Wow, did things get both very frosty and super steamy in Starling City or what? Me thinks the city is suffering from global warming or something. Either that or The CW got some demo stats back and decided they needed to spice things up a little.
“Heir to the Demon” was a wild ride of unfocused and seemingly unrelated stories that when pulled together at the end looked actually quite brilliant. Yes, the soapier elements of the show were full front this week , but how can they not when the flashback sequences focused on the Lance’s during their “Leave It To Beaver” days? Life was just too picture perfect to last.
Honestly, that Lances are FAR better as a whole package rather than in parts. When does Alex Kingston get to join the cast? Pretty please? They can’t bust up the family now that they’re all together. That would be mean. Quentin and Sara together have this incredible spark that’s absent when he interacts with Laurel. He’s the overprotective Dad, so watch out! Even though Dinah wasn’t given much to do other than being the damsel in distress, she got me teary when she saw Sara. That is how a mother reacts to finding out her child is alive. When Alex Kingston and Paul Blackthorne are together in a room, they show all these young amateurs how it’s done. They’ve been schooled!
Heck, I didn’t even mind Laurel’s slide and hissy fit. Her selfish, super cruel, raging rant at the end in front of the whole fam when she found out Sara was alive is the most spark and passion I’ve ever seen from the girl. I cheered! If you’re going to insult your family, that is the way to do it! For a minute there I actually liked Laurel and felt her rage. Families do tend to drive you nuts, don’t they babe? I know, that will change next time when she goes back to her “woe is me” drunken state.
Speaking of families and nuts, the Queens are still the grand effin’ champions, aren’t they? Just when you think that their secrets and lies couldn’t get any more twisted. Gee, Moira runs for mayor and now suddenly she gets to be Queen bitch of everyone? I so wanted to kick her ass when she gave Felicity that verbal smackdown. No you don’t woman! You don’t disrespect the Smoak! I love that the show didn’t forget that Felicity did some spying for Walter last year and her discoveries about Moira’s shadow corporation. I also love Felicity’s judge of character, pegging Walter to be the good guy and Moira to be the scheming bitch. Moira gave us no evidence to believe otherwise. Using emotional blackmail on poor Felicity when she came forward with the truth? If that’s how Moira handles mild threats then she shouldn’t be running for dog catcher let alone mayor (sorry, I did steal line from another review from last week. It’s brilliant).
It’s that scene at the press conference though where suddenly I could be on board with Olicity. Maybe. The poor girl wouldn’t let it go and keep the secret that Moira threatened her to keep. She prefaced the truth to Oliver with her story of being abandoned as a child, her own touching way of saying “don’t hate me.” Even though she risked that pain again, especially the way she feels about Oliver, she overcame it because she knew he had to know the truth about Thea and Moira’s relationship with Malcolm. Of course, doing it just minutes before he was supposed to introduce his mother on the podium, that’s where the delicious soap opera stuff comes in.
Oliver’s speech was pretty damned clever. Getting dropped a bombshell like that, he could only run with phrases like “You don’t know my mother like I do,” and “She’ll surprise you.” Moira is much better at fake smiling though, even when Oliver ended his short and awkward speech by whispering in her ear, “I know.” If you even think of hurting Felicity bitch, I’m sending John Diggle over to “Smoak” your ass! (Ducks flying tomatoes). I thought for sure that Felicity would have confided in Diggle, but there was no time for that scene. Too much was happening.
Me being the Comic book moron I am, can anyone fill me in if The Black Canary was bi-sexual? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but whenever you see two hot fighting chicks passionately kissing in a dark alley, you do have to wonder if there had been a recent drop off in male viewers . That will definitely get them back! As far a villain goes, I really liked Nyssa, Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter. She was the latest enforcer to get Sara back, because you don’t leave the League of Assassins. Ever. Unless you’re Malcolm Merlyn, but he’s too busy playing dead right now to be on their radar. She tried to appeal to Sara through love, but we all know the cliché, sometimes love just isn’t enough. The whole killing thing was crushing Sara’s soul.
Turns out though, the league didn’t take Sara’s threat to leave her family alone very seriously. They poisoned Laurel, which setup the Lance family reunion minus Sarah at the hospital. All Laurel had to do was tell Quentin she thought she saw Sara and that spurned his angry call to the Arrow to put his daughter on the phone. He knew she was there. I loved Quentin’s question to Sara asking how she met The Arrow. “Vigilante club.” Hee, ask a dumb question…
Come on, Quentin HAS to know that it’s Oliver. He’s just got to know. He’s no dummy. I mean, The Arrow and Oliver are the same height and build. Sara would only know the vigilante if they had a history and guess what…Oliver and Sara have a history. I just visualize that when he finally sees that it’s Oliver under the hood, he’ll just shrug and say, “It was pretty obvious.”
Then, while hanging out at the hospital, Nyssa’s henchmen took Dinah. At least The Arrow and Sarah as the BC let her dad join in the hunt. Quentin took the news well that Sara and Nyssa had an intimate relationship, don’t you think? Given all that this guy has been through lately, it just seems that nothing surprises him. My question is, did Nyssa have the right to release Sara? I know she’s the heir to the Ra’s al Ghul’s killer throne, but he ain’t dead yet. Is poppa gonna like that? She did it because Sara took the poison and would rather die than go back? Shouldn’t she be saying something like, “then die bitch?” At least Ollie brought with him that cure all poison stuff that’s he’s managed to break out on several occasions. Man, that stuff really does come in handy at the right times.
Keeping up the scorecard, Sara frees Dinah, Oliver saves Sara, Nyssa releases Sara, so everyone goes onto to life happily, right? Hee, what show are you watching? Laurel has her fit and kicks Sara out, then Oliver has his confrontation with Moira. I love how Stephen Amell approached this scene. Rather than yelling or having a long, drawn out conversation, he firmly tells Moira that as a son, he’s done with her. At this point, he’s keeping up appearances for Thea’s sake and he’ll play supportive son during the mayoral race, but that’s it. I love how he wouldn’t even listen to what Moira had to say. How could he? She would just lie anyway. Smart guy.
The hubby thought the closing sex scene of frustration between Oliver and Sara was unnecessary, but I did remind him it’s not like these two haven’t done it before. Let them have their comfort sex because gratuity is king this week. The Olicity fans can take comfort in knowing Ollie and Sara won’t last. Sara’s got, um, other activities going.
Stray thoughts:
Okay, who cheered when Quentin took out one of Ra’s al Ghul’s ninjas with a quick left jab? Score one for the basic street cop. That’s what you get for screwing with his family!
Speaking of trying to improve the guy appeal, the hubby loved the bare mid-riffed Sara doing the salmon bar routine this week. Whatever you were trying CW, it worked!
While the action sequence was pretty cool, isn’t a fight between two superior bow and arrow marksmen like Nyssa and Oliver pretty much an exercise in futility? Neither can hit the other. It’s like they’ve got some sort of videogame “safety” on.
Sebastian Blood only had a couple of short scenes, but I really like this guy. I don’t think he’s evil at all. He just got tied up with the wrong people. Turns out his cocky threat to Moira was for her protection, but Moira as we know is a dumb ass and took it to be a petty threat. Even when Slade at the end berated him for letting her run, Blood was pretty calm. What else was he supposed do? That’s because you’re not a ruthless killer! Slade promised to take care of it and all I kept asking was, “So you’re going to kill Moira? Please?” That would be sweet. Considering Slade’s hatred for Oliver though, I doubt it’ll be that simple. Rats.
I told you it was a busy episode this week! We didn’t even see the new boy wonder Roy in the Arrow cave. He must have been napping in the back. Now we get a few weeks to chew on it all while the Olympics are on. There’s a whole lot of season left.
I do agree with the Hubby about the ending, I felt it was more forced than natural and wasn’t needed. I just hope they avoid the whole love triangle thing I can foresee happening down the road with Sarah staying on board. Besides I think Nyssa and Sarah had much better chemistry and something I wouldn’t mind them pursing.
Can they do something with Laurel please? I really want to like the girl, but so far all the does is whine “poor poor me” throwing her sister out while her parents are rejoicing in Sarah being alive was a complete douche move and showed lack of respect for anyone else in the room. She could have at least waited until the parents left the room, then threw her out. 😉
I thought I read somewhere Laurel was supposed to take over as the Black Canary at one point in time, did they producers change their mind and that’s why they don’t know what to do with her character now?
Definitely a lot going on in this episode! First off, thanks for using my dog catcher line! 😉 I just don’t really get where they’re going with Moira. They had finally made her almost sympathetic when she was in jail and now she seems to be an even bigger bitch than she was at the beginning of season 1. It’ll be interesting to see how Slade “takes care of it.”
You know, I love Felicity and I really liked her scene with Oliver at the rally (although, really bad timing on her part), but I don’t really understand why she felt the need to confront Moira. She could have just told Oliver and let him deal with it. I just though that was a really odd scene. I guess maybe that was the CW input.
I thought Nyssa was pretty kick ass. This is the type of actress that should be playing Wonder Woman in Batman vs. Superman (or the woman who was in this week’s Almost Human), not the little waif they’ve got. But I digress. I liked what we saw of her relationship with Sara. I’m with you though. I wonder if she has the power to release Sara. Maybe she’ll report that Sara died from the poison.
STILL pretty much hating Laurel. Unlike you, that little tirade at the end just made me dislike her more. Really? Sara’s the cause of everything bad in her life? Oh boo hoo, Laurel. She needs to start taking responsibility and suck it up. Plus, Katie Cassidy just keeps looking worse. I don’t know if she’s losing weight to show the decline of Laurel, or what, but she just looks awful. I’m honestly worried for her health.
The scene at the end with Sara and Oliver didn’t bother me. I think it’s been coming for a while. They’re really the only two people who can relate to each other. I don’t think it’s going to be anything lasting, though.
Anyway, see you in a couple of weeks! 🙂
In response to Stephanie’s question – Felicity went to see Moira to let her know she knew about Thea and to give Moira the chance to be upfront and honest about it with Oliver before he found out about from another source. Being his friend, Felicity thought he would want to hear it from his mother along with any explanations she might want to offer. And, she knew he would probably figure it out as she had. She was looking to protect him and maybe to see if Moira was as big a bitch as she thought. She was right. Poor Felicity. Only Laurel gives Moira a good run for it in the business of being a bitch.
Thanks for the review, Alice! And, my, aren’t the major players on Team Arrow looking mighty fine this season or is it me?!
The only reason I can come up with the producers et al doing what they’re doing to Laurel — making her utterly unlikeable and having me (among others) simply wishing her killed off, is that they need a reason, a big reason, for her to go all Canary. So, she’s having these hissy fits and hating on her sister and whatnot, but in the end, Sarah will get killed off (NO!) and Laurel will (having learned of her sister’s secret identity, she’ll take up her sister’s mantle, as it were, and join forces with the Arrow. That’s the only reason this character will ever be believable in that role. What would be her motivation otherwise?
I did like this episode, although I find Moira repugnant now and I did think the motorcycle sequence — while cool — was purposeless besides being action-oriented filler and giving Lotz a chance to scream in frustration. Also, with so many storylines in play, it is somewhat jarring when something is missed — where was Roy anyway. He’s newly admitted to the Arrow Cave, it makes little to no sense that he was AWOL without explanation this week. Also, wasn’t Diggle supposed to go follow some lead at Moira’s big announcement party, but then he returns to stoically watch Oliver’s awkward (but utterly appropriate) introduction of his mother. Come on, guys, Diggle is awesome. Give him a whole lot more to do, please!!!! 🙂