Liveblog Reminder: ‘Arrow’ Gets The Spins With Count Vertigo Tonight

Generally, Arrow is at its best when it reinvents back-bencher DC villains and when Thea gets handed a dope-slap by reality. And tonight’s episode has both!

Actually, this might mark a good moment for the show. One of the key ongoing problems is that there’s the action plot, and there’s the family drama plot, in a given episode, and never the twain shall meet.

Here, however, Ollie is going after the dealer of “Vertigo”, a designer drug that caused Thea to crash her new car in the last episode. The Starling City PD are on the ball for once, and currently Thea is in handcuffs, wondering why everybody is so meeeeee-an. So Ollie has something both immediate and personal at stake as well as an abstract daddy issue problem to fulfill, a good step forward for the series.

Also of interest is that Count Vertigo is being pretty heavily reinvented here, with the show aiming rather deliberately more for Joker-type sadist than royal pretty-boy with an accelerometer in his skull. The show’s propensity for bumping off villains notwithstanding, it could use a more active overarching antagonist than just Malcolm Merlyn running around occasionally firing arrows and being a douche to his son.

The shenanigans start at 8pm EST, so drop in and join the fun.

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