Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Ready... Aim... Misfire!
By Tippi Blevins | Season 9 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.29.2010
Training facility. Oliver runs in, shouting for Mia. Dude, you sent her away, remember? He sees a big, blood-red message painted on one wall: "When the student is ready, the master appears." Oliver swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing around inside his collar. There's a dripping red Spirograph painted beneath the message. At this point, I was still hopeful of a logical denouement to this story. I mean, the message fits with Vordigan's earlier confrontation with Mia, right? He, in his own whackjob way, is trying to help Oliver live up to his destiny, right? Keep watching.
Vordigan is leading a bound and hooded Mia through a dark forest. He tells her he taught Green Arrow almost everything he knows. "Now it's time for my prize student to come back home," he says. Mia doesn't think he's coming back for the "class reunion," but Vordigan thinks he'll come for her. He yanks off Mia's hood and shoves her to the ground. In the second it takes for her to sit up, he's disappeared. As she holds her bound hands before her, an arrow slices through the air and cuts the ropes. How considerate for a psycho cultist kidnapper. Mia frantically runs through some tall, well-groomed trees. As the camera swoops up, we look down at her. She's standing in the middle of a gigantic hedge maze in the shape of the Celtic Spirograph. Kind of a blatant advertisement for a supposedly secret society, don't you think? Commercials.
Oliver is stalking through the forest, decked out in his full Green Arrow costume and adhering to the Corey Hart dress code of wearing one's sunglasses at night. Vordigan's voice calls out through the darkness: "At last! The apprentice heeds his master's call!" I'm surprised he didn't throw in a "Hark!" or "Forsooth!" in there somewhere. Oliver glances around. An arrow shoots Oliver's bow out of his hand. He reaches into his thigh holster for some kind of bow... gun... thingie. Vordigan steps out into the path, bow and arrow at the ready. "You know why you're here," he says. Oliver pulls back his hood and takes off his sunglasses. "Our paths split a long time ago," Oliver says. "You took your vows, Oliver; now it's time to fulfill them," Vordigan says. If you didn't watch this, you have to imagine the tone and delivery of their dialog is like... Well, imagine the absolutely most melodramatic role-playing nerds you ever knew, and then imagine them trying to pretend they're in a Shakespearean tragedy, except it's actually a parody and nobody told them. Oliver says he can't follow in his master's footsteps. Vordigan says he knows his best years are done and he was badly wounded for the first time recently. "Because I wasn't fast enough, physically or mentally. I realized the process of decay has begun." And finally... finally we come to the actual motivation for this entire plot: The society's rules say that a master must "leave this world" while he's still strong. He wants Oliver to kill him as part of his final test. Seriously. The guy's, like, ten years older than Oliver. Plus, what in the hell was all this bother with the "no disciples, no lovers, no allies" crap? Vordigan's reason for hunting down Oliver has nothing to do with that! Nor does it have anything to do with Oliver being "ready," like the blood-red sign said! Vordigan just wants to leave the world before he ends up like Larry King and he wants Oliver to do the deed. Oliver says he learned many things, like what kind of man he did and didn't want to become. "Some men don't get to choose who they become," Vordigan says. It's all fraught with meaning, or at least it's supposed to be, but we've never seen this guy or even heard of him so it's kind of meaningless. "Your heart is dark like mine, Oliver." Oliver disagrees. When he saw Vordigan's true colors, he left. "Come ooonnnn, Oliver," Vordigan says in an unintentionally hilarious way. He says Oliver left not for some high moral reason, but because he liked the thrill of the hunt just a little too much. Oh, dear God. Oliver still refuses to kill him. Vordigan's reply is so awfully overwrought that I feel I must transcribe it here: "I will hunt down and kill your apprentice, and when you see her dead body, the dark heart in you will rise up, and you will hunt me down, and take vengeance!" Oliver shoves him up against a tree and once again refuses to kill him. Come on, he deserves to die for his awful lines alone! Oliver steps back. Vordigan grabs him, throws him up against the tree, then sticks him in place with an arrow through the hand. Oliver: "Argh!"