Arrow Review: “Betrayal”

Another review by Jethro:

This week gives us a very aptly named episode, in which everyone pretty much either betrays someone, is betrayed by someone, suspects someone’s betraying them, or all three.

Title: “Arrow” Review: Betrayal

Cast and Crew

Director: Guy Bee (seriously)
Writers: Lana Cho and Beth Schwartz

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
John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn
That Guy From Heroes as Forgettable Villain of the Week

Full cast and crew can be found here.

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

Premise

Oliver once again rushes to Laurel’s defense, while (or rather because of which) a criminal mastermind decides to take down The Hood. Meanwhile everyone lies to everyone else, or suspects someone’s lying to them, or is lied to, or… it’d take waaay too much spoilering to explain this. Lets just say Tommy decides he needs to have a talk with Laurel, Laurel decides she needs to have a talk with her dad and Oliver decides he needs to have a talk with his mom.

High Points

  • THE ENDING.
  • Laurel actually putting up a pretty good fight rather than going all Damsel in Distress.

Low Points

  • Laurel putting up a pretty good fight only to freeze for no apparent reason when she runs into the one guy she knows she should punch.
  • I was a bit confused by the Island Memories thing, to be honest. I think it was needlessly ambiguous. I guess it had to fit in with the episode.
  • Diggle, uh, digging his way out of trouble was just a bit silly.

The Scores:

Originality: This was a good one. As usual for the genre (i.e., based on a comic book, superhero thing) it’s not 100% original but Arrow handles its themes well. And I did not see that ending coming. 5/6.

Effects: As usual, top-notch. The fight scenes were well choreographed and it felt like there were more of them this week, too. 6/6

Story: I liked this week’s plot, and sub-plot, and underlying theme, and recurring motifs, etc. It was a very coherent episode – they took a theme and really ran with it. Again, I don’t want to spoiler much and I think I’d have to exceed any decent usage of spoiler tags if I were to talk about it. I’ll just say it was a very well held-together episode, and the ending was icing on the cake. I’m going to give it a 6/6 because I honestly liked it a lot despite my minor nitpicks.

Acting: The usual. I think they could’ve used David Anders a little better, but hey. 5/6.

Emotional Response: While I’m sure nobody was truly worried about Laurel, and nobody was really worried about Oliver in the initial sting, there was a lot of emotional content. The characters continue to grow with each episode on this show and there were some fairly big events in this episode. 5/6

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

Overall: I think this is my favourite episodes to date. 6/6.

In total, Arrow: Betrayal receives 38/42 points.

5 replies on “Arrow Review: “Betrayal””

  1. I had forgotten entirely that David Anders was on Heroes. I remember now, but I must have repressed that memory. In this house, we always call him Sark.

    As for the episode, I thought it was very strong as well. I can’t think of anything you said that I disagree with. The island bit was definitely vague, but it paralleled the story so it made sense at least for it to have been remembered at the time.

    • Luckily I’ve never watched Lost.

      However, I did get Wish You Were Here flashbacks from this AND the previous episode. Probably because I listened to that album right before and I’m fairly sure whoever did the scores did, too.

Comments are closed.