ARROW Gets a Big Brother

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Episode 305 “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak”

[photos: Diyah Pera/The CW]

So, this season the Arrow writers said to themselves, “Hey, let’s make a Batman show…” And that was right after seeing a Lord of the Rings movie, and hey-ho! We’ve got the Eye of Sauron on Arrow claiming to be Brother Eye.

And oh, yeah… we see Goth Felicity.

The opening sequence of scenes — Oliver and Roy sparring, Laurel and Ted sparring, Thea and Malcolm sparring, then Felicity barely making it through her tenth sit-up… priceless. It’s a great way to contrast her character with everyone else. Because she’s the tech. The geek girl. So it’s a nice setup to the arc — the origin story of Felicty “Oracle” Smoak. (Even though they’re not calling her that yet…)

The show goes over the top in presenting Felicity as the ordinary one. She brushes her teeth. She works out to exercise videos. She wears pajamas. She gets embarrassed by her mother. Who shows up at her place unannounced (gotta press “send” y’know). Of course, Hot Mom shows up in the early morning dressed to the nines, like she’s ready to hit the nightclub. And all right after Ray Palmer has dropped in on Felicity to discuss a new idea he has — using the waste heat from Queen Consolidated’s electrical grid to create more electricity for the rest of the city.

Ray Palmer doesn’t know anything about boundaries. And seriously, if my boss showed up at my door early in the morning? I would be seriously considering a new job.

But this episode isn’t about Ray, other than put him in place where he can give Felicity’s Hot Mom Donna a high-tech Chekhov’s Gun in the form of a super-whizzy computer on a wristband. That will come into play later.

It’s really a straightforward episode, giving us Felicity’s history in order to deliver Brother Eye. And really, it was only a matter of time since we’ve seen OMAC on the blueprints Ray was reviewing a couple of weeks ago. So while it’s a fan-service episode to give us Felicity Flashbacks, it’s a very contrived by-the-numbers story. Felicity, in her wayward college days, wrote a super-virus that can hack any system. Boyfriend Cooper decides to be even more of a rebel and use the supervirus to hack into bank records and start wiping out student loan records.

Felicity, Goth girl with a Heart of Gold, doesn’t really want to do anything nasty with the supervirus. She just wanted to prove she could do it, of course. So when the FBI grabs Cooper and hauls him away for his bank hack, she’s feeling all sorts of guilty. And then when Cooper “hung himself” in prison… .

Well, naturally, that means that Cooper just can’t be the one hacking into the Starling City cybernet as “Brother Eye”, right?

It’s one of the most overused tropes in hero/villain stories, which is why I think the whole thing has been done as a way to get Brother Eye into the Arrow universe. Not to add any dimension to the character of Felicity Smoak. Of course she has Daddy issues because Daddy left. Of course she feels like waitress Mommy smothers her with worry. Of course she’s a supersmart kid who did the Goth thing because she wanted to fit in with the other rebels, not because that’s who she actually was. Duh… It’s all fan service, and in that sense, it’s the weakest episode. Because it’s so predictable.

The Handwavium FelicityBacks could just as easily shown her to be a silent, shy, hiding-in-the-corner misfit. Or the hard drinking frat house girlfriend. Or the one who acts like the dumb blonde just to fit in. She didn’t have to be Goth Felicity, but it’s a quick visual cue to give everyone shorthand for telling the two apart. But the function of the episode is to give us a fun popcorn-filled ride to get Brother Eye introduced, because we’ve already seen OMAC plans being reviewed by Ray Palmer. So, this is just a means to an end. So why not make it a fun romp, even if it’s predictable?

(And we even get popcorn when Oliver brings some to Thea’s new pad. It’s almost like the writers know…)

And it is fun to watch, mainly for the scenes with Felicity’s superhot mother, who probably had Felicity when she was about five years old. Never mind that Charlotte Ross is actually old enough to be Emily Rickards’ mother. The fact is, she doesn’t look old enough to be her mother, and that’s part of what sells the awkwardness of the relationship. Donna Smoak is still hanging onto her youth, trying to be a good mother and really screwing it up because she feels no connection with Felicity, who apparently takes after the absent Daddy Smoak.

(Now, wouldn’t it be fun if Daddy Smoak actually turned out to be Maxwell Lord? Come on, all the other pieces are in place…)

Donna’s “How many billionaires do you know?” is priceless, because it just plays to the fact that Felicity’s come a long way since Oliver wanted to borrow a red pen from the IT girl. And of course Ray’s gift of a watch comes in handy at just the right time, allowing Felicity to piggyback off the watch computer’s wi-fi signal to hack Cooper’s Brother Eye mainframe and let Team Arrow know where she and Mom have been taken.

And it’s all for money. Just a simple bank heist, with Cooper using Felicity’s “supervirus that can hack any computer” to divert armored cars. Really? When I saw it before, it was called Die Hard, and the villain was much cooler.

(Remember, this episode is not about the story…)

The other threads have us putting Oliver and Thea on a trajectory where “Speedy” is either going to learn Oliver’s secret, or Oliver is going to learn hers, or they’ll learn both together. I get a sense that each one knows the other is lying about something, which is probably why Oliver agrees to move in. Thea’s obviously doing it for cover, because she can’t be hiding anything if she wants Oliver to be right there with her, right? At some point, this arc is going to end with Thea Queen taking up the Speedy moniker and becoming another member of Team Arrow.

But probably not before the other member of Team Arrow checks in with her leather jacket and fishnets.

Laurel is learning the hard way that her rage will jeopardize people when it’s sent haring off in the wrong direction. When her orders as acting District Attorney threaten to make a mob scene flare up into a full blown riot, Dad takes her to task and tells her she’s got to talk to someone to work out whatever is going on inside her. He understands there’s something she’s not telling him, and she’s still working off the notion that news of Sara’s death will devastate him, so she’s burning up with rage and the stress of dishonesty. So, she turns to the one person who can probably help her through it on several levels: Ted Grant.

Please, writers, don’t make this a love interest thing. You already blew it by casting Young and Hot for Ted Grant. He’s supposed to be older. Gruff. Played out. Training the new Black Canary gives him a renewed sense of purpose. But we can’t have that, because you had to follow CW Casting Guidelines. So, OK. He’s young and pretty. Don’t be any more predictable than you have to be.

And lest we seem to be ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Roy having nightmares that he killed Sara? What the wah?!

[Show web site at CW]     [Previous Recap: “The Magician”]