On ARROW, Timing is Everything
Episode 214 “Time of Death”
[photos: Cate Cameron/CW]
Oh, the feels, Arrow. The feels.
Arrow is back with a new episode after the Winter Olympics pretty much put everyone into reruns, and it’s a decent return, but misses a couple of opportunities. Spoilers abound ahead!
[And this programming note: for a while, we were doing these as part of the 3-Minute Recap experiment over on SciFi4Me TV, but since you weren’t watching…]
Ollie and Moira are on the outs over Moira’s secret about Thea.
Laurel now knows Sara’s back.
Slade Wilson is lurking.
This is Felicity’s episode, at least as far as the emotions and whatnot. The main thread of the episode: a criminal mastermind named William Tockman — with a fascination for precision timing — is running thugs in the city in a series of precisely coordinated robberies. Not only is he a mastermind at planning and precise in his sense of timing, but he’s also a fair hand at computers. This we learn the hard way when he hacks into Team Arrow’s system and fries the whole setup.
For Felicity, this makes it personal.
On top of that, our dear Miss Smoak is already feeling superfluous because she’s the only one not in a leotard kicking the stuffing out of anything. Naturally, Diggle is the only one who notices her discomfiture, since Ollie and Sara only have eyes for each other at this point.
And I swear someone watched “Who Mourns for Adonais?” before writing this episode, because the scene between Diggle and Felicity after the system gets fried looked an awful lot like this one:
Naturally, Felicity has to put herself in the thick of things when Team Arrow lays a trap for Tockman at Ollie’s bank. Putting herself in harm’s way, only to be rescued by Canary. And this is a missed opportunity, Arrow. Really. That bullet that went into Felicity’s shoulder… should have hit her spine. Felicity is just one step away from being Oracle anyway. And with Huntress and Canary both on this show, who’s to say we couldn’t have a Birds of Prey spinoff to follow The Flash?
The other thread is the Lance Family Band: Laurel, feeling a little guilty maybe, gives in to Quentin’s plea to have family dinner at her place. See, Quentin feels like there may be something, a spark, still between him and Dinah. The whole thing with Sara has him feeling a little giddy, hopeful that maybe — just maybe — he can put his family back together.
Alas, ’tis not to be. For Dinah has a nice job in Central City, and has no plans to move back to Starling. Besides which, it comes out that she’s got a fella — erm, gentleman friend — back in Central City. And since Oliver crashed the party at Sara’s behest, Laurel gets to figure out that the two of them are together. Now, of course, she has no idea how long Sara’s been back, so the assumption is that Sara jumped on Ollie after only a week being back in town. But we — and Quentin — know better, and when that comes out… hm. Yeah. Laurel’s going to have anger issues for a while.
Still, the resolution of this family spat is satisfying enough. Oliver finally has his fill and lets Laurel have it right between the eyes. He’s done waiting for her. He’s done hoping she’ll come around and get her life together. His walking away is just the kick in the shorts she needs to walk into the AA meeting, and also reach out to her sister and try to make amends.
Baby sister, by the way, gets herself a job — as the new bartender at Verdant. So the Arrow writers have also been reading Frank Miller’s All Star Batman & Robin, mabye?
Can’t wait for the fishnets.
