Well, it’s about time.
After two seasons of seeing Felicity develop into one of the most endearing characters on television, we finally delve into her backstory with “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak”, a flawed, yet thoroughly entertaining, episode that features an average script elevated by excellent performances from Emily Bett Rickards and Charlotte Ross.
“What do you think I see?”
“Death.”
When Alison and Noah head on a trip to Block Island, we know that they’re trying to escape the worlds they inhabit, the families they’re parts of, the obligations that permeate their environments. However, by escaping together, they can’t escape each other, and it becomes almost inevitable that they learn more about pasts and fears and desires and mindsets. There’s clear tension as each person delves deeper into the other, but after all is said and done, they grow even closer, even more emotionally and physically connected. The affair is really on.
“Take the shot.”
Before Aayan Ibrahim is gunned down in this episode, the story seems to be going in the direction we expect it to go: Aayan will find some way to stay alive, Carrie will continue to juggle her feelings for him a la Brody, and Haqqani will elude the Americans until somewhere around episode twelve. However, that’s not the case, and Aayan’s death is the jumpstart this season needs moving forward.
“A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.”
Riggan Thomson was once a movie star, someone who donned a Birdman costume and raked in millions as fans scrambled over each other to buy their tickets. Now, he’s been replaced by the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Michael Fassbender–both name dropped in the film–and is in the theater business, putting together Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. He’s struggling to stay relevant, to still “exist”, in a world driven by social media and blockbusters and viral videos, and Iñárritu’s film becomes an examination of a man both driven and brought down by his ego, of a man whose earlier fame follows him around like a shadow.
THE KELLY FILE: This isn’t a bad cold open, but it doesn’t really get going until Kate McKinnon’s Kaci Hickox starts talking about dishing out M&Ms to kids with her bare hands and until Moynihan’s Christie shows up at her house to have a slap fest. GRADE: C+
MONOLOGUE: Oh, how I love when the audience is uncomfortable. The monologue pushes all the buttons Rock intends to push as he goes on about the Boston Marathon, and he is absolutely fearless here; that’s what I like. He’s also very funny as well, and it’s clear that stand up routines make for the best monologues. GRADE: A-
“Apparently, we both handle grief differently.”
We saw this idea in “Sara” with regards to Felicity and Oliver, and we see it again–albeit in a different context–in “The Magician”. Oliver Queen is someone who always seems to be at a distance from those around him, someone who is intent on protecting those he loves, but also someone who dons a suit and plays the role of a vigilante. It may oftentimes place him on a different wavelength from the people populating his world, but it helps him just as much as it may hurt him.
“Pretenders” slowly reveals itself as it progresses, developing from a standard case of the week into an essential piece in the overlying Samaritan storyline. The show’s always been great at balancing its two aspects, propelling its main stories while serving up cases that are not merely peripheral; rather, they all tie in with each other somehow, and the themes explored are very relevant throughout.
“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.”
“Eldorado” is about the world moving on, about the world continuing to spin as former powerhouses like Nucky Thompson and Al Capone are left in the dust and newcomers like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky rise to take control. This changing of the guard is encapsulated by Nucky’s encounter with a “woman from the future” and a primitive television, and it’s a David Lynch-ian scene that represents how the past is becoming the future, how the world is perpetually changing and bringing new generations, how the earth remains forever, but the people don’t.
“Don’t wake up.”
The following is said by both Noah and Alison while they’re having sex with Helen and Cole, respectively, and it nicely sums up what they’d like to be the norm with regards to the affair: they get to have it, but they also get to keep their spouses from waking up, from seeing the truth, from bringing a fantasy back down to Earth with a hard thud. This is, however, one of the few similarities in the two stories, as the show begins to widen the divide between Noah and Alison in the present while it’s bringing them closer in the past.
“You’re the only family I have.”
The thing about Carrie Mathison is that for all her intelligence, for all her abilities to manipulate and extract the truth and expose who she wants to expose, she oftentimes gets in over her head emotionally. We saw it with Brody, and we’re now definitely seeing it with Aayan as well; she’s excellent when it comes to drawing him in, but at the same time, she may not realize that she’s drawing herself in, too.
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