Arrow: S1E10 Burned
The first nine episodes of Arrow, as far as Oliver Queen’s nightly duties were concerned, were an adventure in trial and error. It wasn’t about his success or failure on his outings (until episode 9), but what happened and how he learned from what went well, and most important, what didn’t. It was also an adventure in learning how he was supposed to intertwine his personal life with his hooded one.
Episode 10, the return from the mid-season break, is where all of that really builds to something. This is the episode where Queen stares his failures down, and where real, tangible growth takes place on screen in an hour of time.
In the last episode, Queen faced his first near-defeat at the hands of the Dark Archer; somebody who knew about the list, had the power and prowess to both murder people with whom Queen had recently confronted and to nearly best him and his own game. And on top of that, his stepdad Walter has mysteriously disappeared, and his mother is behind it, though Oliver doesn’t know that.
So, he spends his time recovering from substantial injuries with his family, who are going through the second loss of a father in five years. But he needs to get back, so he trains hard and pushes hard, getting his body back together.
But he’s off his game, and his body isn’t the problem. And then the viewer is given the most poignant, meaningful scene the series has produced yet. John Diggle, his bodyguard by day and his partner by night, comes ready to confront Oliver about jumping in too fast, but the opposite happens. Queen is scared. His mind isn’t ready and it’s not, for vigilante work, in the right place.
The way the two of them discuss fear - the fear of death, the fear of losing what matters - is beautiful and moving. In a show that markets itself almost entirely on appearance (read: abs), this a remarkably brave and bold move. It goes deeper than just what’s at stake with heroism, but what is at stake with everyone, everyday. It’s a level the show hadn’t come close to touching yet, and I’m very impressed with the result now that they have.
The payoff for this conversation comes at the end of the episode, when, for the first time, the newscaster refers to him as a hero. I respect the time and patience the writers took to make the progression, and because of that, they’ve really earned it. It’s a much more mature approach the situation, allowing not only the character, but the city around them, to grow into the view that someone operating outside the law is the hero they need.
As far as the “heroic” parts of this episode, it’s all very average. Someone is killing firefighters, the police won’t help, Green Arrow (though those words have only been said once on this show) will, so Green Arrow does. The show begins examining another side of Laurel Lance, when she steals the phone Hood gave to her father in order to contact him. And it also begins examining another side of her father, Detective Lance, and his willingness to shamelessly wiretap his daughter, and essentially use her as really expensive bait. So, there’s no way that blows up in anybody’s face.
And within the aforementioned issues inside of his personal life, the episode shows the strides that both Oliver and Thea (his little sister) have taken throughout the season: both with Thea showing remarkable maturity in contrast to her drug-and-alcohol fueled drug-and-alcohol binges from the beginning, as well as Oliver living like a real person again.
This episodes stumble in a number of places, but those failures are swept under the rug by really strong moment-crafting from the writers and well-earned and believable emotional payoffs. As an addendum, though much of the grit and dirt in this series can be attributed to Mr. Christopher Nolan and his Batman trilogy, there appears to be a very conscience effort to avoid making Oliver Queen the Shadow of a man that Bruce Wayne was. Maybe that’s because it’s on The CW and without Queen as a filthy rich playboy, there’s not too many opportunities for frivolous drama, but no matter the reason, it’s a very strong direction, and they were in danger of going the other way through the first half of the season. So, kudos to them.