ARROW Season 4 Episode 17: BEEcon of Hope [Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Cheese]
If you think the pun in the title was bad, then you obviously didn’t watch this week. The show was riddled with bee puns and was completely unashamed of it. A little cheesy sure, but coupled with the super villain of the week, this week’s ARROW gave me a real Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman vibe.
The Bug Eyed Bandit aka Brie Larvan was back, played by Emily Kinney, after her appearance last year’s Flash episode, All Star Team up. After being thwarted thanks to the efforts of The Flash and The Atom, this week she “hacked” her way out of prison by literally changing the date of her release on the prison’s computer system, heading to Star City with a purpose. That purpose... to steal the design for the bio enhancement chip that Curtis Holt designed. Why? Because she has a tumour on her spine that can only be removed by a procedure that would leave her paralysed. As was pointed out in this episode (and thus addressing the fact that Arrow hasn’t just “cured” paralysis) the bio chip isn’t exactly a consumer product, costing up to a quarter of a million dollars per unit. Larvan unleashes a wave of her robotic bees on the Palmer Tech HQ, just after Curtis Holt is sent home for being ill, and Thea Queen stops by to enquire about a job for her boyfriend, and Oliver’s former campaign manager, Alex. With Thea trapped inside and Larvan taking the Palmer Tech board of directors hostage, Team Arrow scrambles to mount a rescue the likes of which you’ve never seen in ARROW.
Curtis, feeling guilty about not being there when the crazy went down, tracks down Team Arrow by using a phone they had given him in a previous episode (I honestly don’t keep track of this stuff, it’s all too throwaway). Being faced with their identities being so easily sussed by Curtis, Oliver and co decide to welcome him into the fold, albeit grudgingly on Oliver’s part, to help them from a tech standpoint in combating Larvan’s robot swarm. One of the best sequences comes when Oliver has one of the bees break the skin, enter his body and start replicating. Curtis devises a plan to neutralize the bee and its mechanical larvae using a high sonic frequency, which just happens to come in the form of a modified version of Laurel’s Canary Cry. It was great to see the team work with such synergy. The articulation of their respective skills and powers to solve the specific problem created by the villain was great. It felt a little like in Flash when Cisco comes up with an overly elaborate plan that always boils down to Barry running really fast. Simple, yes. Cheesy? Definitely. Doesn’t stop it from being fun, and Echo Kellum was charming as ever as Curtis, especially when playing off the extended members of Team Arrow for the first time, Paul Blackthorne’s Captain Lance in particular.
When Team Arrow mounted an assault on the Palmer Tech building to get the hostages out, that’s when things went a bit off. Larvan’s upgraded bees can apparently swarm into the form of a man, but thanks to a TV budget it looks exactly like what it is, a man in a honeycomb suit. Less a killer force of tech gone wrong, a shifting mass of killer robot bees and more a cross between a lame Power Ranger’s villain and a mascot for a breakfast cereal. The thing, not sure if it was ever given a name, is handily taken out by a shock from a fetching uplighter. A sexy lamp if you will. Larvan herself has her bees turned on her after Curtis hacks into their signal and takes control of them. Knocked out by their stings, her fate is kind of left ambiguous. She had a tumour. She was dying and the only surgery that could save her would leave her crippled. She was desperate. In the wrong yes, but desperate. Are the good guys really going to let her rot in jail? Bleak.
In prison, Damien “Kenneth” Darhk is told by Malcom Merlyn, who once again simply slips into his cell (because he was Ra’s al Ghul dammit!), that HIVE have abandoned him. But that’s okay, as Darhk is quick make new friends in the big house. Accosted by the prison’s incumbent kingpin, a guy with his mouth sewn up (why?!), the episode plays a neat little twist where instead of having ol’ stich lips’ men turn on their boss, Darhk proves how resourceful he is by having their boss kill them. Turns out even hardened cons with a penchant for labial embroidery have mothers you can get to. It was an interesting alternative to another rise-to-power-in-Sing Sing story I may have watched on another comic book TV show recently.
The flashbacks tread water this week, as Reiter once again boasts that with the power bestowed upon him by the idol after sacrificing a dozen men could turn him into a God. Luckily for Oliver and Taiana, the juju from his one kill so far wears off. Not before bullets bounce off him through, showing just how dangerous he could be at full power. Once the power wains though, Oliver just takes him out with a good old fashioned right cross! Reiter managed to get away, leaving Oliver and Taiana to come up with a plan to free his prisoners.
Not to hark on about THE FLASH / ARROW comparisons but this week I felt ARROW embraced its comic book roots more, with team-up action and comic book science galore. It didn’t just feel like ARROW, it felt fun. Something the show has lacked for a while.
And the ending? Merlyn is seen talking to someone about HIVE’s plans, referring to him as Darhk’s “ace in the whole,” before calling him by his name... Diggle. My heart stopped for the briefest of seconds, utterly destroyed by the idea that John could betray his friends like that, only to be reminded that his brother Andy is also part of the show. Maybe if he had featured in more than a handful of episodes, his betrayal could be weightier. Guess we’ll see how this plays out.
Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer -- Click here to read Nick's posts
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