Arrow "Public Enemy" Review

"Don't you get tired of all these chats cause I do" well at least you admitted it finally. The story of Public Enemy has Captain Lance still on a manhunt for the Arrow and Ra's Al Ghul reveals to Lance that Oliver Queen is indeed the Arrow, thus they hunt down Ollie (With no evidence whatsoever), and he eventually turns himself in, they arrest him and while taking him to jail, their convoy is interrupted by Roy, dressed as The Arrow and turns himself in. Also Ray Palmer got stabbed with an Arrow and goes to hospital, where he has a blood clot that one way or another could kill him, so he decided to take a risk and use his nanotechnology to cure himself. While the flashbacks show Ollie meeting Shado's twin sister (Ugh) and telling her the truth about what happened to Shado and even reunites with Maseo.

Arrow has been on a downslope for a while now, especially the past few episodes which have been god awful...this episode was not god awful...in fact it was really good. My biggest problems are with the lack of plot development and a whole lot of it dedicated to characters complaining about their situation with very little being done to change anything. Also Olicity, fuck everything about Olicity. Here, we get so much plot development, emotionally driven conversations, thematic structure and characters behaving reasonably...THANK FUCKING GOD!

I was initially hesitant on Lance's manhunt for the Arrow, he's mad at him for not telling him the truth about his daughter, big whoop, he's done a lot for you. But here it get's analysed, they discuss it, they pull back the curtain and show that both Ollie and Arrow have done nothing but hurt this city, and hurt those close to him "You're not a hero Queen, you're the villain" and goddamn if that didn't sum it all up. They've talked about it a few times that all the good Arrow and Co. have done has lead to nothing, hell, more people are dead because of The Arrow, but the thing about setting up a theme/story point like this is, it needs to have a pay off, there need to be consequences; and here we have it, consequences. Even if Ollie wasn't the one to pull the trigger, he loaded the gun, Tommy, Moira, Shado, Sara, they'd still be alive if it wasn't for him, everything that Slade did, wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for him. Oliver has caused a lot of harm to the city, though indirect, he still needs to answer for it and Lance was the only one to see this. Everything Lance did was completely justified, and Paul Blackthorne of course gave an incredible performance.

The flashbacks helped build on this as well, Ollie telling Shado's sister the truth about Shado, because it points something else out, he keeps so many secrets and a lot of them are for his own benefit, not telling her the truth just because it was difficult even though the right thing to do would be to tell her then and there. Yes the flashbacks were padded and the idea of her having a twin sister is stupid but thematically, it all ties in together, and again, great performances all around. This is the first time in a while that the flashbacks have actually felt like they were adding something rather than just being filler.

And then there's the stuff with Ray in the hospital, on one hand, i liked it, i like the fact that he wasn't guaranteed death if they just left it, it was just a risk, so him using his nanotech felt even riskier, but at the same time, with a better pay off. Also the introduction of his nanotech means that maybe we see him actually shrink at somepoint. But then of course it all comes back to one thing...Olicity *Shudders*. Ray says that he loves her and Felicity doesn't say it back, and Felicity's mum tells her it's because she's in love with Ollie, despite the fact that (and the show even says this) you knew him for TEN FUCKING SECONDS! That should let you know how forced that romance is, it's both a forced romance AND A love triangle, could they make this any more stupid!? Also can we talk about how non-problematic Felicity's problem is, Ollie is going to jail, Thea's father is a murderer and what's Felicity's big problem? "Oh no, two equally handsome, nice, rich superheroes are in love with me, whatever am I to do?" When that is your biggest problem in life, you've got it pretty good!

But apart from that, this was a really good episode, I may be going a little high with this rating, but in comparison to what they've been doing the past few weeks, this episode is a godsend. 9/10.

-Danny