Unmasked (Arrow 7.08)
Hmmm. I had to reflect for a while on what I think of this episode.Â
On the one hand, my expectations were sky-high in anticipation of Oliver and Felicityâs reunion, after 7 episodes and 7 months apart, and there was no way the show would ever be able to live up to those expectations (Unless it gave us 40 solid minutes of Oliver and Felicity of getting reacquainted with each other, obviously). So any disappointment is clearly of my own making, in part at least.
On the other hand, after 7 episodes and 7 months apart, youâd have thought they could dedicate at least one episode â one episode! â to fully unravelling the fallout of Oliverâs imprisonment, and dealing with how it affected both him and his wife, rather than just rushing headlong into the next thing.
Iâm fully cognisant that most of my ire is directed towards the fact that this doesnât get picked back up next week â thanks a lot, crossover literally no one asked for â and then we head off into hiatus, effectively making this episode our mid-season finale. Thatâs unsatisfying, especially because the Oliver and Felicity storyline seems to hang on a dramatic cliffhanger (ZOMG WILL THEIR MARRIAGE SURVIVE?!?!?) in a way it wouldnât have done if the next episode actually followed through on this. Itâs the television equivalent of clickbait.
Side rant â generally speaking, I donât have as much hate for the crossovers as a lot of people; I find them fun diversions for the most part. But I do resent the formulaic structure weâve developed around them â theyâre always at mid-season, they mostly ignore the main SLs of the individual shows (last year was probably the exception), they usually involve alternate earths or magic or shapeshifting or body swapping or whatever the heck is going on this year, and given that this year, Arrow gets one less episode overall than usual anyway, I do feel short changed and quite irked by the whole crossover shebang. Imagine if we could have allowed the events of this episode to percolate and develop in the next one, so that the storylines would have some time to breathe.
I think thatâs my general disposition regarding the episode â thereâs so much happening and not a lot of it is given time to breathe. One of the great things about the prison arc was that there were two arcs running in parallel â Oliver in prison, and Felicity trying to get Oliver out of prison. There were C and D and E storylines too, of course, but those two were the primary thrust that moved the story forward. Each episode advanced those SLs forward in a way that brought progress.
Itâs a bit like the weapon the Silencer uses â 701-707 felt a little like when the device is on, and all extraneous sound is extinguished. There is only the fight, the main purpose, and everything else is muted. Episode 8, then, feels a bit like that moment when the Silencerâs device is switched off, and all sound comes rushing back in, and everything is muddled and chaotic and you have no idea how many people have entered the room, limbs flying everywhere.
âUnmaskedâ feels like a transition episode, and for that, I canât fault it. It gets most people to where they need to be, or at least somewhere along that path. It seems to want to draw a direct line from the events in the present to what happens and is happening in the future. Itâs just that, for all that it is a place-setting episode, it loses a bit of the focus and quiet intensity of the episodes that came before it.
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