The cast and crew of Arrow have been hyping this week’s episode pretty hard. It’s not hard to understand why. “The Slabside Redemption” is the culmination of Season 7’s big prison storyline, and the source of the long-awaited rematch between Oliver Queen and Ricardo Diaz. But despite all that, this episode doesn’t quite live up to expectations. It’s not even the strongest episode of Season 7, for that matter.

Arrow: "The Slabside Redemption" Photos 14 IMAGES

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On some level, you have to feel bad for the cast and crew that this episode is airing mere weeks after Daredevil Season 3 hit Netflix. That series already serves as the gold standard when it comes to superhero martial arts on TV, and that’s to say nothing of the amazing, single-take prison fight scene from Episode 4. It’s difficult not to bring up comparisons between the two given how similar they are in terms of tone and setting.To a certain extent, drawing direct comparisons between Arrow and Daredevil is an apples/oranges scenario. Daredevil has a higher budget and fewer episodes, as well as being catered more directly to older viewers. More than perhaps any other superhero series, it succeeds in looking like a 13-hour movie each season.But on the other hand, it’s not really the budget that made Daredevil’s prison fight so memorable. Arrow’s prison battle is actually much more ambitious in terms of scale and the sheer number of combatants. Daredevil simply managed to do more with less. The choreography was much more intricate. The claustrophobic environment was put to better use. The lighting ensured that it was actually possible to see all the moves and keep a clear sense of where each fighter is and how they’re moving in the frame.Despite having James Bamford (arguably Arrow’s best director when it comes to action scenes) behind the camera this week, the action proved disappointingly bland. At best, the major fight scenes used the height of the prison environment to their advantage, particularly the sequence where Ollie and Turner simultaneously fought enemies on multiple levels. Other than that, the action rarely stood out this week. The low point was easily the corridor battle between Ollie, Sampson and Brick. The dim lighting made it extremely difficult to tell which fighter was which, to the point where I actually wondered for a moment if Sampson had suddenly decided to betray Brick and join Team Ollie.The Ollie/Diaz rematch also proved strangely disappointing. The decision to give Diaz super-strength definitely played into that. Rather than allowing for an all-out brawl between equals, this fight basically consisted of Diaz bludgeoning Ollie over and over till he finally let his guard down. Why was this super-strength plot point actually necessary?I do at least appreciate the poetic end to this phase of the Ollie/Diaz rivalry. After vowing he would never die in prison, Diaz found himself underestimating his enemy yet again and seeing his greatest fear realized. Though here again, the episode proved frustrating unclear. I actually thought Ollie had killed Diaz based on the final shot of the villain bleeding out and contemplating his failure. But according to Stephen Amell himself , Diaz survived and has merely become the new Inmate 4587. Honestly, at some point Arrow needs to let go of Diaz. Between this and the fact that the Longbow Hunters have quietly shuffled out of Star City, it feels more like these characters are being put on mothballs than being given a full, proper send-off.For all these complaints, there was still plenty about “The Slabside Redemption” that worked pretty well. For one thing, the decision to keep the story planted firmly in Slabside and ignore the rest of Team Arrow helped create a more focused narrative. It’s much easier to feel the tension and isolation fueling Ollie’s mission if we remain as cut off from the outside world as he is. Because of this the buildup to the final showdown between Ollie and Diaz worked well, even if the payoff proved lacking. The visitor room sequence worked especially well, with Diaz’s seething rage playing well against Ollie’s helpless, impotent fury.This also turned out to be a great week for Michael Jai White’s Ben Turner. From his very first appearance, Turner has never been given his full due. The show has taken the most morally complex Suicide Squad member and filed away most of his interesting qualities. This season has given Arrow’s writers a belated chance to address that problem and maneuver Turner towards becoming the hero (or at least anti-hero) he’s capable of being. Turner’s decision to help Ollie did feel somewhat abrupt, and I wish the previous episodes had done a bit more to set up that change of heart. But regardless, it’s great to see a more nuanced take on the character, especially with the door being left open for his return to the Suicide Squad.Inelegant fight scenes notwithstanding, this episode also served as a strong sendoff for Turner’s former allies, Sampson and Brick. It’s been fun having these two around in recurring roles, but they’ve pretty much outlived their usefulness at this point. And so both were given fittingly inglorious deaths, with Sampson being sliced up and burned alive and Brick being stabbed by the very last inmate he would have expected. Speaking of which, it was fun seeing Stanley’s dark side emerge this week, and he should make for an enjoyable antagonist when he inevitably rears his head in Star City next.