Arrow looks to cross all the lines it can in the third episode of season 7. If you’re an odd TV junkie like me, you also kind of hoped it turned into an episode of Crossing Lines because William Fichtner would be perfect for the DCWverse.
1. Crossing Lines
The search for the right action has been an early motif of this season, and one the show as a whole has struggled with over the years. Felicity gets even more bold in her mad attempt to catch Diaz. Lyla is perhaps taking too many ques from Oliver and the dearly departed Amanda Waller. Oliver actually manages to thread the needle pretty well as he searches for information on Diaz.
Felicity has been on a single minded crusade to catch Diaz, and finds everyone else’s lack of faith disturbing. Emily Bett Rickards dials it back a bit from last week, and finds a better cadence and tone for her single minded righteous fury. While other characters cross international lines and flirt with others, she is positioned as the trailblazer this episode driving the plot to the showdown at the CDC. Her ferocious drive, however, is starting to negatively effect those around her. After the failure to apprehend Diaz, Samandra Watson is reassigned to desk duty in D.C. . Which is a bummer given Sydelle Noel performance, I thought the character would make an interesting version of The Question. Noel also probably needed to go film GLOW.
Felicity is acting a lot like Oliver, and that isn’t a good thing. After seasons of seeing Oliver handle recurring threats the wrong way, Felicity taking ques from her husband is not a good sign for her remaining allies. Compartmentalizing and kidnapping someone for torture to get info on your hated enemy is something Oliver would’ve done in season 3 or 4. She is crossing a line, that has me curious what consequences will eventually befall her.
Lyla Michaels returns and is similarly inspired by previous partners. The frustrated cop who hates the red tape is one thing, but a director of a major intelligence service is another thing entirely. Bending the rules, or fascistically disregarding them to enforce your own will is at the heart of Team Arrow’s vigilante way. Which should be out of place inside A.R.G.U.S. . Operational red flags aside, Lyla’s transgression is not being a good partner to John and keeping him in the dark. Which is something Oliver and Amanda Waller would’ve done.
The nebulous prison term for Oliver, mixed with the CW’s Showtime like demeanor on keeping shows around, could’ve allowed the show to hit the reset button on his growth. So far that hasn’t really occurred, Ollie has tried to act as hard as he did in the past and still comes around to acting heroic in a bad situation. His stay at Slabside is showing how that is an increasingly untenable position, and now that he descends to Level 2 things may get far worse. Still he beat up those guards about as nice as you could. He just stabbed that guy in the shoulder and only broke Samson’s arms.
2. The Vigilante Way
Felicity increasingly has no regard or desire to play by the rules, over a half-decade of flaunting them in a self-mythologizing justification to continue disregarding them tends to do that to a person. However with over half of Team Arrow now occupying a place in traditional institutional authority, it’s been noteworthy to see how the show somewhat condemns these vigilante ways.
When it was Team Arrow, it was 4 masks and Felicity trying to do everything, which makes the baddies getting away narratively more reasonable. But those days are over, as Diggle reminded audiences last week, and when you have the might of the F.B.I., playing ball with the red tape might not have been so bad. Diaz got away because Felicity led a rogue, vigilante, operation that likely wouldn’t have occurred if they had a couple of tactical teams around to cover them.
As everyone struggles to find the right way to act going forward, just playing the hits, or going even more indie by capturing Silencer, is being shown as incorrect. Team Arrow maybe momentarily disbanded, but what made them work was the first word in the name that started with a ‘T.’ Ollie wasn’t a character worth watching until Diggle and Felicity came on the scene, when there is a lack of teamwork things inevitably go wrong for all involved. It’s built into the shows DNA.
Continued below3. Diggle Family Time
Diggle gets a plot thread to himself, and it doesn’t involve him feeling lesser than the main character! With Diggle working for A.R.G.U.S. now, these little missions that will likely build towards something greater down the night is perfect ‘C’ plot fodder. It also opens up new spaces and pairings for the character. The main purpose of this thread though was showing how good relationships work in the masked world of Arrow, honest communication. Lyla didn’t let Diggle in on her side deals and Diggle didn’t give his wife a chance to explain herself, both of them messed up. It is interesting to see this presented at a time when the shows core coupling is a part, and separated by that lack of communication in the first place.
4. Bronze Tiger
Michael Jai White’s presence is an overall positive for the show, it ties the show back to the early days and gives them a good stunt performer to work with. The latter of which pays off in this episode. That isn’t the point of this little aside, it’s about a brief moment where the captured Bronze Tiger can no longer take Oliver’s moralizing and sense of superiority. If your broke it down to box scores, there likely isn’t that much daylight between what Oliver has done and Bronze Tiger. As an audience our perception of space between them is a function of the time we’ve spent with them as characters. Time where Ollie has been portrayed as the hero and Tiger the villain, which creates a narrative allowing the justification of Ollie’s murderous actions and vigilantism and denies Bronze Tiger space to reveal himself. (Space that could’ve appeared in a Suicide Squad show if they’d ever gotten to do that.)
I’m just a sucker for when writers have bit characters try assert their own agency in someone else’s story.
5. No Flash Forwards
On the whole I think the flashback structure to Arrow was an overall inventive narrative device for the show. These new flash forwards appeared similarly promising, even if their brief use over two episodes is in no way enough room to make a judgement call. Which makes their lack in this episode noteworthy, Colton Haynes was announced as a regular. There is a bit of an out in that Old Roy and William are supposed to be on their way back to Star City and moody green screen boat rides are perhaps not the most interesting thing to watch. Their lack of presence was an overall net positive for the episode, it gave more room to the Diggle Family operation.
