So, Ra's still wants Ollie as heir
And exploits those about whom he cares.
Ollie agrees
So he'll let them go free,
And so they escape from his lair.
Ollie's misdeeds through the season
Have, oddly enough, not been pleasin'.
So, though he was missed,
Everybody's still pissed,
And mostly for very good reason.
A new crimelord's after the prize
Who's sewn shut all but his eyes.
But the police cap
Still gives Ollie the rap
For not telling of his daughter's demise.
Ollie's jealousy is a farce
That Felicity finds hard to parse.
Folks shut out the voices
Of sensible choices,
And the flashbacks are still a right arse.
Disowned, Nissa thinks on a whim
To teach Laurel how to be grim.
While Ra's does his harm
To drive Arrow to his arms
By turning the city against him.
A lot happens in this episode, so I am actually going to lay down a mild SPOILER WARNING for this whole recap, with extra-spoilery stuff marked off at the end.
Weather Wizard enters the show,
Avenging the death of his bro,
And finds out a name:
Det. West is to blame,
So he really has it out for Joe.
Barry and Iris have their tells
That set off their partners' alarm bells.
Meanwhile there's fretting,
And everyone's getting
Suspicious of Harrison Wells.
Even as the truth starts to dawn,
The end seems already foregone.
So get out your feels
As Harris reveals
He really is Eobard Thawne.
He reveals he's not from where he's at,
And he's free of the wheelchair he sat.
Cisco gets wise
And sees through the disguise,
But Harris swiftly takes care of that.
Weather Wizard so alters the clime
That a tidal wave's all set and primed.
And to make it re-route,
Good old Barry runs out
Running so fast, he travels through time.
EXTRA SPOILERY SECTION
So Cisco was picked as the one
To die in a twist meant to stun.
So before we dismiss:
I have issues with this,
But the scene was certainly well done.
One more thing: I was a fan
That when the Chief's hurt for a span,
During his E.R. stay,
His worried fiancee
Just happened to be a man.
Team Arrow prepares for a blow
From a massively better-trained foe,
And the rest of the run
Is just everyone
Being told things we already know.
But Ra's' League is still in play,
And they really want someone to pay
For Sarah's demise,
So to no one's surprise,
The League just takes Merlyn away.
But Ollie, perhaps 'cause he's high,
Decides he can't let Merlyn die.
But through all the surprising-
-ly weak moralizing,
He won't give a good reason why.
Ray marches to the heroic drum,
And though his suit looks kind of dumb,
When we first see him try,
He manages to fly,
And Felicity finally gets some.
So Ollie and Diggle soon dare
To break right into the League's lair.
They soon lose their cover,
But, as we discover,
Ra's really wants Ollie as heir.
The ep sure is one snappy dresser,
But Ollie's dumb choice makes it lesser.
But it takes that hit,
'Cause I'll say this for it,
It's better than its predecessor.
Fearing execution for treason,
Ollie and Thea take a season
To train for a while,
So they go to the isle,
And have to train there for some reason.
To give Oliver back his drive,
Merlyn found Slade still alive,
Let him out for a thrill
To force Ollie to kill,
Which is interesting, if contrived.
But the rain of flashbacks is torrential,
And, as ever, inconsequential,
But as onward they plow,
They still manage somehow
To be more than usually tangential.
It's not like Oliver et al
Have that many plot points to corral,
So all this past action
Is just a distraction
From Slade's little Battle Royale.
There are big reveals to mull,
But of stuff we know, so it's null,
And somehow, in spite
Of flashed-back-to fights,
It just ends up terribly dull.
Now the nuclear man has blown,
The atomic gauntlet has been thrown.
And explosive events
Get the constituents
Back to bodies of their very own.
But this event proves too beguiling
For one man with milit'ry styling.
And this great dissension
Has drawn the attention
Of the villainous General Eiling.
Meanwhile, something has Barry graveled,
As one case starts to be unraveled,
And though it seems queer,
It quickly becomes clear
That Barry's already time-traveled.
Stein soon gets caught in the snare,
Though Wells betrayed him, to be fair.
But it's all for nought,
As the Flash takes his shot,
Beats Eiling, and rescues the pair.
The emotional beats get due deference,
Though action is this ep's clear preference.
We get the side case,
And somehow there's still space
For a slightly odd Game of Thrones reference.
SPOILERS
Comic book fans will be awed
At this episode's final nod,
As Wells in long johns
Tells Eiling to come on,
And basically feeds him to Grodd.
On the Louisiana side,
Where all kinds of mischief reside,
It seems that some ragin'
Occult rapist Cajun's
Gonna take a new child bride.
Leaving the casework to Zed,
Someone's put a price on John's head,
So Papa Midnight
Books the first flight
To go and make Constantine dead.
So we go from the pedophile's house
To Midnight's game of cat and mouse,
But one's just a fetter
For its clear better,
And some of the fire just gets doused.
That's not to say it's all half-assed,
The Midnight scenes are just a blast.
Zed is conflicted
On what she's predicted,
And Manny is badass at last.
So when it's all over and done,
This is the lesson to run:
Creepy Cajun dude
Can establish the mood,
But Papa Midnight's just more fun.
Since Oliver's team won't enlist her,
Laurel's mind's just one big twister,
Afflicted by lows
Where she has on-the-nose
Nightmares about her dead sister.
Then, Ollie and Malcolm consult
To bring Thea into the cult.
They open her eyes,
And to my surprise,
She takes the news like an adult.
But just as I sink into bliss,
Oliver takes time to reminisce
And so they unpack
Yet another flashback.
I had hoped we were well over this.
Before she again comes apart,
Laurel goes to see someone who's smart,
And who does she see
But Felicity!
So the girls have a nice heart-to-heart.
Laurel joins the fight and wins,
But meanwhile is dosed, for her sins,
With vertigo type b,
Which is just basically
The fear toxin from Batman Begins.
So Laurel makes the police blotter,
And finally starts to tread water,
And works up the nads
To confess to her dad
Just what happened to his other daughter.
I had feared that this ep would get caught
In all of the baggage it brought,
Though it can be erratic
And melodramatic,
It actually moves up the plot.
It seems that the cosmic Il Duce
Long ago came upon the excuse
To send down a canny
Young angel named Manny
Who's always needlessly obtuse.
John, with his distaste for the gaudy,
Thinks this divine scheme's rather shoddy,
And he's so nonplussed
That he gets Manny trussed
Up inside an earthbound mortal body.
So John and the Angel move out
For some misadventures throughout,
And there's evil to thwart,
In the form of some sort
Of heroin monster about.
Turns out, a doc wants to get at
Those who turned down second chances flat,
A new iteration
Of Saw's motivation,
And it's just as bullshit as in that.
All that, and it turns out that Zed
Has a tumor clinging to her head,
But future damage incurred
Can just be deferred,
So the show kind of loses that thread.
The episode won't disappoint,
But the season arc's thrown out of joint.
While it's fine that the louts
All get fleshing out,
I wish we'd just get to the point.
While Barry and co. look around
For where Firestorm's gone to ground,
Cisco and Joe
Review what they know
About where the Reverse-Flash is bound.
Now, Barry is set to begin
Dating Linda, to Iris' chagrin.
And though by no means
Are these the best scenes,
They're not as painful as they could have been.
But romance is placed under strain
As duty pulls back on the rein.
Firestorm comes to light,
And then he and Flash fight
For reasons the show won't explain.
The team find a fix to deter
Firestorm from going nuclear.
And we'll find out next week
If that small techno-tweak
Stops more damage than it might incur.
Overall, the ep deftly eludes
Soap-operaesque tantrums or moods.
People don't hurl insults,
They just act like adults,
And we'll see how that story concludes.
Now, wrapping up all of Brick's feats,
We cling to the edge of our seats,
As our ragtag crew
And Malcom Merlyn, too,
Mass for a battle in the streets.
In this ep, Malcom's past is a factor.
He melts down like a nuclear reactor,
Rememb'ring how mommy
Was taken from Tommy,
Portrayed by a dreadful child actor.
Now I've said that flashbacks unfurlin'
Have done little but send me hurlin'
But it's clear as we breeze
Through Malcom's memories,
That we've just traded Ollie's for Merlyn's.
We see his wife's death was the kick,
And how he became such a dick,
Eventually brought
Back to the main plot
By a hasty retcon about Brick.
Oliver, once his injuries free him,
Returns to have the baddies flee him,
And while he's still no fun,
I must say, I for one
Never thought I'd be so glad to see him.
The dialogue tries to throw winks
As it runs through all these hijinks,
But it's mostly just staid,
Frequently cliched,
And never as smart as it thinks.
But the climax is done with such style,
And the last speech brings on such a smile,
How often it halts,
And whatever its faults,
The brawl makes the whole thing worthwhile.
A woman gets teleport skills,
And pulls off heists to pay her bills.
But in quite a short time,
She gets organized crime
Looking to make bank from those tills.
The Flash is tasked to bring her in,
Though her boyfriend's the source of her sin.
So the show's running theme
Is love getting extreme,
For her woes and Barry's are twin.
So Barry and Caitlin bemoan
How they're each still hung up on their own
Former paramour,
Though it's so immature
That they both must know that bird has flown.
But while Barry just seeks safer harbor,
Caitlin must tend to her own arbor.
It's so hard to go on
When your boyfriend has gone
And combined bodies with Victor Garber.
They head out for vodka and ice
At a dive the bads hit once or twice.
And though I shouldn't gloat,
One just can't help but note
That the "dive" looks suspiciously nice.
While we follow the city's protector,
Cisco is off playing inspector.
And Hartley's quite willing
To go about filling
The role of a Hannibal Lecter.
Cisco lets him out of his cell
In hopes he'll surrender intel.
And though he gets a tip,
Hartley gives him the slip,
So the whole thing does not pass off well.
Now, Linda Park's our latest guest.
But I'm left somewhat under-impressed
That the show ushered in
Not one, but two women,
And yet barely passed the Bechdel Test.
It's a decent enough episode,
But it seems reluctant to unload.
It should move us ahead,
But it stands still instead,
And we're no further down that road.
I should also note, 'ere we go,
That just at the end of the show,
We get our first glimpse
At the king of the chimps,
Grodd, Flash's simian foe.
No sooner had the companions of John Constantine received some much needed fleshing-out last week, than we got an episode that sees John on a solo adventure with an oddly brief hand-wave about Zed and Chas being on holiday or something.
There is nothing inherently wrong with doing a solo one-off episode, except that it falls into the obvious trap that a solo one-off would tend to imply, namely that it devises a terrific concept and then finds itself without the necessary time or space to give that idea its full due.
Specifically, this episode sees Constantine help yet another old occultist chum from his younger days - and since to my recollection we have yet seen neither footage nor photograph of his whole former entourage together, the show can keep on doing this more or less indefinitely - to fight a mad doctor in a magical mindspace in which the power of the consciousness determines the nature of reality.
This is a terrific idea, packed with not only exciting story and visual potential, but with tremendous thematic resonance if the show were only to start digging for it. Unfortunately, the time constraints inherent in an hour-long show do not accommodate the possibility of making good on all of this potential, and so even the grand climax less resembles a Dark City-style reshaping of the world than one good CGI shot and an array of underwhelming greenscreen effects.
In short, the key phrase of the day is unrealized potential. A very interesting idea is left without the necessary room to breathe, and the result is an intriguing but ultimately middling episode of the series. The teaser for next week's episode seems to imply the return of the main season arc along with the side characters the show has been slowly developing over its run, so that will be worth returning for at any rate. Until then, we are left with this noble failure of an episode, and at the very least I would much rather see an installment that fails due to an surplus of ambition rather than one kneecapped by a dearth of it.
