Arrow Recap: “Dodger”
Original Air Date (CW): Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Season 1 Episode 15
by Eric Levy:
WARNING: This article contains spoilers.
A collar bomb-loving criminal is in Starling City, Roy Harper makes his CW debut, and love is in the air—the perfect recipe for an almost perfect episode.
Notice how I said almost…
Arrow is hands down, in my opinion, one of the better shows on television right now. Its fast paced, full of action, and gives comic book fans something to talk about on a weekly basis. However, it suffers from some flaws that bring back memories of another show involving a DC heavy-hitter. I’m talking about Smallville—the show about Clark Kent’s journey of growing up in a fictional Kansas town, and realizing his full potential as he very slowly becomes the Man of Steel.
One of Smallville’s issues, at least early on, was the villain-of-the-week that Clark had to face—each seemingly from his own town, and given powers by the same meteor shower that brought Clark to earth.
Arrow has somewhat adopted that concept, but I will say, at least they aren’t no-name meteor-freaks. Rather, the show’s creative team has brought in notable characters from the DC Universe to play Oliver’s antagonists.
This week’s episode, “Dodger,” showed us a bad guy who was itching to make an explosive impact. I mean this literally. He attaches bombs to people’s necks in order to make them do what he wants. He is called the Dodger, and he has an acquired taste for fine jewels.
In between a budding romance—I’ll get to that in a bit—Oliver looks to take Dodger down. Does he get the job done? What do you think?
James Callis played the role of Dodger, and did a decent job of portraying the DC villain. The character wasn’t my favorite so far of the show—that award goes to The Count. I hope we see him again before the season is over. It seems like his drug, Vertigo, is having some lasting effects in this series, as it is mentioned by Roy Harper in this episode.
That brings me to our next special appearance. After weeks of fan anticipation, Roy Harper finally showed up in Starling City. Played by Teen Wolf star, Colton Haynes, Harper acts as a thief who steals Thea’s purse. For those of you who don’t know who Roy Harper is, he was at one point in his life what Robin is to Batman—at least in the comics. It appears, for the time being, that he will be serving a different role in his TV adaptation on Arrow.
The subplot of “Dodger” gave us a look at the softer side of Oliver and Diggle as Digg tries to get something going with his “former” sister-in-law, Carly (she was married to his brother, but he has since died) and Oliver looked to rekindle an old flame with McKenna, the detective handling the Dodger case. However, Detective Lance assigns McKenna to “The Hood” duty going forward—this could makes things complicated in the future.
The end of the episode showed Moira meeting up with a familiar face from earlier Arrow shows, China White—a member of the Chinese Triad. Moira has a special task for China White: kill Malcolm Merlyn.
So, it appears that Malcolm will be heavily involved in next week’s episode, “Dead to Rights.” In the preview, we even see him glancing at his “dark archer” suit. It’s been months since Oliver was attacked by Malcolm and put in the hospital. Since that time, there has been almost no mention of the “dark archer,” or what he did to “The Hood.” I’m sure I’m not the only one who is anticipating the follow-up confrontation between the two.
Also shown in next week’s preview is Deadshot, who will be making his 2nd Arrow appearance. I thought he was dead! Anyway, something tells me that he isn’t too happy with what “The Hood” did to him.
If you haven’t seen the preview, here it is. Enjoy.
See you next time, Arrow Heads.
Eric Levy covers the hit CW TV show Arrow for DarkMedia. He is a comic book enthusiast who loves to read, watch, and write about his favorite characters. You can follow Eric on Twitter at @LifeinStrips. You can also check out his blog at lifeinstrips.blogspot.com
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