Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Arrow: Season 3, Episode 8


Arrow
Episode Title: “The Brave and the Bold”
Channel: CW
Director: Jesse Warn
Writers: Marc Guggenheim and Grainne Godfree
Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Runtime: 42 min
Rated: TV-14
Original Air Date: December 3, 2014

I'm not going to go too in depth into the issue I have with this first crossover event being two mostly self contained stories. If you're interested in reading my opinion on that, you can find it in my review of The Flash “Flash vs. Arrow.”

This season of Arrow has seemed mired in an inability to compete with the last season. Whereas it seemed like in season two almost every moment was building towards an inevitable showdown, this season has seemed to languish without getting the main story arc really moving. “The Brave and the Bold,” while sounding like the rejected title of a soap opera, didn't do a lot to put things on the right track, but it did happen to be very fun. Some progress was made in the hunt for Sara's killer, but the highlight here was the injection of humor and lighthearted moments that the crew from Central City brought with them.

The philosophical differences between the two heroes, and their teams, were one of the best parts of this episode. Oliver does things in a much more brutal fashion than Barry is willing to accept, and they have a pretty decent sized disagreement over the Arrow's methods. The flashbacks this week, which I was surprised to see, though they finally complimented the story in a logical way, centered on an event that seems to have begun Oliver's loss of what he thinks of as his humanity. Barry gets his chance to return the favor of an inspirational pep talk in what was a really good moment between the two heroes. While that is going on Caitlin, Cisco, Roy and Felicity are talking about the differences in the way they approach their jobs. The Central City crew reveals that what they do seems more like a game, because they're working against metahumans it feels less real. It was an interesting and believable point of view.

The villain was handled very well in this episode, much better than the villain in “Flash vs. Arrow.” Captain Boomerang had a believable motivation, and had a screen presence that has been missing from a lot of the villains recently. At first glance the idea of a bad guy using boomerangs as weapons sounds pretty ridiculous, but they managed to make it work. Nick Tarabay's portrayal of George Harkness makes me hope that we see him again, and the fact that he's now prison mates with Slade Wilson makes it seem like an inevitability that he'll pop up again.

All of the supporting characters had their moments, although with so many appearing those moments were small. I liked Roy's reaction to the S.T.A.R. Labs crew best, he wasn't thrilled to see them initially, but was soon referring to the 'Arrow Cave' in an adoption of Cisco's nickname for their lair. Thea popped in, and was the source for a little more comic material involving how badly an attempt by Cisco to hit on her would go. All in all the entire cast was used very well.

Conclusion: This was the most enjoyable episode of Arrow this season. Hopefully this marks the beginning of the writers rekindling their desire to lighten the mood occasionally. They showed a better ability to juggle the necessities of an ensemble cast better than the folks over on The Flash. The few mentions of Sara's killer seem to finally be putting us on track to find out exactly what happened on that rooftop.

Rating: 8/10

No comments:

Post a Comment