TV Retrospective - Arrow Season 1 episodes 10-12

Time to continue our look at Arrow, and since there will be a short break before the next one

Spoilers to follow

Burned

Ladies and gentlemen, our antagonist is yet another Batman villain. I'm not a Green Arrow comics fan; does he have any decent villains outside of Merlyn and Count Vertigo?

Anyway, so we have Garfield Lynns AKA Firefly, although in this version Firefly is the name of Fire Brigade unit that left Lynns to burn, and Lynns wants revenge. Yes the villain's motivations are that shallow, but it's a one-time villain, so...

Oh yeah and what's her name's sister got murdered. She hasn't had enough screen time to warrant me to care about it.

Laurel takes the phone, and puts it to good use, getting the Arrow involved, and bringing him out of his slump after the previous episode, her father then places a bug on the phone to hear what the Arrow is planning, harsh.

We also have Moira's slump after losing Walter turned around surprisingly quickly, as Thea noticed

OK, did Oliver really reveal that he knew Garfield Lynns was alive, really? Please do more to spell out your identity Oliver, sooner or later, everyone you know will know it!

On Lian Yu, we see Oliver evade capture down a waterfall and recover body armour and a map, and I suppose also sort of facing the close to death slump.

Rating 7/10

Trust but Verify

You know I'm getting sick of the trope where a hero loses parents at age 8. Now Tommy lost his mother at age 8, SOUND F*CKING FAMILIAR?

Anyway, we have 2 plot-lines going on in the present. First is an armoured truck heist, conducted by an old war buddy of Diggle's. Diggle not wanting to believe that a fellow from the army could possibly be behind this was interesting, even if the villain was pretty one-note, again

Then we have Thea Queen's birthday interrupted with Malcolm Merlyn's plotting being confused with an affair. Thea's closing in on that humility I mentioned earlier in the season, her car crash under the influence of Vertigo begins that path, plus it adds a little extra depth to the next plot.

On the Island, Oliver got himself captured again, yay! Seriously we've been down this path already!

The development is all there, but it's fixation on one-note uninteresting villains is starting to become irritating.

Vertigo

Shock of all shocks, we actually have a Green Arrow villain, sort of.

But we also see Oliver sink to a whole new level of stupid in this episode, as he uses his bratva connections to secure a meeting with the Count (Count Vertigo) and shows up as HIMSELF! If police came, if anyone saw him, he'd be in deep hot water. Perhaps he could've come up in some made up alter-ego, and alerted the Bratva to his intentions, to keep his image clean, or something!

Also he told Laurel. I'm working on something at my end. He may as well have said "I'm the vigilante." I can't believe Laurel didn't realize

So, with that we have the Count, he's crazy, lacks morality and is the first interesting antagonist outside of Malcolm Merlyn and possibly the Huntress.

We also see the humility stages begin for Thea. She may have managed to avoid prison, but doing community service for Laurel will hopefully continue that journey

On the Island, we see Oliver experience first-hand that trick he used to "kill" the Bratva agent, it's not a bad technique, useful too.

Rating 7/10

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Images used in this review are from Arrow and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.