DigificWriter

My review:
Greg Berlanti and Co. are IN THE ZONE, producing not one but TWO of the greatest shows on television right now, which is not an easy thing to do.

The last 5 episodes of both Arrow and The Flash have been phenomenally plotted, written, and acted, and "Corto Maltese" makes the streak 6 for 6.

A simple trip to find Thea and convince her to come back home becomes anything but simple when Diggle - accepting an unofficial assignment from Lyla - inadvertently walks himself, Oliver, and Roy into a crisis, which ends up leading to some crazy international Team Arrow action, complete with Oliver improvising to make some pretty sweet homemade archery tools.

We also get some action from both Laurel and Felicity back in Star(ling) City, as Laurel takes the first major step - ill-advised though it may have been - towards realizing her ultimate destiny as the Black Canary, finding some help along the way in the form of one Ted Grant, whose first interaction with her is anything but friendly, and Felicity finds herself being pulled in several different directions all at once by her new boss Roy Palmer, Team Arrow, and Laurel, leading to some hilarious and really well-acted scenes from Emily Bett Rickards and Brandon Routh.

Speaking of Palmer, his mission for Felicity - decrypting and restoring a Queen Consolidated Applied Sciences hard drive - led to an interesting scene as he browsed through the blueprints for a bunch of high-tech weapons. I have no clue where this particular storyline is headed, but I'm really intrigued by it.

I'm still working my way through the first two seasons of the series and consequently didn't quite understand some parts of Thea's storyline in this episode, but I nevertheless found myself really enjoying her interactions with Malcolm, who, despite being all kinds of bad, comes across as incredibly likeable and always has.

Getting back to Felicity, it hasn't been a secret that she'll be headed to Central City in this coming Tuesday's episode of The Flash, but I was expecting the setup for that trip to be a bit more flashy (no pun intended), and am kind of disappointed that it was handled so low-key.... although it was neat to see her browsing the same "The Streak Lives" blog we saw Iris tracking at the end of last night's Flash episode.

Arrow has gotten really good at episode-ending cliffhangers, but I think tonight's is my favorite. Having Nyssa so Ghul walk into the Arrow-Cave with bow drawn and demand to know where Sara is gave me the same kind of feeling I got when a bad-****-looking Rupert Giles returned to confront an ultra-powered Willow Rosenberg at the end of the Buffy Season 6 episode "Two to Go", and I cannot wait for next week to see exactly what happens when she finds out about Sara's death. I also can't wait to see how Oliver reacts when she tells him about Malcolm being alive.

Like I said at the top of this review, Berlanti and Co. are on a serious roll right now creatively, and if the previews for both this Tuesday's Flash episode and next week's Arrow episode are any indication, things do not appear to be slowing down anytime soon.