Loved It? Hated It? What did you think of "Irreconcilable Differences?"

[KSiteTV]

What did you think?

[LisaK]

I enjoyed it from the reception to the evildoers reveal the slow build up is great and I am excited for the next 14 episodes

[President_Luthor]

Well, I've finally seen the S6 winter finale, and it was alright. (Not as good as the S5 winter finale, which was a real cliffhanger where Prometheus had systematically dismantled Team Arrow one by one ... and Laurel seemed to have come back from the dead.) This one was just okay, I would actually say the Flash winter finale edged it out slightly this year for me.

I'm not going to spend oodles of time with the wedding reception, other than to say that it was basically to bookend what happened in Part 4 of the Crisis crossover -- where Oliver and Felicity got Diggle to shoehorn their own wedding into Barry and Iris'. The only things to note are that it was probably too long, something like 10 - 12 minutes. We got to see Oliver and Felicity happy, I guess. Rene/Wild Dog did give what appears to be a truly heartfelt tribute to his friends who have just gotten hitched - remember this for later. I actually liked Curtis' drunken 'love isn't real' counter tribute better, lol. See, there was something for everyone.

We see the seeds of the so-called Civil War overtones finally sprouting, and it's not (at the moment) the Oliver/Old Arrow vs. Diggle/New Arrow one. It's a team-wide rift as all the newbie have reason to question their standing in the team and the trust the OTA had placed in them. Yep, it's an Old Team Arrow vs. New Team Arrow schism.

And guess which team bothered/annoyed me more? I'll save this too for later.

When the team discovers that Dinah has been associating with her ex, Oliver lays down the law and boots her off the team. Despite her part in the secret-keeping re: Diggle's nerve issues and performance anxiety in the field, Diggle is conveniently mum and so is Felicity. A lot of do as I say, not as I do when it comes to the alleged "original" team members.

Then we have the more complicated situation with Rene, who has cut a deal with the feds as Samandra has leveraged custody of his daughter to coerce him into cooperating. There are some fan theories out there that Watson is actually a heel because she appears to be almost malicious in pursuing her case against Oliver. Not sure about that. She could just be a tough FBI agent who won't take the crap/tolerate the b.s. that apparently every other level of government agency -- including ARGUS -- is prepared to put with re: Team Arrow.

Here again, Oliver, and by association, Diggle and Felicity are quick to dismiss him ... even though -- by Oliver's own admission -- Rene was putting his daughter ahead of the team ... just like Oliver is currently doing (Anyone remember Oliver having given up being GA, all for William sake? Yes, it's a stupid promise that was going to be increasingly untenable, but in this universe promises have to be honoured. Until they're broken, which Oliver is looking at in the rearview mirror.) Plus, the team is currently lying to William about it. Yeah, Rene is a rat in the underworld sense and trust is the foundation on which a team like this is supposedly built upon.

If the "originals" were pillars of teamwork, honesty and, heck, telling the truth and not keeping secrets, they would have some moral high ground on which to pass judgment on the the newbies. They don't, not after six and half seasons.

Having said that, Dinah sneaking around to try to redeem her fallen ex is easier to swallow than Rene ratting to the feds. Maybe there could have been another way for Rene to retain custody without selling out Oliver, maybe not. I guess we'll never know because the deal is done, Rene has his daughter back and whatever he gave them means the feds will likely be closing in on Oliver very soon.

Thea was the voice of wisdom here, and also Quentin, in terms of suggesting that Oliver find a way to forgiving his teammates who've gone astray. Obviously, wisdom and Oliver Queen don't go well together.

As expected, Oliver initially cans Dinah when everyone assumes she had ratted to the feds, then cans Rene when he reveals that he was the rat. I did like that the newbies were still friends with each other in spite of it all, so it really is (sadly) an 'old' team vs. 'new' team rift. Oliver momentarily post-dates his dismissal of them for one critical mission against James, but apparently Rene going rogue to rescue Quentin was the flimsy straw that broke Team Arrow's back. Oliver had some convoluted reasoning about chain of command, following orders, etc. Blah, blah, blah, it's not like you didn't know Wild Dog sometimes tends to be, you know, wild in the field. It's like he was looking for a pretext to axe him, with his talk of no third strikes. And how many strikes have the originals gotten -- seven, eight?

Sometimes a spade is a spade, and it certainly was in this episode. Oliver was a dick both times (I would say even a S1-level dick), first with Dinah with the false accusation about her being a rat and then with Rene, who admittedly was the actual rat. Diggle may not have been a dick in this context, but he was a putz in letting first Dinah then Rene twist in the wind ... knowing full well that only recently he'd been putting teammates' lives in jeopardy with his nonsensical secret-keeping.

So Rene's out. And it turns out that the "originals" were spying on the newbies -- their justification being Evelyn's betrayal last season. This doesn't sit well with the newbies, obviously, and throws Oliver's trust card he's been lording over them into the mud. Dinah invokes that trust issue, and throws the originals' hypocrisy in their faces, and walks away of her own volition.

Curtis comes to the same conclusion in the end, and he's been dwelling on the "originals" 'do as I say, not as I do'-itis since the reception (albeit clouded by alcohol and post-Paul angst). Only at Curtis' quitting the team does Felicity show any emotion over the team imploding -- we could argue that she knew him the longest of the newbies, but really, no reaction when the others get chewed out by hubby?), but luckily for her Curtis will still work on the start-up business with her. So Rene gets canned from team, and Dinah and Curtis walk.

So, yes, Rene talking to the feds is a betrayal esp. if he's giving up Oliver and Co. on acts that could get them serious jail time -- but in the show's context of Oliver doing similar in putting his son ahead of the team, since last season -- I (and apparently Thea and Quentin too, let's not forget) still have some sympathy for Rene's predicament. Lose his daughter forever, or rat on the team? We can only guess that the feds were playing hardball and he was presented with a "Do this-or else!" scenario. I'm not excusing his ratting, but I'm not damning him to hell for all eternity either.

I'll give points for the newbies for sticking together in the face of the "originals" hypocritical b.s. Oliver was being his Class-A stubborn self, while Diggle ... who only so recently was rightly chewed out for jeopardizing the team for his own secret-keeping foolishness ... comes off as having a rubbery backbone esp. with Dinah's situation. I'm actually more irritated at this point with the "Original Two" -- Oliver and Diggle -- than Felicity, since she barely had two cents to offer when Dinah and Rene were being wrung out to dry.

On the plus side, it looks like James is part of some Arrow version of the Crime Syndicate, which includes Vigilante, Black Siren, James, Anatoly and Richard Dragon. James is a pretty good villain but this Arrow crime syndicate would suggest that TPTB feel that no single foe is going to be THE Big Bad this season and James by himself wasn't going to be like Slade or Prometheus in carrying that title alone all season long. I probably agree with that assessment.

Quentin seems to be getting the long-anticipated Black Siren redemption arc going -- a pretty good scene too -- though again I would say I'm in the minority in actually not wanting it to play out just like that. I'm fine with Black Siren being a 100% irreverent and remorseless heel, and I still hold out hope that she is merely toying with them re: redemption and will blindside the heck out of them -- and maybe even James and the syndicate included -- in the second half.

Overall, it was a fun episode plot and action-wise, other than the too-long reception and Oliver and the so-called originals' own short-term memory on their own trust foibles. (Can't cast stones when you live in fragile glass houses, Olicitiggle.)

[KSiteTV]

This midseason finale didn't sit too well with me, though it got better as it went along.

The first 20 minutes felt like a Tumblr Olicity fanfic, checking every check mark to make sure it's GIF'd and who knows what else for all eternity. Which is great if you're into that sort of thing.

I did, however, REALLY like the dynamic between Quentin and Black Siren. More of that please. And Team Arrow? You look SO douchey for spying on your own people.

[JDBentz]

I've looked at it objectively and with bias. The only way the mid-season finale becomes a 'win' is if one looks at it through a shipper's bias, because otherwise there is no way an action-drama spends the first 11 minutes on a fluffy shipper fantasy, and then focuses only on character moments for most of the mid-season finale with very little action. As it is, the only character evolution in this was with Black Siren as we got more of her backstory, and we saw her let Quentin go, suggesting she could get a redemption arc IF Guggenheim doesn't decide to make the choice based on Twitter/Tumblr. Outside of Black Siren's brief evolution, I could've told this episode in less time and with a lot less useless fluff. Any writer could.

There was a claim that Oliver would be being more of a 'mentor' this season to the team. I sure as heck ain't seeing that. There are brief moments of 'wisdom', and then its back to the same old thing. Melodrama for the sake of melodrama.

Could not care less about Curtis' mopey man-pain.

Rene is at least doing what he's doing for good reasons (any father would do the same, as evidenced by Oliver).

Dinah? Bleh. They had a chance to make her interesting, and now its a question of whether she even deserves the name Black Canary with how wishy-washy she is about things. E-1 Laurel had her issues, but she never wavered from doing what they were doing. Her one time she considered it, she decided she wasn't going to (4x18) before dying.

As to the alliance of villains? Interested in James' issue with Oliver; Anatoli is always fun, and I love Kirk Acevedo's Richard Dragon for the time being; They get major negative points with Vince Sobel, because I'm fairly sure Vigilante is not a member of a cabal of villains. So much for him 'fighting against corruption' when he's as much of a corrupt little twerp as any of them.

Sidenote: Beth Schwartz, who wrote the episode, said something on Twitter that she could've made the entire episode about the reception. Hopefully, that was a sarcastic comment in response to complaints about the length of the reception, but if not... yeah. I think the show writers are thinking they can go back to S4 levels of moronic storytelling and not see themselves lose their jobs.

All in all, the saving grace for the episode was the brief action sequences and the groundwork for Black Siren's potential redemption arc. I personally found nothing to be excited about in this episode beyond that, and I've tried multiple times. So this, sadly, gets a 1/10, which I think is honestly a first for me to give to a mid-season finale.

[TheSecretVampire]

It was really bad, IMO. The only saving grace for me was the scenes between Black Siren and Queintin. I can tell that Black Siren will turn on that team of "super villains." That group minus Black Siren is really unimpressive and should be a cake walk for Oliver and company...eventually. I say that because they are several steps down from what Oliver has faced in the past with the likes of Malcolm Merlyn, Slade Wilson, Damien Darhk and Prometheus.

[shadow08]

I thought this episode was total trash. The wedding sequence was taken straight out of a cheesy soap opera and everything about the team split felt forced and manufactured. I won't even bother to get myself emotionally invested in any of this because we all know the team will find it's way back to each other sooner rather than later and all the heroes on the show are sneaky and hyopcritical liars, so there's no point in taking sides. The villains this season are completely uninteresting, too. Michael Emerson is a former Emmy winner, but he's being wasted on a run-of-the-mill hacker character, who has an axe to grind with Oliver because of a lost son(?) Richard Dragon is just some vanilla drug dealer and don't get me started on Vigilante. Nothing about this character makes a lick of sense and the actor brings absolutely nothing to the table. Where is the humanity shining through in his portrayal or am I supposed to believe that Vincent always came across like a total creepster even before he took a bullet to the head?