#ConstantineOnArrow: Arrow Season 4, Episode 5 Review
"Whoever you are, I'm a nasty piece of work!"
I had never seen Matt Ryan's cancelled show "Constantine," so I watched the pilot on Hulu before watching this Arrow episode. Dodgy haircut, tan trench coat, un-posh accent: Constantine is the Detective Columbo of the dark arts!
Exorcist, Demonologist, and Master of the Dark Arts, his business card says, guaranteed to "kick your demons in the bollocks." I love this guy already.
"He truly believes that he has every situation under control," says Constantine's Ivy University professor friend about him in that pilot. "He makes you believe. That's his magic. It's also his curse."
Remind you of anybody?
How fortunate that Oliver still had Constantine on speed dial even after not seeing each other since Lian Yu. (Who did Oliver not meet on that island?)
Helping Sara get situated on Planet Earth was far beyond Extended Team Arrow's core competencies and the Brit walking around with the orbed sceptre who can transfer his tattoos to other people is probably the right guy for the job.
(So that's where Oliver got that tattoo with the Chinese characters! Not in Hong Kong! We need more tattoo origin stories.)
His diagnosis: Sara doesn't need an exorcism, she needs a "restitiutionim," a restoration of her soul to her body, because it turns out the Lazarus Pit was never intended for use on the dead.
The really, truly dead.
This episode was sort of The Good Wife Meets CSI Meets The X Files. There's political fixer, and future Thea love interest, Max Davis telling Oliver that Laurel could tank his electability (not to mention his show). There's Felicity pulling up photos of Sara's latest victims and realizing they all resemble Thea. There's John Diggle with his arms crossed in disbelief as Constantine transports Oliver and Laurel to another realm - Where, to the conference room next door? Sorry, that scene was sloppy and ridiculous. - to pull Sara out of the Lazarus Pit.
Again. With her soul this time.
It pains me that Thea recognizes Sara's blood lust because she's experiencing it, too, as did the look on Oliver's face when she tells him that Malcolm served up 2 men for her to kill in order to appease it. Temporarily.
Thea still feels she deserves death for Sara's murder. This is the third time on the show she's said to someone who wanted payback: "Just do it."
Sara's situation is exactly the kind of situation that in seasons 1-3 sent Oliver right over the edge into doing something well-intentioned and self-destructive. In season 4, he has Felicity.
Their quiet conversations at home that ground him feel organic and earned. Arrow has done an admirable job of making their romantic relationship a largely unspoken new baseline for the show.
There are 3 distinct story lines on Arrow that feel like 3 different shows trying to fit into the same hour:
1) Oliver, Thea, Laurel, and Constantine rescuing Sara and restoring her soul (part 1 of the setup for Legends of Tomorrow), backstopped by the island flashbacks and introduction of mystical elements to Arrow season 4.
2) Captain Lance/John Diggle double-teaming Damian Darhk and searching for answers about Andy Diggle and HIVE. John's disappointment that his brother wasn't the honorable soldier and man he always thought he was crushed me, but that those answers came from Lance and not from Oliver means we'll see more of that intriguing pairing.
3) My personal favorite: Olympic medalist and binge (energy) drinker Curtis Holt helping Felicity "Overlord" Smoak unravel the mystery of Ray's last moments, part 2 of the setup for Legends of Tomorrow.
Really quickly - starting next week would be nice - I need to feel those story lines converge. Felicity is getting further and further away from the action, Original Team Arrow was nowhere to be seen, and Laurel had way, WAY too much screen time.
Just when I think I couldn't hate Laurel more, she surprises me with another episode of unapologetic self-centeredness. The show is called Arrow, Laurel. It's not about you.
Oliver doesn't think of you as an equal because you're NOT.
When Laurel said she cared about Oliver's family and accused him of not caring about hers, when it's Thea lying in a hospital bed after almost being killed by Sara, I wanted to punch her in the face.
(Sara's ambush of Thea in the apartment and the broken wine glass were overly obvious callbacks to Ra's Al-Ghul's attack on Thea that forced Oliver to take her to Nanda Parbat in the first place.)
That Laurel would allow Sara to run around the city killing people just to avoid Oliver's judgement, which she deserved, should get her evicted from the Arrow lair right now. What superhero does that?
Now that she and Oliver have hugged, he forgives her for raising Sara from the dead, and she supports his campaign for mayor, can we call it good? As a Hail Mary, I was hoping we could convince Constantine to ask Laurel to run away with him, until somebody in the Arrow fandom pointed out that she's in episode 7.
Oh, well. Worth a try.
Coming up next, episode 6 "Lost Souls"
