Warning: Your level of care for this pairing may determine how tolerable this episode is
What They Say:
After defeating Ra’s Al-Ghul, Oliver’s decided to put the vigilante life behind him and retires out in the suburbs with Felicity. However when a new threat run by Damien Darke appears, Oliver must once again take up the hood. This time though he’s decided to take on the title of “Green Arrow” and vows to be the symbol of hope the old Arrow wasn’t, but will Oliver be able to escape the darkness of his past so easily?
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Once again, this season of Arrow has somehow managed to turn what would otherwise be a frustrating episode on paper into a solid one…mostly. This week’s antics center around last week’s cliffhanger involving Ray, which, of course, means some Olicity drama. Given how…”well” that material went over during last season’s events I was expecting something painful, but what we get on that end is pretty grounded, though sadly at the expense of everything else.
So after finding out Ray’s actually alive, Felicity begins a desperate search to find him. It’s a little too desperate for Oliver’s tastes though and his attempts to get her to take things a bit easy (one of which includes the return of Felicity’s mom to the show) only end up causing tension between them. Eventually we find out the true reason behind Felicity’s obsession is that she feels guilty about Ray’s fate and blames herself for getting too distracted by Oliver but conversely Oliver feels a bit insecure about how much Felicity cares for him over Ray. Both manage to get some much-needed relationship advice, though, and manage to patch things up while successfully springing Ray from Darke’s clutches.
Frankly, a lot of your tolerance for this material will probably depend on how much you buy into the Olicity dynamic, but thankfully I do, so this came off as fairly compelling. However, as I think I mentioned in a previous review, the show seems a little too determined to sell that dynamic this season and it’s convincing me more and more Felicity will end up being the character death teased at the beginning of the season. Really hoping that’s not the case since stuffing love interests in the fridge is always a cheap tactic for a show to pull, and while I wouldn’t put it past Arrow to do that I want to believe the show can rise above doing something that cliche.
Sadly, though, since the episode is surprisingly laser focused on the Olicity stuff, what side plots we get feel a bit shortchanged. Sarah’s return to Team Arrow leads to gruesome results as her murderous impulses get to strong, eventually culminating in her leaving the team…again. Thea’s side plot this week doesn’t fare much better as we get just a couple of brief scenes dedicated to her starting up a relationship with Oliver’s campaign strategist in an attempt to bring some level of normality back to her life. Both of these would be fine with more time spent on them, but there’s so little devoted to either that it almost would have been a stronger episode if they were omitted entirely. This is especially bad in the former’s case since it’s a pretty blatant way of shoehorning her off the show so she can be in the Legends of Tomorrow spinoff and it feels a little unnatural.
The flashbacks are on the slow end as well this week, but there is some progress. Oliver starts to piece together that Constantine may have been right about Reiter delving into the supernatural. but there’re bigger things for him to worry about since the soldier who’s been suspecting him for the last couple of episodes finally to set him up to be exposed. As a whole, this is probably the weakest episode of the season so far, but it’s not a horrible one, and hopefully next week’s gets things back on an upward trend.
In Summary:
This week’s Arrow is almost 90% Olicity centric, and while that would sound like a drag given how relationship drama tends to work in this show, it actually makes for some strong material. Sadly the same can’t be said for the other 10% as the side stuff suffers and especially in the case of Sarah’s sendoff since way too little time is spent on it for how significant a character she’s been throughout the series. This is the lowest the season’s gotten so far which kinda sucks, but on the bright side if this is as low as things get this season could still be a winner. Here’s to some improvement for next week.
Grade: B-
