Arrow Review: “Vertigo”

Green Arrow doesn’t have many memorable villains, does he? This ep tried to give him one. Jethro reviews the results:

This week gave us some good character development (as usual) but sadly an extremely predictable plot, as well as a Muppet supervillain.

Title: Vertigo

Cast and Crew

Director: Wendey Stanzler

Writers: Wendy Mericle and Ben Sokolowski

Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen/Green arrow
Katie Cassidy as Dinah “Laurel” Lance
David Ramsay as John “Dig” Diggle
Willa Holland as Thea “Speedy” Queen
Paul Blackthorne as Quentin Lance
Colin Salmon as Walter Steele
Susanna Thompson as Moira Queen
Seth Gabel as The Count

Full cast and crew can be found here.

Information for this episode may be found at TVRage and IMDb.

Premise

Ugh. Oliver goes after The Count, a drug-dealer responsible for the pre-epidemic drug Vertigo, in an effort to help Thea somehow.

High Points

  • I kind of liked the opening chase. It was nice seeing Arrow from the crook’s POV.
  • The consistent character development is always nice.
  • Island of Mystery (but see Low Points)

Low Points

  • I don’t know that there was anything not predictable in this episode. I’d say more about that but it’s just not worth the work of putting in a spoiler tag.
  • Cartoon character supervillain.
  • The whole Super Nerve Pinch Ultra Revive Power… what the heck was that???
  • I’m kind of getting tired of Felicity’s super powers, too. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a Wizard.

The Scores:

Originality: Not a hell of a lot this week. I just don’t even want to talk about it. 2/6.

Effects: Those are always good on this show… except the whole cheesy drug-view thing. I’m actually dropping points off cause seriously guys? 4/6

Story: I’m going to go with “meh” again. Oliver is getting WAY too involved in stuff that would — at best — make people REALLY suspicious, and at worst blow his cover. Heck, he got CAUGHT doing some really bad stuff and just talked his way out of it without much argument. There was a good deal of character development, as usual, which is good and makes this episode not a complete loss, and (hopefully) we got some better direction on Thea. 4/6

Acting: Even bad episodes of Arrow have good acting. 5/6.

Emotional Response: I’m kinda happy Thea seems to be taking things seriously, but I don’t know that there was a ton to get emotional about this episode. 4/6

Production: This show has consistently good production values. 5/6

Overall: It wasn’t an absolute disaster or anything, but I expect more from Arrow at this point. 3/6.

In total, Arrow: Trust but Verify receives 23/42 points.

What’d everyone else think?

4 replies on “Arrow Review: “Vertigo””

  1. The whole Super Nerve Pinch Ultra Revive Power… what the heck was that???

    Yeah, I can’t wait for the episode where he meets Xena on the island and she teaches him that one.

    • I, too, thought immediately of Xena.

      On other points:

      I don’t think Felicity herself is a wizard, she just has access to the right toys and other people to get the info on things she can’t do herself. For all we know she passed that drug off to Dr. Hodgins at the Jeffersonian to get that answer… (We all know he could narrow down a drop of water to a specific city block, eh?)

      Seth Gabel is good, I hope they bring him back. He was a bit underused here but the way they carted him off and what happened I suspect we haven’t seen the last of Lincoln Lee/The Joker/Scarecrow/”The Count”

      Overall though, I agree, this episode was weaker than most.

      There was something else I intended to mention but now I seem to have forgotten what it was. Not sure that’s a good thing either.

  2. Pretty much agreed.

    Even if the silly fake-death could be real, he’d either have drowned or been seen to wake up. And if you don’t trust someone to kill for you, you don’t let them “dispose” of the “body”.

    As for Felicity and her Magic, it’s about time she got read in, as she’s probably figured it out long ago anyhow…

    • Felicity seems to be a convenient “Lucius Fox”. Queen has all that kit in the cavebasement of the club and has proven he knows how to use it and yet cant solve what would be trivial tasks for that said kit.

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