Spoilers below!
1.) Plot’s really moving forward!
Arrow’s always been a fairly action-heavy show but, man, this episode really picked up the pacing. Diggle performs the show’s millionth fake kidnapping to get information out of Moira for Ollie, the team pulls off a heist to get information from Merlyn, Tommy screams about his ex-girlfriend, it’s almost like I’m watching a superhero show or something. Next week is the season finale, so all the plotlines regarding Merlyn’s “Undertaking” are building towards a boiling point. As tolerable as other episodes have been, I think this has been one of the recent few that was actually really fun to watch. Granted, John Barrowman’s master plan continues to elude making sense, but that comes less from the writers not knowing what to do and more the characters taking crazy jumps in logic. With all the action building up, it felt like the show was embracing its role as a superhero drama for once; which it kind of needs to do more often. Less scenes revolving around rich people crying over each other and more scenes with heroes drugging a security guard with a hamburger.
2.) Oh hey again, island.
This week marked the return of the island in the flashbacks after last episode’s focus on the events from before the shipwreck. Here, Ollie and Co. are taken to Evil British Mercenary headquarters where Evil British Mercenary forces Yao Fei to record a message to China framing him for the plane explosion (on Ferris Airlines hahahhAHAHH) that the British mercenaries will actually be performing. Yao Fei complies, even though he’s saying the message in English for a Chinese audience, but is then shot in the head by Evil British Mercenary. Ollie and Shado scream and I’m still not entirely sure what’ s happening here? The British mercenaries are probably working on a prototype Starling City destroyer for Merlyn but I’m not too sure? Hopefully next week will elaborate more.
3.) I’m radioactive radioactive.
Ollie re-hooks up with Laurel and, like the character of Laurel Lance, there’s nothing too remarkable about it. However, the show was somehow able to scrounge up enough cash to get the rights to “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons to play in the middle of this bang party. However, the real purpose behind the song comes when Ollie and Laurel start love-smackin’ by her apartment’s window where Tommy is just standing around watching. Gee, I hope this doesn’t propel him to be a villain or anything. He could be deadly. Radioactive, even. Because the chorus of “I’m Radioactive” plays right as we close in on his face. Subtlety.
4.) Where do we go from here?
So, the episode concludes with Arrow confronting John Barrowman over the plan to blow up the poor section of Starling City. Ollie fires an arrow to kill him, when John catches the arrow and reveals himself as Dark Archer.
Or Archer Rival.
Or John Arrowman.
Perfect.
Anyway, Arrowman and Arrow have an intense fight in which Arrowman kicks Ollie against the floor and breaks his neck, potentially killing him. He takes off Arrow’s hood, sees Ollie’s face, and realizes the gravity of what’s just occurred. Or at least until next week when Ollie turns out fine.
5.) Behind the Scenes
Alright this has next to nothing to do with the episode, but the CW did show a commercial about the casting process of Arrow and it was enlightening. Basically, Marc Guggenheim and Greg Berlanti held skype auditions with first year drama students who, in the end, weren’t considered for the show but were able to be on a commercial for the show about how they didn’t get in. All so a teenager could write about them on the internet. Really working that theater degree there. The real revelation here came from where the producers show off how they like to have fun between auditions by playing the fakest game of Forza I’ve ever seen. They’re playing on an Xbox 360 with Windows tablets for controllers while trying desperately to look like they’re playing something. Microsoft does a lot of product placement on CW shows, but this was overkill.
Review Score: 8.4. Watch.
