qualities to him. He still mostly cares for Bruce, but isn't quite as fatherly as other incarnations of Alfred, sort-of justified by the fact that he's never been a father. He's still respectful and cares for Bruce, just lobs around angry British swearing all over the place. Still not a particularly big fan of Alfred.

Bruce, meanwhile, has taken to burning his hand to test his capabilities and shit, and apparently according to Alfred cutting himself too? Don't be emo, Bruce. Train hard and study hard, don't cut yourself and burn yourself. There's also this scene where he's listening to mental music and drawing all kinds of shit, which leads to nowhere. If I didn't know that this kid is going to grow up to be Batman, I'd be seriously worried about him. We get a nice little in-joke with Alfred getting surprised and angry at Bruce for creeping up behind people's back.

There's also this bit of a cheesy scene where Bruce wants to give money to the homeless, but then decides to give clothes instead. Somehow I sort of like that, how he wants to do a nice gesture but not by simply throwing money.

I still think Bruce is in this too much, and interacts with Gordon too much (and will be in the future, from the looks of things). Why can't we have Bruce be training offscreen? The whole concept of the show is 'Batman's city before there was Batman', so why the heck do you keep showing Batman?

Other than that, we get the Penguin side of the story, which doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the plot. We get a scene of Allen and Montoya, the straight cops, interviewing Mrs Cobblepot (or Kaplepoot or whatever she corrects them?), who's not right in the head. She's a bit crazy and goes off-track several times, going on and on about her handsome child and all that, and so far matches the description of Penguin's smothering mother from the comics. Except, you know, crazy. Allen and Montoya are still pretty flat, though I thought it's a bit interesting how the only other clean cops other than Gordon is going to come to heads with Gordon by tracking the apparent 'death' of Oswald Cobblepot.

The Penguin's just hobbling along and being this tightly wound-up mass of emotion. A bunch of kids screw with him when he's trying to hitchhike and I thought that was a bit cruel, but they do end up letting Oswald get on board the car and give him a beer. I do like how Oswald suddenly talks in this absolutely extensive vocabulary for no good reason other than being a little queer, but it's all fun and games and he stabs this dude with a broken beer bottle when he jokes about him looking like a penguin.

Dude's crazy.

He goes off and apparently rents a trailer (which is another scene that took a while but Oswald's funny and therefore the scene becomes absolutely tolerable) and does this crazy newspaper clippings thing... seemingly obsessing about Wayne? And we get a rather hilarious scene where we start off with Penguin threatening the mother of the other boy he's holding hostage. And while it starts off like any chilling hostage situation, it soon devolves into comedy as the mother apparently keeps believing that her son is pulling a scam, and it gets downright hilarious when Oswald goes 'but I sent you the video, how can you not believe me?' in such an incredulous tone that he's snapped out into sanity for a moment. Man, Oswald, you're fun. And then the mother hangs up and Oswald gets to become creepy-scary again as he possibly kills his hostage.

Overall, it's not an entirely solid episode. I'm still rather interested in the stuff that's going on in this show, and I am told by various people that it gets a lot better after the first three episodes or so. There's definitely potential for a lot of interest down the line. For now, I am waiting.

Arrow S3E4 Review: In Which Ra's al Ghul and Amanda Waller Escalate the Plot

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 4: The Magician

Well, the show-makers certainly know just how to handle an escalation well. Where do I even begin with this episode? Let's get to the Hong Kong stuff first, because that's a lot shorter but no less escalating. We see Oliver being told to murder some poor old man eating ice cream, and indeed the dude (Castwidth? Something like that) really did look harmless. We get something going on about Katana's Husband Who I Can't Remember The Name Of going on about how it's not their place to know the reasons why, but Oliver isn't going to stand for that.

We get a funny little scene of Oliver striking a deal with the kid with all seriousness to use his laptop in exchange for cookies, sees what's inside the USB he swiped and demands to meet Amanda Waller. I guess the events with Tommy Merlyn has scared him off contacting his family? He could do the whole 'I'll release information to every blogger and journalist in the world' thing not only with Fyers' plans but also with his own existence, but I guess he might just not dare to push Waller that far.

Anyway, the meeting with Oliver and Waller has her reveal that Waller has been watching Oliver's exploits against Fyers, Slade and Ivo with her satellites, and Waller's gang-pressing Oliver to work for him, Suicide Squad style. We also get the in-show revelation that Fyers is working for Amanda Waller, a fact that was all but directly confirmed way back in season one for eagle-eyed viewers... though Fyers wasn't aware of all the details. Fyers thinks he's doing all that to destabilize the Chinese economy, when in reality Waller wants to take out a single target.

And it is beautiful how it's done, how the big reveal of the episode was actually a big reveal. For all the scariness that Waller's target is built up to be, you'd think it would be Ra's al Ghul, or at Merlyn, or Nyssa at the point that Waller says it's a woman... but no, Waller's target is Chien Na Wei of all people, otherwise known as China White, otherwise known as that weird Chinese Triad Kung Fu lady that Oliver fought multiple times in seasons one and two and was never really that big of a threat.

That was, indeed, a massive bombshell and a big 'what the fuck' moment. Why is China White such an important target that Waller is so frustrated? Why is China White still in alive in the present day? A highly interesting twist that ties in together with the season one Island plot, and while there's still the 'this is all in the past' feeling, that revelation about China White is certainly a complete curveball and I'm curious to know what exactly it entails.

Is China White a member of the League of Assassins? Maybe she's secretly Talia al Ghul?

Also, Amanda Waller is awesome.

Meanwhile, in the present-day plot, Nyssa al Ghul arrives, and we immediately get Oliver telling her that Sara's dead. We get a bit more mourning with Nyssa praying at Sara's grave, and Nyssa actually being quite civil to Laurel, but Laurel basically explodes in bitchiness... and idiocy, because what's to say that Nyssa doesn't send her to accompany Sara right there and then? But all Nyssa did is call her unworthy for the jacket, which, all things considered, isn't that bad. Throughout the episode Laurel and Nyssa kind of bond over their thirst for Merlyn's blood, culminating in Laurel asking Nyssa to murder Merlyn whatever it takes, and finally Nyssa showing Laurel some grudging respect at Ted Grant's gym.

Also can I mention just how awesome it is to have freaking Nyssa al Ghul in a TV show? I still can't believe it sometimes.

Rewinding the plot a bit, shortly after Nyssa's arrival, Oliver and Roy follow Nyssa and they finally recruit Nyssa's help. Nyssa explains that Sara was in Starling City on the trail of Malcolm Merlyn, and we get a confirmation that prior to this episode, no one there even suspects Merlyn is still alive, a fact that went over my head while reviewing the previous episode... the only people who did know Merlyn is alive are Thea and Moira -- the former being a secret keeper and the latter dead.

Granted, I never bought that Merlyn is the killer, even before this. Other than the fact that the only evil archer around is way too obvious, last episode makes it clear that Merlyn's busy in Corto Maltese training Thea in the ways of evil archery. Not to mention that we, the viewers, saw Sara recognizing the killer and acts in the exact opposite of what you'd expect an assassin would if she sees her target, which is mild surprise.

Though, of course, Merlyn could always be lying.

The only question is if Nyssa was the one who did it, or someone else from the League (which Merlyn implies) because Nyssa would be able to approach Sara unguarded... but the question remains on what does Nyssa have to gain other than to spark a war between the League and Team Arrow-Merlyn. Also Nyssa's grief and rage felt too authentic so unless Nyssa is a very good actor I don't think that she's the one.

Anyway, back to the plot, Team Arrow and Nyssa discover this Ghost Ink paper on Sara's person, and I think that unless they recently found it on Sara's safehouse, it would be phenomenally moronic for Oliver not to realize that, hey, this blank piece of paper might show something when heated with flame! Didn't he remember how he nearly died trying to figure out how his father's blank notebook worked? Jeez, you'd think that would inspire abject paranoia on every blank paper he sees.

They find one of Sara's targets, Jansen, and the fact that Sara's been collaborating with Quentin. We get confirmation that Laurel didn't tell Quentin about Sara's death after all, and even pulls out some bullshit lies about how Sara asked her for a favour and everything. Hell, Quentin even felt bad for not telling Laurel that Sara had visited! The fuck you're keeping Sara's death a secret for, Laurel? I mean, she uses the flimsy excuse that Quentin has a heart condition, which I suppose is sort of justifiable, but I agree more with Nyssa's point of view if not quite to her extremes. Quentin deserves to know, if not actually be out in the front lines trying to avenge his daughter. Freaking idiot Laurel, the fuck are you trying to prove. And why did you play along, Nyssa? Why did you join Laurel in her quest of deception? And that scene at the end, with Quentin just on the phone speaking to Sara-who-he-thinks-is-alive? Man, that was depressing as fuck. I really feel sorry for poor Quentin.

All the Nyssa stuff is intercut with Oliver meeting Thea in cafes and whatnot. Thea is setting up the Verdant again, and while it's mentioned we puzzlingly get no answers on where Oliver is getting money. Maybe he's got a trust fund stashed somewhere, or maybe ARGUS is feeding him, I dunno. It's weird. We get a little back-and-forth between Oliver and Thea where they keep saying that they're not going to keep secrets, but it's clear that Oliver isn't quite ready to spill everything about the Arrow and Lian Yu and Hong Kong and Slade and Roy and everything. In the same vein, Thea is tight-lipped about Merlyn. But Thea takes the gesture of Oliver telling her that a friend of Sara's saw Merlyn helping her as Oliver telling part of the truth to her...

Which implies that Thea doesn't know that Malcolm is in contact with Oliver Queen, the Arrow. Interesting. She's going to explode when she knows Malcolm is keeping secrets from her too.

Anyway, Oliver, Diggle, Roy and Nyssa head off to go to this Jansen dude, who's apparently a Merlyn ally... and there's the excellent twist that Jansen's already there and Merlyn of all people has already arrived and is waiting for them. The fact that they'll clash with Merlyn is inevitable, but the fact that they met him so early took me completely off-guard. Merlyn completely takes down Nyssa and flash-bangs away, but Oliver tags him with a freaking GPS nanite arrow.

A GPS nanite arrow.

Do you know how happy these crazy trick arrows make me? The fact that they are realistic is the icing on the cake. I mean, we've got the wire-bola arrows from episode one, we've got a flashbang arrow later on in this episode...  I don't need something as extreme as a punching glove arrow, but all these trick arrows make me really happy. The fact that they're realistic is the icing on the cake.

Laurel continues her streak of psychopathy by going all 'you had a shot but you didn't kill him', just like how she was so hellbent on Oliver killing Sara's killer that she didn't give a shit that Oliver got shot in the chest in episode 2. Apparently the dude who whacked her in the head didn't give her any form of clarity, it only made her even more loony.

Though Laurel does have a point, and she reminds us that Merlyn might not have killed Sara, but he was responsible for the Undertaking, killing 502 people including Tommy. And I thought that it was a nice parallel to Grant Ward, except Grant Ward has been consistently being shown as a complete dick for the past few episodes, whereas all of Merlyn's recent appearances have shown him as being a good guy and a good (if mental) father to Thea. Though, yes, with all those sins reminded, as charismatic as Merlyn is he is still a terrorist and a murderer...

Except Oliver doesn't kill, which is one of the biggest points of conflict in this episode, and he further has another reason to spare Merlyn since Merlyn is Thea's father.

We get some Roy-Thea moments as an intermezzo, though nothing significant beyond the two making up as friends. Laurel and Nyssa also make up as crazy women hellbent on vengeance.

Diggle and Oliver track down  Merlyn, but of course he outwits the GPS arrow that 'even idiots can operate' and meets Oliver alone in a crowded place. Merlyn and Oliver have a pretty awesome conversation and Merlyn reveals that, yes, he isn't the killer. Also the fact that he still owns the streets damn it. Merlyn gives Oliver some revelations about Thea, about how he's been protecting her all the while though leaves out the training bit. Oliver later meets up with Thea and we get the little confirmation about it, though Thea also leaves out the meeting-Merlyn-and-going-away-with-him bit.

Oliver goes back and tells an angry Nyssa that Merlyn can't be the killer, because Merlyn swore on his daughter's life... and as Oliver does this cool walk-away pose, that look of complete annoyance on Oliver's face as he facepalms and realizes that he done royally fucked up is simply precious. "Malcolm Merlyn has another child?" Nyssa and Oliver argue, and Nyssa heads off to hunt Merlyn alone. Diggle, like Laurel, sees the good in killing Merlyn because whatever the case, good father or not, Sara-murderer or not, Merlyn is still a genocidal psychopath and, yes, a world without Merlyn would be a less dangerous world.

(The show without Merlyn, on the other hand, would be a less interesting show.)

Anyway, Roy hangs out with Thea, and Nyssa arrives to abduct (thankfully not kill) Thea. Roy does this funky parkour flip and then hilariously gets taken out immediately by a tranquilizer dart. Thea seems absolutely ready to kick some ass at this point, but she relents and goes with Nyssa peacefully, possibly because she doesn't want Roy to get hurt.

All this happens outside the Verdant unless my memory's being stupid, so Team Arrow assembles quickly.

And then, smoke signal! I find that unintentionally funny.

Laurel... man, it's not so much that Laurel is a massive unreasonable self-centered unbearable bitch that I hate her so much. I can deal with asshole characters, I can like complete unredeemable jerkwads if they're written right. The problem is that the writers have Laurel be bloodthirsty one minute, and then immediately backpedal and have her be all 'I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that Oliver do what you must' in this scene. I mean, yes, rage after her sister's death. Yes, she did get put down in season two numerous times and she did get beat up last episode which was well-deserved for her idiocy. And yes, she does do absolutely stupid things upon people's death -- first Tommy's and now Sara's... but all that still does not make her any less irritating.

Why can't we lose Laurel instead of Sara? Dammit.

Anyway, we cut to Thea, being hung upside-down and that shot of her with her hair all hanging down is funny as all sorts. Nyssa tells Thea about Malcolm Merlyn's Assassin name, Al sa-her which means the Magician and also the title of this episode. Oliver arrives and frees Thea and she runs away, and we get a great battle between Oliver and Nyssa, which is awesome. Merlyn goes in, snipes Nyssa's scimitar away, and tries to clear up the misunderstanding with Nyssa as well, but she ain't going to want to hear anything.

We get a cool three-way melee and we see that Nyssa actually is able to hold off both Oliver and Merlyn at the same time at one point during their fight, which is cool. Merlyn does this awesome triple-arrow shoot which manages to pin Nyssa to a wall, but Oliver flashbangs Merlyn. There's not really any tension since we know Oliver's not going to kill Merlyn, especially not since we know Oliver believes him, and Merlyn just swaggers off after telling Nyssa that no, she did not kill Sara. Nyssa has other reasons for killing Merlyn as this episode has established multiple times, and brings up Tommy and the possible corruption of Thea. We know Oliver won't kill, but Oliver raises his bow anyway and Merlyn actually does seem a bit panicked and tries to up his bluff.

Oliver thinks of a third option, namely to arrest Merlyn, but Merlyn pre-empts Oliver and says that no member of the League can be held in any prison... including Lian Yu. Well, shit, he knows about Slade's prison! Can the prison be shitty and not hold Slade and he can swim all the way back to Starling City? I really want Slade back.

Anyway, Merlyn escapes, and Nyssa punches Oliver in the face. Oliver then declares that the League will not lay a hand on Malcolm Merlyn while he's in Starling City, which I think is going too overboard -- as Diggle and Nyssa pointed out, Merlyn is still a killer, and that's a stupid move to provoke Nyssa while her blood is still hot like that. Oliver incurs the wrath of the League of Assassins, with the flimsy justification that he's buying time to find Sara's real killer.

I mean, Merlyn did mention that the killer of Sara is most likely one of Ra's al Ghul's men, so maybe there's going to be a conflict straight down the League of Assassins and Oliver is banking on that? Or maybe he thinks that Team Arrow, Merlyn and maybe ARGUS are enough to handle the League of Assassins? I don't know. At the moment it's a bit of a stupid decision.

And at this point Felicity comes in fresh from her guest star in that Flash episode, and goes all 'what did I miss?' Girl, you missed like the setup to this season's big plot thing. Though I suppose eliminating Felicity and the Ray Palmer subplots for this episode does make it flow a lot smoother so I guess it's a good thing for pacing? She was mentioned a bit during the GPS arrow thing, with a rather hilarious joke about how she says even an idiot can operate it.

We get a bit of a cooldown as Nyssa leaves and later meets up with Laurel, the future Black Canary. Roy gets his job as assistant manager in the Verdant. Thea thanks Malcolm for watching out for her. We get the Hong Kong flashback revelation about China White which was well-paced and well-scripted.

And, the money shot? We know it's been a long time coming, but we finally see Ra's al Ghul. I'm still not a fan of him being a white dude, but at least Ra's ethnicity isn't quite as obvious as someone named the Mandarin. He could be awesome, I dunno, we've only seen him for like thirty seconds. Hopefully they don't pull any of that moronic Ducard bullshit, though.

Anyway, Nyssa returns to what I assume is Nanda Parbat and reports to Ra's al Ghul about the developments. Ra's is awesome. He doesn't give a fuck about Sara as expected, and is more concerned about hunting Merlyn down for his transgressions against the League as well as Oliver for siding with them. All that stuff.

But the kicker, though? We see Ra's al Ghul rising from the pool. That is literally the first shot we see of him. I'm thinking that this is hinting towards the Lazarus Pits, or at least a variation thereof. Or even a homage. I'd be cool with that. It's just that, well, Arrow and Flash has been slowly getting more and more faithful to the comic books, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do the Lazarus Pit in this show, even with a sci-fi goobledeygok explanation.

Because, after all, Nyssa did say that Ra's al Ghul is 'one with a long memory'. Is that a foreshadowing about his quasi-immortality? We shall see.

Dammit, man, Ra's al Ghul! This makes me so happy.

Overall a great, great episode that really is freaking awesome. The Laurel bits do get me, but other than her it's an awesome ride. A lot of their characters have their own secrets and agendas and goals and everything and it's fun seeing Oliver, Merlyn and Nyssa clash. The League of Assassins is being set up as the next big threat, there's a lot of intrigue in the flashback arcs that I'm really curious about unlike how the flashback arcs for seasons one and two are just there... I do see a lot of potential for this season outshining the two previous ones.