Jessie Robertson reviews the nineteenth episode of Arrow season 5…
Part Cyber Crime Thriller, Part Heartwarming Family Drama, Arrow does it all!
Opening scene tonight was pretty fun albeit feeling a bit Scooby-Doo-ish; Chase was cornered in an arcade but he turned the games against Team Arrow (where was Toymaster from Supergirl’s Earth?) The “chase” is still on for Prometheus and no one wants to get him more than Felicity. She shows she’s willing (as she has a few times since being with Helix) to step over the line for something she believes making it worth crossing, just like Oliver and Diggle have in the past. She figures out Chase must have an ARGUS contact, a guy on the inside to be able to stay one step ahead of him. But Athena from Helix takes the first step and kills the mole with an elevator. Yes, and the visuals are both physical comedy funny and grotesque at the same time. You see, it turns out Helix isn’t a fan of ARGUS as they have captured their creator, Cayden James, a man who’s “20 times worse than Snowden” as referenced by Lyla. There’s a moral struggle in here as Lyla informs Oliver and John that any break in to ARGUS by Helix would be a nightmare, placing every single agent they have in mortal danger; on the other hand, James was taken black ops style and being held w/o a charge or trial in some real Amanda Waller type shit. This is what Arrow does so well when it’s firing on all cylinders; these heroes are all shades of gray with a lot of dark more than light sometimes so putting them all in this kind of a rock and hard place always makes for good TV.
As Felicity gets deeper into this, she finds out Helix is going to bust James out of ARGUS prison and she’s being talked into helping; James created a device that can locate people by heartbeats no matter where they are. Felicity is convinced this is the key to finding Chase, which is actually sound thinking. But, she has to sort of go against Oliver and John, her closest friends, to do it. She cuts Oliver off early as he’s about to lecture her and later in a very close, almost romantic moment, the two have one of their great one on one scenes together, which we haven’t seen in a while where Oliver tries to convince her again to stand down. Felicity can’t and she cites Oliver as her example and one of the reasons she loved him so fiercely. The op goes pretty darn well as Helix tracks James down at an off site location and turns ARGUS’ own defenses against them and Team Arrow. It was quite the image seeing Felicity trapping Oliver behind a laser fence and taking off with exactly what she came for. In the past, I would have expected Oliver to put Felicity in the doghouse, but this time, she tells him exactly what she’s going to do. She even chides him after Helix gives her the boot but leaves a parting gift: the heartbeat tracker (for lack of a better term) by telling Oliver “You didn’t back my play and you don’t trust me.”
What else happened tonight? Oh yeah, Rene has one of the gutsiest scenes of his young Arrow career so far retelling the incident that has scared him away from being with his daughter. I won’t retell it; it would lose a lot of its power but if you’re a dad to a little girl like me, or in TV terms, a recovering alcoholic like Quentin, this story spoke volumes. But, Quentin doesn’t care. A father without his daughter doesn’t fly with him and I love seeing him in this role of trying to help others now that he’s fighting his demons pretty successfully. Let me just say when Rene is reunited with his daughter – TEARS. It’s a bit ham-fisted, I’ll be honest, but it does its job well. Rene and Quentin are just too good not to put together even if Curtis would seem a much better fit in the corporate world than Rene. He’s quietly been one of the shining stars of this season and added a ton of character, charm and fun.
8.5/10- Arrow continues on its thriller path , scaling way back on the crazy and mystical from last season and Adrian Chase has become one of the best foes , consistently, on Arrow in a bit; when are we going to get that Sister v. Sister fight though?!?
Jessie Robertson
Originally published April 28, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
