"Sara" had all of the components needed for a great hour of television. The premiere had been so packed with action that its follow-up really didn't need to do much more than coast on its momentum into the rest of the season. No big twists or turns were needed. Just...progress. The problem with "Sara" was that the main plot didn't accomplish anything by the end of the episode. The stakes were never raised beyond the need to discover the identity of Sara's killer. There was no sense of urgency, and any suspense that built into the story by the climax fizzled out upon the reveal that Komodo actually had nothing to do with Sara's death, thus leaving Team Arrow as clueless as in the teaser. Komodo became a filler antagonist, which absolutely should not have been the case in such a pivotal episode. If he had been written as a cog in a villainous machine or a pawn to the real big bad behind Sara's death, his capture might have had some weight to it, and the mystery of Sara's killer might have some intrigue to it. As it is, the mystery of Season 5 so far isn't so much of a "Whodunnit?!" as a "...Who cares?" and "Sara died for this?" Honestly, the biggest question to arise out of this episode is how all 47 pounds of Laurel Lance was able to drag Sara's limp body of pure muscle from the alleyway and down into the foundry without so much as jostling the arrangement of arrows embedded in her abdomen.
Fiction buff and writer. If it's on Netflix, it's probably in my queue. I've bought DVDs for the special features and usually claim that the book is better than the movie or show (and can provide examples). I've never met a TV show that I won't marathon. Follow on Twitter @lah9891 .
