Welcome to Last Night on TV, our daily column that looks back at what happened on television the night before. If we’re going to stay up all night and watch TV, we might as well talk about it the next day.
Last night on TV, Arrow struggled to juggle all the narrative balls it has thrown into the air.
Arrow
There’s something funky about this subplot about Oliver’s secret son. For some reason, the show couldn’t walk away from the situation, which has existed since season one in the deep recesses of background. If we remember back to “Seeing Red,” the entire conceit of the Samantha pregnancy was part of run that explored Moira Queen’s propensity for keeping secrets. The show, and Oliver, have come a long way since then. Which is why the notion of Samantha wanting him to keep William’s existence secret so puzzling. Bringing Samantha and William back into the fold was puzzling on its own, let alone her insistence that this version of Oliver — the stable, mayoral candidate — can’t have a relationship with his son unless he keeps it secret. Perhaps the Arrow Writers Room is trying to carry on the Queen family legacy of keeping secrets, but that doesn’t really jive with the show’s new “Green Arrow” direction. In one scene, Oliver waxes poetic about being inspired to fight Damien Darhk out in the open. In the next, he’s explaining to his sister how he absolutely must keep his secret child from everyone.
The show is struggling to make all the pieces fit. An episode like “Code of Silence” becomes clunky because it has to fit all this in between the otherwise energetic bouts of action and high-wire melodrama. It’s clear why the show wants to have William in the fold. Darhk has already taken a shot at Felicity, they’ve already sort of crossed Thea off the list of targets and William is the last place where Oliver can really be hurt. The show has been crossing off names from our “Who is in the grave?” list over the past few episodes, so one needed to be added. William’s name is now on the list.
The biggest problem is that the episode is very interested in they dynamics of trust. The entire subplot between Donna and Lance is about trust. To the extent that Felicity insists that Donna should be more trusting of Lance. Will she be more trusting of Oliver when she figures out that he’s been hiding a son? The show made no bones about how easy this is to figure out. In a two minute span, Thea figured it out. What’s to say that Felicity won’t do the same at some point? Or more simply, what happens when Darhk reveals that he’s got William in his sights? Oliver could try to go it alone, but Team Arrow isn’t stupid. They will figure it out. The narrative juggling act of this whole William storyline not only feels tacked on to create tension, it feels like it’s headed for a real mess. Hopefully they can pull off a clever zag, but thus far it’s hard to be enamored with the zig.
In an episode that was light on action early, it did deliver nicely in the debate theater sequence. The advantage of having a show in which very few super powers are available is that we can have these wonderful, frenetic long takes. It’s doubly frustrating in an episode like “Code of Silence” to have to wade through the muck of the hidden son storyline to get to some good action and some solid character work.
The one interesting scene that came out of nowhere was the pulling back the curtain on Darhk’s evil lair. HIVE’s upgraded digs (and council of people who will soon be mind-choked by Darhk) finally rival that of Team Arrow. The Arrow production design team clearly had some fun building this underground layer. Though it was a scene that raises questions about Darhk’s power: it works via Skype? That feels awfully useful. I need to know more about the rules, here. Does Darhk have to have visited the room before to project his life force draining power over video chat? Or does it work simply by sight? I need to know. Stop screwing around with trust issues and explain the magic, Arrow! I demand it.
What did you watch last night?
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