Warning: full episode spoilers follow.
This is one episode that will probably improve with a second viewing. “Al Sah-Him” hinged on the idea that the Oliver Queen we know and love is gone. In his place is “Darth Oliver,” a villain who doesn’t bat an eyelash as he attacks his old friends and puts innocent people in harm’s way to carry out the whims of Ra’s al Ghul. The problem is that I didn’t buy that transformation. Not at first, anyway. But as the conflict progressed, it became harder and harder to deny that Oliver really does seem to have become the villain of his own story.
Perhaps what “Al-Sah-Him” needed was more focus on Ollie’s grueling conditioning in Nanda Parbat. We were given a brief training montage that basically consisted of Ollie being forcibly awoken every morning and spending a lot of time training in sword combat with Ra’s. None of this material really gave the impression that Ollie was being broken down and rebuilt as a remorseless killer. Not even his hallucination of murdering Diggle did the trick. For most of this episode, I didn’t buy into the idea that Ollie was doing anything other than playing possum and waiting for his moment to turn on Ra’s. Thus, the tension wasn’t quite there.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...
This is one episode that will probably improve with a second viewing. “Al Sah-Him” hinged on the idea that the Oliver Queen we know and love is gone. In his place is “Darth Oliver,” a villain who doesn’t bat an eyelash as he attacks his old friends and puts innocent people in harm’s way to carry out the whims of Ra’s al Ghul. The problem is that I didn’t buy that transformation. Not at first, anyway. But as the conflict progressed, it became harder and harder to deny that Oliver really does seem to have become the villain of his own story.
Perhaps what “Al-Sah-Him” needed was more focus on Ollie’s grueling conditioning in Nanda Parbat. We were given a brief training montage that basically consisted of Ollie being forcibly awoken every morning and spending a lot of time training in sword combat with Ra’s. None of this material really gave the impression that Ollie was being broken down and rebuilt as a remorseless killer. Not even his hallucination of murdering Diggle did the trick. For most of this episode, I didn’t buy into the idea that Ollie was doing anything other than playing possum and waiting for his moment to turn on Ra’s. Thus, the tension wasn’t quite there.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...