Arrow, Season 3, Episode 2: Sara
A slight bit shorter than the other TV series reviews, but anyway... this episode mainly deals with the aftermath of Sara's death. Laurel heads off with Sara's body and contacts Team Arrow and basically recruits everyone to hunt down Sara's killer, who was thought here to be Simon Lacroix, alias Komodo. We get a pretty depressing episode overall with the knife of Sara's sudden death still hanging over our heads.
There's the constant theme of death and basically a lack of emotion versus cold competency. We've got Felicity basically breaking down in seams, the poor girl, with the whole 'I don't want to die down here' theme, and Oliver going all 'I know my life will lead to my death down here'. Again, it's one of those realistic, borderline depressing things that Arrow does so well as a TV show which gives it its own extremely melancholic tune which I have a love-hate relationship with. We get a little Batman-style argument between coldness and actually having to feel, and there's a fair amount of sad scenes like the funeral where Laurel likewise breaks down, and the montage of mourners at the end. There's all the cool action scenes in between, of course, and a bunch of fun Ray Palmer scenes to lighten up the mood, but everyone -- Oliver, Laurel and Felicity in particular -- are fraying at the ends and are just breaking apart and it's quite sad and painful to watch.
All the while, the Flashback B-Plot on Hong Kong deals with Oliver being forced by Amanda Waller to eliminate Tommy Merlyn, making a surprise appearance, who got into Hong Kong hunting down Oliver because he accessed his email last episode and that set off a ping. Well done Tommy on being a loyal and steadfast friend. I thought it was a bit of an odd cameo choice, forcing Tommy into this role without any sort of foreshadowing -- you'd think Tommy would mention something about going off to Hong Kong in season one, but it's not entirely bad. I mean, there isn't much tension since Tommy's survival is a moot point, there's only the curiousity of what Oliver would do to ensure that it happened. Katana's Husband thankfully is playing along with the whole little setup where Oliver pretends to be a kidnapper and all that bluffing to pretend to be there as a money-trap thing.
Fancy pompadour haircut Tommy's got, though, I must say.
I'm still curious if all this is just a big elaborate setup between Waller and Katana's family to actively groom Oliver Queen to be the Arrow, or a Suicide Squad member. I'm sure a lot of their scenes together in season two are going to take on a whole new meaning when I rewatch season two after seeing all that's happened in season three. Still think the flashback-style storytelling loses a fair amount of its bite, though, and this is a perfect example of that happening with there being absolutely no tension at all. Also doesn't particularly gel well with the present-day events happening, but I guess it can't all really be winners.
We get a little B-plot with Oliver trying desperately to contact Thea, and apparently last episode the pictures from Thea seem to be just automated or something, and Oliver's not heard from Thea ever since. Roy's forced with the tough job of breaking the news to Oliver, although thankfully we avoid any team breakup drama. Roy also confirms that it's been five months after the end of season two. I did like how Roy struggling to tell Oliver the truth is sort of juxtaposed between Laurel trying to break the news to Quentin... and we didn't even see a confirmation if Laurel actually did.
The stinger shows that Thea is apparently training with samurai clothes under Malcolm in Corto Maltese (which is also the title of the next episode), seemingly being groomed up by Malcolm Merlyn to be... something. The new Merlyn? Speedy? Whatever the case, it seems like the plot's going to be on the wind-down on the Sara front and focus on Thea/Malcolm for the momeny.
Action scenes are pretty good, keeping up with the higher standards set up by the latter episodes of season two and the first episode of season three. For whatever reason, I'm a big fan of the scene where Komodo's arrow just smashes through all those glass panels, and I laughed when the Arrow literally punches this dude in the balls. The motorcycle battle between Komodo and Arrow was pretty awesome, proving that Arrow can too have absolutely exciting fight scenes without involving expensive CGI. It's a pretty excellent fight scene, although of course Komodo doesn't take time to finish Oliver off while he was shot out of his bike.
The short three-way battle between Komodo, the Arrow and, uh, Roy (come on decide on one of your three superhero handles) was pretty cool too. Always happy to see Roy and his swanky new costume in action. Not sure why Komodo doesn't shoot his target immediately, but hey, whatever. The grappling scene as Komodo and Arrow launches themselves out of the window into thin air and just grapple off, and Roy pussies out, was pretty well done, and how Arrow finally beats Komodo with the bow catching scene was awesome.
Komodo, a.k.a. Simon Lacroix, isn't really an interesting person character-wise. He's got this proud of his work thing going on, and he's a really awesome archer able to fight on par with Oliver Queen. Oliver and Diggle-on-ARGUS respectively claim that only 10 and 20 people are able to have that degree of bow-aiming skills, and I'm not sure if that list includes Malcolm Merlyn, Yao Fei and Shado. Regardless of the reason, Komodo's cool and he's got a cool costume even if he doesn't have anything to do with giant poisonous Indonesian lizards.
Sara's death really shook everything up, and Oliver in particular gets thinking about fatality and stuff. Thankfully he perks up at the end of the episode with a more optimistic worldview, but still... those five years did a number on him psychologically. We see him just being all business and everything and I thought that exchange with Felicity, who's breaking down due to stress after Sara's death (and we must remember how much longer Oliver's known Sara) while Oliver is bitching about Felicity not having her A-Game. It's a powerful scene.
Laurel gets her first spotlight in a fairly long time, and I'm in two minds about this. On one hand she still comes off as a sanctimonious bitch, and a busybody at that -- barking orders at Felicity and telling her to show visuals during Oliver's first confrontation with Komodo, and pretty evidently being more pissed at Komodo getting away than Oliver getting shot in the gut. And the tantrum at the grave. There's also the whole crazy bitch thing where she confronts Komodo and was prepared to execute him... which I would say go ahead except, you know, Komodo isn't the one who did it and Laurel's just too angry due to her sister dying. And that, I think, is the perfect reason to forgive Laurel's bitchiness this episode -- her sister's just died, and she isn't thinking straight.
On the bright side, she didn't shoot Komodo, and good for her for having the balls to avenge her sister -- after all, remember how Oliver dropped bodies left, right and center during season one? I also liked how much of a massive Jack Bauer Interrogator that Laurel was to that crippled witness dude, and while unethical, she did need the answers and I thought that was sort of a cool scene. And, well, she's pretty hurting over Sara's death and that scene with her cuddling Sara's old shark doll is just heartbreaking. On the top side, she's trying to get her life together, avoiding alcohol and at least being pretty supportive all things considered. Her bitch levels have certainly dropped since season two.
There's also that whole thing where Quentin is unaware of Sara's death and even cracks jokes about Sara to Laurel and Oliver on separate occasions. Poor dude. We don't get to see Laurel actually break the news to him in the end, but I'm going to assume she did. Interested just how much Sara's death will break Quentin and Laurel. I do hope there will be ramifications in the future just to make it more realistic, but hopefully it won't be too emo.
The rest of the cast is shoved aside for the moment. John Diggle has that one moment where she tells Laurel that Sara will not be forgotten, and that he named his daughter Sara. There's also that moment where, well, it's off-screen but Lyla and Diggle managed to assemble freaking ARGUS to hunt down Komodo. Which is awesome. Roy's got the whole Thea thing, of course, and while it's nothing spectacular I thought it was a bit of a nice development as Roy and Oliver sort of bond together.
Felicity, like I said, isn't used to all this, and the poor girl just breaks apart in tears so many times throughout the episode it's hard to watch sometimes. She's also dealing with Ray Palmer's borderline-creepy stalking, and frankly I'm surprised she didn't punch Ray Palmer in the face considering the state of her emotions at the moment. Maybe a combination between this and her breakup with Oliver last episode is what broke her and led her to go off to Central City in Flash? We'll see. She did accept Ray Palmer's job offer nonetheless, though, which I thought was the smart decision for the same reasons Felicity does.
Ray Palmer is still trying to be charismatic and still doesn't come off as too much of a sleazy douchebag like Malcolm Merlyn or Brother Blood did, but he's still an annoying rich dude. He bought the entire distribution company or whatever just to get Felicity to work under him, and thankfully Felicity responds what an actual woman would do in the situation -- tell Ray Palmer to piss off. If this was a sappy romantic comedy she would fall for him. Hopefully there's going to be more of Ray Palmer instead of just wanting to tap that ass, and hopefully Felicity doesn't stay away from Team Arrow too long, but we'll see.
Next up, Colto Martese and the Merlyns!
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