Previously ON DRAGONBALL Z!--sorry, force of habit. Previously on Arrow, we saw Oliver fight against Ra's Al Ghul and not only lose, but get stabbed through the chest and get kicked off a motherfucking mountain. So he's sort of out of commission right now and the others are beginning to suspect that he may be dead, yet try to continue on with their jobs anyway. However, once Malcolm Merlyn provides them with the evidence to prove that Ollie is dead, it becomes harder and harder for them to find the will to continue their mission.
This is one of the few times where it never felt like Arrow was spoon-feeding us the emotions of the characters and having to spell everything out, sometimes, letting your emotions out in other ways or subtle ways is all that is needed. Take Felicity's argument with Ray, when she tells him that it is pointless to try and become a hero because it's not going to change anything and it's not what his fiance would have wanted. She's expressing her emotions vicariously through Ray, without having to say something stupid to make it really obvious that she's upset about Ollie. But what makes it even better is Ray's reaction, a man so cheerful and helpful, suddenly becomes quite stoic and quitely says "Don't ever tell me what Anna would have wanted". He doesn't have a big rant at her or even raise his voice, but this change in his tone, though subtle, feels massive for the audience.
This is definitely the highlight of the episode, seeing everyone coping with the supposed death of Oliver, Felicity trying to compensate for the death of Ollie or Diggle talking about how he still saw himself as his bodyguard. This is some of the best emotional writing in the show's history and it was greatly delivered from the actors, without over-acting it.
Then there is the actual plot to the episode where they have a large gangster steal all the evidence of the convicts that Team Arrow have put away the past few months, with the evidence gone, there's nothing keeping them in prison (Don't believe that's how it works for already convicted criminals) so now a super gang is forming who plan to take over the Glades (Poor part of town). There isn't much to talk about with this just yet seeing as this is only the set up of a story arc so all i'll say right now is, so far, so good.
The flashbacks of this episode we see Ollie and Maseo beginning to form a new found trust in each other, after Maseo's wife was kidnapped in the previous episode, and Ollie swears to help him find her. This of course parallels the scenes within the episode that show Maseo helping the dying Oliver and taking him somwhere safe, that would be Tatsu's secret shelter. Now this is something that i'm kind of mixed on, on one hand, this raises a lot of questions that will most likely be answered later on and is a good cliffhanger for the audience. But on the other hand, it ruins a lot of the tension in the flashbacks because now we can confirm that all major characters within the flashbacks are in present day (Except for their son, GASP) so it kind of loses a lot of the tension on where that story arc was going to go. As well as the tension of what's going to happen to Oliver, at least keep him dead for a couple of episodes, but nope, he wakes up in the end.
Oh, and then there was Laurel dawning her Black Canary costume, an idea that was stupid from the get go because Sara was so much cooler than Laurel. So even though the idea was stupid, her costume was stupid and Laurel is stupid...i dunno, it did bother me as much as I thought it would, maybe i've just accepted that Laurel is going to be a major character, no matter how little people want her there. Also she got literally 10 seconds on screen so we can hardly judge her completley as Black Canary.
Overall, this was a great episode, some parts of it were greater than others, but I can't think of anything that was really bad in it. Honestly if more episodes were like this, especially when it comes to the emotional conflict of the series, then I think the show would be all the better for it.
I'm giving "Left Behind" an 8/10.
-Danny
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