I once knew a guy who refused to watch any show set on a spaceship. Just flat out refused. For him, people living and working and doing stuff on spaceships just pushed him past his ability to suspend disbelief. This struck me as extreme, especially since it wipes out a number of really great pieces of fiction be it film, TV, or literature, but as a premise, it was a complete non-starter for him.
We all have what we will and will not accept in terms of storytelling, though. Often, our tolerance for those unacceptable things will vary depending on how much we like the story we're being told. If we're really liking something, it's easy to overlook or at least minimize the flaws, to the point that when people point these flaws out to us, we accuse them of nitpicking, or, worse, say that they need to relax, sit back, and just enjoy the damn story. I've accused people of picking at nits in things I like, and goodness knows I've been accused as picker of nits as well. It sort of comes with the territory sometimes.
I say all this to acknowledge that my overall response to "Public Enemy," and a large part of what really frustrated me about the episode, could be (and probably will be) waved away as nitpicking and as ignoring all the action-related stuff that likely had a lot of folks' blood pumping. That's what they tune in for Arrow for: action and the bigger plot stuff, like Oliver turning himself in and then Roy having an "I'm Spartacus!" moment to save Oliver. This is what's exciting about Arrow, I just found all of it really very dull.
It's dull because I just don't care about or get why Ra's wants Oliver to replace him. It's the engine driving all of this, and I cannot grok it. I'm glad we've shifted away from "Ra's wants to punish everyone because of Malcolm Merlyn" because that was too distant of a motivation. Ra's "offer" provides a nice thematic layer to Oliver's existential angst about whether or not he can be Oliver Queen and the Arrow instead of just one or the other, and so it's a richer idea, but it's one I can't get into since the motivation behind the "offer" makes zero sense to me.
With "Public Enemy" specifically though, motivations came to the forefront again for me, and this time it was about Quentin. There's plenty to gripe about in this season, but it's also managed to improve/rehabilitate Thea and Laurel in really impressive ways (I say this fully aware that for many, Laurel hasn't and is too far gone to ever be good; again, things we'll tolerate). Quentin hasn't always been so lucky. Part of it that he was the last one to learn about everything, and so he was stuck being in the dark a lot, often with the show bending over backwards to keep him there a little while longer. As Arrow's proven, once a character is in on the show's bigger secrets, they tend to really improve since they lose a lot of their passivity and regain some agency in story world.
This week, Quentin not only learned a whole bunch of stuff, he also decided to share some of it with the entire city in one of his many press conference (those poor reporters). It paralleled Thea's loathing of secrets as a motivator for her to start being very aggressive about the answers she demanded from those around her. Quentin got burned by secrets, so now he'll burn everyone who had those secrets by revealing them. And it paid off. Oliver turned himself in, and Quentin got what he wanted.
Or did he? Here's where it stumbled a bit for me. I do think that Quentin is driven by two competing impulses: actual civil justice and personal justice for his family, specifically Sara. These motivations are at war within Quentin, with the latter being used as a justification for the former. It's really no different than what the rest of the characters do by using their vigilante activities to ease or escape from other traumas. Quentin just has "the law" on his side.
However, given everything he's experience and the obvious pain he's in, I have a hard time swallowing him not turning in Laurel, him accepting that Laurel, obviously in cahoots in Oliver, would grant Diggle, Felicity, and Roy get an immunity deal. Maybe it's because the episode didn't do enough to position where Laurel stands in the complicated web of Quentin's motivations, or maybe it's because Quentin just really wanted Oliver to lay all his pain onto. Their exchange in the prisoner transport backs up the second interpretation, but I just can't accept that Quentin wouldn't balk at this blatant corruption of justice and committed by his own daughter no less.
This may get to the larger problem I often have with Arrow. Its characters all have these messy, complicated motivations for things, and that's great. It's one of the things that's actually really good about Arrow. Then it gets actors who do a very nice job of tapping into those motivations, of swinging between them and making them work. Paul Blackthorne did some very fine work in this episode, especially in that scene where he reveals he knows Oliver's the Arrow. It's because of the actors that show's messy writing and plotting manages to work and lurch along, but it also means that sometimes there's just no way for those actors to make things firmly click into place and make sense because they're being failed by things beyond their control.
Roy's another example of this, albeit significantly less messy. Despite being a supporting character, Roy's arc this season has been really straight-forward but also underbaked. I mean, last week's episode didn't even care enough about him to show Oliver checking on the kid after he took an A.T.O.M. suit energy bolt head-on last week, so that's how much the show legitimately seems to care about Roy. He's been haunted by his grief over killing a cop in his mirakuru rager, and it's cropped up now and again since he remembered doing it, but never as more than just a reminder that it's something he feels. It even resurfaces here as he admits that he wanted to be caught so he could finally be punished.
The wall I run into here is basically, "Well, Roy, you weren't in a costume at the time. If you really feel this way, just turn yourself in and face the music." He didn't, of course, because the show needed him not to so he could instead claim to the be the Arrow to get Oliver out of this jam. He finally got to act on these feeling, but only because it benefited the larger story and Oliver. Again, considering all the work this season has put into Laurel and Thea, Roy and Quentin have been battered by the show's inelegant needs to have characters do certain things at certain times instead of making their actions feel motivated by the plot.
On some level, there's excitement to be had that the tail end of the show's first act and the entirety of its second act was just a long action sequence. I'll admit I'm sort of tired ofArrow staging action sequences in noir-ishly lit alleys and abandoned warehouses, and so they're losing a lot of their appeal at this point, but the show is very willing to leave it all on the field in a way few other shows are.
However, it's not what I tune in for Arrow for, and it really never has been. A good action sequence is like a bonus for me, and a bad action sequence is, well, something that tends to make the episode worse. It's just hard for me to care even about good action sequences when I don't care about the events that bring about that action, and it's hard to care about those events when the characters just aren't given enough room to always make the most sense. These are the things that prevent from really enjoying something, even something like a long action sequence. It just doesn't mean anything to me without the other stuff.
FROM THE QUIVER
– Ray got all better thanks to some teeny-tiny robots he invented, and Felicity is still torn between the stalker corporate scientist and the mopey vigilante because even though she loves the latter he's, well, a mopey vigilante. Either way, she could do a lot better. I don't even really like Barry Allen and Felicity as a couple, but he's better than either of these two jokers.
– I'm somewhat interested in seeing what happens to Arrow now that the whole city knows Oliver's identity. The show excels at coming up with these BIG IDEAS but then never really does anything fascinating with them (see: Glades, The). Of course, this week's big trailer for the remaining episodes of The Flash gave away some sizeable tidbits about Arrow, which was weird.
– "He looks like a Disney prince." But does he look like Astronaut Mike Dexter?
– Flashbacks had Oliver meeting up with Shado's twin sister (of course) and giving her some closure on the fates of her family...and also leaving her with a shot up apartment.
– A big "Thank you!" to Kaitlin for filling in for me last week while I was on vacation. Kaitlin, your gift basket is in the mail. Of course, I don't have your address, so I just sent it to "Kaitlin Thomas." I'm sure it'll get to you eventually.
– Arrow is taking next week off before it begins the final 5 episodes of Season 3, so we'll meet back here on April 15 to discuss "Broken Arrow." No, not that Broken Arrow, though that would be cool.