Batman v Superman Review

Jim’s Thoughts

***SPOILER FREE section***

I’ll tell you what I told my friends. If you’re going to see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and you’re hoping the critics are wrong, or that they’re being too hard on the movie, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Simply put, it’s an objectively terrible movie. If you’re a fan of the comics, it’ll manage to insult you, and if you’re not, it’ll just bewilder and sometimes bore you.

I won’t say the film doesn’t do anything that’s any good. There are small moments that have potential, but there is no element of the story that isn’t botched at some point along the way. Dawn of Justice tries to do many things, and the end result is that none are done well.

Most of the actors do a serviceable job with what they’re given. I’m sorry to say I think Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor may be the lone glaring exception. His portrayal of Luthor is manic and hyperactive in a way that is neither believable nor menacing. It reminded me of Jim Carey’s portrayal of The Riddler from back in the days when Batman movies bummed us all out in a very different way.

Zack Snyder seems to have drawn most of the fire for this movie. The director usually does, and he deserves his fair share of it, but the writing was atrocious. I can’t imagine any way to put this script together that wouldn’t have been an irredeemable mess. Character motivations are only loosely defined, then changed without much reason. The dialogue, when not cliché-laden, is nonsensical.

Those are the broad points. I’ll get into some specific complaints that delve into plot details, but I can honestly say there isn’t much to spoil. The trailers for this movie just about showed this movie. Maybe that’s the ultimate criticism of it. It takes 2 1/2 hours to cover what a handful of 3 minute trailers got across. How can that possibly entertain you?

***SPOILERS***

The big fight. The “v” in Batman v Superman is brought on almost entirely by Bruce Wayne. He views Superman as a threat, and he means to kill him. That’s not an overstatement. Batman kills people in this movie, and it comes off as though he has done it before. No, I don’t mean that he knocks people out in ways that fans like to laugh at and point out that he would probably have killed them. I mean he kills people. He shoots bullets and missiles at them. This is a more barbaric Batman, and that’s Superman’s gripe with him.

Lex Luthor is pulling strings, egging the two on into this showdown for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Ultimately, Lex’s plan to get Batman to kill Superman (or Superman to kill Batman) fails when Lois Lane wanders onto the screen and asks them nicely to stop fighting, and reminds them that each of their mothers are named Martha. Seriously, that’s pretty much what happens. Not to be foiled, Luthor creates and unleashes Doomsday. Now brothers from other, but similarly named, mothers Batman and Superman team up with Wonder Woman to take out Doomsday. Does it feel like Wonder Woman was just sort of dropped in there? Yeah, she was. Think of her as the vestigial tail of this movie.

It feels weird putting all that under the “spoiler” heading, because you could have surmised it all from the trailers, but I wanted to make it clear for those who hadn’t done that amount of homework, and also to lead up to the one thing that could actually be a spoiler. Superman dies. He kills Doomsday, and Doomsday kills him. It was a famous plot in the comics years ago, so it may sound familiar. There are many problems with this, but I’ll focus on two, and try to leave something for Kyle to talk about. First, Batman and Wonder Woman are shown grieving at the graveside. Why? Wonder Woman knew Superman for about twenty minutes, and Batman liked him for those twenty minutes, just after he meant to kill the guy himself. Nothing was resolved. Superman died still being Superman, still possessing the power to destroy mankind, should he choose to. Batman never swore to be a gentler Batman, to stop torturing criminals and let the law deal out punishment. Second, Superman’s death is the true end of the movie. Yes, the soundtrack offers us a couple thumps of a heartbeat, and that could be inferred as Superman’s, but he never rises out of the grave. Are we really expected to believe they’re going to begin their Justice League franchise by ending their Superman one? Of course not, so where is the tension in that?

***END OF SPOILERS***

I’ve written a bit of a manifesto here, and I could write much more, but I’ll spare you. All I can say is I hope the negative critical response to this movie shocks DC into action. I love these characters, and I have since I was a child. They deserve better storytelling than this.

Kyle’s Take

Wow. Jim hit on a lot of Batman v. Superman’s writing and comic book flaws, but unfortunately, there’s still more he didn’t touch.

I want to like a DC cinematic universe movie. I’d love to see a great Justice League film. I kept trying to find something Dawn of Justice did well, but all I could come up with was that I knew the dream sequence Superman had of Pa Kent was indeed a dream sequence. That doesn’t mean it was an effective dream sequence; I just knew that it was a dream sequence while the scene occurred and that’s something the rest of the movie didn’t make clear.

Evidently there were flashbacks, flash forwards, dream sequences, and hallucinations, and they all looked the same. And some were braided together, so even comic book aficionados couldn’t figure out what was going on in a single viewing. That’s not a good way to get repeat ticket sales, Warner Brothers and DC. Jim mentioned to me an hour or two after we had finished watching Batman v Superman that he read that Darkseid’s Omega symbol was in one of the “dream sequences.” After he said that, I slapped my forehead and said, “And those crazy looking flying beasts could be Parademons.” And then he said that the “dream sequence” in question wasn’t a “dream sequence” but a flash forward. If that sounded confusing, you’ll be lost in the movie’s first five minutes.

Kid Bruce Wayne falls into a bat cave during his parents’ funeral. He strikes a Jesus Christ on the cross pose and ascends the bat cave by means of the wind generated from a camp of bats. Seriously. DC thought the opening scene of a movie released on Good Friday needed a young Bruce Wayne striking a Jesus Christ Pose. I’m not religious but even I found Bat-Christ—and the countless other appropriated Christian images—in bad taste.

Batman v Superman didn’t even know its own characters. Jim mentioned the many ways the film messed up Batman and Superman, but it also cast Wonder Woman as the reluctant hero. Sure, Wonder Woman plays the reluctant hero often, but it’d be empowering to see her spring into action because she wants to take action. And it helps when she isn’t an afterthought.

Oh, and Lex Luthor came off like a psychotic, adult Peter Pan. He had severe daddy issues and his go-to move was placing his hands on his hips and cocking his head to the side. All he needed was Tinker Bell on his shoulder.

Okay. There was one half-way decent part of this film. Jeremy Irons made an interesting Alfred. Michael Caine was a sympathetic father-figure, but Irons was gruff and had a military background. I liked the change of pace but it was drowned out by the unholy mess that was the rest of Batman v Superman.

At this point DC needs to hit the reset button with its cinematic universe. I don’t know why they don’t use the characters and actors from Arrow and Flash to flesh out the DC movie-verse, but for whatever reason they won’t or can’t. Whatever the reason DC placed more of an emphasis on what their rival Marvel currently has in their cinematic universe than see what’s working with their properties.

Daredevil Season 2 Review

Jim’s Thoughts

If you want a short, spoiler-free answer, Daredevil’s season 2 was excellent. I’d rank it a little better than Jessica Jones, and a little beneath Daredevil’s first season. The things that worked so well last time are still working here. The new additions to the show are well done, but the creative team may have over-extended itself to some degree. By that, I mean my one criticism of the season as a whole is that it lacked some of the focus of last season, as there were simply more moving parts to the story. With that said, I’ll try to keep spoilers limited, but consider this the end of the spoiler-free section.

This season’s big baddie turns out to be a returning Nobu, and The Hand. If you’re a fan of Marvel comics, you know about The Hand, and if you’re not, I’ll tell you they’re a shadowy mystic cult of ninja, and that’s functionally all you need to know. The problem with this angle is that it takes some time for that to solidify as the endgame to the season. As it starts, season 2 seems to be about the showdown between Daredevil and Punisher, then about a government cover-up regarding the murder of Punisher’s family, then we get more about “the war” between The Hand and The Chaste which Stick alluded to when we met him last season, but by then, we’re in the home stretch of the season.

It’s true that Daredevil offered plenty of side-plots last season, so it may seem unfair to be critical of that here, but I would say that Kingpin was presented early as the main antagonist, and that conflict was built slowly as the season progressed. Because the show seemed to want to keep Nobu’s return under wraps for a big reveal, we were denied that slow build this season.

With that relatively minor grievance out of the way, let me say a lot of the side-plots of season 2 were done spectacularly. In particular, The Punisher was portrayed in a way that I think should be satisfying to fans of the character. Bernthal’s performance was excellent, and with the exception of a few scenes (one on the rooftop with Daredevil in chains) where the show became too literally a debate about vigilante justice and vengeance, it was well written.

Where Punisher seemed to fit perfectly into the show’s dynamic, I can’t say I was equally impressed with Elektra. I don’t fault the actress (Yung) so much as the fact that her relationship with Matt shifted too suddenly. He goes from flashbacks where he loved her in college, hated her in the present, then loved her again. Given that he’s known for some time about her cruel nature, his wafting opinion feels off to me, and his willingness to run off with her just as he’s begun a relationship with Karen undercuts Matt’s character.

Speaking of things that came too easily, Kingpin’s rise to power in prison felt rushed, and unexplainable considering how we’re told his funds are now limited. I had a hard time believing Kingpin could buy the unquestioning loyalty of every prisoner and guard with what was described as a “percentage” of the wealth he held before. However, the show clearly doesn’t want to keep Kingpin out of play as a character, and I can agree with that decision on some level, so I can forgive the messiness at least until he returns to the show as a central figure.

The breakup of Nelson and Murdock felt inevitable. Watching Matt leave Foggy holding the proverbial bag during the trial of the decade ran the risk of making it harder to like the show’s main protagonist, and letting the two part ways came out as a good way to let Foggy grow as a character and Matt delve deeper into being Daredevil.

I wasn’t crazy about the cliffhanger, having Matt reveal to Karen that he’s Daredevil. To be clear, I like that he told her. I usually get annoyed with masked heroes keeping their secret from their closest friends and love interests, but it should have happened much sooner. Letting it come in the last moments of the season finale was a cheat, wanting to create interest in season 3 (which was already there from where I sit) without playing any real cards.

Despite a handful of specific gripes, season 2 was every bit as good as I’d hoped it would be. Though the season felt more like a series of conflicts being resolved in succession than one large one unfolding over time, every subplot held some amount of my attention. It captured everything I enjoy about Daredevil in the comics, and continued to build on that more grounded level of the Marvel Universe, and the things that happen while the Avengers fight gods and aliens.

Grimm Review: “Into the Schwarzwald”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Into the Schwarzwald” started off with a nice puzzle Nick and Monroe had to solve, and that paired well with the intrigue caused by the murder of Portland’s leading mayoral candidate, the Portland PD and Hadrian’s Wall (the government issue wesen). But then the episode fed us a lot of plot devices.

You could refer to these plot devices as hands of god. In fact, one of the devices could literally be the hand of god. We’re entering spoiler territory, so if you haven’t seen “Into the Schwarzwald” and don’t want to know any more details, avert your eyes. The plot device in question is the one Nick and Monroe found in the box they had retrieved from Schwarzwald. It was a stick. Everyone was upset at their discovery and lost hope. Conveniently, Monroe had been bitten by one of the wesen chasing he and Nick in Schwarzwald and his wound had gotten infected by the time Team Grimm opened the box. They used the stick as one part of a tourniquet and the stick magically healed him. Like I said, convenient.

The second plot device shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler. Grimm has set up Adalind regaining her hexenbeist powers for weeks and they pulled the trigger this week. But they did so in an obvious manner. A bully from Rosalee’s past, who I vaguely remembered, hounded Rosalee for assistance. When she didn’t comply, the bully attacked Adalind, and that’s when her powers jumpstarted.

My issue with both plot devices is that they were choreographed. I knew what would happen a good two or three minutes before it happened, so the suspense Grimm wanted to build never grew higher than a whimper.

The Renard story line worked a little better than I thought I would this week. I haven’t cared about Renard’s arc because his existence reminds me that we aren’t getting a story about the royals. Sure, most of them have died, but there’s still intrigue in Europe and Grimm isn’t giving up the goods.

I never bought into Renard becoming Mayor and could see his ascension to that position from the start. Again, “Into the Schwarzwald” pulled the trigger on this plot thread and tied Renard to the Black Claw. This was a nice development but Renard putting together the pieces fell flat. He discovered that the mayoral candidate’s publicist was looking in the direction of his shooter before shots were fired. I saw her do that last week and figured that would tie into a conspiracy, and that’s what we got, a conspiracy. But I’m not that upset about the deliberate nature of Renard’s story. Sure, I saw it coming, but it didn’t come out of nowhere.

Grimm continues to feel around for its story this season, and while there have been some great individual episodes, the overarching stories have been clunky. Thankfully, the characters are still ones fans can and should care about, but Grimm needs stories that match its dynamic characters.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review: “Bouncing Back”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. put its human characters on the back burner this week and promoted its inhumans, so “Bouncing Back,” the mid-season return show, had plenty of bumps in the road.

The strength of Agents has been its human characters, and while Fitz-Simmons finally got together (that was a huge payoff for fans, but it may and should have complications), the rest of the human cast was plot spackle. Lash, Melinda May’s ex-husband, was namedropped more than once, but Agent May was nothing but a tool to further Agent Coulson’s development. Agent Coulson had a few moments in the episode, but his biggest role was as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mouthpiece, warning Malick that the agency’s on to him—neener, neener, neener. And Lance and Bobbi were statues, literally, for half the episode, which forced the inhuman characters to take center stage.

Now, I don’t mind the inhuman characters, but they haven’t been developed as much as the human characters, and “Bouncing Back” aimed to fix that. Guiterrez gained some good background here, as we were reintroduced to him. Agents planned to shove Skye (Daisy, Quake, or whatever he name is) and Lincoln down our throats, so seeing them lock lips wasn’t a shock, but I still don’t buy their relationship; it’s forced. And Elena (Yo-Yo Rodriguez) was a nice addition. She provided context for the aforementioned Guiterrez (The Melter). The pieces were there to build on the inhumans but there’s still some chemistry issues. I trust that Agents will iron these out as the show continues to shift from a human-centric story to an inhuman-centric one.

Grant Ward’s transformation into the monstrous It was predictable. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good, it just means that one could see It coming before the mid-season break. The rise of It wasn’t the question; it’s what It will do after It gains power that is. I was on the fence with turning Ward into It, but I’m glad Agents brought It back to Earth. The show has done a good job of building up this monster, and Agents has another monster at its disposal: Lash.

We haven’t seen the last of Lash, so it’ll take the inhumans we’ve met and a few more to deal with both It and Lash. We’ll see plenty of inhuman action. My hope is that “Bouncing Back” won’t be the only episode used to develop Agents’ inhuman characters.

Thanks for reading.

Blindspot Review: “Scientists Hollow Fortune”

Kyle’s Thoughts

After a strong stretch just before the mid-season break, Blindspot has been a mixed bag. I still don’t buy the Patterson story. Thankfully, the writers didn’t get technical with how military intelligence treats a security breach and focused on Patterson’s mental and emotional state, but with each reveal to the larger web of lies the show makes, Blindspot loses steam.

A couple of weeks ago we learned that Jane did this to herself and she was revealed to be Taylor. During “Scientists Hollow Fortune,” we discovered what Taylor-Jane’s motives are—at least on the surface—for wiping her own memory and that she died at some point. While some of these story threads are interesting, Blindspot did little to develop the characters outside of Jane and perhaps Patterson, and those cracks are showing their toll.

I keep waiting for Weller to become a more intriguing character but he’s flat. Zapata had a nice thing going with the NSA director but now he’s dead and she’s lost her mojo. Director Mayfair is up to something—I guess—but she’s more of an also in this episode character, even though she’s the director. Agent Reade is suddenly in a relationship with Weller’s sister, but I don’t know that I care too much with how that plays out; this has more to do with Weller’s lack of levels. Ultimately, Blindspot comes off as a plot heavy show with very little character.

I’ve given the show half a season, but if it doesn’t improve its supporting cast, I don’t know if I’ll continue watching to the season’s finale.

Thanks for reading.

Bob’s Burgers Review: “Sacred Couch”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Sacred Couch” was a good, but out of place, episode. Sure, the Belchers have owned the same couch for five or six seasons, but their couch doesn’t hold the same significance as The Simpsons’ couch. Marry this incongruity with the fact that Bob struggled with his burger puns last week, which is something Bob’s Burgers is known for, and you get an episode that belongs on another show.

Besides the focus of this episode being a family couch, the rest of the episode went off without a hitch. You had one family member, Linda, who loved the couch and didn’t want to see it go, another who destroyed the couch, Louise, who then had a change of heart, and Bob worrying about money. Throw in a side story for the other two kids, Gene and Tina, and you get the recipe for a fun episode. But no amount of developing the Belchers’ couch into a legitimate member of the family could replace the fact that this story fits more with The Simpsons than Bob’s Burgers, and I was hoping for an episode that didn’t play on nostalgia, since we received a heavy dose of that last week with “Sexy Dance Healing.”

Still, “Sacred Couch” is a good episode. The show did a good enough job setting up the loss of the couch as a blow for the family. I’m just looking for something a little different next week.

Thanks for reading.

Grimm Review: “Key Moves”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Nick and Monroe visiting the Black Hills worked better than I thought, but I still question why Grimm more than doubled its number of secret Grimm keys in one week after not mentioning them in three years. The ending of “Key Moves” shed some light on that subject, citing that the story will continue in episode 100, but Grimm dropped the ball on this story arc and watching the flashbacks this season only shinned a light on how out of place this story is. Not all the flashbacks revolved around the keys. The ones with Nick and Adalind worked to illustrate how complicated their relationship is and why they would want to take it slow. I liked those flashbacks.

And I liked the Grimm keys story too, I just don’t know why Grimm took three years to get back to them. It had been so long that I had forgotten Renard wanted the keys for himself. I remembered as soon as Nick refused to tell his boss what he was looking for, and that was an aha moment for me, but I’m not certain anyone who hadn’t watched Grimm’s previous seasons recently would’ve gotten that reference without scouring their memory banks.

Speaking of Renard, I’m still not sure about his side story. It looks as if another faction of royals may have wanted him dead, but the assassin killed the wrong man. Now it looks as if Renard will take up the position of Portland’s mayor for some reason. Either way, Renard won’t be assuming the throne any time soon and that may have been the goal all along. Again, I’m not sure. In terms of that story arc Grimm has a firm grip on its blinders.

Grimm has also kept the window open on Adalind returning to her witchy ways. That doesn’t mean Nick will get back with Juliette. The show’s done a good job of severing that relationship. I just wouldn’t be surprised if Adalind became a hexenbiest.

I’m interested in the Black Hills conclusion. It’s a fun story but it’s a story that should’ve been explored a year or two ago and that got me to thinking of the Nick-Juliette-Adalind triangle. Grimm had to drop that web in order to get to something that was working for the series two seasons ago. Now that the series has gotten back to an interesting story, I hope they don’t rush its conclusion.

Agent Carter Review: “Hollywood Ending”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Hollywood Ending” tied up a lot of loose ends, while still finishing with a cliffhanger. The Peggy-Sousa-Wilkes love triangle got dropped. You could see Peggy choosing Sousa, and Wilkes fading into obscurity; figuratively, not literally. Thankfully, Agent Carter took little time to resolve the triangle in the manner they choreographed from the opening season’s minutes. The Whitney Frost story got wrapped up real quick, too, and I’m not sure I buy that the zero matter just left Frost and Wilkes’s bodies with little to no ill effects. That was too easy.

Frost did end up in an asylum at episode’s end, but Agent Carter introduced a substance in zero matter that could destroy all of existence, and it disappeared in less than an episode. That rang false to me. I didn’t want anyone to die, necessarily, but you’d think there’d be more repercussions. As a result, Agent Carter did an okay job setting up the concept of zero matter, but I’m not sure it set up the upcoming Doctor Strange film as much as I would’ve liked. We’ll have to wait and see.

The season (or series?) finale also showcased some clunky dialogue exchanges. Agent Carter has always been a tad off with its dialogue, but it was more pronounced in “Hollywood Ending.” The line deliveries exacerbated this flaw, too. I’m okay with humor but the actor who would make a joke, specifically Howard Stark, waited a beat for a rim shot that didn’t come. The result was something alien.

The closing minutes of “Hollywood Ending” ended with a cliffhanger, of sorts. I won’t spoil it here, but I’m not sure if it’s enough of a cliffhanger to get viewers clamoring for a third season. While “Hollywood Ending” wasn’t the best Agent Carter this season, I’d say the season, as a whole, was pretty good.

I’m worried that the fourth episode this season (“The Atomic Job”), where a Three Stooges episode broke out in the middle of Agent Carter, damaged the show’s chances for renewal. Agent Carter lost half a million viewers after “The Atomic Job,” and the show never fully recovered.

Don’t judge Agent Carter’s second season by “The Atomic Job,” ABC. The rest of the season was solid, even if the ending left me wanting.

Thanks for reading.

Blindspot Review: “Cease Forcing Enemy”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Blindspot started off pretty good with its mid-season return episode “Cease Forcing Enemy.” It picked up with Jane Doe coming to terms that she mind wiped herself, but then the show spiraled back into certain things that didn’t make sense. Most notably is how they handled Agent Patterson.

I have a history in military intelligence, and Patterson brought home classified information, which resulted in the death of her civilian boyfriend. “Cease Forcing Enemy” started with Patterson getting reamed and then suspended, which I liked because that’s what should’ve happened. And then the show let her off the hook. It floored me that Patterson rejected her fate of suspension. If Blindspot was based in any kind of reality, Patterson should be worried that she’d be making small rocks out of little rocks, and no, just because your commanding officer says that you stay, doesn’t mean that the intelligence oversight agency loses its authority. If they handcuff you, you’re going to jail.

In fact, there wasn’t a truthful bone to be found in Patterson proving her value to the team. Director Mayfair knew that a distress call was using Morse Code, and Patterson was the only one who could translate it. Really? Is Blindspot really asking us to believe that no one in the FBI can write down a series of dots and dashes and then look up what they mean in Morse Code after conducting a Google search? My fifteen-year-old son could translate that if he wanted to. You didn’t even have to write down the message because even a Morse Code layman could hear dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot, which is the famous SOS, and the message accompanied Agent Weller’s last known location. Methinks Weller’s in trouble.

The rest of the show was spent in a malaise of people blaming themselves for things, when perhaps they shouldn’t. But in the case of Patterson, yes, she is at fault. We even received confirmation that Jane is in fact Taylor Shaw, the girl from Agent Weller’s past. I’m not sure what the end game for the “Is she Taylor or isn’t she” thread was supposed to be, but it was resolved too soon for my taste. I guess Blindspot gains renewed focus on why Taylor did this to herself and which side of the fence is she on. And is there even a different side to the fence?

The new questions Blindspot asks should carry it to the season finale, but it needs to be grounded more in reality to hold my interest. I only hope that Chief Inspector Fischer (John Hodgman) throws the book at Director Mayfair and Patterson.

Arrow Review: “Taken”

Jim’s Thoughts

Arrow started much stronger than it finished this week. Overall it was an okay episode. Darhk was front and center. The show really needed that, and it mostly paid off. I liked that they finally moved beyond the formula of Ollie shows up, Darhk uses “not the force” to choke him out and leaves grinning. The show needed that, too.

The confrontation with Felicity over Ollie’s son has been a long time coming. There wasn’t anything surprising there, and the focus on that point for the episode exhausted me. I’m to the point where I simply dislike Felicity, and being that I never bought Ollie’s reason for withholding the information from her (how would Samantha know if Felicity knew?), I had no one to side with in the argument.

On the other side, I rolled my eyes at the heart-to-heart Samantha had with Felicity. In that moment, there is no way Samantha’s prime concern is smoothing out Ollie’s relationship for him. That conversation was unnatural, and a little odd. Laurel, who has been unusually tolerable of late, bugged me this week. How could she be broken up about Oliver cheating on her when they were together? How could she even be surprised? Does no one remember that he cheated on her with her own sister? Lack of attention to continuity has been a problem for this show, and the disproportionate attention to dull romantic angles has been another.

Vixen’s role in the show was done as well as could have been expected. What’s more, there seems to be a tie to the events in the flashback segments. I can’t say the flashbacks are winning me over at all, but at least they seem to be going somewhere.

It seems the ending of this episode is where it came down hard on the Felicity involvement. That left a bad taste in my mouth, and may cause me to be harder on the show than is warranted. It fizzled, but a little more of what worked in the beginning of this episode, and at least a little less of what came in the end will work wonders toward a strong finish to the season as we move forward.

Kyle’s Take

Jim mentioned the solid opening, but I couldn’t remember anything from that except for Felicity’s struggle to walk. That was okay (at least she wasn’t dancing a jig immediately after the chip was implanted) and so was Darhk’s confrontation with Ollie and Felicity in the rehab center’s dark parking lot (that was down-right creepy), but it took a grand total of six minutes before Arrow devolved into Olicity. I agree that Darhk was too strong, and he went to the “not-the-Force” choke far too often, but Arrow didn’t have to away all of Darhk’s powers. That was a cheat.

Unfortunately, I was wrong a second time with Arrow. I had thought The League was this season’s Brick, but Arrow showed me that Darhk would factor into this stretch of the season in last week’s episode. Since “Taken” took Darhk from the venomous snake that he his and turned him into a belt, Olicity and the Merlyn-Thea daddy issues took center stage as this season’s Brick. I’m sure we’ll have villains of the week, but Arrow looked to tie a couple of bricks to this season and dump this year into the bay.

I don’t believe in the moment when Samantha smoothed things over with Felicity. What did she have to gain from that and why would she take time out from worrying about her son to do that? That shows you how little Arrow’s writers understand parenthood and how much they’re promoting Olicity. I don’t even know if I’d believe Samantha offering comfort to Felicity if Felicity approached her instead of the other way around. Samantha should be focused on her son. But what would you expect? Her and Ollie’s son is nothing but a plot device.

Laurel was as ridiculous as ever. I can’t tell if it’s more poor acting or writing for the character. There are too many examples of Ollie as an incestuous yo-yo between Laurel and Sara that Laurel should be immune to Ollie’s sleeping around. How is Laurel upset that some random woman slept with Ollie? I’d believe her—on some level—if she lamented the fact that there was a time when she thought she’d be the mother of Ollie’s children, a kind of path not taken thing, but that didn’t happen.

Then, there was Vixen. She worked as the unnecessary stand-in for John Constantine. Let’s throw in another magic user. Why not? If Arrow really needed another magician, why not go with the fan-favorite Zatanna? Actually, Vixen was another plot device. If Arrow had enlisted Constantine or Zatanna, either of those two and Darhk would’ve fought to a stalemate and the team wouldn’t think of targeting Darhk’s totem. Yawn.

I hope I’m wrong a third time about the presence of a Brick or two this season, but I don’t see Arrow spending too much time showing us Darhk’s struggle to regain his powers. Actually, that might be interesting to watch if it happens. But the clock is showing Olicity-o-clock.

Do you want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page. Thanks for reading.