Arrow

[Threash]

He got shot right in the face, it barely broke his skin.  When Roy put an arrow in him he said "i guess he is not immune to that".

[Evildrider]

He got shot right in the face, it barely broke his skin.  When Roy put an arrow in him he said "i guess he is not immune to that".

The shot was a graze and not sure where you saw Roy say that. 

[Threash]

It looked like a graze because the bullet bounced off.  That was why he gave his henchmen guns before killing them and gave them a chance to shoot him, he knew they didn't have a chance anyways. They could not have made that any more clear really.

[Evildrider]

It looked like a graze because the bullet bounced off.  That was why he gave his henchmen guns before killing them and gave them a chance to shoot him, he knew they didn't have a chance anyways. They could not have made that any more clear really.

Umm no, it was definitely a graze.  I don't know how you can say he's that invulnerable when arrows can hit him and he gets pretty bloodied up by Wildcat.  He's just supposed to be a badass, but a human one.  Him giving the gun is because he's super confident in himself.  Plus, if Diggle is the first one to try for a head shot, then he's been just doing that maneuver with peons.

[MediumHigh]

I actually like Brick. Keeps this show very "street level". We need the show to mostly be about badass normals with the occasional venture into the supernatural or high technology. So yeah while the B team floundered against Brick, I'm kinda happy we didn't open up the season with robot ninjas sent by the New Gods.

[satael]

I actually like Brick. Keeps this show very "street level". We need the show to mostly be about badass normals with the occasional venture into the supernatural or high technology. So yeah while the B team floundered against Brick, I'm kinda happy we didn't open up the season with robot ninjas sent by the New Gods.

I agree that street level would fit the show but for some reason I'm really peeved off how getting run through with a sword can be cured with some tea and no hospital treatment fits into the narrative (I guess a perfect angle of the sword might miss both the lung and the liver but I'm not sure if that is even possible with a blade as wide as the one used).

and yes I am aware how it's just one particular detail I'm nitpicking over but for some reason it really bugs me.

[Khaldun]

It's interesting to try and devise good street-level bad guys who still challenge characters who are being portrayed as physical paragons with strong combat training. Especially when they also have a genius-level computer user/scientist working with them, and maybe soon also a multi-million dollar businessman and inventor. In some ways, Arrow is evolving into a show more like Doc Savage, where the team is as much the story as the main character.

Batman is pretty much the master-class example of how to do it.

*Characters who are schemers, plotters,etc.--where they set intellectual challenges that the physical paragon can't easily overcome
*Characters who are by their nature hard to confront or find: live in sewers or tunnels, are disguised as someone, are completely ordinary-seeming or have otherwise normal lives
*Characters who are obsessive and or mentally deranged to the point that they are impossible for an ordinary person to understand
*Characters who have political or social power that makes it impossible to fight them easily, even vigilante-style
*Characters who are a physical match for the hero(es).

The last one is easy to overuse, and generally results in having to up the ante on the hero's physical prowess or to have every fight be like the last match in a Rocky film, a sort of cliche of "he's down! wait, no he's up" etc.

Brick actually worked pretty well though as an example of that, partly because he also had a sort of schemer's intelligence. I just wasn't very clear what the source of his physical toughness was.

[pxib]

*Characters who are schemers, plotters,etc.--where they set intellectual challenges that the physical paragon can't easily overcome

This is any villain's central advantage over heroesl. The hero can't really plan ahead because there's no way to know what the villain is going to do next, and even if the act itself is known there's still the question of when and where. Then the hero has to be there at that moment or the villain can simply leave... meaning most of what the hero does is cleanup duty.

Leveraging this is more about finding a satisfying moment for the villain to slip up, rather than worrying that the heroes won't be appropriately challenged.

[Hawkbit]

We're getting caught up with S3, maybe six episodes in.  Just finished the Goth Felicity episode, and wow.  That was an awesome visual nod to Death from the Sandman novels.  Right down to the ankh.

[jgsugden]

There is apparently some discussion that an existing character may have a Super Hero role in their future...


If true, the entire Justice League could be right around the corner...  *if true*

[HaemishM]

That would be fucking awesome.

[jgsugden]

This is one of those situations I could totally see now that someone has pointed it out to me, but I totally did not see in advance.  I wish nobody had pointed it out to me and it was a reveal in the final scene of a season...

[Khaldun]

Yeah, actually. It's so perfect that now that I see it, I'll be really depressed if they don't do it. It would actually be a far better Green/Green team than the comics ever offered.

Though if they're having trouble handling the Flash in the same frame as the Arrow, GL is an even bigger challenge by far.

But I can see some highly constrained or limited versions of GL that might make for better storytelling anyway--something almost more like Mike Baron's Nexus character? Get weird visions and dreams from strange aliens about justice that needs doing, think maybe you're going nuts, have a weapon you don't really understand and that doesn't always work consistently? After all, so much of our minds actually don't operate off of conscious thought, a GL ring could be a bit of a curse if it was mostly interacting with subconscious or unconscious thought rather than conscious and deliberate will. Maybe that's what the "will" part is for--not for what it's used for in the traditional version, in focusing the GL's power and making his constructs strong, but in forcing yourself to control some of your unconcious and subconscious mind. I'd buy Diggle as a guy who could do that and yet no one on Earth could do it 24/7.

This is really starting to click for me. Honestly, their next series could be almost an anthology--there's Arrow, there's the Flash, and then there's the Tales of the Justice League. One week we check in with Atom/Ray Palmer, the next week with Firestorm, the next week with GL Diggle, the week after that with Zatanna or whomever they add next, with Felicity/Oracle being the shared element that keeps it altogether.

[HaemishM]

Keep in mind John Stewart was originally the backup Green Lantern, only given the ring when Hal Jordan was unavailable. They could easily have that happen to him for a 1 or 2-episode arc and then have him return to normal.

[Khaldun]

Eh, if you've got Diggle (or Stewart as he's developed, honestly), who the fuck wants Hal Jordan, who I think is almost invariably a dull character even if not played by Ryan Reynolds.

But yeah, they could do that too--have GL be Hal Jordan the space cop who almost never comes to Earth anyway, but who is incapacitated once and sends the ring to Diggle. That's a way to keep Diggle in the Arrow mix but give him a two-episode "very special" arc of some kind.

[jgsugden]

That could work - or just explain that Hal Jordan has been GL in secret for a long time and 'kill him off' so that Diggle gets the ring as John Stewart.  Maybe have Jordan be a former contact of his that called him by his middle name... which is revealed to be Stewart ...

It'd be real tough to do GL on a TV budget, but if they're tackling Firestorm...

[Khaldun]

We *have* seen a Ferris Air plane, after all.

[MediumHigh]

Eh, if you've got Diggle (or Stewart as he's developed, honestly), who the fuck wants Hal Jordan, who I think is almost invariably a dull character even if not played by Ryan Reynolds.

But yeah, they could do that too--have GL be Hal Jordan the space cop who almost never comes to Earth anyway, but who is incapacitated once and sends the ring to Diggle. That's a way to keep Diggle in the Arrow mix but give him a two-episode "very special" arc of some kind.

Hal Jordon isn't dull. And he should never be played by Ryan Reynolds cause no. But John Stewart? Hell yes. Only because JL/JLU John Stewart is my favorite green lantern. I don't care so much about the comic book version of him though.

[jgsugden]

More importantly, I think Diggle as a character would make a good GL as his character already fits into the duty/responsibility issues that underlie a lot of the GL storylines: Where does duty end and personal responsibility take over.  I don't think they need to make a 'John Stewart' GL story out of Diggle - they just need to advance his story by making him a GL that they can echo with John Stewart trappings.

[Tannhauser]

Enjoyed Arrow.  Glad to see Laurel going through her own crisis to become a hero.  I like this new Laurel, now to get her into fishnet stockings!  Thea was a nice surprise when the big reveal came. That was very welcome. Not too sure I like the direction they are going with Ollie and Thea, but we'll see how it pans out.  Poor Arsenal, that chump just can't win.  I would be very happy if the actor playing Diggle got a GL job!  When the Arrow was gone, now one in the supporting team had as much to lose as he does with the wife and kid and he didn't mope about it, he just did his job.

[Khaldun]

Roy needs a characterization boost in some way. Hopefully it won't be the original DC Comics version of shooting up heroin, though. Or worse yet ending up in an alley swinging a dead cat at hobos. Might be interesting if at the end of the season Roy ends up hooking up with Nyssa al'Ghul, which would be sort of a vague nod to his comics liason with Cheshire.

I'm glad the Arrow people are finally doing what the Flash cast has been doing all along, which is telling each other what they know. The only reason not to do that is because you're deliberately keeping a secret that's bad for essentially sinister reasons.

I am wondering if Oliver is waiting for Merlyn to come clean of his own accord with Thea or if it's yet another "secret I can't tell because because something bad will happen" thing.

[jgsugden]

They're adding a third series to the Arrow/Flash universe - A team up show with the original TV Black Canary, Firestorm, Atom, and at least 3 more heroes that have not been on screen before in live action.  No word on the 'Justice League by any other' name yet.  Interesting news, indeed...

[schild]

I just started watching this. I saw the first few episodes when it first started airing, but have wanted to get back into it.

[Tannhauser]

They're adding a third series to the Arrow/Flash universe - A team up show with the original TV Black Canary, Firestorm, Atom, and at least 3 more heroes that have not been on screen before in live action.  No word on the 'Justice League by any other' name yet.  Interesting news, indeed...

But Atom was just had his origin, how can he team up with original BC?  Wait, nevermind, this is the DC TV universe; folks die and get better from it all the time. 

[jgsugden]

[Khaldun]

[MediumHigh]

I think the thing with current Oliver is that his crime fighting is based on the simple fact that he is the best fighter in the room. He is the smartest, the most tenacious, the man with the highest level of skill and the most to fight for. Without any of these assumptions...he's Roy or Laurel, something that psychologically Ollie will never be ok with.

[Threash]

I spent the last episode going "this is why nobody tells you a god damn thing Thea, jesus christ".

[Khaldun]

I get that Oliver needs to be the biggest bull in the room, but he should also be the smartest fighter by far among his friends. Taking Digg and storming a castle full of ninjas run by an immortal legend seems kind of low on the smart-fighter list. I genuinely assumed that Ra's was going to be up to something dire and Oliver was going to know it and that all of the fighting was about that. If it was just his ego, he should spend some time figuring out how to get Ra's in a mano-a-mano.

Plus what happened to the "I'm not a killer any more?" He might as well have dropped a few cruise missiles on Nanda Parbat before moving on to the hand-to-hand in terms of unambiguous kills dished out to ninjas, who don't even seem to be particularly bad ninja assassins as far as that goes. (So far I can't really think of anything especially awful the Arrow League of Assassins has done.)

[MediumHigh]

I'm glad someone pointed out my one nawing complaint about the Arrow's League of Assassins... their not evil. There just implied to be evil. Like a symptom of the not very friendly world we live in. I get more the sense that these were the good guys before the the advent of modern western society and the relative morality that came with it. I mean they went after Malcom Merlin because??? He killed civies? Didn't the league threaten to kill civies to satisfy the vendetta against Merlin? I mean what makes Ra a super villain? Hundreds of ninja assassins that do what exactly? Being called The Demon? Not giving his thrown to his lesbian daughter? Offering Oliver Queen a job? I'm drawing blanks here.  

Thea and Laurel.

Thea no one tells you anything because you have the emotional fortitude of a toddler.
Laurel no one thinks you good things cause your not. You wreck anything you touch with high incompetence. Oliver cheating on you with your sister was a subconscious desire to run away, far away a lesson you need to eventually learn so you can stop being Laurel. For fucks sake. 

[Tannhauser]

So do you think the pool Ras was bathing in was the Lazarus Pit?

I kind of see Thea's confession.  She does hate when Ollie keeps secrets so maybe it makes sense for her to deliberately spill the beans all the time.  

Lastly, I was surprised by Ras' idea for Ollie, that came out of left field.

[Evildrider]

Yeah the hot tub is the Lazarus Pit.

[MediumHigh]

Yeah the hot tub is the Lazarus Pit.

Oh god...

[Khaldun]

I was sort of waiting for some bubbles to come up around him.

Once the offer to be Ra's came, I wasn't surprised at all--it just means they're going all in on Ollie being the same as the Batman who met Ra's (hairy-chested love god Batman, not yet borderline-psycho Batman).

TV-DC heroes sure do love their extrajudicial prisons, by the way. And they really don't seem to be into the idea of giving their prisoners anywhere to go to the bathroom or lie down or anything like that.

If the League and ARGUS aren't in cahoots in some way, I'll eat my hat--it's the only way for the flashbacks to make much sense. (It might also be how Oliver gets Maseo to break with the League--if it turns out Waller works for Ra's or Ra's works for Waller and it also turns out that Waller was behind the death of his son...)

[HaemishM]

That's definitely the Lazarus Pit, and we'll definitely see the original Canary back if that actress is going to be on the not-Justice League show. And I'm totally betting it's due to the Pit. Or at least that Pit, because we know Ra's has others.

Oliver was being a dumbass this episode (not as much as Laurel or Thea but that's some stiff competition) but I can see where he was coming from. He said it himself in the conversation with Digg in the cell. He got beat and Ra's got in his head and he's gunshy because of it. Hell, the whole alliance with Merlyn wasn't about what was right, it was about Ollie getting his shit pushed in by Ra's. If Ra's can beat him, that means Ollie's crusade is doomed to failure because he knows there's somebody out that that can walk into his city and fuck shit up and Ollie can't do anything about it.

Yes, it's machismo bullshit but perhaps its also part of Ollie learning to be more Batman.