Jessie Robertson reviews the eleventh episode of Arrow season 7…
Past Sins is about as stuffed as a regular human person’s head when you stick a bomb in it…..
The Good:
Arrow feels like it’s on the cusp of grabbing some great threads and keeping another really good coherent season together, but it’s not quite there yet. I feel like Curtis has been missing. He’s back here and in a big way. Curtis really focuses showing outrageous storylines through the lens of a regular dude, I mean a genius regular dude. When he finds out about the “Ghost Initiative”, as he nearly name drops the “Suicide Squad” in a funny bit, he reacts as anyone would: why the hell are you putting bombs in people’s heads?? I groaned audibly during the VR section of Diaz’ escape (in fact, killing Curtis which killed some of my drive for this show momentarily) but loved when he used Diaz against himself and outed Dante, and of course, walked off like a boss as he said “ARGUS thanks you for your cooperation.”
The ARGUS stuff has all really worked for me mostly, but man, was I let down thinking this was the return of the Squad episode; even if this was a literal ‘B’ team of villains (as Curtis mentions) but the quick interrogations from Diggle and Lyla, sprouting the lines “Daddy Issues” and “Not my type” were well worth the scene.
I really, really liked the opening of tonight’s episode as well; the TV interview with Oliver and Laurel was good material, setting these characters in a different light and really opening up the history of the show. Oliver’s true and transparent story about what happened in the raft is out there; juxtaposing that with his first meeting with Emiko, his sister was very poetic. But, really- who didn’t see her reacting that way? I mean, she’s a Queen!
Not the Best:
I’m trying not to be too harsh because the only good I pulled out of our “villain of the week” is how Oliver recognized, after all this time, he could have reached out to the son of the man his Father killed in the raft, thinking, maybe he would still be looking for him. Which he was. It’s only when we drop into him turning into a psychopath who uses his knowledge of electrical engineering to set up the police station as his own personal microwave. Does every situation have to turn into a full scale bad guy wanting revenge and doing it in the most insane and theatrical way possible? It just rips credibility away from anything real they were getting at with his motivations and Oliver’s obligation to this person. They also wasted no time ripping away at Oliver’s new status in the SCPD.
Then we have Laurel….I’m sorry, but her melodramatic story of her father dying in Earth 2 was so clichéd, I feel like The CW has aired at least 3 other shows in it’s history that have had that exact same scene. And to top it all off, of course the last thing she said to him was “I hate you.” Could it have been anything else? Everything to do with her back story this week was lazy writing and her performance didn’t elevate it at all. Felicity helping her only denigrates her further this season when she’s falling way down on the list of my favorite characters (I never wanted to join her haters but I’m starting to.)
I take the good with the bad this week and honestly, all the time on the villain was a trudge through mud; there was a ton of shit happening though and it was overstuffed.
Rating – I’m going 6.5/10 on this one.
Final Thoughts – Really excited about next week’s potential with the Vigilante hunter and Oliver’s Net Arrow was dope!
Jessie Robertson
