#9.10 “Disciple” Review

SPOILER WARNING: There are spoilers in this review. Stop reading now if you don’t like to learn important plot points before seeing the episode, but come back when you’re done.

Well, this was a bit of a letdown. I don’t know, maybe if the wait hadn’t been so long and this hadn’t been mostly about Oliver I would have liked this episode more…

I suppose it was well done, overall, so another competent episode from writer Jordan Hawley. The pacing was pretty good, but I did find myself getting bored at several points. And there were other problems: I was a bit confused by a few things.

Why did people keep saying that Oliver was acting like someone else? Chloe even thought he might be suffering from Dissociative Personality Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder or split personality). I can kinda see why everyone would, given what they’d been led to believe by the little they had known or had seen with what was happening in this episode, but as far as the writing is concerned, it was a bit clumsy. Other people thinking that Oliver was having problems distinguishing delusion from reality seemed to have been a bit of ham-handed attempt to insert some doubt into the viewers’ minds of who it was that had been terrorizing the women around him.

But even if I hadn’t had already known the ‘Dark Archer’ was going to be paying Oliver a visit, I don’t do spoilers but I had seen a few things online that indicated Steve Bacic was making a guest appearance as Oliver’s old mentor, I wouldn’t have bought Oliver going crazy. And Dark Arrow seems to be an original character loosely based on DC Comics character Merlyn, who is more than a villain than Vordigan was.

Yeah, Ollie’s still been having some problems, but at the conclusion of ‘Roulette’ I thought he was past the worst of that and nowhere close to crazy. So for him to suddenly have a split personality is more than a little bit out of left field. That’s a serious mental disorder that is developed over years, even decades…

I suppose that little thing that Chloe did to Oliver in ‘Roulette’ could have driven him crazy, like Chloe had mentioned later, but it had never even crossed my mind that Oliver had been to blame for the attacks on Lois and Chloe. Maybe it was partly because there wasn’t much in the way of suspense regarding the fact that the attacker was someone else, or at least that suspense didn’t last long. Vordigan showing up at the end act one getting dressed in the black version of Ollie’s Green Arrow outfit before Chloe had offered the I-might-have-gone-too-far-and-made-Oliver-crazy theory certainly didn’t help.

Maybe if that reveal had been done at a later time, it would have stretched out the suspense a little while longer and made the contrivance more successful. Maybe it would also have helped if they’d laid out MPD as a possibility in the last few episodes Oliver had appeared in, but there had been no hint at all prior to this episode for us to think that Oliver had a split personality. Does Oliver have problems handling his anger? Yeah, but does he seem like he has a split personality? No. I think as a suspension building plot-device (Did Oliver do it or didn’t he?), that failed miserably.

Another problem I had with this script was that the villain’s motivation really didn’t make sense. Why would any assassin cult require the mentor to be killed by the student? I guess it’s supposed to be a bit like the Sith Lords in Star Wars, where there are only two in addition to the Emperor. You train and kill your predecessor when you’re better than him, or he’s too old to carry on, or whatever. But I’m not sure how any real secret assassination cult could be sustained if the new guys are always killing off their teachers. It’s stupid, but similar storylines had been done in genre film and TV before so it’s not a new idea, but it makes for an awful motivation for a villain. There’s a fine line for any bad guy, you want him to be sympathetic, but also to be truly bad…. At heart, Vordigan didn’t seem like a truly a bad guy. If he’d wanted Chloe and Lois to die, he’s skilled enough he could have done it easily and probably gotten away clean.

Making their villains have some heart, without making them totally unbelievable as the bad guy in the process, isn’t something that “Smallville” has always done well.

They’ve had more than a few of their villains being not all that villainous. For example, as much as I liked ‘Hex’, Zatanna hadn’t really been much of a villain. In this episode, Vordigan was less villainous than he was suicidal. He’d gotten too old to do his ‘job’ and didn’t want to live if he couldn’t be an assassin anymore.

It’s actually sort of sad, he tried hard to get Oliver to do his duty and kill him when you’d think even an old assassin could find something else to do after retirement other than having a disciple kill him. Maybe Vordigan could take up a hobby, like fishing or knitting, or just take on new disciples and teach some kids how to kill using a bow and arrow.

So Vordigan, as villains go, was not very villainous. Maybe if he’d been a true enemy of Oliver’s instead of an old friend/mentor, or had really been a vicious killer, it might have worked better, but he had taught Oliver how to disable without killing. That proved he wasn’t exactly a cold blooded murderer so it didn’t really feel like anyone was in any true danger. Even at the end, when Vordigan was trying to kill Mia and both she and Oliver might finally have truly been in danger, of course Clark was there to block the arrows. Then Oliver had shot his old teacher in the shoulder at the same exact same spot that Vordigan had shot Lois. Thanks to Ollie’s earlier lesson about a disabling shot in the shoulder that was hard to make, yet doesn’t kill, I knew that Vordigan wasn’t in any immediate mortal danger.

Having rising stakes that don’t really cause much more than an inconvenience for the characters isn’t really escalating the action. Maybe that’s the reason I got bored: no one seemed to be in mortal danger.

However, I did like Oliver’s character arc in this episode. He changed from the start to the finish. In the beginning, he was in the very ascetic workout studio trying to get centered when he clearly wasn’t. He was troubled, his going overboard in his reaction to Mia doing a sneak attack on him was proof of that, and on top of that he obviously felt so guilty about putting Lois, Chloe and Mia into danger and he was still torn up by Lois dating Clark.

Although nowhere near crazy, he was clearly a man on the edge and Oliver struggled a lot with his emotions in this episode, but I think at the end in that final scene with Mia he seemed to have found a happier place mentally. This episode was transformative for him and was probably needed to help him get more peace with his place in the world as a Superhero. That will probably come in handy before the following episode, ‘Absolute Justice’ (the ‘Society,’ ‘Legends’ two-fer).

I also liked the through-line for Zod as he looked for the Book of Rao. He was clearly after something, what it was initially hard to tell, but it’s good that he wasn’t upfront with Clark. It wouldn’t have fit in with his character for him to up front with Clark. Zod’s smart, he knew being honest with Clark wouldn’t have worked. Clark doesn’t trust him and if he knew where this Book of Rao was, no way he’d give it to Zod.

So, Zod came at the problem obliquely, very slyly. He talked to Clark about other things, hoping to get a hint he’d seen it, or that he’d recognize parts of it, until he approached Lois and left a big old hint that anyone who knew what the sign of Rao looked like wouldn’t have missed. Very clever and it was nicely spread out over the course of the episode. I liked that his dialogue kept coming back to knowledge or acquiring it or sharing it. He talked to Clark about the human hoarding of knowledge even as Kryptonians were taught to share it. Then he talked to Lois said he could tell her about the real Clark Kent. In the last scene with Clark, the terrific one up on the roof of the Daily Planet, he even brought up lucky Kryptonian symbols, the symbol of Rao protecting people like the way they’re protected by the knowledge imparted in his book. It was a nice touch.

It tied into his quest for the missing Book of Rao, whatever that is, and I’m glad they didn’t reveal that was what he was after until the end. And I think it’s the first time this has been brought up, but the Book of Rao must be what Jor-El had hidden in that vent in Clark’s living room.

All in all, this was not a completely successful foray for Jordan. Yet, there were things I really liked about this episode… I think it set up some nice conflicts that will likely help raise the stakes for Clark and everyone for the rest of the season.

Tom Welling did a fantastic job as Clark. Probably my favorite parts were when he had scenes Clark had with Lois and Zod. Probably the thing I like most about Smallville right now is how nicely the romantic comedy moments are being handled between Clark and Lois. They have such good chemistry. Clark is almost humorless most of the time. It’s a nice break to see Tom play lighter scenes and act so earnestly with Erica as Lois. He makes it look so easy and I’m not sure how easy that is…

And the scenes Clark had with Zod were out of the park awesome. At first he played Clark as so cautious, but trying hard to play nice until Zod crossed that line with Lois. Then Tom played Clark as feeling that Zod had gone too far and made it believable that Clark lost his temper. He was like Superman, angry and resolved to do the right thing to protect someone he cares about. It was a completely awesome scene.

Allison Mack was terrific in this episode, even though she was really barely in it. Chloe was rightly suspicious of Oliver and, even though I think that part of the plot was nonsensical, Allison did a good job with what she was given.

Erica Durance was great in this episode. I like how she plays Lois walking the thin line between showing Clark how much he means to her and holding back so that she doesn’t scare him away. I’m not sure that’s all on the page, so I think a lot of what she does as Lois is more than what is written for her. I think doing stuff like that isn’t easy and yet she makes it look like part of who she is. The walk with Clark at the beginning was a great scene for her. She played Lois as a bit coy and standoffish, yet so charming it was easy to see why Clark was enchanted with her, even as she put off doing anything further until later. A lot of that was implied in the dialogue, but her inflections and the way she delivered her lines really added to that scene. Erica did a great job.

Callum Blue was marvelous as Zod in this episode. Probably my favorite scene of his was the first one he was in, after inviting himself into Clark’s kitchen. There was a lot of menace under the surface, yet Zod seemed to be playing nice with Clark, the persecuted man who worries for his own safety because he can’t have Clark’s powers. When Zod talked about the loss of his son, and that’s why he was innocent, I would have believed him if I hadn’t known that he was lying. What a remarkable moment for Callum, he dredged up a lot of emotion… I could almost see the gears moving in Zod’s head. I love Callum as Zod. He was terrific.

Justin Hartley turned in one of his better performances of the series. I liked how torn up and confused he had Oliver being as the women around him kept getting injured. Then, once he knew where the threat was coming from, he went into action and worked to intercede with Vordigan to save Mia. I liked Oliver much more in this episode than I had in past ones. I think Justin believably played Oliver as having changed during the course of this episode. Oliver had clearly made a journey, being different at the beginning from where he ended up by the closing credits.

Elise Gatien I thought did better in this outing than she’d done in her previous one as Mia. She seems to have a better take on the character now than she had then. Although Mia hadn’t had a definite character arc (or at least not much of one) I think her character felt better developed than she had before and Elise played her beautifully, with a touch of cynicism somehow believably combined with a rather sweet naïveté.

Steve Bacic, who played Vordigan/The Black Archer, was barely in this episode and to be honest, I’m not sure I can really say one way or another how well he did. I suppose he did pretty okay acting wise, but he was nearly perfect in his look for the part. He was big and muscular and there was menace in him. I liked the way he talked to Oliver at the end, trying to goad him into murder. He was very effective.

Director Mairzee Almas did an outstanding job in this episode. While I have some issues with the script choices, I didn’t have any problems what she had done. In fact, I liked quite a lot of what she did. I loved the opening long take with Clark and Lois that gave us Tom and Erica delivering that beautifully acted cute romantic comedy banter they do so well. I liked that they learned their lines well enough to keep talking during such a dialogue-filled long take and I liked that Mairzee trusted them to be up for it. It was a very good start to the episode.

I also liked a lot of the setups. The framing of Vordigan in the tease as he pulled his arrow back to fire at Lois was awesome. His dark form being silhouetted in the large globe of the moon was very dramatic. Mairzee also used long shots and long takes very well. She gave us another good looking episode with solid performances from the actors to boot. I always like seeing her name in the credits and this was another excellent outing from Mairzee.

Director of Photography Barry Donlevy did a fantastic job keeping the camera very mobile, giving his A Camera/Steadi Camera Operator Chris McMullin, a real workout. It made for a very dynamic episode and I liked the way the shots were framed. It was a beautifully shot episode.

Production Designer James Philpott did a terrific job. I liked Ollie’s new workout space. An un-powered human, of course Oliver needs to keep fit and a workout pad makes sense. It’s far sparer than I would have thought, but given Oliver’s frame of mind up until this point in the season the ascetic décor made sense.

Costume Designer Melanie Williams, Key Make-up Artist Tina Teoli and Key Hair Stylist Sarah Koppes did a great job making Erica Durance look even more awesome than normal. Even though we didn’t get anything close to a good look at the dress Lois wore to the benefit in the tease, she was wearing too long a coat for that, I loved the hair and make-up in that scene. Both she and Tom Welling looked awesome. And that dress Lois wore at the Ace of Clubs was perfect for Erica. It was a good color and I liked how it was draped, it fit her perfectly.

Although, I would have figured she would still have a bandage, or a visible scar, in that dress. It bared the part of her shoulder that would have shown the wound she got back in the first scene…

I also liked the colors that Allison Mack wore as Chloe. Her hair style was very attractive and her make-up was perfect for her. She looked fabulous, even while her costumes weren’t as flashy as Erica’s. That purple jacket and her make-up in that scene in Oliver’s office look terrific on her.

While I loved Vordigan’s costume, although I would have liked it to have been more form fitting like Oliver’s. Other than that, I really liked the dark take on Oliver’s Green Arrow costume.

However, I’d like to know where Vordigan got those three extra arrows he’d used to try and kill Mia. He had one arrow knocked into bow when he was chasing her around the hedgerow-maze and had four in the quivers on his back. He had used a couple of arrows before the final scene with him, yet when Oliver took him down, Vordigan still had four arrows in his quiver. Where did the extra arrows come from? Not sure if that was a props issue or a costuming issue, but I think someone in the production design department needs to learn how to count. (Or at least they need to have had made it far clearer where Vordigan had been keeping his extra arrows.)

I adored Louis Febre’s score. It was wonderful. The first scene was romantic and made more so by his score. In the more exciting scenes, the music was bigger and added to the tension as it should. It was another excellent outing by Louis.

This was not a perfect episode: the story was a bit on the contrived side and I was bored at points. However, the great sets, costumes and acting made this better than average. I’ll give this episode a little slack for that, 3.5 Rao Charms out a possible 5.

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