Arrow (Midnight City) Review

Vinny Jones as Brick

Arrow  is probably the best action drama on television.  It continues to improve every week by developing the main character’s story along the supporting character’s stories. The best part about last week’s episode was the main character, Oliver Queen, was not even in the show until the end of it. Stephen Amell plays Queen and again he was given the backseat to a few other main characters.  Ollie’s partners Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), Diggle (David Ramsey), Felicity, (Emily Brett Rickards), and Laurel (Katie Cassidy) all take starring roles in this episode to stop Brick (Vinny Jones).   Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) is also showed cased more in this episode as a catalyst for things to come in the future of Arrow.

Colton Haynes as Arsenal
Katie Cassidy as Black Canary

Oliver Queen is supposedly dead and the maniac known as Danny Brickwell as taken over the city.  Laurel Lance steps into the Black Canary costume in attempt to fight Brick’s men. She gets her ass pretty much kicked but Arsenal shows up and helps her.  Roy remind Laurel that he has had training from Oliver and years on the street.  Ray Palmer and other city officials hold a meeting to discuss the Brickwell problem.  Brickwell doesn’t oblige their meeting because he shoots his way into the office and captures several city officials.  The mayor decides to give against the consent of Captain Lance.  Meanwhile Malcolm Merlyn tries to convince Thea Queen, his daughter, to leave Starling City because they are endanger. Malcolm tells her the truth about Ra’s Al Ghul.  Felicity has a conversation with Laurel and realizes Laurel is continuing Ollie’s fight so she has too. She helps Ray Palmer solve his Atom Suit problem.  Oliver is in a shack healing with the help of old friends.

John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn and Willa Holland as Thea Queen

First of all this Arrow episode really didn’t have a lot wrong with it. John Barrowman and Willa Holland did detract from the main storyline a little bit of the heroes trying to stop Brick. However, their storyline is important. Roy shows up at Thea’s apartment and demands Malcolm stop seeing Thea. Merlyn replies “thanks, I needed a laugh.”  Thea also demands to know the truth why they have to leave the city.  She reminds her father that he taught to be a fighter and not a person who runs away from a fight.  These scenes set up the more important part of the main storyline of Malcolm finally confronting Ra’s Al Ghul.

This episode deserves a lot of props on how they handled their main female characters, Laurel and Felicity.  Laurel has been an awesome or stupid character depending on the episode. This episode highlighted the strengths and weakness of Laurel.  Laurel is a strong commanding district attorney. She uses her power and authority to exploit criminals into making deals.  However, she is a weak crime fighter. She nearly was killed three separate times in the show and escaped her almost final fight by kicking Brick in the balls.  Laurel and Felicity have a great chemistry on screen with their interactions to each other. Felicity is super stupid when she is a nagging witch but she is strongest she stands with and helps the people she loves.  Emily and Katie showed a great deal of emotion during this episode.  They really made this episode special.

Ray Palmer played Brandon Routh and Felicity Smoak played Emily Brett Rickards

The last positive that I want to touch on is Brandon Routh and Vinny Jones.  They make their characters fun, likeable, and command the screen when they are in a scene and one of them plays a bad guy. Brandon plays a great romantic hero who wants to the save because he is noble and good.  He might get his own show playing the Atom. Vinny Jones on the other hand is evil. He has fun playing the evil greedy one lining bad guy who will kill anybody for the hell of it. He needs to be reoccurring villain every season because he is so good.

Overall, this arrow episode was great.  The secondary characters are being developed more and more each episode.  Midnight City gets a 4.5/5.

Thea has an Assassin working for her spoiler alert

Arrow (Left Behind) Review

Ra Al Ghul killing Oliver Queen in combat
Ra Al Ghul played by Matt Nable
Oliver Queen played by Stephen Amell

 

Who fights crime now?

The Climb, the previous Arrow episode,  ended with Oliver Queen being killed by Ra Al Ghul in mortal combat.  In this episode, tells the story what is Starling City like without Oliver Queen as the Arrow to fight crime. The episode also is a catalyst for Arsenal’s future independence as a crime fighter (at some point in the show) and starts the countdown to Laurel apocalypse.  Laurel Apocalypse was coined by John Campea but the meaning of the word is when Laurel Lance starts to pose as the Black Canary and fans might quit watching the show.

The episode starts with Diggle and Roy pursuing a truck with two criminals. They capture one criminal and discover he works for a crime boss named Brick, played by Vinny Jones. Felicity has trouble focusing on her work and needs to find out if Oliver Queen is dead. Malcolm Merlyn looks into the matter and discovers that Oliver Queen is dead by the traditional practice of Ra Al Ghul leaving the killing weapon on holy ground to honor the dead. Felicity tests the blood on the weapon and discovers that it is Oliver’s blood. Roy and Diggle need to stop Brick but Felicity prevents them in succeeding by quitting the team. Meanwhile, Oliver has an old friend who helps him even though he is dead.

Diggle played by John Ramesy
Arsenal played by Colton Hayes

The episode was a very good episode because of the conflicts within the Arrow team. Roy still wants to fight crime and stand up for the innocent. Diggle has mixed feelings about fighting crime. Felicity wants out of the crime business because she lost Oliver. Colton Hayes was more a feature in this episode which was nice. It is like having a Robin or Nightwing centric storyline in a series of Batman issues. Roy in the episode was put on display. He was skilled with a bow but still lack that intuition to be near as good as Oliver Queen. Felicity had internal conflicts which made her walk away from Ray Palmer and his goal of building a crime fighter suit.  It was nice to see all three pivotal characters featured in a episode without Oliver Queen being the main focus.

Katie Cassidy as Black Canary

 

The biggest negative was Laurel Lance but not until the end of the episode. She does show up in the Black Canary outfit.  Katie Cassidy looks gorgeous as the Black Canary but her character is no Canary. Her crime fighting skills makes Roy look like Oliver Queen.  However, the writers of the show can prove us wrong.

Overall,  Left Behind was a great mid season premiere. It was better than Gotham’s or the Flash’s premiere. The villain was great and Vinny Jones should reoccur as Brick every couple of episodes per season. Brick will be talked about more in next week’s review. Left Behind gets 4.5/5.

The Arrow vs. Flash crossover review

Arrow played Stephen Amell & Flash played Grant Gustin

Every Justice League begins with two heroes coming to a kick ass team!

There are events in television history that put the spotlight on a show or two television shows. Star Trek: The Next Generation had a series of episodes where Spock, Leonard Nimoy, was a guest star. The viewership for these episodes skyrocketed. Arrow and The Flash had their first crossover episodes, and it was the first of many.  Essentially what made this crossover so great was the fact every important character from the Flash or Arrow was essential to the storylines.  Felicity and Diggle appeared on the Flash and went to Star Labs while Cisco and Caitlin were hanging out in the Arrow cave in the Arrow episode.  Arrow and The Flash are created and run by the same people. Marc Guggenheim and Greg Berlanti created Arrow and Berlanti went on to be executive producer of the Flash while Guggenheim is the head man at Arrow as of right now.  Berlanti also looking at producing a Supergirl show for CBS. The two producers along with the team of writers for both show were spectacular at making high quality entertaining television for two nights.

Oliver Queen and Barry Allen decide to work together

The first episode of the crossover was Flash vs. Arrow.  The Flash, Barry Allen, has to face an enemy that can cause rage in people. The villain causes people to overstep their emotional boundary and it them to into a Hulk rage. Oliver Queen, Green Arrow, and his team are in Central City looking for a killer that kills people with boomerangs.  Arrow saves Barry and Detective Joe West from trouble. Barry and Oliver decide to find the new metahuman together and defeat him. Detective West and Dr. Wells tell Barry that the Arrow is dangerous and can’t be trusted. Barry has to decide to between working his trusted friend, Oliver Queen, or following the advice of his two mentors. His choice will either strengthen or destroy Barry’s alliance with his team who helps him at Star Labs?

Nick E. Tarabay plays Digger Harkness or Captain Boomerang

The second part of the Arrow vs. Flash crossover had Oliver going after Captain Boomerang. Caitlin and Cisco drop by Palmer Industries to help Felicity with the death of Sara Lance. They want to see the Arrow cave and which Oliver is not to happy about. However, Captain Boomerang shows up at Star Labs and starts to take out ARGUS soldiers left and right. Oliver, Roy, Diggle, and Lyia are on the brink of death when Flash shows up and saves Oliver from two boomerangs.  The Flash and Arrow again team to stop the former suicide squad member. Barry has a huge problem with Oliver’s methods of getting information and this causes friction between them. The question is, will Oliver change his ways or same the stay?

The most positive aspect of Arrow and The Flash crossover was the interaction between the characters.  The banter and conflict between Barry and Oliver was spectacular but the supporting like Felicity, Diggle, Cisco, and Caitlin stood out. Roy was a spectator between the members of the team debating who would win in a fight Arrow or Flash. The stories themselves were good. The first time Diggle saw Barry Allen use his super speed in person caused Diggle to be speechless. Caitlin and Ramon were psyched to see the Arrow cave. Every character was used properly besides a few of them.   The Flash and Arrow showed case their primary attributes that makes them unique.  The two episodes were funny and it is one of the reasons why this crossover got the ratings it did.

The negatives for me were Eddie Thawne deciding suddenly The Flash was a villain and wanting to take him down. It causes Barry Allen gives in to his rage and he nearly kills Eddie. Iris turns her back on The Flash just like that.  For me, that plotline should have happen at the mid-season finale, and it felt like the writers of The Flash tried to have every character be essential to the storyline.  My biggest pet peeve for the Arrow crossover episode was Lyia.

Lyia was almost dead and gone. Captain Boomerang puts a boomerang in her chest and she is at death’s door. I have applauded the creators of these two television shows in the past for killing their characters off. However, the writers of Arrow copped by having the Flash to run Lyia to the hospital so she could survive. Lyia for me is a weak character and really bitchy. She is not likeable. I would love to see her die and Diggle go on vegence streak or turn his back on Oliver. Hell, Diggle could go after Amanda Waller and is also a deceitful troll. Those would have been better options in my opinion instead of having the Flash there to run Lyia to the hospital, and she survives.

Overall these two episode were spectacular and funny. The Flash crossover gets a 4.7 out of 5.

(have links to the two crossover episodes below on the CW site. I suggest watching them because it is like watching a Batman episode with Superman involved.)

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/the-flash/flash-vs-arrow/?play=bd69b271-88c1-404f-880f-0e23fe34eaf8

 

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/arrow/the-brave-and-the-bold/?play=4254f82b-bf7d-4d18-819b-8e275ab45bec