Jim’s Thoughts

“Dangerous Liaisons” wasn’t exactly filler. It just didn’t advance the part of the plot that involved Prometheus, and that made it feel like filler.

For a while now, I’ve been saying the best thing for Felicity’s character would be for her to become a villain outright. For some brief moment, I thought that was possible, but it didn’t pan out. What did happen was Helix, the organization that seemed really evil, turned out to be really evil, and extra tension between Ollie and Felicity was manufactured.

Speaking of manufactured tension, Diggle and Mrs. Diggle sparred over secret government prisons, and the issue was addressed about as thoroughly as gun control was earlier this season. For the uninitiated, that means not at all.

I could get into the ridiculous elements of the show. When did computer hackers become commandos? When did Quentin decide to take an interest in Wild Dog’s daughter? There’s plenty of that, and there always is with these shows, but the biggest problem this week was that it bored me. There’s not much else to say.

Kyle’s Take

Well, if there’s not much else to say, can I skip watching Arrow this week? Too late. I’ve seen it, and it can’t be unseen.

When I saw the title “Dangerous Liaisons,” I wondered if we’d see plenty of bed hopping like the play of the same name. Thank goodness that wasn’t the case but that doesn’t mean this week’s Arrow was any good.

Arrow could make its side stories feel less like filler if they developed them. Jim asked, when did Quentin decide to take an interest in Wild Dog’s daughter? Well, Quentin and Wild Dog had a passing conversation about his daughter two months ago. The rest of the story, and that’s most of the story, developed off camera. How hard is it to show clips of Quentin on the phone, hunting someone down? That story element could’ve built intrigue. Who is Quentin calling? Who is he looking for? Nope. We’re given the same attention to detail with Quentin as Flash has given Wally and his engineer degree. I’m sure any college would be happy to hand someone a Bachelor of Science to someone who never shows up to class.

Isn’t Felicity supposed to be a quick study? How could Helix dupe her? Helix as an evil corporation was obvious. She suffered from the same fate as a writer who can’t think of anything clever for the Riddler so they dumb down everyone else in Batman’s universe, including Batman, to make an average intelligence Riddler look like a genius. This devalued an already weak Felicity.

I’m not sure how much of this will matter. This hasn’t been the bounce back year I was hoping for Arrow.

Thanks for reading.