I swear you all, Felicity is a lesbian. She just has to be. Emily Bett Rickards has shown herself to be an amazingly talented actress, so there's no way her ambivalent look when she watches Oliver doing shirtless exercises is a mistake. She is so not into him, at all.
Which is awesome, of course. I love that we're not wasting screen time on some very tired and boring unrequited love thing. Maybe the writers realized that Felicity is so much more popular than Laurel that if they made her the third leg in a love triangle, absolutely no one would be rooting for Ms. Lance.
Anyhoo, Oliver is feeling antsy. Now that he is not getting laid anymore (in spite of numerous not-so-veiled offers from Tommy and a few direct looks from Digg) he is really eager to go back out and kill people.
John Nichel is our latest target. He's a slum lord whose tenants tend to wind up dead as a result of the poor maintenance of his buildings. Oliver asks Felicity is she's on board with him going after the big jerk, and she says "totes!" and I scratch my head.
Look, show, we all knew Felicity was going to become the Oracle of Starling City, but you seem to have skipped over stuff. She made it really clear at the outset she only wanted to help Walter and did not want to get involved with Oliver's murderous moonlighting madness.
Yet for weeks, that's just what she's been doing. And no one has mentioned Walter at all. I really expected Felicity to call Oliver on welching on their deal, so when she didn't I found myself frowning.
I know it's hard to squeeze in every little detail into your weekly allotted time. I have a suggestion to fix that, though. When you have to cut something? Cut out any scene with Detestable Detective Lance. Really, no one will mind.
Oliver goes to do I don't know what about Mr. Nichel. Usually, he extorts money, but in this case? What was he going to do? Sit there and force him to hire contractors to upgrade all of his buildings?
We never find out. Oliver shows up and discovers his victim has already been victimized. Seriously, Starling City is getting so overcrowded with vigilantes these days. The Hood, Deadshot, the Huntress, the Dark Archer... It's getting so a guy can hardly murder in peace anymore without some other killer getting underfoot.
Oliver pouts like a cat does when you take the dead bird they were playing with and put it in the garbage. If you don't know what the looks like, you just have to trust me. It is a pout to be reckoned with.
He tells Felicity to find his missing victim. When she politely asks him why, he says, "I don't like the idea that there's somebody dangerous out there."
Which merits this look of pure win.
Oliver sulks. Why can't people understand that his form of assault with a deadly weapon is completely different than other peoples' assault with a deadly weapon? He's the hero, dammit!
While Felicity works on the Nichel problem. Oliver looks for another playmate. He has his heart set on killing some folk, gosh darn it, and that is just what he's gonna do if he has to go through every last name on The List of Doom.
Diggle steps in with his typical Digg awesomeness. He tells Oliver they're going to go out on a date and Oliver has no choice in the matter. Man, do I love the way Digg bosses Oliver around.
Meanwhile, in The Glades, Thea is helping Bad Boy Roy recover from his injury. That is to say, they're sucking face. This is one of those plot lines that is just lamentably predictable and yet entirely unavoidable. I mean, a bad boy who looks like Colton Haynes? It would require inhuman self-control to not want to tap that.
Roy gets a Revolver-gram, which is a lot like a Stripper-gram, because they both involve a pistol. See what I did there? I was saying that a stripper has a.... And it's like a... Okay, never mind.
Anyhoo, Thea is shocked and outraged that Roy intends to continue his life of crime. Oh please, Thea, don't try and fool us. We all know that only makes you want him more. You probably have Britney Spears'Criminal on repeat on your pink sparkly iPod.
Laurel comes home to find her father hard at work with her mom on the case of the missing-but-maybe-not-drowned sister Sara. She gets all in her dad's face about how she thought he was just going to get her mom to see reason.
WTF...?
Did any of you get that impression last week when Laurel was guilt-tripping her father into helping out? I sure didn't. I actually feel bad for Detestable Detective Lance as he tries to understand why he's in trouble for doing what Laurel asked him to do.
On their date totally straight, bromantic hanging-out dinner thing, Digg once again stands up for the last spark of humanity within Oliver's stone cold heart. I want Digg to stay around for a really long time. I see a lot of feels between these two as Digg tries to keep Oliver from sliding over that edge.
While at dinner, everyone gets a live-streaming feed of the latest vigilante putting John Nichel on trial for his crimes. I know it was unrealistic to hope for, but I was really wanting him to say, "John Nichel, you have failed the Glades" or something. I just like seeing Oliver squirm.
Well, Nichel is pronounced guilty and murdered right there over the interwebs. I swear, what some people will do to become a YouTube sensation!
The next evening, our latest crazy kidnaps the assistant D.A. This is the show again drawing clear distinctions between Oliver's murdering and other murdering. He doesn't attack people who are (mostly) innocent.
The D.A.'s crime is just that he's overworked and has to pick the cases he can win. It's a cold, sad reality, but it's not a crime. Mr. YouTube doesn't see it that way. His wife was killed and he wants justice.
Oliver springs into action, guided by the fantabulous Felicity. He races to the abandoned building she directs him to, only to find it empty. She gives him a new location, but it's an empty lot.
Time runs out for the poor A.D.A.
Felicity is shocked and traumatized and I just want to hug her. She's such a wonderfully human presence in our coterie of tough guys. Emily is one of those actors that can convey so much with a look, with silence. What a lucky find for Arrow.
In the midst of all this, Malcolm Merlyn is zeroing in on the culprit behind the attempt on his life. I still think he knows Moira was behind it, but he likes her too much to kill her. This whole thing was just a game to warn her to not mess with him.
Speaking of being messed with, it's Bad Boy Roy's turn in the YouTube courtroom. I am sure there has to be more to his selection than a random, "he's a gang banger" thing. The show is just not that sloppy... Er, usually.
Felicity and Digg suss out that the bad guy is using the abandoned subway system. Oliver rushes off to rescue the guy he suspects is nailing his sister. Because if anyone is going to kill him, it will be Oliver.
When asked why he should be allowed to live, Bad Boy Roy says, "I shouldn't. I'm a waste" with a look of utter despair on his face.
He now has an all-access pass to Thea's pants, in case that wasn't obvious.
The confrontation between the Hood and the killer is poignant. They hit all the right notes with comparing their different kinds of vigilantism. There's even some indication that maybe the guy was inspired by the Hood. I hope they revisit that later.
Oliver does his best to talk the crazy man down, but the guy won't have any of it. So Oliver has to kill him. I liked the way the show played this. They made it sad instead of triumphant.
Oh my god, did y'all see the look on Roy's face later? When he was eying the arrow he had kept as a souvenir of his rescue? That was the look of a boy with a huge crush. I'm just saying. If Roy were a girl, there would be no doubt that he'd be in Oliver's bed by the end of S2, is all I'm trying to say.
We get the first scene in the history of the show where any kind of emotional vibe can be felt between Laurel and Oliver. Over this scene they play Rihanna'sStay, which might as well have been written about Oliver.
Laurel seems to sense what he needs from her, that it's more than coffee. But she declines to go "round and around" this time and leaves him standing there.
Oh Oliver...
Moira has found a solution to her Malcolm problem. She offers up her friend Frank as a sacrifice, which we all saw coming. And just when I am thinking she really is as cold as ice, she goes into her car and breaks down sobbing.
Oh Moira....
As far as the whole Magical Ninja Island thing goes, I just don't have much to say. They're doling out so little information at a time, that I'm honestly not really engaged on that whole subplot. They need to give me something to care about.
Laurel convinces her mom that Sara really is dead and so Dinah departs. She gets one spectacular line, "I'm catching the Red Eye to Central City. I should be home in a flash..."
Awesome. I am sad to see the wonderful Alex Kingston go, but I'm sure she'll be back. And it's such a shame she's anchored to the worst parts of the show.
This whole interlude does actually move our story forward, though. The subway tunnels are the final piece of the puzzle that clue Oliver into the fact that the Undertaking has something to do with the Glades.
But what?
OMG, you guys, so many feels! Seriously, this episode was kind of shaky as far as plot, but with the characters it was right on target. What did you think?
