Duck Fox

Over the long term, complacency can become a TV series’ biggest drawback. When a series starts, it’s got plenty of room to grow and change with the actors and writers, reaching as high it possibly can before usually settling into a groove. Some series (Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones) continue to escalate things further and further reaching dizzying heights of insanity as they progress while still having engrossing and interesting characters. Arrow is not one of those shows, but it seems want to be a lot of the time. It’s never quite on full “turn your brain off” escapism because Oliver and the rest of team arrow are too real for their interpersonal turmoil to be superseded by the case of the week. Indeed, Arrow generally avoids having a persistent “case of the week” structure, which is why it can be pretty aggravating when the series randomly decides to drop in what feels like a filler episode after a pretty strong streak. Don’t get me wrong, “Guilty” wasn’t the worst thing the show has ever done, but it felt very… safe. Like the show was afraid to carry through with a plot twist before the December finale. 

While Roy discovering he killed a cop last year was something we knew had to happen eventually, it was a woefully predictable. I admit, I was a little worried they were going with the far worse “twist” in which he actually murdered Sara when Felicity concluded someone threw arrows into her. Thankfully this was a misdirect (though now I’m looking extra hard in Solomon Grundy’s direction…) and Roy was instead merging memories of his assault on the police officer back in season 2. The epiphany comes courtesy of Oliver, who helps Roy meditate to memory land. Roy is very upset with this twist himself, as it means Oliver lied to him. 

This would have all been so compelling last season, but right now? With Sara’s murderer on the loose and Malcolm Merlyn on the fringes of Starling City planning God-knows-what AND Oliver struggling with the loss of his company?! There’s just way too much going on to revisit this storyline. It also feels like a stretch for Roy to want to turn himself in when he was under the effects of Mirakuru. It’d be one thing if the police had beyond a rudimentary knowledge of the drug, or if he wasn’t actively going out alongside a reformed killer (of mobsters and other killers, sure, but Ollie stilled killed a lot back in season 1). 

Everything’s couched in this incredibly obvious parallel with Ted Grant and his former sidekick Isaac Stanzler (Nathan Mitchell). Isaac used to work with Grant back in the day, before the Arrow came to town, but after a bad turn with a group of gangsters Grant hangs up his pretty lackluster costume. Isaac’s back in town and killing mobsters, framing Grant for their murders. There’s some tension between Oliver and Laurel—Oliver wants Laurel to stay away from Grant after he finds out about his connections to the murder. When Oliver pushes the issue even after Laurel clears Grant’s name, it starts to feel a little controlling and possessive rather than protective. The series has been trying to milk tension from Oliver refusing to support Laurel as Black Canary, but considering we know the endgame we’re basically getting Oliver looking more and more like an asshole with little cause for such characterization. 

It took me a minute (okay, a week) to get this review up because I was much more psyched about “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak” (which I WILL do a phantom review for one day), but I knew I should do this one first. Because while the show has managed to keep pace with the action sequences, the weekly sideshow is formulaic and drags on about twenty minutes too long. Arrow doesn’t have to wow me every week, but it does have to be more than just competent when it’s setting up such interesting plotlines. Here’s hoping the next episode reaches a little higher of a target.