You know how sometimes when you don’t really expect much from an episode of tv, that you’ll watch and be pleasantly surprised at just how good it actually was? It happens to me a lot with Arrow. The description of the episode won’t sound like something I’ll enjoy but then I’ll tune and go, “Wow, that was better than I expected it to be!”
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Yeah, that didn’t happen this time. This time, I was less than excited and that feeling held true until the episode was finished. Can’t have them all, can we? But that’s not to say that I didn’t like “Brotherhood” at all. There were some good moments for John Diggle and David Ramsey was far and away the MVP of the episode. Add in some other fun moments and it was a decent hour of television, if not a great one.
Diggle’s Brother Woes
Diggle gets the shock of his life early on in “Brotherhood” when he discovers his beloved brother Andy is, in fact, alive. But it’s not just that, he’s alive and working for Damien Darhk as one of his Ghosts. John Diggle embraces a very black/white view on morality. Either you’re a good guy or a bad guy and there’s no shades of grey. And right now, his brother is a bad guy.
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Oliver and Diggle have an argument about Andy, where Oliver urges Diggle to have hope for Andy. He needs to believe that people can come back from darkness. Diggle is hurt and upset and utterly resistant to believing there’s any hope in restoring Andy to any semblance of normal. But then he says something I do agree with… that they need to take Darhk down in the light of day.
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Diggle is annoyed when Oliver and Company plan to infiltrate the Ghosts to retrieve Andy and doesn’t want to have any part in an operation that might get his friends killed. He tries to talk them out of it but, of course, they don’t listen. Later, after Andy is brought back to the Lair 3.0 and caged up, Diggle goes to him with the file of information about Andy’s misdeeds and begs him to tell him that it’s not true. Andy tells him that it is true and certainly seems rather remorseless.
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The good news for Diggle (what little there was), is the bromance between him and Oliver is as strong as ever as Dig showed up to help Oliver out saying, “My brother needed me. The green one.”
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Lance, You in Danger, Girl
Quentin maintains his #1 spot on my Death Poll this week. Damien gives him an ominous warning about trust and how fragile it is. When Quentin then spots some intel on a possible meeting spot on Damien’s desk and goes right to Oliver with it, one can’t help but wonder if that wasn’t a “test”. After all, Damien seems less than surprised when the Green Arrow and Spartan show up at this location. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say he planned to see the local vigilante there. Oliver and Diggle get a beatdown for their time (and learn that Damien is employing some mind control on his Ghosts).
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Ray’s Personal Problem
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Ray’s still “playing dead” and to fill the time, he’s helping Felicity with trying to track the tooth they got off a Ghost back several episodes. He tells Felicity that being dead has shown him that he hasn’t had as much impact on the world around him as he would like. The city renamed is nice, but his company is in trouble and no one (besides Felicity) really seems to miss him.
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This plays out later, of course, when we see Ray join the battle to retrieve Andy from the Ghosts. Ray seems to have chosen a calling and that’s being a hero. Is this something he can do better by being “dead”? Which, of course, begs the comparison to Sara and her continued “dead” status.
Thea’s Bloodlust Crisis
The younger Queen’s blood lust is returning and after she rejects Malcolm’s offer of a pedophile to quench her thirst on, Thea nearly kills a creep who tastelessly hits on her while she’s out on a date with Alex.
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Later, she runs into Darhk and after a particularly apt “Merida” comparison, Darhk tries his voodoo on Thea only to find out it doesn’t work. Not only does it not work, but it seems to rebound on him to some degree, allowing Thea to escape.
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What’s more, it seems to help satisfy her blood lust some. So she tells Malcolm about this (and Malcolm looks suitably horrified because Damien scares the socks off of him) and asks for his help finding a way to make the easing of her blood lust permanent.
Oliver’s Journey (the show is about him, remember?)
During the course of this episode, Oliver seemed to straddle a place between the man he was last season and the man he’s striving to be now. On one hand, he counsels Dig and offers support and wisdom. On the other, he considers working with Darhk in order to take him down. When Felicity (wisely) advises him against this tack, Oliver eventually comes around to her way of thinking.
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I mean, can you stand those heart-eyes? They’re like a lethal weapon all their own!
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Oliver announces at a press conference that he’s going to clean up the Star City bay, something Damien specifically told him not to do and he even looks Darhk in the eye as he does so. Yeah, I’m sure that won’t come back to bite him in the butt.
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BONUS
Felicity mentioning Oliver usually spends his nights dressing up in leather and tying people up and the little old lady walking by and overhearing it might just be one of the best moments of the episode.
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No, scratch that. It was the best.
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No Arrow next week, folks. We’re taking a week off for Thanksgiving and then it’s back in December with the big crossover episode with The Flash!
