1) One overacting villain! Ha ha ha!
So this week’s episode introduced Arrow’s version of Count Vertigo. Here, he’s a drug dealer who saw Bane in The Dark Knight and thought “Yeah I can do that”. He talks like he learned how to read from a Highlights for Kids magazine written by one of Quentin Tarantino’s monologues. I won’t lie: he’s easily the best character this show has had. There’s one scene where he injects a guy with a doped up version of his drug, Vertigo, where, with a straight face, he says “You believe you are in pain, but you are only imagining it! It will pass in a couple of days and then your heart will give out”. Vertigo has the power to not only make you feel the pain of your heart giving out, but it also causes your heart to actually give out. That’s perfect. It should also be noted the The Count, also looks like Edward Cullen joined the Sex pistols. Only way he could have been better if at the end his last name was revealed to be Berger.
Perfect.
2.) Russians just know everyone.
A few weeks ago, Ollie approached the Russian mob to help get him some info on and meet up with Deadshot. This week, they showed up again to help Ollie by doing the same exact thing but with Vertigo. I really appreciate how there’s just this one group of Team Fortress 2 Heavies hanging around Starling City who know everybody. “What? Darkseid is invading Earth? Yeah sure, his nephew painted my shed I can take you to him; just fight this bear first.”
3.) Ollie you magnificent badass.
Ollie was feeling really angsty this week due to his sister getting arrested for driving high while under the influence of Vertigo. As a result, he decided to just go ahead and kick as much as possible. Namely, when asked by the aforementioned Russians to kill a dude, he choked the man out. Granted, five seconds later he revealed that he actually only knocked the guy out but once the guy regained consciousness he just punched him again. Diggle kept telling Ollie to stop that badassery, that level of hardcore left Ollie the most entertaining he’s been in weeks. Ollie also got heavily drugged by The Count and I thought the scenes of him screaming from the hangover were hilarious.
4.) Every other character showed up too.
Thankfully there was next to no Merlyn this week, but Speedy took up a lot of this week’s spotlight. After crashing her new car while high last week, she didn’t go to jail because she’s going to intern with Laurel. Compelling stuff. Meanwhile, Felicity, the IT worker who I keep forgetting is a part of this show, told Ollie that she totally knows he’s Arrow. Ollie wonders how, remembers that he shows up every week with a gun or weapon-strength drugs and asks where they came from, and decides to keep quiet. Felicity then gives Ollie his step-dad’s copy of the List and reveals that it belonged to Mrs. Queen.
5.) Fight Club.
Over on The Island, the soldiers who imprisoned Ollie seemed to really liked Call of Duty as they were reenacting the first few levels of Black Ops with a prisoner fighting ring. Ollie got his ass kicked by Arrow Classic who threw him off a waterfall because knocking someone out of the ring is for chumps. Ollie wakes up from a 40-foot drop into the shallowest river without any serious injuries because of course he does and discovers that Arrow Classic gave him a map to help him survive. Because not kicking his face in wouldn’t have helped as much.
Review Score 8/10 – As much as some parts didn’t make much sense, this episode was ridiculously fun.
