Arrow
Season 5, Episode 5: “Human Target”
Original Air Date: November 2nd, 2016
Grade: B
Arrow’s fifth episode of the season, “Human Target,” began with Rene in Tobias Church’s cliché-bad-guy warehouse being tortured. “Tortured.” With the previous episode’s “I’ll make you turn on your own team” (Not actually verbatim) and “you’ll give me all the secrets I want”, this scene honestly felt kind of underwhelming. Am I a terrible person? Maybe. But in my opinion if you want to make a huge plot twist, you should live up to it.
I’m not really sure I like Tobias Church as a villain. He represented the overused persona of a common villain, shown in any cheesy TV show or play or Greek myth among the years. He didn’t have a story and he didn’t seem especially scary like Slade Wilson, Damian Dahrk, or (I hate to bring the Flash up, but) Zoom. Of course, Tobias Church wasn’t the main villain of the season, considering he’s now a corpse in the middle of an armoured truck. This actually makes me even more excited to meet Prometheus.
Speaking of Prometheus, his costume (or, ha, identity concealment) isn’t especially terrifying either. I understand the costume department has made all of the costumes have an urban feel, which means muted tones, but Prometheus looks like a mix between The Hood and Ragman. I honestly mixed him and Ragman up several times throughout the episode. Whoops. (Editor’s note: You are not alone.)
Curtis, aka Mr. Terrific, also seems strikingly similar to that character from Spongebob. You know which character I’m talking about.
And you thought I was joking.
Also, it kinda looks like he slapped playdough onto his face and went with it. I’m underwhelmed by the costuming this year.
I made a groundbreaking discovery during this episode. You know when Oliver is out interrogated people to get information? I’m pretty sure the writers of Arrow copy and pasted a scene just like it and changed the words up a bit.
I’ve developed a step by step procedure to create an action scene such as this one:
- “WHERE. [Pause. Mustn’t forget the pause] IS HE?”
- “I can’t tell you, my boss will kill me!”
- “Your boss isn’t here. Guess who is!”
- “Okay, okay! [insert information lil guy gives here]
I couldn’t believe that the writers of Arrow would make scenes like these so similar, but there may have been one of these scenes (playing out exactly as above) in literally each episode this season. Either that, or I’m getting massive déjà vu.
Now that I’ve gotten my cynicism out, let’s talk about the cool parts of the episode.
Yeah, so one BIG BIG thing. Basically, all Oliver moments we saw the entire episode were NOT OLIVER. I repeat, they were NOT OLIVER. There were probably some very large plot holes during this episode, but all in all, what a plot twist. We watched a guy who-very-much-looked-like-Oliver-Queen get shot several times in the chest in front of the mayoral hall.
Skip to Lance, announcing in front of reporters that Oliver Queen died that night. Honestly, I don’t think that’s how the government works, but okay. We’ll go with it.
So, hold up, Thea went the entire night (probably several hours) thinking her brother was dead? The episode didn’t even touch on that. I’m 100% sure that if this actually happened, Thea would have gone to the Arrow cave immediately to see what was happening. But of course, that wouldn’t go along with the plot.
The last ten to fifteen minutes of the episode were so rushed, like the producers were little puppies who wanted to show the audience their idea, but weren’t patient enough to present it.
I really liked Christopher Chance on the show. If he doesn’t come back, I’ll be pretty upset.
I mean, come on. He gave Oliver a girl’s number. He also spurred a talk between Felicity and Oliver. If anyone can change things up and make things interesting on the show, it’s probably this guy.
Let’s talk about that conversation between Olicity. 2 cute. Must date now. Can you feel the tension from here? 10/10.
All I must say. Sage Yvonne will wait patiently for her ship to resail.
Very patiently.
Watch Arrow 8/7c Wednesdays on the CW.
