Roulette

DVD, Smallville S9 (Roulette)

There's no better way of getting out of the dumps than having your life put at risk in a series of torture games, or at least, that's what Oliver Queen discovers in this conclusion to his latest arc. His feelings of guilt and self-hate, lack of desire to live, and even self-pity are resolved by a forced fight for survival, reviving his flagging self-confidence and honing abilities he'd abandoned in exchange for drinking, gambling and casual liaisons. So it's ironic that it's exactly these things that draw him in to the little sadistic game he must play. I was also at first drawn in by the surprising turn of events, though they were rather cliched, even for this series, as they've long loved to have one of the characters locked up somewhere with some villain enacting controlled peril for them in order to teach them a lesson they'll never forget, or make them suffer for the sake of revenge, or even some other motives, none of which spring to mind right now. I like it when a character has to get down and dirty, not hang around in smart suits, sipping drinks like they're James Bond, but pounding the streets, so it was a pleasant novelty to have a character lying in puddles, jumping through broken glass, or trapped in rusty cars, for a change. After initial intrigue I couldn't help but allow my cynicism about the series to surface, suspecting that all these tricks and striking imagery or situations wouldn't really go anywhere, and would be a disappointment, and if I'm honest, I was right, but not entirely.

I believed in the scenario, that it was somebody Queen had hurt in the past, and I was left wondering if it would be someone we knew, a comeback for a villain (though I never was fooled by the Lex Luthor coffin, as he was never likely to come back, unless it was in the final season, perhaps) - Queen suspects the Toy Man, which would be a reasonable guess considering he was in it recently (prompting Oliver's suicide attempt where he stepped off what he thought was a pressure pad for a bomb), and survived, so we know he'll be back. But it wasn't him, and he was discounted pretty quickly. It might turn out to be a new character that was nevertheless from Queen's past, but which we'd not heard of, and to be honest I didn't particularly care who it was, as I was more interested in the potential for the situation he was put in. I was on the right track, without realising it, when I thought this experience would force Oliver to dust off his skills and intelligence, and start to think beyond his own befuddled brain, something that could only be a good thing. And I was right, really, the message being that when you start to think about others, your own pain and problems become secondary, and shrink. Oliver still retained a sense of morality inside, despite his desperation and resorting to the dregs of his playboy persona to escape this higher calling, shown when he goes after the girl at the end, to save even someone who'd wronged him.

Everything had the air of unreality, a fantasy world that if it had been shot differently, or had been in other sci-fi, such as 'Star Trek,' I'd have assumed was a drug-induced hallucination, or something that was happening in his mind, or even an alternate reality, but although this series is fantastical (usually in the logic and reality of its settings and characters rather than a strange change in nature each episode!), it usually makes things happen for real, as outlandish as that can often be. It's become ever less grounded as the seasons have flashed by, so much so that almost anything could be possible - but I was thinking it wasn't real when he goes back to Club Roulette and then a guy starts fighting him for no reason. This is where I felt Chloe's script broke down (and spoiler alert, yes, it was all Chloe's plot, not some super villain - she'd make a great enemy for Superman in future, if she deemed it necessary!), with the grip on reality loosening almost completely. Where was he going with the girl with the dragon tattoo, Victoria? When she was shot I thought she was probably fine, just acting, another twist in the game - you'd think that he'd have gone somewhere other than the club where it all started when he came to, however. And then with the police, that seemed phoney right from the start - I hope the guys Chloe got to play those roles kept a low profile, I hear it's quite an offence to impersonate officers of the law! And then when the FBI man's telling Oliver that this supposed gang play this game on rich people, then suck their money dry, followed by him wanting Oliver to log into his account, well…

We can put Oliver's lack of suspicion down to bewilderment at the events that had happened to him, a shock to the system that had dragged him out of his slump of despair (nicely montaged in the opening scenes), straight into some kind of Indiana Jones film, or 'Buried' (though that film came out the following year, and being trapped in a coffin isn't an exclusive idea, anyway). From the first escape I thought this was going to be an ingenious series of puzzles Oliver would have to escape from, so I was mildly disappointed that he was soon out of the warehouse. It didn't immediately signal that the episode wasn't going to live up to the premise, however, as I quite enjoyed the fun little film night Lois had planned for her and Clark, with Clark having to keep making excuses for nibbles and drinks every time he needed to be out saving someone, which is always great to see. And I appreciated the contrast these domestic, social scenes made for Oliver's seeming life and death struggle, occurring at the same time. But even so, things did die down, and Clark helped him escape, even though his funds had been completely emptied. He had billions in that one account, and perhaps we were meant to think this was some kind of overarching access for all his individual accounts, because no one that rich would keep all his eggs in one basket, he'd have money invested in property, business, etc, so it couldn't have been true when Oliver says he's bankrupt! No one would even store that much money - if they had it, it'd be working for them. Okay, perhaps the interest was more than enough to justify it, but it gave the strong impression of dumbing down to keep things simple for a simple audience.

Then he decides to go back, and at the same time Lois is out looking for him, after a strange scene where they go to his place and she jumps straight on his computer and immediately finds a video of the night he almost committed suicide by stepping off the bomb platform, then blaming Clark for not telling her. This is where I felt the episode lost itself in the usual disappointing super soap strand of plotting, people shocked and whining at each other, and it was losing me. And yet again, it was odd that Queen goes back to Roulette, and Lois is a captive, he almost shoots her, but Victoria shoots at him, and then she runs off and gets trapped in an explosion in the next room… I guessed the answer mere moments before the mirrors turned round, that it was himself that the 'villain' had been referring to as the person Queen had destroyed, so while it wasn't a big reveal for me (even though it happened seconds later), I still thought it was a nice twist, though I didn't guess it was Chloe's doing, with the help of their Justice League mates. The fact we don't see any of the group, even though Oliver mentions how each one must have done this or that, really lets the episode down, making it seem cheap and missing something that it needed: a reunion where Oliver's morale is further boosted by his allies and friends. We could even have ended on a high and left it at that, which we did to a degree (with Green Arrow and The Blur standing together atop a skyscraper, with the intention of continuing their fight), but only in a small way.

I was also glad that the slightly boring subplot of the location of Kryptonian symbols/soldiers didn't play into it more than it did, revealing to the heroes they're around the globe (convolutedly by Clark noticing a symbol on the shoulder of someone he thought he'd beaten in a previous episode, on the footage of Oliver being forced to make his speech, and Clark asking Jor-El about it and reporting back), because we already knew it, so the good guys are playing catchup. It's not a plot I care about, I don't care that the new guy playing Zod, Callum Blue, has barely been in most of the episodes, because it just doesn't interest me, and Oliver's mental state actually was more interesting. But as a whole, even with Lois going all teary-eyed on Oliver, and him feeling a connection with her again, couldn't stop me from realising I'd rather enjoyed the story. It was beyond probable (how did Chloe recruit all these actors in her little charade, and why go to so much trouble when she could have had a serious talk with Oliver? - the second question's easier to answer: he needed a wakeup call to revive his life), but it had a positive, upbeat message, friends doing everything they could to help, and a greater sense of family. I hope Lois' tantrum over Clark never telling her about Oliver's brush with death on the bomb, won't become the next running theme, but as it stands, this is certainly the first episode of this season that I can comfortably say has worked for me. Just remember kids, never take sweets from strangers!

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