Arrow: 5 Things That "The Calm" Did Right (And 3 It Didn't)

The Not-So-Good:

3. Too Much Going On

And now, moving on to what didn't work so well, we have the fact that huge romantic beats were not the only plot elements of which there were ridiculously many. There's nothing wrong with a fast-paced hour of television; on the contrary, any episode of a show that features a big enough moment to not leave viewers checking their watches every few minutes is generally a good one. The problem with "The Calm" is that there were so very many big moments crammed into a single installment, and none were given the time to sink in. The final five minutes saw the birth of Diggle's daughter, a Hong Kong flashback, Oliver and Felicity's kiss, the Barry Allen phone call, and Sara's death. Any one of these would be enough to end a premiere satisfactorily, but the combination was too much. Roy's disarming of a bomb that would have killed upwards of 20,000 innocent civilians is an afterthought in the overall scheme, and the first several flashbacks are a blur. Additionally, certain scenes needed time to breathe, and the actors more time to deliver their lines. Oliver's heartbreak after Felicity walks away is abbreviated by the immediacy with which he answer his phone. Half of the dialogue in the foundry is so speedy as to be difficult to understand, and the entire scene when Oliver arrives back to the lair carrying a bloody and unconscious Felicity feels as though it was never properly fleshed out. "The Calm" would have made an excellent two-parter, and the additional time would have given the plot enough room to breathe that it would rank as one of the better season premieres of this fall.