TVSquad

(S09E05) Tonight we get an Oliver-centric episode that finally resolves his issues. Good! Now we can get to the more interesting dramas of the series such as that with Major Zod and his time-traveling Kryptonian army.

I had a myriad of questions about certain inconsistencies of the episode. No matter how wrecked Oliver was, how did he get so stupid as to swallow a pill given to him by a stranger in a casino? How did he get a flashlight while in the coffin? What casino takes car keys as collateral? Fortunately, they wrapped it up all neatly at the end by blaming Chloe for all his troubles during the episode.
I do have one question: what was with the white suit? Did they just want to extenuate the blood and dirt of Oliver's situation? His dry cleaner is going to curse the day he was born when he brings in that suit. Mind you, Oliver has enough money to just get throw it away and get another suit.

I would even ask why Lois was doing laundry at Clark's, but we learned that answer, too. "How does a guy with nine phone numbers not return phone calls?" That's a dealbreaker! (It's an inside joke for those of us who managed to catch both this show and 30 Rock this week.)

In the comics, Roulette kidnaps super-powered folk and has them fight each other while taking bets on the fight. In this version, she's more like the character of Arcade from the X-Men. She puts heroes through trials and tribulations just to bet on whether they can get out of it.

When she said "they found us," I said to the television "Of course they found you! You only ran twenty feet down the street!" Fortunately, the television didn't answer back.

Between taking the pill and accessing his bank account from someone else's laptop, Oliver really had a case of the stupids tonight. It's a great bank though. My bank usually has some sort of time delay in showing any changes to my bank balance.

Lois did find out that Clark was there during Oliver's suicide attempt, but at least the whole Blur secret identity is still under wraps. For a guy with a variety of vision powers, Clark has to be a little more cognizant regarding video cameras.

One thing shown tonight was Chloe's growing ruthlessness in accomplishing things. Perhaps that very trait will lead to her (seeming) death in Lois' visions. The Lois-vision subplot obviously took a backseat this week, but will likely be back soon.

While it wrapped up nicely, having Chloe hire Roulette to get Oliver back on track was a bit of a lame plot device. But hey, it's Smallville. I'm sure the writing will improve when Geoff Johns steps in.

Despite the poor episode quality, it's still nice to have Green Arrow back. While I don't think trick arrows are going to stop an army of super-people, it's good to have some semblance of the Justice League around.

[Watch episodes of Smallville at SlashControl.]