Hey! You know what? This is a really fun episode! All kinds
of interesting things happen: Roy and Sin team up and create havoc, Slade
debuts his cool new costume, and Laurel—Laurel, of all people—saves the
day, sort of. Or maybe she makes things worse. It’s hard to tell. But in any
case, Laurel gets to do stuff for the first time in a very long while,
and that alone makes this episode noteworthy.
Sebastian Blood visits his mother, Maya, in the asylum to
grill her about Laurel’s recent visit. He then dons his skull mask and murders
her in some never-detailed way; since her death will later be attributed to her
preexisting heart condition, it’s possible he scared the life clean out of her.
Upon hearing of Maya’s death, Laurel, who is still popping stolen pain pills,
asks Quentin to arrange a rooftop meeting with the Arrow. Laurel and Oliver are
both bristly and bitchy to each other at first—Laurel because he showed up
late, Oliver because she sicced a SWAT team on him at their last meeting—but
eventually she fills him in on her suspicions about Blood.
Oliver corners Roy in the alleyway outside Verdant. He
thanks him for saving Moira’s life at the rally last episode, while sneakily
trying to see if the mirakuru serum is having any effect on him. Roy
dodges his inquiries.
Inside their lair, Oliver and Felicity and Digg all sit
around and spy on Roy via surveillance camera as he goes about his business in
the club upstairs. In response to
Felicity’s query as to whether Roy has talked to anyone about getting kidnapped
and injected with the mirakuru, Oliver grouses, “Roy’s not the kind of
guy who’s comfortable discussing his feelings.” “Not like you and me,” Digg
replies.
Heh. Digg. Digg is a
wee bit worthless in this episode—he mostly loiters around the lair while
talking about how Sebastian Blood sure seems like a stand-up fellow—but that
was kind of awesome.
Digg openly scoffs at the notion that Blood could be
corrupt. Felicity is at least willing to consider it: “His last name is Blood.
That can’t be a good thing.” Oliver’s on the fence: On the one hand, he doesn’t
want to consider the possibility that his new buddy Blood is dirty; on the
other hand, he trusts Laurel’s judgment, kind of. Seeking proof of Blood’s
wrongdoings, Oliver dresses up as the Arrow and, with Laurel along for the
ride, breaks into the City Archive to steal the police file on Blood’s father’s
murder. After much derring-do, they abscond with the file… which turns out to
be empty.
Island flashbacks: Sara and Oliver hole up in the plane
wreckage and try to decide upon a course of action. Sara suggests surrendering
to Ivo, insisting that he’s not really a bad guy, even though he shot
Shado in the head two episodes ago while playing pointless and sadistic
mind games on Oliver. Sara, I don’t get you. Oliver, quite reasonably, refuses
to entertain this suggestion. Sara also dishes some dirt on Laurel: Back in
Starling City, before either of the Lance sisters were romantically involved
with Oliver, Laurel learned of her sister’s crush on him and schemed to win him
for herself, going so far as having the cops raid a party Oliver and Sara both
attended. I sort of dig the conniving rat-bastard side of Laurel—pill-popping,
boyfriend-stealing—that’s been emerging in recent episodes. She’s got layers.
While Oliver sleeps, Sara swipes the radio and makes contact
with Ivo. Over the course of their conversation, Sara goes from viewing Ivo as
her savior/possible lover to seeing him as, y’know, a sadistic torturer and power-crazed
murderer.
It’s about damn time, Sara.
Roy reveals his super-strength to Sin. I love seeing
Sin—she’s a great character, and she always brings her fair share of the
awesomeness to Team Awesome—and yet I always get nervous when she’s in an
episode, because I’m terribly afraid she’s going to meet a grim fate before the
end of the season. Roy says, “The Arrow once told me all I was good for was
taking a beating,” which is hilariously dickish and cruel, and thus totally
sounds like something Oliver would say. Now that he’s got super-powers, Roy
wants to put them to good use by fighting crime, thus taking his Arrow-worship
to the next logical extreme. He and Sin scamper off to harass ne’er-do-wells.
In no time at all, they locate the perfect ne’er-do-well for
their purposes: a high-powered lawyer who’s been slicing up prostitutes in the
Glades. Ah, Starling City, where a violent criminal can operate out in the open
under his own name and identity, and neither the cops nor the city’s premiere
crime-fighting vigilante can be bothered to take him down. (Early in this episode,
there’s a quick scene where the Arrow scares the pants off of some low-level
miscreant while looking for intel on Sebastian Blood; there was a nearly
identical scene in last week’s episode, thus suggesting that this is how the
Arrow’s been spending his nights. Okay, fine, obviously he’s got a strong
personal interest in tracking down the source of the mirakuru, but…
Oliver? Buddy? Maybe you could pencil in an hour or so to go after the guy
who’s been violently attacking women?)
Anyhoo. Roy comes up with a plan, of sorts, which involves
Sin dressing up as a prostitute and offering herself up as bait.
(Note: This is not a good plan.) He explains to Thea that Sin has a hot date:
“She was hoping to borrow an outfit. Something slutty.” Thea cheerfully
obliges.
Things I love about this scene:
1. Roy assumes that anything Thea would wear on a date would
be indistinguishable from what a prostitute would wear on the job.
2. Thea is wholly unoffended by this assumption.
3. Roy and Thea both (correctly) view “slutty” as a positive
character trait.
So Sin, tarted up in Thea’s finest first-date outfit, starts
walking the streets. In no time at all, she’s picked up by the sleazeball
lawyer, who pulls a knife on her in the front seat of his BMW.
Roy arrives and goes crazy from the mirakuru, using
his super-strength to beat the lawyer into an unconscious pulp. He and Sin are
justly horrified by his actions, though… what, exactly, was their original
plan? For Roy to beat him into somewhat less of a pulp?
Slade (present-day Slade, the one who wears expensive suits
and has a sexy eyepatch, not scruffy island-flashbacks Slade) visits Sebastian
Blood to growl at him about Laurel meddling in their affairs. Slade slams Blood
against the wall and snarls ominous threats, then orders him to fix the
situation.
So Blood has his favorite henchman, corrupt Officer Daly,
ransack Laurel’s apartment and bust her for stealing her dad’s prescription
meds. (Nice touch: Daly was the officer who arrested Laurel for her DUI earlier
in the season.)
At the police station, Laurel tries to convince Quentin this
is all Blood’s doing—he’s setting her up because she’s getting too close to
uncovering his dark secrets. Well, you’re half right, Laurel: Blood is
out to get you, but it’s not like Officer Daly planted those pills in your
apartment. Quentin thinks Laurel’s suspicions about Blood are nothing more than
the paranoid delusions of an addict. He walks off, leaving her sobbing
brokenly.
Hey, speaking of sobbing brokenly: Roy, Sin and Thea stand
vigil at the hospital for the badly-injured (and prostitute-slashing, let’s
not overlook that part) lawyer. Overcome with guilt and misery, Roy hides in a corner and has a good cry.
I love Roy. Kid breaks my heart. The way he’s coming unraveled
is giving me Teen Wolf flashbacks, in the best possible way.
Oliver escorts Laurel back to her apartment. Sebastian
Blood, in his skull mask, sneaks up and knocks him out, then drags Laurel off
to a creepy abandoned cannery. Suited up as the Arrow, Oliver arrives at the
cannery and faces off against him in a balls-out battle. Blood gets the upper
hand… and then Laurel picks up an abandoned gun and shoots him several times in
the chest.
Laurel, my friend, you are redeeming yourself splendidly for
all your glum dithering in the first half of this season.
But wait! Laurel removes the skull mask… and finds herself
staring at the corpse of Officer Daly.
Oliver assumes Daly was the mastermind behind the scheme to
mass-produce mirakuru all along. Both Oliver and Laurel are wracked with
guilt for thinking Sebastian Blood could be a bad guy. As Oliver tells Felicity
and Diggle, “The only reason I nearly believed her is because it was Laurel. I
do have a blind spot where she’s concerned. Not anymore.”
Poor Laurel. Develop one teensy little problematic addiction
to opiates, and all of a sudden everyone stops trusting your judgment. Even
when you’re entirely right about something. As an added bonus, Laurel
gets fired from the D.A.’s office, thanks to her drug problem. Eh, it’s
probably for the best. She’d been spinning her wheels there for the past ten
episodes without ever stumbling into anything resembling an interesting
plotline; time for her to move on to fresher pastures.
Blood informs Slade that Officer Daly sacrificed himself to
throw Laurel and the Arrow off of their trail. Slade, kitted out in his full
Deathstroke armor for the very first time, effortlessly slaughters all of
Blood’s bodyguards, then warns him not to screw up again.
After hearing from Thea about Roy’s recent violent
escapades, Oliver dresses up as the Arrow and pays him a visit. He offers to
train him to control his abilities, an offer Roy gratefully accepts.
So Oliver managed to go an entire episode without being a
total dick to Felicity, Slade is evolving into a villain worthy of season one’s
Dark Archer, and Roy just took another big step on the path toward eventual
sidekickdom. Excellent stuff, all of it. Keep it up, Arrow.
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