Arrow 3-08: "The Brave and the Bold"


After a break for Thanksgiving, Arrow was back with a new episode last night. This was part two of a two-part special that began the previous night on The Flash, which I took great pains to avoid watching, because that Flash pilot was terrible. In a fit of self-amusement, my sister and I instead watched that old episode of Smallville where Justin Hartley's Oliver Queen joins up with Kyle Gallner's Flash and forms the Justice League, and look, nobody's ever going to point to sixth-season Smallville as being any good, but it was giddy cheeseball fun. Which Arrow is most decidedly not.

Having said that, this wasn't a bad episode. Good to see Barry Allen yelling some sense into Oliver.


As always, use the links below for larger, expandable images.





Comments

DKoren said…
Look! I managed to watch an ep this morning before you posted! :-D

I have not watched any of The Flash eps, so did not realize this was a conclusion. It played fine to me as a stand-alone, so... not sure I missed anything on the Flash side.

I was immensely amused by Barry calling Oliver accurate names, and the fact that he was appalled by Oliver's behavior was a really cool thing. Finally! (You're "I thought you were a hero/don't feel bad..." caption quite cracked me up.

Also, Captain Boomerang is quite cute. And they put him in a cell next to Slade?? Yowza. Do they have a wing just for the good-looking bad guys? Also, nice to be reminded Slade is still around.
Morgan Richter said…
I was happy with the quick little reference to Slade, too. It'd be lovely to see him again.

Loved Barry calling out Oliver. It was the first indication in a long while that the creative staff realizes Oliver is a terrible human being. Good also to see Oliver developing some self-awareness, though I had to wonder at his fear that he's losing his humanity to the Arrow. Because... he's never had any humanity that we've seen. Before the island, he was an entitled playboy who cheated on his girlfriend with her sister and who was happy after his girlfriend purportedly had a miscarriage (btw, the Flash part of this two-parter apparently involved the mother of Oliver's secret baby, so they'll be bringing that whole plotline back at some point). I wish we'd seen some indication that Oliver was once a decent person, so his metamorphosis into an unfeeling killer would actually be a little poignant.