Arrow 'Honour Thy Father': Oliver Is A New Man

After having such a great pilot episode, Arrow soon gathered rave about its success and excitement for the rest of the series. As Tv.com's review mentioned, it is always hard to follow up after a pilot episode, and Arrow faced this challenge itself. With Honour Thy Father, Arrow decided to develop its characters more and take them for a field to feel them out. In a way, a test to see what works and what will not. I hope Arrow will learn from this and use it throughout the series.

So Honor Thy Father starts off with Oliver in action as his other persona going after another target on his father's list. This is where the catch phrase of the day (hopefully not the whole series), "you failed this city" is introduces as Oliver makes him give up the money Marcus Redmond had embezzled.  Next day, Oliver is back at his place, getting ready for court to legally declare him alive. I must say this is the first time ever I have seen a character having being legally declared alive in a television show. After being officially declared alive, Oliver runs into Laurel and Martin Somers (Ty Olson), a man on his father's list, outside the courtroom. Somers soon becomes Oliver's next target for justice, and tracks him down.

Back in his everyday life, Oliver's mother and Walter bring him to Queen Consolidated, and tell Oliver that they want him to take over the company. Something Oliver clearly doesn't want since it might affect his hidden agenda. This is where Arrow went right, and didn't attempt to make a balancing act that could have been too much work to maneuver throughout the story. This brings us to a nice scene with Laurel and Oliver as Oliver tells her about the situation with his mother while sharing ice cream. Cause you know, manly men eat ice cream. Their conversation is interrupted when assassins break in to Laurel's place on Somer's orders to kill her. This makes it personal for Oliver as he heads after Somer once again.

Now I enjoyed Honor Thy Father as it held some surprises and character development. First and foremost we see Oliver resign himself to the fact that he is not going to be the person people want him to be. In addition to that he needs to let people in. This revelation from Thea as she mentioned that she felt more closer to Oliver when he was "dead". Next thing I would like to mention, and its something I don't normally mention and that is I found the camera work in this episode done well. Especially the scenes on the island where it is all shake hand cam like. It gave the scene more of a desperate and realistic feeling to it than the scenes shot in present day Star City. I would like to point out that the ending creates even more mysteries especially the SPOILER since it didn't even have SPOILERS inside when Oliver found it.

Arrow found in Honor Thy Father a couple sags in its storyline. As I mentioned above, I don't think there has ever been an legally declaration of live before on television history. Not sure how I feel about that. There is also the matter of "You failed this city", and how it feels a bit cheesy. Are they trying to give him a catch phrase? I also found it really weird and random that Oliver felt the need to work out on screen while the plot was being explained. I get that its for the girls, but it was already stated back in Pilot that Oliver is a buff as hell. Which bring me to my next point of Arrow recycling its music. Remember in Pilot the music Oliver worked out to? Well its appearing that Arrow is determined to keep using it over and over again. I sure hope thats not the theme music for Arrow.

Now that Arrow is over its second hump with Honor Thy Father, it can start delving into more of the plot point opened up by these two episodes. Arrow can take it at a good pace, and make it something great. Next week is Lone Gunman, and we meet Deadshot.