Arrow, Season 3, Episode 13, “Canaries”
Written by Jake Coburn and Emilio Ortega Aldrich
Directed by Michael Schultz
Airs Wednesdays at 8pm ET on The CW
It’s impressive how “Canaries” ends in a completely different reality than it began, unburdened by the show’s two biggest still-existing “secrets” and teasing the audience with a closing tag that sets up next week’s episode as the inverse of Arrow‘s normal world, with Oliver and Thea on the island (in the present), and Oliver returning to Starling City in his flashback adventures with A.R.G.U.S. It puts a fun tag on an episode that smartly pushes quickly past two major in-world reveals in order to move on to bigger, more important stories to follow. If anything, “Canaries” is a clear marking point for Arrow‘s third season, hitting the reset button with this week’s episode, and positing next week’s episode as the dramatic catapult to kick the third act of this season into high gear -and hot damn, it’s about time.
Another wonderful inverse quality of “Canaries” is how well it portrays its two most difficult characters – both Thea and Laurel are approaching believable human being status, with Thea neatly coming to terms with Oliver being the Arrow (even feeling bad for getting mad at him for being absent all the time), and Laurel working through her issues over Sara’s death to finally break the news to her father. You can feel Arrow wiping its hands clean of these messy, long overdue resolutions as the episode moves from Oliver’s moment of truth to Laurel’s, both expecting a certain anger that never arrives (or for Laurel, a heart attack that doesn’t happen, at least not in this episode).
Now, there’s some massaging to get this into place; the sudden re-emergence of Count Vertigo 2.0 in the city (something that still doesn’t make a ton of sense; he’s just up and running like that?) pushes Oliver to put Arsenal and Canary 2.0 out into the field again, even though it’s clear those two don’t have anything down but parkour and sneaking up on people, respectively. That part I can accept; Oliver suddenly accepting them as protectors of the city because he needs to run off again is a real convenience, something that betrays the emotional honesty of other scenes with him in the episode. It pairs neatly with Quentin’s immediate acceptance of Laurel running around getting her ass whopped, another moment that only makes sense because the script pushes past it so quickly, nobody has time to contemplate what just happened. Wait, Quentin just said it was cool that Lau– oh wait, is he having a heart attack?
These are small complaints, however, and open to interpretation, thanks to Arrow‘s gentle see-sawing of characters throughout the series (for example, Thea’s decision to not be pissed at Oliver isn’t surprising, simply because her reactions to things are always at random, fitting whatever theme it needs to for that episode. That malleability makes moments like Oliver’s reveal of the Arrow Cave or Thea’s reluctant acceptance of Merlyn as her co-protector more powerful and shallower, all in the same breath; an inconsistent character makes for great drama, but not great resolution, something we’re seeing less and less of as Arrow puts in serious time developing Laurel and Thea, but still something that pops up from time to time (like Oliver being cool with the B squad holding things down again, even though Roy just got somebody killed doing that; he’s cool with it because the script needs him to get his ass out of Starling City, for the most part).
Despite that, “Canaries” surprisingly works, an amalgamation of ideas and themes and stories all smushed together in this tangled ball of narrative momentum, with Thea and Laurel square in the middle. Small pieces don’t work (Felicity is reduced to a shrill whiner in this episode, less of a character than some obligatory dialogue), but the juxtaposition of Oliver’s past and present intersecting suggests that Oliver is about to enter an important new chapter in his journey, a chapter that will be shared with his sister and ex-girlfriend (and sister of other ex-girlfriend), as Oliver learns that he cannot be Absolute Ruler of Team Arrow, even if that means allowing others to put their lives on the line. When “Canaries” is an episode about acceptance of difficult things, it’s a surprisingly strong (if slightly superficial) character piece about personal motivation; when it’s just a Vertigo-of-the-week episode, it’s simply not as engaging.
— Randy