I'm of the opinion that Ollie isn't acting wholly rationally; however, I don't think that that is, in and of itself, a story flaw. Oliver story is the story of a broken man who's groping his way towards heroism. I expect Oliver to make bad decisions. So long as he learns from them, I'm willing to accept the journey.

That is a fair point.

I'd argue that Merlyn needs to be neutralized. That's why Ollie has his own, personal Supermax. Yes, that does mean that Merlyn will, inevitably, escape but that's just the way that superhero stories work. It's wasteful to kill off good villains even if it would, arguably, make sense to do so. See also Batman and The…

Well, there's nothing wrong with that theory, but I think that mine is more fun. :-)

Ultimately, the real reason that they're teaming Ollie up with Merlyn is that it's a classic comic trope: enemies forced to work for a common purpose. The trick to telling that story, though, is that you have to sell the audience on the necessity of the team-up. It's a tricky balancing act because you only have so…

This subject is like discussing the differences between weather and climate. Any given instance of a type of weather can't be ascribed to climate. Climate only exists as a trend.

My wife thinks that one of the themes of the show is good, but flawed people, trying to make good decisions and fumbling along the way.

But why not at least attempt to reach out to Maseo, in that case. I could buy the notion that he'd have to turn to Merlyn after he, literally, exhausted every other option, but the writers opted to skip over those steps, so it makes it seem like Merlyn just talked him into a bad alliance and that Ollie just went along…

I don't see that. The modern Ollie is still willing to kill when there aren't any options, but his policy is now that killing is the absolutely last option, which I think is what it ought to be. Again, the point is that he's a hero. He's supposed to have extraordinarily high moral standards, and a strong code versus…

My personal theory is that everyone on Team Arrow has developed Stockhold Syndrome-like behavior from prolonged exposure to him. He has a very strong and forceful personality that tends to make people follow him.

I'm strongly disagree with anyone wanting Oliver to go back to being a killer. One of the things that defines a true superhero is not powers, but the willingness to spare people even though you have the capacity to kill them.

Whenever you throw family into the mix, Oliver loses his capacity for rational thought. I'd object except that this has been a fairly consistent theme with him from the very beginning.

I agree. I'm the farthest thing from a Laurel fan. Prior to this episode, the nicest thing that I've ever said about her is that she sometimes uses her superbitch powers for good instead of evil. But this episode has the Laurel that I've always wanted to see. If people are hating on her character in this episode,…

When Lance interrupted her and told her that she knew her vigilante secret, I seriously thought that they'd end up punting the reveal about Sarah, again. It was such a classic set up for the cliched "I tried to tell you" plot. I'm so glad that Laurel powered through it and came completely clean.

You nailed it. Headless was much, much more frightening when he was a monster. Headless the man… meh.

I think that the scientist seeing Finn with spaghetti is a Lovecraft shout-out. Finn is basically Cthulhu and his form is so terrifying that the poor scientist literally melts from the mental trauma.

A C+ seems a bit harsh. I'd knock the episode down to a B just because it's aggravating that no one calls Ollie on his hypocrisy (not even Laurel, whose super-bitchiness powers would normally hone right in on that character flaw), but everything else about the episode was great. I particularly can't agree that Roy was…

Everyone one is entitled to their opinions. I don't agree.

Someone mentioned this on last week's Flash threat, but I think it bears repeating: the thing that makes Felicity work so well as a character is that she has chemistry with EVERYONE. EBR is simply an incredible actress and the show is fortunate to have stumbled across her. She is the very definition of an ascended…