X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

I think this may have been the best episode yet… I’m kinda annoyed now I waited so long to sit down and watch it.

I know I’ve been putting down the flashbacks a lot but in this episode the flashback is the A-plot while Diggle and IT-Girl Felicity are the B-plot. The flashback itself is a complete story from beginning to end and actually gives us really useful insight not only on Oliver, but on Slade, Yao-Fei and Fyers. Here the flashback is more than just random window-dressing. As for Diggle and Felicity (too bad Black Cat is Marvel), sure, they are mostly just standing around doing exposition but at least these two actors can keep it from being too boring as Diggle is just awesome and Felicity is also, well, awesome.

There was also no ‘cameo villain’ in this episode, instead existing villains are given a bit more depth and the overall plot arc is explored. As a special bonus, Thea is not really in the episode and there is a distinct lack of whining. Oh, there was still whining at the end (Arrow, dur, your mom was playing you so she could get the gun) but it’s not thrown at us every five seconds with long speeches.

Oh, speaking of mom… dang! Now where know where Oliver gets it.

Now, it wasn’t an awesome episode by any stretch, but I wasn’t screaming at it every five seconds, telling people to shut up, or shouting ‘oh, come on!’. They did take better care putting this episode together and if they can keep that going and work on it then Arrow could start getting up to the level it should be.

Lastly, I was remiss in not pointing out last episode that notably Oliver killed (or at least seriously maimed) all those hired guns but the bad guy is just cuffed and sent off (I know he stopped the dad but why didn’t he do it himself? He said so himself that is what guys like him do, not cops, even though that cop willfully followed Arrow knowing that people were going to get hurt so I think the moral high-ground was already lost in the shuffle).

I need to find the article and reblog it, but they writer pointed out that Arrow is not about ‘the little guy’ cause he does seem to do this, kill the hired guns but let the rich get away without a scratch to either ‘clean up’ or ‘get arrested’… and we all know how well it turns out for rich people who get arrested… rather well for them actually.