We’re a-busting Diggle out of jail!
1. The dumbest idea anyone on the show has had
This Diggle jailbreak took a show that already strains credulity and amped it up to a thousand. Now, you can do a fun ‘let’s break Diggle out of jail’ story, but literally every aspect of the plan was dumber than I could have dreamed up. Breaking in or out in a laundry cart is the definition of an overplayed scene, pouring (essentially) acid on the floor, having the plane hoist them, mid-flight, into the air, everything about it was just. so. dumb.
For a show to make us believe that Ollie could have broke in and out of a military prison, they needed to do a lot more work than they did here. Not only that, but the Diggle storyline was, essentially, boiled down to the voiceover narration from the opening credits of The A-Team, only people liked that show. Every single aspect of this storyline was botched: how is Diggle going to be with his family, when his wife is the head of a clandestine organization and will clearly be watched at every turn to see if she’s harboring him? How will he be hanging out in Star City, his old haunts, and not be spotted? If they’re writing him off the show like they did with Roy, then why not just leave him in prison and let him be off the show that way?
Imagine for a second if Ollie took the new team on this mission: that could have been interesting. What if Curtis, still a rookie, gets hurt and can’t get out? What if Wild Dog makes a stupid mistake and may be left behind? Those are actual stakes. Fuck, even in Superman II, when Otis was struggling to get up the ladder to the helicopter, you had the feeling that Lex would leave him behind without a second thought, and so you had some investment in the action. Was there any doubt at all that Ollie and Diggle were both going to get out?
If they made this a really high-tech, super high stakes episode, his could have been the show’s Mission: Impossible moment; instead, it was its Inspector Gadget.
2. Gout?
I love the idea of the ever-increasing excuses that Mayor Queen has to make to get away with leaving the city for a few days. I also think it is hilarious that this is the show’s attempt to maintain some narrative clarity. Remember when Nanda Parbat was either a 15 minute Uber ride or a life-challenging journey, depending on how quickly characters needed to get back there? Remember when peopel who have known Oliver for more than a decade couldn’t recognize him with a hood on? Remember when Felicity somehow held down a job, despite being in the Arrowcave day and night?
All of that was fair game, story-wise, but we need to give Ollie an antiquated sounding illness to give him a couple of days off? Also, didn’t the prison break take, in storyline time, 25 minutes? I’m not even kidding – this show has completely lost sense of what is important.
3. Felicity and Ragman
The one part of the episode that really did work for me was Ragman and Felicity coming to a sort of understanding. Felicity’s guilt over her role in the destruction of his home gives her character some much needed gravity, and having him struggle with looking her in the eye is the closest to a human moment this show has had all season. The show need more of this and less of the grab assery that we got this week. Make us care about these characters and the show succeeds.
4. Vigilante is literally coming to life in front of us
A lot of people thought that, due to his smarmy nature, Adrian Chase was maybe also Prometheus. Fans of the comics know Chase as Vigilante, a hero. Watching this episode, you can definitely see why people presumed his villainy – he comes off like a poor man’s Patrick Bateman. But this episode sees him begin to embrace the vigilantes in the city, and see that good can be done via their circuitous path to heroism. This seems like the moment when he puts on a mask of his own to join the fight, or it seems like an actually well constructed swerve. Either way? Good job, Arrow!
Continued below5. Wild Dog in custody
The new team trying to take down a big bad was adorable in that “aww, the puppy is trying to jump up on the bed” sort of way. You knew it couldn’t end well, and with Curtis taking a knife to the back and Wild Dog being held by Church’s men, it went pretty poorly. I like this dynamic though; I remember complaining about how Laurel went from desk job to jujitsu master in about 8 minutes, so seeing the team struggle and begin to come together was a nice moment. But a few things would have made this team even better:
– why isn’t Curtis using any sort of weaponry? T-spheres were introduced last season, and he’s a known genius, can’t the dude invent something so that his primary powers aren’t ‘hair shrinkage’ and ‘the ability to poorly snoop around?’
– can we get Artemis just the slightest bit of character?
– Wild Dog needs to be shown as a slightly better marksman
– Ragman’s powers need to be explained better. I know the show has tried a few times, but when Diggle meets him next week, he has to say “these rags are magic and I can control them” or some shit, so that it is clear as day, because sometimes they absorb explosions, and sometimes they just seem like shitty tentacles.
So, am I really far off about this episode’s quality? Let me know in the comments.
