Arrow S01E23 – Review

By: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg (story)

The Story: Sometimes it feels like your whole world is tumbling down around you.

The Review: Phew.  Let me tell you: covering a TV series from start to finish requires quite a bit of commitment, and the task is made even more difficult by a show like Arrow, which is still, even here in its first season finale, trying to find itself.  It’s a show that’s got so many genres and elements mixed together that finding the right balance among them all could take another season or so yet.  But here, it proves itself worthy of investing in its evolution, however long it takes.

This episode works because while it has the same over-the-top energy that defeated the show’s credibility in other instances, it channels that energy in all the right places.  Malcolm’s speech to a trussed up Ollie starts as a drag of a villain’s monologue, crowing and condescending at the same time: “You can’t beat me, Oliver.  Yes, you’re younger, and you’re faster, and yet you always seem to come up short against me.”  But after all that’s out of the way, he reveals his choicest lines: “You want to know why?  Because you don’t know in your heart what you’re fighting for—what you’re willing to sacrifice.  And I do.”