Denial, anger, bargaining: Laurel’s death sends ‘Arrow’ through the stages of grief in ‘Canary Cry’

Perhaps there is clarity in grief?

“Arrow’s” fourth season has been unnaturally busy, home to a half-dozen side plots fighting for screen time while Merlyn and Damien Darhk keep alternating plans that could destroy Star City or, presumably, planet Earth. The series has taken episodic pit stops to create new characters (Constantine, Anarky, Vixen) and set up an entire spinoff show in “Legends of Tomorrow.” Space to breathe has been at a premium.

But if nothing else, the death of Laurel Lance gave the show a refocusing, highlighted by definitive grief stages each member of Team Arrow finds themselves suffering from in “Canary Cry.” From Diggle’s rage to Quentin’s denial to Oliver’s struggle to play anchor, the episode manages to block out the sonic boom of its myriad season-long arcs and deliver a narrow, neat chapter that both eulogizes the Black Canary and sets a few Star City residents off in interesting directions.

In the long term, Laurel’s death may truly pay off in its effect on characters like Diggle and Quentin than in the actual impact of her passing. While her death was handled well, earning major pathos from an expertly structured episode back in “Eleven Fifty-Nine,” the desperate spirals it might send her father and former teammate into are far more interesting.

John Diggle almost shot a woman in the face tonight. Just let that sink in for a minute. John’s a solider, maybe the show’s only truly accepted killer (we tend to gloss over the fact that he straight up guns people down in his “Spartan” guise), but the sight of him pistol-whipping Ruve Darhk was jarring, even for a show as grim in tone as “Arrow.”

John is never going to forgive himself for Laurel’s death, and he’s only going to approach anything resembling closure by killing Darhk or taking his brother off the board. Until that happens, we’re looking at weeks of unhinged, emotional David Ramsey, and the actor is more than talented enough to carry that load. Very glad the writers didn’t let Diggle go through the usual “I want to kill you but I’m a hero” routine, forcing Oliver to stop him from executing Ruve in public.

Quentin’s delusional pursuit of the Lazarus Pit is an equally painful, and inevitable, reaction to Laurel’s death, one also buoyed by Paul Blackthorne’s penchant for playing a character who is 3 centimeters from complete mental collapse at all times. If Diggle’s guilt is painful to watch, then Quentin’s refusal to accept his daughter’s death hurts like all hell. It’s a true testament to the insanity of Quentin’s life that he can rationalize a possible Laurel resurrection based on the fact that the last daughter he lost to a megalomaniacal murder managed to return from the dead as well. I’m sure we’re headed for a “will he/won’t he?” battle between Quentin and a bottle of scotch sometime soon, and his desperate conversations with Nyssa and Oliver were a nice pre-cursor to that.

Each of those scenes were set in motion by Arrow subverting the “depressed or dying characters see ghosts” trope I often mock the series for. Thankfully, instead of actual Laurel apparitions, the writers chose to place a woman seeking revenge on Darhk in the Canary suit, forcing the Team to contend with a warped version of the friend they just lost. The revenge plot isn’t much on its own (though it is good to see the show acknowledge Darhk’s actions are hurting regular people), but it triggers a flurry of interesting scenes from Quentin’s fleeting belief that Laurel somehow survived to Oliver revealing Laurel as the Canary at the funeral.

If I had any problems with the episode, they had nothing to do with the writing or acting and everything to do with CW’s infuriating “now you see me, now you don’t” scheduling this season. “Arrow” goes on more breaks than a chain-smoking waiter who is only there for the paycheck, and the three-week layoff did take some of the shine off the fantastic previous episode.

The series needed an emotional downbeat like this, a chapter to take stock and let us sit in the grief of characters like Diggle and Quentin, but I occasionally found myself wanting the Genesis plot to advance only because the series’ latest vacation left an already sluggish season-long arc in stasis for another month. I guess in the world of streaming and on-demand, CW’s scheduling can be forgiven (I don’t review “Flash,” for instance, so I just waited and binge watched the last few episodes) but as a weekly “Arrow” consumer, the layoff definitely screwed up the pacing for me, and that’s a shame.

Left In The Quiver:

• Continuity question: When does this “Arrow” episode take place in relation to “Flash”? If we’re supposed to assume time lines up week to week, Barry should not have his powers right now. This could be nothing, but given “Flash’s” constant use of time travel in its storylines, I am putting on my tinfoil hat and wondering if that’s any kind of hint as to what’s going on over in Central City.
• I don’t know what it is about Janet Kidder’s sneer, but I’m almost more excited to see Ruve get her comeuppance than her husband.
• Wise choice to keep Damien off screen this week. If we’re not going to explain Genesis (which someone should by now!) then we don’t need to see the big bad right this second.
• Apparently the flashbacks can be useful? Sorry, it’s been so long since that was the case that I was starting to wonder if proper use of flashbacks had actually been outlawed. If we could just never go back to the Island, that would be great. The look back at Laurel and Oliver’s brief romantic reconciliation after Tommy’s death (this seemed to be the gap in time we missed between Merlyn’s undertaking at the end of Season 1 and Oliver’s flight back to Lian Yu at the start of Season 2) was far more interesting than anything that’s gone on with Reiter. If we ever go back to Lian Yu this season, hopefully it’s just a shot of someone holding up flash cards explaining how Darhk’s idol works and then a brief public service announcement letting us know that Reiter had to return to his home planet.

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