Arrow "Canaries" Review

I know this is gonna seem like a strange thing to start on, but it is something about this show that I wanna talk about. Detective Lance may be the most underrated character on the show, in a show where everyone either starts off weak or is crap through and through. Detective Lance (Even though he's a Captain now people still call him Detective) has always been a strong character, he's always been in the right of a moral dilemma, he doesn't make bad choices, he's an honest and hard working man who just wants best for his family. On top of that, Paul Blackthorne is probably the best actor on the show, in this episode alone he had to go from blind anger to crippling wreck in the span of 2 scenes. He might honestly be my favourite character in the show, simply because he's the only one who never makes any stupid choices, but still has emotional & physical problems that he has to overcome.

But enough about that, let's talk about the rest of the episode. In Canaries, Count Vertigo is back to mass producing hallucinogenic drugs, gives some to Laurel and she hallucinates about seeing Sara again (Always welcome to see the better of the Canaries) and she has to overcome her fear & guilt involved in keeping Sara's death a secret. Meanwhile Ollie finally tells Thea the truth about him being the Arrow so the two of them can prepare for when Ra's Al Ghul tries to kill them, which one of his minions does, but is defeated by Merlyn & Roy, the episode then ends with Ollie & Thea heading off to the island Ollie was trapped on to help conquer their fears.

So let me start with the best thing about this episode, the Macaulay Culkin clone is now dead, in a fight scene where I never thought i would yell out the phrase "Get him Roy! Get him!" because in case you haven't been following, i hated everything about this character, he was a sleazy scum bag piece of filth who deserved to take an arrow to the chest, but i'll settle with an arrow to the shoulder and a bottle of cyanide. But seriously, that was a really good scene, Thea figures out her drink is poison, Roy & Merlyn get to kick some ass, the rejected member of Nsync is killed, it's a good day for all.

And surprisingly, the stuff with Laurel didn't suck, in fact I would go as far to say it was...good. They weren't trying to force how badass she was, instead her conflict is an emotional one and she confronted it logically and like a real person, and in the end she's able to tell her father the truth about Sara and officially become part of team Arrow, i don't mind. This is a good stepping stone to getting me to accept her more as the Canary, she needs to get their mentally before she gets their physically.

The flashbacks were...decent, they didn't really tie in much, they were mostly just set ups for more flashbacks later on in the season, but still, there wasn't anything wrong with them, except i swear the actress who plays Waller blinks less and less with each episode.

I honestly can't think of anything bad about this episode, just good stuff, they killed off my least favourite character, made Laurel the focus and not have it suck, took a massive leap in character growth and gave us a lot of emotional Lance. I'm gonna give Canaries a 10/10.

-Danny