Arrow: 1.22 – Darkness on the Edge of Town

Hold on to your hats friends because the Dark Archer is back and ready to blow up whatever he has to! Oh and killing whoever he has to as well.

That includes Brion Markov, aka Geo-Force in the comics. It seems in the Arrow universe his superpower is being a decent enough seismologist to get a job at Unidac Industries, but being unable to talk his way out of an arrow in his chest. You win some and you lose some I guess.

After last week’s discovery that Walter is actually alive (yay!!!), he’s returned home in ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ and oh boy you can cut the tension with a knife. For all of you relationship-challenged out there – if you go in for a kiss and it’s diverted to the last moment to the cheek… all is not well.

Damn them! I was really hoping they’d be able to sort it all out but of course once divorce papers enter the equation, things get a little dodgy. Before we go down that road though, let’s discuss the heartbreak that was the island this week.

So two weeks ago there was the whole “Yao Fei once again leads Fyers to Oliver and Co.” in which my love affair was declared as officially over. Well now we finally get to find out what Fyers’ plan is and oh boy is it a doozie. We already knew that Yao Fei was going to be the scapegoat for whatever Fyers had planned but I myself had no idea has to how in-depth his evil scheme would be. Destabilizing the Chinese economy by taking out a commercial airliner (note: I do believe the “I really need your help” guy was saying Ferris Air which would be a shoutout to the Hal Jordan/Green Lantern universe) with SAMs? Having a member of the Chinese military claim responsibility for it due to being sent to an island as punishment? It’s sort of genius.

Never mind the dead guy – that’s a cool looking floor.

Then this happened. WHY?!?!?! I know Yao Fei and I have had our differences but was it necessary to shoot him in the head? As much as I’d like to believe he’ll bounce back from this, Deadshot did survive an arrow to the eye, a bullet to the brain is a bit of a different story. Let’s all pause in a moment of silence for the man who saved Oliver’s life, a couple of times.

Okay back to the main story. If Oliver and Laurel getting together means that this whole love triangle thing is over, then I’m all for it. However, I imagine it’s just going to lead to more “Sad Tommy” moments and blah that’s getting old.

Much like the lesson up above about the denied kiss, this seems like common sense but seriously, I know it’s easy to get caught up in the moment but perhaps it’s best to make sure the curtains are shut before you get freaky with your ex while your other ex is standing outside. Or, you know, strangers walking down the street. Anyone really. Again, I would have thought this was everyday knowledge but it appears as if I’m wrong.

At the very least maybe now they can move the story along past this “she loves you, no she loves you, but you love her, you love her more, I can’t love her…” crap. Fingers crossed!

Even though Thea annoys the ever-loving crap out of me, I can’t help but root for her and Roy’s Nancy Drew routine. Although I do have to laugh at the stalking of a crime scene in a stolen car, with a stolen camera. Oh that Roy Harper, what a smart boy he is! Now that Oliver has laid down the law about them looking for the vigilante, it’s only a matter of time before they do… perhaps the cliffhanger? Next week we’ll find out!

Of course the best parts of the episode had all to do with “The Undertaking”.

Let’s give Moira some credit here – how on earth she’s still somewhat sane is beyond me. One husband is dead, another husband is kidnapped only to return and ask for a divorce, she’s been “approached” by the vigilante now twice, the second time involving a tranq dart, her family has been under constant threat for years and she’s had to keep a rather large and awful secret for years. If that were me? I’d be seeking out a room with padded walls post-haste. Rather she just keeps on keeping on and that’s impressive.

Also impressive? The Arrow Crew’s plan for breaking into Merlyn Global. Although I do have to wonder, what kind of fast food place delivers? Granted I live a bit in the sticks but I’ve never heard of McDonald’s delivery. However, Big Belly Burger does deliver and thank the gods for that otherwise how on earth would they have delivered the drugged hamburger?

Of course the Olicity shippers might have died a slow death at the Oliver and Laurel make out session, but you know they all have this image seared into their brains. Give it up guys, it’s not going to happen!! Oh well, at least it led to this which was pretty kick ass.

That looks like so much fun! Of course I would have pissed myself but still, fun. Thankfully this was followed by a scene full of brooding whiny Tommy and then nosy Thea so my heart rate was able to slow down before the awesome fight scene between John Barrowman and Stephen Amell. I will say this – the quality of the fight scenes seem to have gotten better as the season has progressed which is a major plus.

So now there are two people in the show (the other being Huntress) who can catch arrows? This does not bode well for Oliver, at all. Plus the fact he got his ass kicked (again) by a man old enough to be his father. Oliver, you need to go ahead and start doing more shirtless hand to hand combat with Diggle to work on this. Let’s make that a priority next season okay?

Of course we don’t know what next season will hold as far as actual combat between these two because…

Now Malcolm knows it’s Oliver!!!!! OMG what does this mean?!?!?! Where do we go from here????? More punctuation needed!!!!

Seriously, loved this episode. Even though Yao Fei is dead (sob), so much action and so much story progression. Although if it had been me, this would have been the season finale and I’m having a hard time seeing what kind of cliffhanger they are going to leave next week. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Going to have to go with 4.5 out of 5 because it was that good.

Season finale next week -see you then Arrow fans!

Arrow, 1:14 – “The Odyssey” and News of a Renewal?

If you are a Diggle, Felicity, and island fan than The Odyssey was for you! I am that person and I was in heaven.

This week picked right where we left off last week, with Arrow telling Moira about how she had failed Starling City. If that wasn’t shocking enough, Moira, after pleading in the name of Oliver and Thea, goes off and shoots Oliver! Granted she didn’t know it was Oliver but still, she shot her own kid. Of course Ollie gets out of there and the camera pans to the pool of blood he left. I’ve watched enough crime shows to know this was a problem.

Credit to: itseverdeen

In a very heads up play, Oliver finds his way into Felicity’s car, instructing her to the Arrowcave instead of the hospital. Finally! It’s about time that Felicity is told the truth, although I will miss the incredibly stupid cover stories Oliver came up with. The rest of the episode was basically Diggle and Felicity trying to keep Oliver alive. Another reason to keep Diggle around? Apparently he can dig (hehe) bullets out of bodies. He may not be so great with fritzy defibrillators, but that’s why Felicity “I’ve been fixing computers since I was 7” Smoak is there. They made a pretty good team and Oliver lives to see another day. However, I do have to call bullshit on Diggle’s proclamation that Oliver’s injury was a “Zone II wound” as a simple Google search classifies Zone II as part of the neck and that was clearly a shoulder shot. Come on Diggle, get it right man.

The majority of the episode was flashbacks to the island. Last week we met Slade Wilson and learned that the guy in the mask back at Fyers’ camp was obviously not Deathstroke, because Slade Wilson is Deathstroke and there he is helping Oliver escape. Come to find out this week that not only is the masked man not Deathstroke, but rather that’s Billy (William) Wintergreen. I don’t know why I didn’t even think of him last week, but I didn’t so I was surprised when Slade said his name.

Now I know that Arrow hasn’t really been all that concerned with canon, but this whole thing with Deathstroke is really convoluted. Wilson and Wintergreen were friends. At times they took on a mentor/student role. Wintergreen was Wilson’s best man when he got married. In the end Deathstroke/Wilson does end up killing Wintergreen, but that’s only because his son, well the spirit of his son, has taken over his body. It wasn’t actually Deathstroke himself, rather his son, Jericho. Wilson even mentioned his son to Oliver when he said that Wintergreen was his son’s godfather. So the idea that Wilson killed Wintergreen himself is a little bit of an annoyance, but then again the show is set in Starling City and Oliver Queen’s mother is a major character so really this is just another in a long list of taken liberties.

Obviously the focus of the island was the attempted escape by Wilson and Oliver. Before they could do that though, Oliver needed to become a somewhat trained soldier-like individual. Hence the training montage with him and Wilson. Of course Oliver, being from a very privileged and not very hands-on background, doesn’t do so hot with that. The best part of the episode came when after watching Oliver struggle to start a fire for hours, Wilson pulls out a lighter. Of course this is a family show so Oliver didn’t take all that newly learned hand to hand combat skills and beat the crap out of Wilson, instead he just laughed it off. It’s official, Oliver is a better person than I.

Credit to: waspftw

So far on the island we’ve seen Oliver grow a little from the elitist douchebag to a somewhat more humble man, but this episode really brought his selfishness to the spotlight. He’s made it no secret that up until now he’s thought pretty much only of Oliver, so you’d think that when Wilson is telling him that you have to live for yourself, he’d be on board. However, instead of ditching Yao Fei to grab his assured seat on the plane out, Oliver heads out to try to get Fei to go with them. One has to wonder why instead of running through the jungle he didn’t just take one of the dozen Jeeps sitting there, but hey he went back and that’s all that matters. Of course Fyers was waiting for him and had Wintergreen attempt to execute him which ends up with Wintergreen’s death but the real revelation in all this is…

SHADO!!!!!

I fear we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to poetic license on storylines, because I have a feeling there is no way we are going to see the comic’s version of Shado and Oliver’s relationship, but still it should be fun to see what happens. I can not tell you how happy I am that they had her as part of the island because as I said here, I was really quite concerned that she was just going to be some throwaway paralegal or something. I’ll admit that I have zero idea as to how they are going to continue the island story, but at least we don’t have to wonder (for now) how it is that Slade Wilson and Oliver Queen ended up on a plane together with there being no mention of Wilson being rescued.

After all the island excitement, we returned to the Arrowcave and what the what?!?! Oliver has the same tattoo as Shado! The intrigue, it is strong.

Of course we couldn’t go an entire episode without Thea so she made an appearance, thankfully it was short. Annoying, but short. Oliver declares his mother off-limits to the Arrowcrew, and we finish up another visit to Starling City.

This was a great episode. Probably my favorite so far of the season as I love the island. It’s not that I don’t enjoy modern-day Starling City but I’ve really liked how they have told the island story so far and this episode was no different. Had there not been the wide injustices done to the Wintergreen/Wilson story, it might have been a 4.5 but going to have to stick with four out of five.

Not only was it a great episode this week, but there was good news as well. Arrow has been renewed for a second season! It comes as a surprise to no one, given how strong the ratings have been, but it’s always nice to have that renewal become official. Not only that, but apparently the powers that be have seen the fan’s reactions to our favorite IT girl because it was announced that Felicity Smoak will be bumped up to a main character next season. No doubt there are ‘Felicity and Oliver’ shippers who are just beside themselves with this news.

Credit to: selfcenteredcow

That’s all I have, until next week Arrow fans!

Arrow: 1.05- “Damaged”

Even though ratings for last week were a little lower than they had been, there’s no need for alarm because this week ratings were back up, way up. As a matter of fact they matched the ratings from the premiere! Not only that but over on TVGuide.com, Arrow is #1 in their “popularity contest” of fall shows. I’ve said it before, it’s not going to be long before the CW announces a second season. If they continue to put forth episodes as good as last nights, then I think we are in for at least a couple of years of Arrow.  Sounds good to me!

Because there wasn’t a lot of time spent on the bad guy du’jour, it left a lot of time for them to work on advancing character storylines and just the story in general. 

Instead of immediately picking back up with Oliver getting arrested, the episode started off back on the island. Yao Fei strengthened his status as my “favorite person ever” when after he let Ollie shoot the bow for the first time he feels the need to tell him “You will die badly.” Seriously, where is the Yao Fei fanclub and how can I become it’s president? Because that shit right there is funny. Edward Fryers makes an appearance as the guy chasing after Yao Fei, who then tortures Ollie to get info. How on earth is this going to lead to Fryers and Oliver becoming friends and the introduction of Shado? How? I do not see it and that makes me sad. I mean, I figured they weren’t going to even touch the “I raped you while you were drugged, oh, and this is your kid” thing, but to not even have her in the show at all? Bummer.

Okay, bone to pick. I can agree to ignore Laurel’s ridiculous multifaceted law career. I suppose in an alternate universe, a legal aid lawyer would have all the time in the world to take on clients that are arrested (with zero evidence I might add) and then brought to court in a matter of hours in between the her time spent on cases involving millionaires and death row residents. However, are we seriously supposed to believe that she did not even go to law school until after her sister died and her mom left? Seriously? That would mean that at best she’s been practicing law for about two years. At best! Well, let’s see; yacht goes down, let’s say that mom stuck around for only a couple of months afterwards before getting fed up with Detective Lance and hitting the road. It was then that Laurel decides to go to law school which I do believe is three years. So we’re looking at three and a half years of the time Oliver is gone. So Laurel has been a lawyer for less than two years and she is already taking on this huge workload. I’m calling bullshit. The least they could have done was said she had already been in law school when Oliver and Sara took off on their fateful three hour tour.

Moving on before I rupture a blood vessel over a TV show.

IT’S DEATHSTROKE!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that was necessary. Deathstroke appeared for the first time ever in live action and that dude is frightening. Were I tied to a pole and that guy came at me with a knife? I’d be telling whoever was asking, every single thing I’d ever known, ever. Without the slightest hesitation.
What you should take away from this is, don’t rely on me to keep a secret under duress. Not going to happen.

Thankfully Oliver (we are led to believe) is not so weak willed and dealt with the torture. For a show that is more entertainment than it is “high quality” there was a great set up in this episode between the interrogation on the island, complete with Deathstroke and his knife, and the interrogation back in Starling City with Detective Lance and his polygraph machine. Just goes to show that even though it isn’t Breaking Bad or Boardwalk Empire or shows of that caliber, they can still have nice moments like that. I hate when people start talking shit about a show like Arrow because it isn’t something that is Emmy worthy. Sometimes entertainment for entertainment’s sake is a welcome escape. Sakes alive this episode is getting my dander up.

Going out on a limb but I have this feeling that Deathstroke isn’t going to lose his eye to a gunshot from his wife, but rather there on the island. Why else would they have shown the mask with the arrow through it? So perhaps Yao Fei attempting to shoot him was a bit of foreshadowing. I’m a little bummed because it would have been cool to get into Deathstroke’s back-story with his wife and sons and everything. Oh well.

I’m choosing to ignore the fact that Oliver once again referred to Thea as Speedy. Why would they do that to me? Why not just have Diggle be Speedy? Come on. At least Thea is getting more tolerable in recent episodes, girlfriend was obnoxious as hell when they first started. However I did enjoy the conversation between Oliver and Thea when she thought that because he brought her an arrowhead that meant he was Arrow. He ruses that it’s a good thing he didn’t get the panda shotglass because then he’d be “Pandaman”. I immediately thought of how awesome it would be if someone made a show based on World of Warcraft. I’d watch that all day long. If anyone was wanting to send me a gift you can go ahead and get me that Chen Stormstout action figure. I’m sure if you put “Amanda Denton, Georgia” the post office will get it to me without a problem. Thank you.

Another thing I’d love to open my mailbox and find one day is John Barrowman. I’m not sure how much it would cost to ship him but I’m pretty sure I’d be willing to pay it. That man is incredible. I’m really enjoying how they aren’t coming right out and telling us who he is. We get that he is obviously a bad guy, what with trying to have Oliver killed and then successfully offing the poor security guy Josiah, but outside of that, not much is known. Now we also know that Moria is working for him and not with him like the first couple of episodes led us to believe. Of course that whole killing people thing makes me want to know what is on that boat even more. Intrigue!

Speaking of the boat, poor Walter. When the show first started I really thought he was going to be a bad guy. Don’t know why, just a feeling I had. Seeing his face when he was walking out was just heartbreaking. Granted I’ve never been in the “my wife is lying to me about why she took millions of dollars to get a warehouse to store the wreckage of the yacht her late husband died on and she won’t tell me why” type of situation so I can’t imagine how difficult it is but I really want him and Moira to just kiss and make up. Now that Moira has gone into Momma Bear overdrive, paper cuts be damned, I’m really enjoying her character. I especially liked her and Walter together. It’ll be interesting to see how she reacts to his leaving. Ooooh, what is she going to tell the kids? Can’t very well come out and tell the truth now can she?

When it comes to telling the truth, I guess I’ll have to admit I thought Oliver was an idiot for coming clean to Diggle so soon. He could surely keep up the ruse for at least another month or so, if for no other reason than to watch Diggle get aggravated each time Ollie ditched him. Thanks to this episode, I can now say that I should not have doubted ol’ Oliver because the man has a plan.

A good plan at that! Having Diggle as a co-Arrow really could help keep the spotlight off of both of them. That spotlight being the previously mentioned Detective Lance. Of course, one has to wonder how long Diggle is going to keep it from his sister-in-law. She is going to blow a gasket, and I would really enjoy watching that.

I didn’t enjoy watching Laurel and Oliver kiss mainly because Laurel irks me but that scene was awesome for one reason and one reason only; Laurel mentions fishnets. If you had listened closely on Wednesday night you could have heard everyone who knows about Black Canary squeal in delight. I was one of those squealing while my husband sat next to me thinking I’d sat on a pinecone or something. Highlight of the episode right there.

Another cool part of that scene was the number of Ollie’s “prison uniform” costume. It’s actually the hex code for green. I love it when they put little things like that into shows. I looked up Ollie’s mugshot number as well but all I can decipher is that perhaps the writers are big fans of Gloria Allred as she was born on July 3rd, 1941. I think that would qualify as one of the most random references ever so it probably wasn’t that.

My last thought on this episode is that isn’t all we’ll see of Kate Spencer. I mean surely they have more in store for her so maybe this was just a “I wonder if anyone will notice if we introduce Kate Spencer on the down low and then we’ll come back to her at a later date as Manhunter and everyone will be like “hey isn’t that the ADA that was prosecuting Oliver back in the fifth episode” and we’ll just sit back and laugh because, yea, it is.” type of situation. That’s what I tell myself so I can sleep well at night at least.

Overall, fantastic episode. Loved it. I personally don’t want to see Laurel and Oliver together but I realize it’s going to happen so I just have to get over it. The scene with Barrowman was awesome and prompted so many more questions than it provided answers and of course DEATHSTROKE!!! was amazing. From start to finish, a strong episode.

The only shirtlessness involved Laurel but we have this to look forward to next week, November 17th, in an episode titled, “Legacies”.

Not only that but we’ll get to see Arrow’s take on the Royal Flush Gang, exciting!

Until next time!