#wastedbullets

Before I start with the fourth episode of Wasted Bullets, I’d like to focus on the end of the third. (The fourth episode begins with a continuation of the last scene from the third episode, so it’s kind of appropriate.) This is what I initially thought was the most egregious example of lazy writing and disrespect for the audience found so far.

There are many things I could discuss. How does Deadshot avoid burning his hands with his wrist mounted machine guns? Where do those guns get their ammo? Did Deadshot really lace with a rare (and presumably expensive) poison every single one of the eight dozen or so bullets he fired at Oliver? These are the sorts of questions you’re not supposed to ask.

But the big one for me is: how did Diggle get to the place where he gets hit by one of Deadshot’s stray bullets? Let’s go through the timeline.

37:10: Oliver tells Diggle to get Moira and Thea out of the Exchange Building.

37:15: Detective Lance notices the laser pointer targeting Walter.

37:18: Deadshot fires his first shot.

37:35: We see Oliver running up the stairs.

37:42: Oliver retrieves his mask from the garbage can.

37:50: Deadshot continues to fire at the Exchange building, hitting the woman who I believe was his second target. (This woman has her back toward Deadshot and appears to be getting champagne. Why?)

37:55: Diggle climbs the stairs Oliver went up, notices the opened trash can.

38:00: Oliver’s arrow forming the end of the zip line between the Exchange building and Deadshot’s location secures itself to the concrete of the second building.  (Oddly enough, the arrow is angled upwards, which to my mind would prevent the zip line from working, but I’ll give this one a pass.)

38:04: Oliver infenestrates the room from which Deadshot was shooting.

A couple notes at this point. One: I’ve made up the word “infenestrate” because I need a word that means “being thrown through a window into a building” and because I think it’s funny. “Defenestrate”, which means to be thrown through a window _out_ of a building, is one of my favorite words and I think it needs a counterpart, especially for this series.

A second, more meaningful note: Presumably there is some lapse in time between 37:42 and 38:04 to give Oliver the time to put on his mask, aim and fire his arrow, and zip line across the building. It might be a few seconds, and it might be a minute or longer. It’s not going to be too long, otherwise Deadshot will escape, and it probably is between the 37:42 and 37:55 mark, otherwise Diggle would catch up to and confront Oliver before the 38:00 mark. But—and this is the key point—there doesn’t seem to be any similar opportunity for a similar lapse time with Oliver and Deadshot in the same room. I mention this because there’s actually a reasonable way for Diggle to get to that room, but he simply doesn’t have time.

38:20: After a flurry of gunfire and arrow-shooting, Deadshot begins to approach the pillar behind which Oliver hides.

38:32: Oliver clubs Deadshot from behind, beginning a melee combat sequence.

39:00: Oliver tells Deadshot to drop his guns.

39:07: Deadshot asks Oliver to extend him some professional courtesy.

39:12: Oliver tries to guilt trip Deadshot.

39:24: Deadshot fires his last flurry of bullets.

39:27: Oliver fires the arrow that knocks Deadshot out.

39:49: Diggle grunts, standing in front of a doorway behind Oliver.

So, let’s run through some numbers. The final battle starts at 38:04. It ends at 39:27. It is more or less a continuous scene, and although we cut several times for different points of view, those cuts are sequential, and do not offer any opportunity for time to pass. Thus, we’re working with one minute and twenty-three seconds, perhaps one minute and thirty tops if Diggle just missed Oliver as he started to zip line between buildings, but more realistically one minute and twenty seconds, between the time Oliver crashes into the room and Deadshot fires his last flurry of bullets.

There are two possible ways for Diggle to get into position to be shot.

First, he could have used the same zip line Oliver did. He certainly has enough time to do so, but I’m dismissing this possibility for several reasons. First, Diggle doesn’t have the equipment for it—he wasn’t expecting to zip line across buildings and Oliver would have no reason to leave him the things he would need to do so. Second, I think we would have noticed Diggle crashing into the room if he did this, even if incidentally at the last moment. Third, he would have had to move from the window to the doorway, which seems implausible. For these reasons, I think he must have run through the doorway.

Second, he could have seen Oliver zip line over, run down the stairs to leave the exchange building, cross the street, climb the stairs to get to Deadshot’s room, and arrive while Deadshot begins shooting in the final sequence after Oliver tries to guilt trip Deadshot. (While this seems like a minor point, Diggle almost certainly wouldn’t open a door behind which he hears active gunfire, although there is the possibility that one of Deadshot’s bullets ricocheted off the fire door to hit Diggle as he ascended the stairs.

Let’s focus on that second scenario. We know from establishing shots of the Exchange building that the auction was on the ground floor. We know that Deadshot was firing at a downward angle, putting him on at least the second floor of his building. We know that Oliver climbs at least two floors up to zip line down to Deadshot’s location. (We’ll ignore the problem of Oliver needing an open location from which to fire his zip line for now.)  

So, can Diggle, in the one minute and twenty seconds there is between Oliver entering Deadshot’s building (representing the first possible moment Diggle has to know where to go), run down two flights of stairs, cross a busy street, figure out a way to enter a presumably locked building, and then climb another floor’s worth of stairs to arrive in time to be shot?

I suppose that’s theoretically possible, which I didn’t expect to be true when I started this analysis, so I leave the analysis here for posterity. I don’t think Diggle would do this—I don’t think he could do this, given the navigation problems he certainly would encounter. I don’t think Diggle would charge up into a room with active gunfire. I think it’s far more likely for one of the officers surrounding the exchange building to get to Deadshot first. But, while I think it stretches credulity, I do have to admit it’s at least theoretically possible and therefore doesn’t break it, in the same way that any coherent analysis of Deadshot’s wrist mounted machine guns would.

Anyway, on to episode four, entitled “An Innocent Man”.

This might be nothing, but at the 8:50 mark, Oliver reveals that the Queen mansion is 20 miles from the city. Later in the series, I become baffled at the geography of Starling City, so I thought I’d note it here.

At the 9:20 mark we learn the topic of the episode. A man named Peter Declan is on death row for the murder of his wife Camille. Moira is watching the news and the announcer notes that Camille’s former employer, Jason Brodeur, released a statement about the execution. Jason Brodeur is on the list Oliver obtained from his father—the list containing the purported criminal organization behind a conspiracy, the exact nature of which is unknown at this point. From this, Oliver posits that Peter is in fact innocent and Brodeur killed Camille. In fact, we immediately cut to a scene where Brodeur and one of his honchos confirms this very thing: Brodeur killed Camille and framed Peter in order to get rid of them both. If only the members of the jury could have been as prescient as Oliver, who—we should remember—hasn’t been back in Starling City for more than a couple weeks.

At the 10:25 mark, we have another tiring scene where Joanna reminds Laurel that she’ll never meet anyone if she doesn’t abdicate her lawyerly responsibilities and go out drinking with her. Joanna is not a very good friend.

At the 11:00 mark, Oliver, mask on, has broken into Laurel’s apartment. He uses a voice changing magic gadget to disguise his voice. Oliver tells Laurel of his theory, apparently acquired from information off-screen, that Camille was going to blow the whistle on Brodeur so he had her killed and Peter framed for the murder. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s more or less what the bad guy did two episodes ago, when Martin Somers had a man killed by the Triad for threatening to blow the whistle on him. Except this time we have a frame job thrown in. I don’t know how often the “killing whistleblowers” schtick is used but twice in four episodes cannot be good.

The next scene shows Laurel talking to Peter, Oliver’s little pep talk apparently convincing Laurel much more than it convinced me. (There is, of course, no information as to Peter’s current attorney, so anyone with a bit of knowledge of the criminal defense system recognizes that the Arrow writers have swept about one month’s worth of procedural difficulties under the rug, but, eh, it’s camp.) Of this scene I’ll just note that Peter—a man sentenced to be executed in less than two days—is allowed to wander a large room without restraints or any handcuffs while Laurel sits in a chair and accuses him of the murder for which he has been duly convicted by a jury of his peers.

Yeah.

At 13:50, we learn of a side plot that unfortunately never goes anywhere. $2.6 million is missing from a Queen Consolidated subsidiary. Walter brushes this off, claiming a bookkeeping error. On this bit I actually want to praise the Arrow writers for getting some things right, but the exact praise will have to wait for later. Walter says “I’m sure it’s nothing,” which I suppose puts Queen Consolidated squarely in the Fortune 100 for treating $2.6 million as a paltry sum. Later in the episode, Moira admits it was her investing in a friend’s startup. Billionaires really don’t think there’s anything wrong with embezzling $2.6 million from a public company to invest in a friend’s startup. But Walter, to his immense credit, tells Felicity Smoak to look into it, which is an example of the law of economy of characters.  There’s no way Felicity would be the right person to do such a thing—she’s in IT, not accounting—but, eh, it’s camp.

At the 22:40 mark, Oliver hits a man named Matt Istook with a tranquilizer dart and, under threat of being run over by a train, coerces a confession that he perjured himself when testifying against Peter. (As a geographic note, we learn that a suburb of Starling City is called Bloodhaven. Wouldn’t you like to live there?) Matt tells Oliver of a file of evidence in his desk which Camille was going to use against Brodeur.

At 24:45, Oliver delivers the file to Laurel. I’ll just note for the moment that the moment Laurel produces that file as evidence, she’s likely to get arrested for trespassing, given that she obviously didn’t obtain the file using legal means. But, eh, camp.

At 27:40, we see something more praiseworthy! Laurel presents the evidence to a judge in the judge’s chambers. Now, there’s about a million nits to pick about Brodeur suddenly arriving in those chambers surrounded by a legal team (they would have been there already), and there are undoubtedly other problems with it. But the one thing that the writing team gets right is that the unauthenticated file itself is insufficient to justify a grant of habeas corpus. Good for them, although really Laurel should have known this earlier. I feel like this is worthy of praise.

At 28:05 we see Brodeur whining to his lawyers like a little crybaby, because Laurel’s going after him. We learn that he’s guilty of “dumping”, presumably pollution of some sort, which means that he’s the only guy in the world who does such things without making himself the target of environmental lawyers looking to squeeze a civil settlement out of said people.

At the 29:10 mark, we learn that Moira lied to Walter, and that the $2.6 million was just flat out embezzled by her and used to purchase a warehouse. Food for later thought. Still no bullets yet, although Laurel did draw a gun on Oliver some eighteen minutes earlier.

At 30:20, Oliver attempts to force a confession out of Brodeur. This is kind of funny to me. Eventually Brodeur tells Oliver of the plan to kill Peter before he can be executed. This is funny to me for two reasons. First, the judge just denied a habeas writ—why would anyone be afraid that Peter would be released after such a denial. Second, and perhaps more importantly, if they had the means to kill Peter in prison, why wouldn’t they have done it already? But, eh, camp.

At 31:20 Oliver begins his assault on Iron Heights prison, which might offer us the first wasted bullets of the episode. Laurel is there talking to Peter. Suddenly Brodeur’s thug hands a guard a wad of cash in order to open the cell doors, and, well, here we go.

Laurel is told to stay in the interview room, which of course she ignores and runs straight for the cell block for reasons unknown. Oliver—dressed in a guards uniform and a ski mask, rescues Peter and Laurel before they get killed. There’s another fight, and Oliver pulls a prisoner who intent on strangling Laurel off of Laurel. Laurel gets a good look at Oliver’s eyes and, in my mind, Laurel really should have recognized him at this point. But, eh. Still no bullets fired.

At 34:00, Laurel and Detective Lance join each other in a frantic “thank God you’re safe” hug. We learn that, for reasons unknown, Brodeur’s bodyguard just confessed to Camille’s murder. Presumably the reasons for that were left on the editing floor.

At 36:20, Walter goes to visit the warehouse identified by Felicity. There’s a keypad there which is protected by the password “Robert”—evidently, Moira’s just as bad as most people at coming up with strong passwords. We learn, surprise surprise, that the warehouse contains the remains of the Queen’s Gambit! Perhaps Moira’s duplicity will catch up to her!

Some might wonder, based on my writing so far, why I bother to watch Arrow or continue to watch it given how much I have nitpicked it or complained. To give credit where credit goes, this episode probably did a lot to answer that question. It’s a really good episode in setting up future conflicts and storylines. We see a complicated relationship developing between Laurel and Oliver—and we think Laurel must at least have a strong suspicion that Oliver is the Arrow. There are no wasted bullets here. Even though it can be nitpicked like crazy, the writers avoided the quick and easy solution of the file freeing Peter. We see that Walter is a man of integrity, and are teased with a conflict between him and Moira.

There’s more to it, too. I must confess that the biggest reason I continued to watch the series was the actor in the limousine Moira gets into at the 39:40 mark. It’s not a spoiler to reveal it, but I trust I don’t need to.

There’s not a single bullet fired in this episode, which I suspect makes it either rare or unique in the history of this show.

So I was thinking about the Oregon shooting as I considered whether to continue this little project. In case you missed it, a 20 year old man opened fire at a community college in Oregon, killing at least ten people and injuring twenty more. By the Boston Globe’s count, this was the 294th mass shooting in the U.S. this year, an average of more than one per day.

There are two reasons why I decided to continue this.

First, as President Obama noted when speaking about the incident, as a nation we have become numb to gun violence. There’s lots of gun violence on Arrow, but the specific aspect of that violence that concerns me is how little impact that gun violence appears to have on anyone meaningful. By presenting a world in which guns are essentially firecrackers that rarely hurt people or hit targets even from point blank range, does Arrow desensitize someone as to the actual harm and violence imposed by these guns? I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it’s a question worth asking.

The second, and perhaps sadder point, is that gun violence is so prevalent in the United States that if I chose to suspend writing this series now, I’d never be able to pick it up again. By averages, tomorrow there will be another mass shooting, and we’ll likely have six to eight more by next Friday. So either I stop this project altogether—and thereby pass up the opportunity to ask the real question about how gun violence is normalized and trivialized by shows like Arrow—or I accept that I’ll have to do it in an environment where it might be considered insensitively timed.

As many people have pointed out, if it’s unacceptable to have a discussion of gun violence after such tragedies, we’ll never have that discussion. It’s far too common.

So, to be clear, I don’t mean any disrespect to any of the victims of today’s shooting, or any other shooting. I think it’s high time to have a discussion about all aspects of gun violence.

In any case, onto the third episode, entitled “Lone Gunmen”. I wish it weren’t called that.

The opening sequence provides our second exception for bullets hitting people: when the bullets are fired by Deadshot. He’s an assassin and supposedly never misses his target. The first shot fired by him hits Oliver’s target for the week, James Holder, in the chest, presumably killing him. Oliver turns and fires a few arrows blindly. Deadshot then fires five times at Oliver. Later, Oliver sews up a flesh wound, so presumably one of those bullets hit.

That’s when Oliver discovers that Deadshot laces his bullets with poison, which gives the writers the opportunity to introduce one of their magical get-out-of-jail-free cards: Oliver has an apparently limitless supply of herbs that will counteract any poison. Undoubtedly this will come in handy later.

A few moments later, Oliver, using his expertise gained from his vast zero days of being an actual parent, lectures his mother on her parenting choices with regards to Thea. I only mention it because it’s Oliver’s most loathsome quality. Moments later, in a monologue, Oliver explains how his methods of killing are righteous and how Deadshot’s are without morality. What a fucking hypocrite. So Deadshot becomes Oliver’s new target.

As much as I hate Oliver, I feel compelled to note a surprisingly good thing that happened, one that gave me hopes for Oliver. At the 20:30 mark, Oliver confronts Thea in a nightclub where Thea really shouldn’t be (but the law of economy of characters demands that she should be). Thea, in an effort to tweak Oliver, tells him that his BFF Tommy and his ex-girlfriend Laurel have had sex. Oliver, of course, has no right to be mad about this—he was dead, he had effectively broken off his relationship with Laurel by boffing her sister, and in any case Laurel’s a big girl, not some piece of property that Oliver owns. To Oliver’s credit, he doesn’t seem to be fazed by this at all. It really gave me high hopes for Oliver, hopes that would be dashed a couple seasons later, but that’s well down the road. (Unfortunately, Tommy seems to think it was wrong but did it anyway.)

At the 27:00 mark, Oliver confronts Deadshot in Deadshot’s hotel room. Here we learn that Deadshot has more than just a sniper rifle; he unloads about fifteen shots in Oliver’s general direction. None hit. Several seconds later, Deadshot takes cover behind a mattress and fires about fifteen more shots from a custom wrist mounted automatic weapon. None of those shots hit, either. Deadshot then defenestrates himself, leaving Oliver free to search his hotel room.

Worth noting: at the 27:50 mark, we meet Felicity Smoak for the first time. Felicity Smoak represents yet another get out of jail free card. If there’s anything that has anything to do with computers, she can do it. (Sometimes, though, she might have to consult her “Javascript for Dummies” book helpfully located in her cubicle.) Why she is working as a mundane IT grunt in Queen Consolidated rather than hacking for the Russian mob or alternatively making a fortune with several iOS apps is anybody’s guess.

Felicity provides the information to Walter that Deadshot was working for a man named by Warren Patel.

The final confrontation begins at the 37:20 mark. Deadshot has Walter lined up for a shot, but for some reason he’s decided to use a laser finder which marks the target with a red dot, utterly useless for Deadshot at his range but allowing Detective Lance to see that Walter’s about to be shot and to play the hero. Deadshot’s shot misses as a result. Deadshot then fires a second shot, hitting some random white guy in the shoulder, who for the moment I will assume was his second target.

While Oliver is changing into his outfit, Deadshot fires two more shots, one hitting a woman who looked to have been his second target, with the random white guy having jumped in front of her unexpectedly at shot two. We’ll call one of those a hit.

Oliver fires an arrow and ziplines over to Deadshot’s location. Deadshot fires about twenty-five shots from a range of about fifteen yards as Oliver ducks for cover; none of those shots hit.  A few moments later, Oliver gets into hand to hand combat with him—seemingly not a good idea against someone with a wrist mounted machine gun, but tactics have never been Oliver’s strong suit. Deadshot unloads about eight more shots, but fortunately for Oliver they’re during the five second window when Deadshot’s arm isn’t pointed directly at Oliver, so all the shots miss.

There’s then a bit of moralizing by Oliver, explaining to Deadshot why his brand of vigilantism is better than being a contract killer. Deadshot seemingly has no response for this other than to unload twenty five or so shots at the pillar providing cover for Oliver. After the shots cease, Oliver emerges from the cover and fires an arrow that goes right through Deadshot’s eyepiece.

After Oliver seemingly confirms his kill, he turns around to find that one of Deadshot’s bullets hit Diggle, who was chasing Oliver up a staircase. Evidently the writers forgot that Oliver ziplined between buildings in the interim, something Diggle would have had absolutely no reason to do—this selective lapse of memory allowed them to further the plot. Oliver treats Diggle with the magic cure all herbs, after which Diggle discovers Oliver’s secret identity. Yay plot. Thus ends the third episode.

Here’s the second installment of “Wasted Bullets”, in which I take a look at the absurd inaccuracy of guns within the show “Arrow”.

I suppose I should start by explaining the greater criticism at play here. Bullets never finding their targets isn’t just some random quirk in the Arrow universe that makes it charming. It is probably the biggest sign of the laziness of the writing in the series. This laziness manifests itself in many, many different ways, but the inaccuracy of guns is perhaps the most obvious.

An example from the pilot will demonstrate this point. In the episode, Oliver is targeting a man named Alan Hunt. He has given Hunt a 10:00 deadline to pay extortion money, with the explicit threat that he would cause Hunt harm if he didn’t. Hunt holes himself up in his office, protected by at least seven guards, most of whom are armed with machine guns.

Having not understood at this point the apparent rule that bullets cannot hit their targets, I was legitimately curious as to how Oliver could pull this off. I was expecting something clever. Instead, Oliver just comes up the elevator and basically does a solo assault of Hunt’s makeshift fortress. Oliver’s plan succeeds—and can only succeed—because bullets don’t hit their targets, and Oliver seems to know this. So, rather than a clever sequence that might have shown Oliver’s tactical acumen, we get a scene that only succeeds if you assume the bad guys are firing blanks. Seriously, you could probably go down to the Lazer Tag at the closest megamall and pluck eight tweeners who could stop Oliver, provided they were given guns with actual bullets.

The opportunity for an exciting scene vanished.

Now, this laziness manifests itself in other ways. In the end, Oliver achieves his goal of robbing $40 million from Hunt. How does he do this? Apparently, by firing an arrow that contains a microcomputer that—by itself—hacks into Hunt’s network and initiates the transfer. Can you imagine a world where such devices actually existed? It’s essentially magic, and a major dodge by the writers. Wave their hand and the protagonist wins. Everyone’s happy, as long as no one peeks behind the curtain to wonder how it was done.

In any case, let’s move on to Episode 2, entitled “Honor Thy Father”.

There’s an opening fight sequence where Oliver confronts Markus Redman. Redman was guarded by at least six and probably seven people. One of them had a gun, but he didn’t fire it before being disarmed by an arrow from Oliver. So no wasted bullets here.

Just for reference, Oliver adds perjury to the list of crimes for which he could be accused at the 3:10 mark. Spoiler alert: not only did his father and one member of the crew survive the crash, so did his amour du jour, Sara Lance—and as we’ll see in season 2, Oliver knows this.

At the 6:30 mark, we learn that Starling City has a port. I’ll come back to this later.

At the 8:30 mark we see Starling City at night. This is definitely Boston; the clock tower on the right half of the screen is the dead giveaway. This doesn’t mean that Starling City is DC’s equivalent of Boston, in the same sense that Gotham is not New York and Metropolis is not Toronto. But I just like Boston.

At the 10:30 mark, Oliver gets all paternalistic with Thea. I mention this only because I hate Oliver and this is the biggest reason why.

At the 23 minute mark we get to see Laurel’s apartment. She’s the daughter of a cop and works for legal aid. There’s no way she can afford something this nice unless her dad’s on the take.

Another reason to hate Oliver: he eats directly from a half gallon tub of ice cream. Not sure how he can do that and maintain the body necessary for the frequent homoerotic porn we see in the series, but this is Wasted Bullets, not Wasted Calories.

At the 25:40 mark we have our first wasted bullets of the episode. A guy busts through Laurel’s front door and unloads about twenty shots in two or three seconds from a distance of about five feet. None hit, although he is obviously aiming too high.

A few seconds later another five shots are fired. None hit.

At the 26:00 mark, the badass platinum blonde Chinese woman—whose hair, by the way, just screams badass—confronts Oliver. One of her associates shows up at the other side of the room. We hear the click of a gun getting ready to fire, and then five shots. The surprise here is that the shots don’t come from the bad guy; Diggle has arrived to protect his charge and pumps the anonymous goon full of lead, with several shots hitting. I’m marking Diggle here as five for five because that’s what it looked like to me, though you are free to disagree.

In any case, this provides the first exception to the rule that bullets don’t hit anyone:

Bullets fired by guns aimed by “good guys” can hit their target. Not always, but quite frequently.

Diggle then confirms this rule by shooting another anonymous goon twice. So far Diggle is seven for seven by my count. He then gets into hand to hand comment with the badass Chinese lady while Laurel and Oliver spectate. Finally, Oliver saves Diggle with a well placed throw of a kitchen knife, thrown with far greater accuracy than any bullet fired by a supposed bad guy pro.

At the 30:40 mark we get more gunshots. We don’t see who fired them, where they were aiming, and some of them sound to be too far away from the action to be anything other than people celebrating a wedding or something. In any case, I’m going to assume they were intended for Oliver and none of them hit. In about a twenty second sequence, I counted fifty five shots, at least a quarter with a clear line of sight from less than thirty yards away. None of them hit.

At the 33:10 mark, Detective Lance has Oliver dead to rights. He threatens to shoot if Oliver twitches. Oliver twitches, launching a dart so accurately that it goes through the trigger of the gun as Lance holds it and pins it to a shipping crate behind Lance. Oliver’s gone before Lance can react, but thankfully for Lance the dart contained a recording of the confession Oliver coerced from Somers (something that would never hold up in court, by the way, but lazy writers wouldn’t know that).

This doesn’t have to do with bullets, but it’s another pet peeve I have about the show. At the 34:20 mark we see that Laurel is attending the opening of Queen Consolidated’s new Applied Sciences building. Why? Doesn’t she have work to do? As a plot point, it’s obviously to see Oliver embarrass himself with a fake drunk act of disavowing his father’s legacy, but there’s no way for her to have known that would happen. So why are she (and Tommy, for that matter) there? More lazy writing. It’s probably the second most obvious sign of lazy writing: people being places they have no reason to be for the sake of plot.

As if to press that point, at the 37:00 mark, Detective Lance pays his daughter a visit. Apparently neither of them are busy enough with their work.

No further shots are fired during the episode, which seems to make it a light episode in comparison to the pilot.