Jessie Robertson reviews the fifteenth episode of Arrow season 7…
Opening Montage….Oliver beating up some poor young police academy trainee (in the middle of their desks?), Renee kills it time-wise putting a gun back together, Felicity badly wants to interrupt a police IT person and Diggle looks bored in strategy class. Then the one-liner by Rene: “Don’t you know we already have our own uniforms?”
So, tonight’s episode feels like a lot of ideas we’ve seen in Arrow before, that all want to get to a certain place that makes absolute sense for this show. As I illustrated, they all start out in police academy, and after Oliver tells Felicity he really wants to give this a try, they do! Their first mission out of the gate is dealing with a big corporate honcho who’s manufacturing poisoned bullets, essentially and is untouchable. Team Arrow show up in police uniform and the whole operation gets botched; after one attempt, Oliver is calling it quits and what do you know! Felicity has revamped the “Arrow- Cave”! When did she have time to do that?
Once the happy couple break the baby news to Diggle, he does what Diggle does best: he calms the situation and tries to find an amend with both sides of the argument, which at first Dinah resists. She looks like she’s about to bring her Captain’s hammer down on all of them but once Renee digs a bit deeper, he finds out her cry isn’t working correctly, which gives her pause as she doesn’t feel like she can be a vigilante/hero without it. Once we get to the end, Team Arrow is back in business and apprehend the bad guy doing what they do best: being badass vigilantes. And, to wrap a frilly bow around the whole package, they are now going to be operating as a SCPD Black Ops team, essentially, which is the end destination we always needed with this group.
The trip was long, but the destination was pre-determined. Every time I honestly think Arrow is about to really stick with something that’s going to make the show tougher to maneuver around, I’m proved wrong. That’s not to say the show doesn’t tackle tough stuff: they do, but they are not patient people. Being a black ops team, almost outside the law for the most part, is the dream scenario for these characters, especially at this point in their lives.
As far as Future Star City, I thought our two main characters there really sung together this week. It was all about sister and brother coming together and learning how to work with each other, their strengths, their weaknesses and just being around each other. Finding a mini tape player in a futuristic yard sale is about what you would expect honestly, in this torn society they find themselves in. Also, hearing Felicity’s voice on the tape recorder was strangely a pleasant time, even though we just saw her whole episode long!
That’s not even getting into the OTHER storyline that happened that sorta got brushed to the sideline where Laurel investigates Diaz’s death and finds Emiko as the killer. Hearing her bring up the name “Black Siren” stops her in her tracks though. And did I hear Bronze Tiger call his son Connor? Hmmm….
7.5/10 – The future and the past seem to move back and forth between working better than the other one week and switching places the next. I’m getting more excited about the story of Baby Queen and Mia is becoming less and less of a story trope and finding her way into real character. Plus, I’m sad Echo Kellum is leaving.
Jessie Robertson
