Arrow 2x11 - "Blind Spot"
Spoilers keep secrets. Sometimes they are anticlimactic secrets.
Felicity Smoak: "His name is Blood. That can't be a good sign." Now there is a woman who knows what genre she's living in.
This season has such an emphasis on masks -- literal masks as well as figurative ones. In "Three Ghosts," Oliver is unmasked to Barry Allen -- who provides him with the mask of a hero. In "Blind Spot," Sebastian puts on the Brother Blood mask to kill his mother; Slade puts on the Deathstroke mask to kill Sebastian's men; Daly puts on the Brother Blood mask to kidnap Laurel. She commands Oliver to take the mask off for her: because she can't bear to see Sebastian? Because she can't bear to let go of the gun?
I love the misdirection of that Brother Blood mask: it's not just that Sebastian isn't wearing it; it's that he never intended to kill Laurel or the Arrow, when discrediting Laurel would work so much better. But the liar mask tells the truth: "It just confirms what I already knew," Laurel says. "What a sick son of a bitch you are." (This is probably my favorite Laurel moment in the entire series to date.)
There's a lot of telling other people's secrets in this episode. Roy continues his ridiculous man-pain charade, which both Sin and Thea try to reason him out of. Sin gives up on this pretty quickly and just tells Thea what's up, and Thea immediately tells Oliver. Sebastian's mother tells Laurel and Sebastian the truth, and is murdered for it.
Honesty has mixed results. Oliver's acknowledgement of his "blind spot" when it comes to Laurel ironically counterpoints his refusal to distrust his mother in Season 1. In both cases, he's wrong; just in opposite directions. Laurel's openness about her investigations just gets her dismissed.
(I can't say that I wouldn't be dubious about the perceptions of a drug addict in denial, either. But it hit me hard, all the men using her mental problems to dismiss anything she said as craziness. Because her evidence may be circumstantial, but it's still more than either Oliver or Det. Lance have had when they pursued other investigations.)
Laurel's storyline is full of ironies and almost hypocrisies: Laurel called the cops on Tommy's party; Oliver calls the cops on her drug abuse. Donner is still employed after a well-publicized dose of Vertigo, and fires Laurel for addiction. (I don't actually think it would be fair to fire Donner. But the episode explicitly makes the comparison.) Sarah betrayed Laurel with Oliver because she thinks Laurel betrayed her with Oliver first. (This has to be the least convincing and most anticlimactic follow-up in the entire history of the line "She's not what you think!" But I can see why Sarah felt burned.)
Sarah abandons duplicity, with Oliver and with Ivo; Ivo temporarily drops his (not very convincing) philanthropist mask.
Laurel's storyline. I just don't know what to say. She is actually being worked into the Mirakuru/Brother Blood plotline pretty neatly, and has organic character development that isn't dependent on her reactions to Oliver, Tommy, or her father. Maybe the show just burned its bridges with Season 1? Or maybe, as much as it hurts me to say it, Katie Cassidy is too badly miscast. I loved her on Supernatural, but she is just not working on Arrow -- even though this episode is as close as she's come to working for a while.
Unlike the rest of the world, though, I do not consider Laurel the biggest problem with the show. I hate Roy Harper more. It's not reasonable, since I have to admit that he has been better integrated into the plotline. It's just that the actor is so flat I am annoyed every moment he is on the screen. I want him to get fridged so Thea can avenge his death by becoming a vigilante superhero.
Costume notes: For once this season, Felicity is wearing vaguely Felicity-appropriate clothes! It's still more dressed up than she was in Season One, but the clothes are quirky instead of sexy businesswoman. The shoes remain completely wrong.
But I am feeling in charity with the costumers, since Sin wears the least revealing and exploitative hooker disguise ever. She even has a wool scarf worn to obscure her breasts. And the camara seemed very eager to get away from the hooker line-up: a medium shot on the legs and no poring over the bodies. It all reminded me of how sensible and covering Helena's superhero costume was in Season 1. It is a sad commentary on US pop culture that not objectifying women on a superhero show makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but we all knew those comments anyway.
cups brewed at DW
Felicity Smoak: "His name is Blood. That can't be a good sign." Now there is a woman who knows what genre she's living in.
This season has such an emphasis on masks -- literal masks as well as figurative ones. In "Three Ghosts," Oliver is unmasked to Barry Allen -- who provides him with the mask of a hero. In "Blind Spot," Sebastian puts on the Brother Blood mask to kill his mother; Slade puts on the Deathstroke mask to kill Sebastian's men; Daly puts on the Brother Blood mask to kidnap Laurel. She commands Oliver to take the mask off for her: because she can't bear to see Sebastian? Because she can't bear to let go of the gun?
I love the misdirection of that Brother Blood mask: it's not just that Sebastian isn't wearing it; it's that he never intended to kill Laurel or the Arrow, when discrediting Laurel would work so much better. But the liar mask tells the truth: "It just confirms what I already knew," Laurel says. "What a sick son of a bitch you are." (This is probably my favorite Laurel moment in the entire series to date.)
There's a lot of telling other people's secrets in this episode. Roy continues his ridiculous man-pain charade, which both Sin and Thea try to reason him out of. Sin gives up on this pretty quickly and just tells Thea what's up, and Thea immediately tells Oliver. Sebastian's mother tells Laurel and Sebastian the truth, and is murdered for it.
Honesty has mixed results. Oliver's acknowledgement of his "blind spot" when it comes to Laurel ironically counterpoints his refusal to distrust his mother in Season 1. In both cases, he's wrong; just in opposite directions. Laurel's openness about her investigations just gets her dismissed.
(I can't say that I wouldn't be dubious about the perceptions of a drug addict in denial, either. But it hit me hard, all the men using her mental problems to dismiss anything she said as craziness. Because her evidence may be circumstantial, but it's still more than either Oliver or Det. Lance have had when they pursued other investigations.)
Laurel's storyline is full of ironies and almost hypocrisies: Laurel called the cops on Tommy's party; Oliver calls the cops on her drug abuse. Donner is still employed after a well-publicized dose of Vertigo, and fires Laurel for addiction. (I don't actually think it would be fair to fire Donner. But the episode explicitly makes the comparison.) Sarah betrayed Laurel with Oliver because she thinks Laurel betrayed her with Oliver first. (This has to be the least convincing and most anticlimactic follow-up in the entire history of the line "She's not what you think!" But I can see why Sarah felt burned.)
Sarah abandons duplicity, with Oliver and with Ivo; Ivo temporarily drops his (not very convincing) philanthropist mask.
Laurel's storyline. I just don't know what to say. She is actually being worked into the Mirakuru/Brother Blood plotline pretty neatly, and has organic character development that isn't dependent on her reactions to Oliver, Tommy, or her father. Maybe the show just burned its bridges with Season 1? Or maybe, as much as it hurts me to say it, Katie Cassidy is too badly miscast. I loved her on Supernatural, but she is just not working on Arrow -- even though this episode is as close as she's come to working for a while.
Unlike the rest of the world, though, I do not consider Laurel the biggest problem with the show. I hate Roy Harper more. It's not reasonable, since I have to admit that he has been better integrated into the plotline. It's just that the actor is so flat I am annoyed every moment he is on the screen. I want him to get fridged so Thea can avenge his death by becoming a vigilante superhero.
Costume notes: For once this season, Felicity is wearing vaguely Felicity-appropriate clothes! It's still more dressed up than she was in Season One, but the clothes are quirky instead of sexy businesswoman. The shoes remain completely wrong.
But I am feeling in charity with the costumers, since Sin wears the least revealing and exploitative hooker disguise ever. She even has a wool scarf worn to obscure her breasts. And the camara seemed very eager to get away from the hooker line-up: a medium shot on the legs and no poring over the bodies. It all reminded me of how sensible and covering Helena's superhero costume was in Season 1. It is a sad commentary on US pop culture that not objectifying women on a superhero show makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but we all knew those comments anyway.
cups brewed at DW