Arrow The Recruits (2012– ) watch online HD

This episode continues the trend of attempting fixes for the previous bad season.

+ Laurel is called out on her lack of skills.

+ Felicity finally gets to show some remorse for nuking several thousand people.

+ Oliver continues to be a bad***, and shows he does not want to make the same mistake twice

+ Action alone.

• Introducing a meta to the team: it is pretty predictable he will not last long

• Felicity a little too condescending

• Dumb handling of "evidence". In previous seasons, they would at least use plastic bags to prevent contamination.

• Prometheus forcing Church not to kill GA was a mistake that will come back latter.

• You can still tell that they are reusing sets.

• Diggle army buddys were obviously villains from the start, and the resolution is also pretty predictable.

All in all: nice episode, but its outcomes are predictable

When the idea of 4 or 5 new vigilantes making their way to Star City first surfaced a few months back, I was completely against it. This season seemed like it was going to feature Oliver taking on criminals by himself once again. So 2 episodes in he already recruits a new team? I'm sorry that just wasn't something I could get behind.

But I was actually on board with the idea during this episode for a while. Or maybe it was just the fact that seeing Ollie kick the crap out of a few cocky wannabes was just plain awesome. Either way, the episode started out nicely. It didn't hurt that the relation to the flashback's via the "on the line" training tactic seemed to be integrated well this time, though I am a bit tired of the flashbacks perfectly linking up the present.

I was also entertained by Oliver's attempt at balancing his time as mayor and working on a deal with Amertek amidst his late night activities. Or as Thea would say, a vigilante moonlighting as the mayor. The episode seemed to have a clear arc and grounded tone with these new recruits. Having Laurel's death still looming in the background and weighing on Oliver and Quentin was a nice approach. But then the episode kind of took a turn for the worse.

I'm not down for Wild Dog, Artemis (or whatever they will call the fake canary from last season), or even Curtis suiting up as a vigilante. But I feel like even they showed some promise. Wild dog complains a whole lot, but Curtis had some nice comeback's to Oliver's mishaps. But it was Ragman that really turned me off. We had just finished a season where the concept of magic invaded what was a pretty grounded show considering the other CW shows it shares a universe with. Damien Darhk was cool for a bit, but it got old watching a man with a bow and arrow fight who was basically an immortal god. I thought we were done with magic or people with meta-human like powers. I won't pretend to understand exactly what Ragman's powers are as of yet, but I just can't get excited for that on this show again. 'Legacy' was a brilliant episode that brought the show back to its grounded roots, this episode seemed to take a step in the wrong direction.

Ragman's mini arc finished with him unmasking to Oliver, whom he just met, and already agreeing to be a part of the new team. It just felt really out of place. As did Oliver's rushed turn of admitting he doesn't want to fail anymore at saving this city. So is he already eliminating going back to killing? Something he just went back to in last week's episode?

I know I'm being harsh, but it's because I care about the quality of this show. I don't want it to make the same mistakes previous seasons did. I wasn't a huge fan of the Diggle material this week but the flashbacks were cool, as was Quentin's potential position as deputy mayor. Those are story lines I'm interested in, however. I don't care about the new additions, but maybe that can change. Let's just keep the quality of the show consistent week to week.

+Oliver's training tactics

+Flashback's link

+Laurel's death still weighing on everyone

+Quentin's new gig?

-Ragman brought everything down

-Unmasking too early

-Wild dog's complaining

7.2/10

I really liked last weeks episode. It had me with a good outlook for the rest of the season and I was excited to see what they would throw up to use this week. Overall, I liked this episode, not as much as last episode, but I still think it was a solid episode. There were a couple of things that bugged me but I'll get to that later.

Firstly, Ragman. I really liked his introduction in this episode. I was a bit confused at the start, firstly I thought it was the big villain of the season. Either way though, his face is awfully similar to that of Prometheus. Back to Ragman himself though, I liked the contrast between his origins with his father to Oliver's. This really played into how everything that happens this season is a result of what Oliver and Team Arrow have done in previous seasons.

Something they did really well this episode was the editing between the flash backs in Russia and Oliver's training and the real time training with the new recruits. Again, it shows contrast between Oliver's past and him connecting to this new generation of Team Arrow.

My favourite scenes where with Diggle. I'm going to talk about the writing as a whole a bit later but I thought the writing in these scenes were outstanding. The fact that they made us care about that new recruit in the army so quickly before he was taken away from us I thought was really great. I just thought everything about Diggle's scenes were done really well and I would of been perfectly happy to have a whole episode on him and what he is doing in the army.

Now to some negatives. Felicity. I like Felicity as a character. I think as far as Team Arrow goes, she plays a good role and the character is well written for that part. However, her playing a role as Oliver's love interest or in this episode, his voice of reason just doesn't work. This is mainly because how they portrayed the two together in previous seasons. I think pre-Olicity, she would of worked well as the voice of reason that Diggle is normally there for, but in this situation it didn't. I thought Thea would of been a much better character to be putting Oliver in line. I always felt that if Diggle wasn't the one getting through to Oliver, Thea was and I really wanted her to be the one to step up to this role both as Mayor like she has and as the Green Arrow.

Apart from the Diggle scenes and a few others here and there, most of the writing was poor. I'm not talking about the story and the plot itself, but just some of the dialog came of cheese at times. I get that shows like the Flash can be an absolute cheesefest of dialog but for that show it is completely suited. Arrow is serious. While playing into the serious tone was part of the reason of Arrow's decline, I don't think they can jump straight back into Flash territory. They need to slowly bring back the lighter tone and humour which is kind of hard when the main character wears a dark hoodie and only really operates at night.

Overall, while it wasn't the greatest individual episode ever, I still thought it was a solid second coming to season 5. It did enough for me to start getting invested into these new members I do look forward to where they are going to head to from here.

8/10

This episode should have been an exciting continuation of the premiere. However, it was a mixed bag. There is good to be had with the episode. The action scenes are still on top form, and look better than ever, with Oliver actually not getting nerfed like he did in Season 4. This new Bag Man guy seems to be a really cool addition with his mystical powers. However, I don't want the show to take the powers to far like they did with the magic in Season 4. Diggle's new storyline with the army is interesting and had twist coming from all directions. The new flashback storyline with the Bratva is in top form with Oliver going through the recruitment process. Prometheus is a really good villain with his ninja stars and sword. He better continue that streak, and I like how they tease him. Now to the bad. The new recruits were absolutely annoying complaining about everything the Green Arrow does. I wish he could just fight crime on his own. Felecity is just annoying, and she took up too much time in this week's episode. She is not the main character. Overall, I hope the next episode is a lot less of a mixed bag and more of an improvement. Grade: 7.0/10

Green Arrow has always worked best alone and with his small team. "The Recruits" is a huge step down from the high-octane season premiere and certainly does not make anyone care for the new team. Most of them seem to slow the protagonist down. A very mundane, eventless episode to say the least, aside from some action.