Arrow S06E10 Review: Forced Conflict

Arrow, Season 6, Episode 10: Divided

This is the first episode of Arrow after its mid-season break and... it's... well, let's just say that the episode's title definitely embodies how I feel about this episode. The entire episode is just a game of back-and-forth on Oliver being a complete dick and going "we don't need the B-team!" to "we need the B-team!" and it's honestly quite exhausting. Especially since how the fact that the team's fracture feels iffy in the first place...

And honestly, a lot of the conflict going on feels extremely tiresome. Yes, Oliver did spy on the B-team, but the high horse that Rene and Dinah are riding really felt flat considering that the two of them have their personal fuck-ups in not telling the rest of the team (not just Oliver) about their own misadventures. Honestly, the only person in my book to really deserve to be pissed off at Oliver entirely is Curtis, who's stuck with the team since season four but is still treated with a degree of suspicion. And thus the bacckbone of this episode -- whether the team gets back together or not, whether they can return to being one big happy family again or not -- feels really tired more than anything. Add that the fact that the two loaded guns that the season has been carrying, the FBI investigation and whether little William knows about Oliver's return to the hood, aren't particularly interesting and feels really tiresome... and, well, that's really how I feel about this episode as a whole.

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying Cayden James's huge legion of doom, and I do like that at least the mid-season cliffhanger of Rene, Curtis and Dinah leaving Team Arrow is being perservered in some way, so it's not a fake-out cliffhanger. They're not associated with the greater Team Arrow, and are forming their own team at the end of the episode... although considering how quickly we reverted away from John-Diggle-is-the-Arrow plot (it lasted, what, four or five episodes?) I'm skeptical at whether this will stick. The thing about the conflict between the original Team Arrow and the B-Team is that... everyone's being such assholes that it's really hard for me to root for anyone but Felicity and Diggle. Oliver's being an unreasonable asshole that goes "no! Never again!" for no real reason despite having seen no problems about working alongside villains before, whereas Rene and Dinah are likewise being unreasonable, and the end result is that, for me, at least, I end up just rolling my eyes and gritting my teeth at every single time when both sides of this 'argument' try and tell us their viewpoints while not really having particularly sympathetic points.

The plotline of this episode is... functional, but unimpressive. We get the return of the Bertinelli family's final member, Jerry Bertinelli (but not the Huntress, sadly) who gets intimidated by the Cayden James collective, causing Jerry Bertinelli to turn to Oliver for help. Of course, though, it's not that interesting in practice, with Cayden shrugging off Oliver's continued escapes so much that even his own allies Black Siren and Sheck (who we finally get a name for!) lampshade. Michael Emerson continues to impress with his acting chops, but there's only so far that he can stretch credibility.

The episode honestly feels more functional, intent to explore this one aspect of the story -- the breakup of the team -- more than anything else. We've got multiple B-plots running, of course. Thea and Quentin have really tender scenes discussing Evil Laurel's possible redemption. Dinah attacks Vigilante when she realizes that Vigilante's working with Cayden James, even though the two of them spend actual moments in the episode on a date of sorts. Curtis finally fixes John Diggle's arm. And there are a lot of great dialogue delivered well by the actors... but overall, the episode felt mostly just functional more than anything due to a really bland central conflict that felt like it's something that the writers needed to get off to set up the rest of the season more than an actual story that proceeds organically.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jerry Bertinelli is a member of the Bertinelli mafia family, which is the family of Helena "Huntress" Bertinelli. Huntress herself hasn't really been seen in Arrow since the first two seasons, and Jerry notes that after her one-woman crusade that's essentially fucked over the Bertinelli family, she's gone underground. That doesn't stop Jerry from... naming a drug after Huntress? Eh.