Arrow: S01E05 - Damaged.

Let the midweek TV clusterfuck...commence!


Damaged is largely about a battle of emotions between Lance and Ollie, something that has been prevalent throughout the series but really reaches the fever pitch this week as Lance ends up saving Ollie's life from an assassin. There is further development between Laurel and Ollie and many a question raised about Ollie's sanity, especially considering a masked man tortured him on an island... There are lots of bits and pieces scattered around the plot this week too. Diggle is furthering his plot as Green Arrow's sidekick, eventually donning the costume himself to give Ollie an alibi and Steele is still looking into why he found the remains of the Queen's Gambit that was apparently lost to the sea, in a warehouse down town on his companies payroll eventually getting him wrapped up in a Torchwood mystery or some shit, I don't know, there is so much going on the thing gets hard to follow unless you want to take notes while watching.

Okay look, I know I haven't really mentioned the flashbacks...like at all but honestly, I haven't had anything to say on them really until this week. Like sure they develop Ollie's character somewhat but most of them are just too brief to give anything worth commenting on. Basically the last two or three episodes has just been Ollie hanging out with a Japanese Green Arrow and that is about it. Like people have broken down and tried to find deep fanwank meanings in these like thirty second scenes but even I'm not that pretentious or that big of a nerd. This is basically the first week where there is even anything of value in it - you know, that you can see without studying it frame by frame. This week Yao Fei teaches Ollie to shoot with a bow and an actual, genuine mystery starts to develop on the island which has actual thematic importance to events off it too, yay!

We also get our first introduction to Deathstroke as well thanks to these flashbacks. And he looks hilariously bad in live action form, although that being said, his little fight he gets is pretty awesome, I really hope he doesn't actually die on the island - unless of course they're going to have Deathstroke's daughter take up the mantle off the island? Although there is no set-up for that at all though, so whatever.

There is something else I haven't really mentioned either and that is that the acting in this show is great, I mean I've talked a fair bit about cast chemistry but despite my offhand joke last week, Katie Cassidy has more talent than I really give her credit for. Other highlights are Paul Blackthorne, I really love his Detective Lance. Now we've seen a more human side to him, I am quite enjoying David Ramsey's performance as Diggle and my God do I have a crush on Willa Holland. But really, the whole cast, minor or major characters, all do a great job. That being said, John Barrowman, why are you here? I actually find you quite charming as a person but I find you leave a lot to be desired as an actor.

The solid acting really helps give weight to the more emotional scenes this week, without making them feel too hokey. A polygraph test is something we associate with Jeremy Kyle but thanks to great acting and clever editing, it made the whole sequence extremely powerful without becoming mawkish. That might also be that Amell finally seems to be relaxing with the rest of his cast, I don't think I've really 'felt it' between Ollie and Laurel really since the second episode but their interactions in this episode were truly charming and practically like a roller coaster with the ups and downs they share. And thank God for that, I was starting to get real awkward with the way he and his sister looked at each other (then again, I can't blame him). Even scenes Ollie shared with characters who hate him, like Detective Lance, were still so much more enjoyable now the chemistry between the cast feels more natural and fluid. If only it could do action as well as it does characters.

Now the negatives, there are always negatives. The pacing feels practically non-existent with the sheer amount going on in this episode, I mean a lot is happening but when they are all condensed down to tiny, fragmented scenes, it ends up feeling like nothing is happening at all, the show just feels spread too thin for a forty minute, weekly show with way too many characters and plot threads, you could really do with trimming some of this crap back.

It also doesn't help that Damaged is hilariously badly written in places. I mean Ollie's whole just as planned crap relies so heavily on chance, only in a scripted TV show could this have actually worked. I mean I think I proved just how dumb this show is in my Lone Gunmen review. But this isn't stupid so much as it is goofy, like the sort of narrative you make up when playing with your action figures as a kid. For all the attempts to do a 'realistic take' on superheroes, in places this plot is actually just as silly as the comics it's loosely based on.

And once again the biggest problem with this show is in the advertising. I've said it practically every week and I'm starting to feel like a broken record myself. The characters are good, the cast is strong, the chemistry is palpable, the dialogue is well written...but this is an action show, this is a comic book adaptation, well it's meant to be but I just feel like I'm watching another one of those teen American drama things and that isn't what I signed up for and the action is probably only going to decrease further as each of the plot threads is getting more and more elaborate and they are trying to pin this whole 'is Ollie just crazy' crap into the mix.

We get maybe five, brief action scenes this week and that may sound like a lot but they take up less than ten minutes of the overall running time of the episode. It just once again leaves me baffled, I mean the fights themselves were pretty decent but I just can't ever understand why every week the action show I review has the most tacked on action. I guess it's an enjoyable episode if you forget everything you came here for but this show in general just fails so completely as a Nolanesque Green Arrow TV show adaptation and it's such a shame because there is a lot to like, especially this week which was a surprisingly solid episode, it just lets itself down.

Pros;

• When it comes to character development, this show is spot on.
• Finally there is enough of the flashback to actually have meaning and purpose wider than a few thematic relevancies. 
• Deathstroke is pretty awesome.
• The acting in this show is excellent. 

Cons;

• As cool as Deathstroke was, he looked pretty stupid. 
• Terribly paced.
• For every great bit of dialogue there is a truly awful piece of plot.
• I'm still waiting for the action to start.
• There is too much going on.

Think About It!

-Locke