Stop it, Arrow. Stop messing with me. You’re featuring the Huntress in your first season, your creators have made sure to leave room for a female Speedy a la Mia Dearden, and John Barrowman is on hand to play some sort of mysterious figure.
And yet I see clips of stilted dialogue and have to groan so loud the neighbor’s dog starts barking. Now you’ve cast the actor behind one of my favorite Battlestar Galactica characters and his cheekbones for at least one episode, possibly as a recurring role. I’m just saying, Arrow. I’m having trouble maintaining a comfortable level of indifference to whether you succeed or fail, and it’s all your fault.
Tahmoh Penikett played Karl ‘Helo’ Agathon for the duration of Battlestar Galactica, pulling double duty as the father of the only human-Cylon hybrid and the show’s most reliable moral compass. He’s also familiar to nerds for playing Paul Ballard on Joss Whedon‘s short-lived series (half-way redundant, I know) Dollhouse.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Penikett will be appearing in Arrow as Tom Salvati, second-in-command to mob boss Frank Bertinelli, a.k.a., the Huntress’ father. We don’t know whether he’ll appear just in the inaugural Huntress episode of the first season, or earlier, whether he’ll just be around once, or be a recurring character. It’s probably too much to hope that Salvati would be a morally complicated ally or attempted protector or confidant or something to a Helena Bertinelli character on the cusp of devoting her life to destroying the crime organization her family built as a costumed vigilante… that sounds like the kind of complexity we’d get out of a show about the Huntress, not one where she’s just a secondary character.
Yeah, yeah. Give me moment to lower my expectations.
Okay I’m good. We’ve got less than a month until your premiere, Arrow. You can’t disappoint me if I don’t get my hopes up.
(via The Hollywood Reporter.)
