Arrow, Season 6, Episode 18: Fundamentals
This episode, as a whole, isn't particularly interesting when you break it down. We've had a neat and much-needed break from the Arrow Civil War and Cayden James stuff, with... mixed results. And I'm sorry to say that this episode is also another one with mixed results. The entire premise of the episode is dumb and honestly repetitive of a different episode (season one's "Three Ghosts"). Oliver gets high on Vertigo thanks to a councilman on Diaz's payroll, and hallucinates and acts like a bigger dick than usual to everyone. We get an egregious (if highly fun) return of Josh Segarra's Prometheus, being the little devil on Oliver's shoulder... but the Oliver-is-on-drugs bit is stretched out for the entire episode with a pretty bland love-saves-the-day bit at the end. And in the end, Oliver ends up resolving to do things absolutely alone since everyone's left him, to return to the mission. And it's... it's pretty convoluted, honestly.
Still, the episode isn't all bad. By boiling things down to a single character and not ping-ponging the entire episode throughout multiple plot points like what we did during the worst of the Arrow Civil War bit, we just sit down with Oliver Queen, and his heightened anger and temper is easily excused (even by William and Felicity) by Vertigo amplifying the emotions that are already there. And, of course, Prometheus is an amazing foil for Oliver, by noting that, no, none of Oliver's past villains are his biggest fear. Oliver's biggest fear is that all the shit Prometheus said about him last season is actually right. And honestly? All evidence points to yes.
Ultimately the Vertigo-induced vision causes Oliver to choose his original season one fundamentals, which... which I'm not sure is what Oliver should be taking from his drug-induced hallucinations. Especially since the whole reason that Oliver nearly gets killed by walking into a police precinct as a one-man army is shut down by Felicity and Quentin arriving and telling him it's a bad idea... so if anything else, he should be taking in the lesson that, no, he isn't stronger alone.
Still, despite the flimsy premise of the episode, and the fact that there is no reason for Diaz to stand patiently in that room with an army while Oliver and Felicity were having their big moment of clarity outside, or that Oliver doesn't have a Vertigo antidote recipe somewhere in that base of his, it's still an amazingly acted episode with Stephen Ammell really flexing off some neat acting muscles. So despite it being a bad episode on paper, it's actually a very enjoyable watching experience nonetheless.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Oliver uses his old... season one? Two? An old costume, anyway, thanks to a hallucination of him using said suit to tell him to 'return to the mission'. Likewise, "you have failed this city", Oliver's season one catchphrase, returns.
- Earth-1 Laurel and Prometheus return in Oliver's hallucinations, obviously.
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