The Demolition of a Relationship
WARNING: SPOILERS are coming, SPOILERS are coming!!!
Queue the maniacal laughs. It seems Damian Darhk and the rest of HIVE have moved on to “Phase Five” of their evil plan for Star City. What does Phase Five consist of? Blowing sh*t up, apparently. They hire a team of professional mercenaries called “The Demolition Team” to destroy a series of buildings, one of which happened to be a trap for Lt. Lance. Lucky for Lance, his daughter, Sarah was there to help get him out alive. The scene was predictable, but it had a pretty cool destruction scene which seemed to be a single-take tracking shot.
Lance’s near death experience happens to bring forth a plot line that I honestly could give a sh*t about. Because Lance knows he’s being targeted, he tries to distance himself from Felicity’s hot mom, Donna, telling her a BS story that he has a gambling problem and the people he owes a debt to are after him. He tells her this lie in efforts to protect her from HIVE. She sees right through it, and the two break up. Throughout the episode, steps are taken to get that relationship back on track. By the end of the episode, Lance tells the truth, all is forgiven, and I still don’t give a sh*t. Their relationship is not something I, and I’m pretty sure nobody else, every invested in. I think at this point, the producers are just desperately trying to keep the Lance character relevant. As for Donna, I’m guessing the producers like to look at her in those skimpy outfits she wears. Um, I do too, so I don’t mind her being there. However, this plot was so lame. It felt more like a distraction than some deep conflict to develop the two characters.
Speaking of plots I don’t care about, this whole idea of Oliver Queen running for mayor this season has never sat well with me. I mean, really? He’s gonna have enough time to fight evil and make it on time for numerous press conferences and public appearances? It’s just a personal problem I have with this season. I don’t know how anyone else sees it. Anywho, Oliver and Darhk’s wife, Ruve Adams have a scheduled public debate. Oliver tries to use that to his advantage by tailing Adams, hoping she’d lead Team Arrow to her husband’s whereabouts. That plan doesn’t work, but there’s a really cool ambush scene with the team fighting off Darhk’s Ghost henchmen. After that, Oliver and his campaign team prepare for the debate while tracking down the Demolition Team. By the way, the Demolition Team was very underdeveloped, and one of them had a nail gun as her primary weapon…. Oh, kay.
The main objective for the DT was to sabotage the debate by blowing it up, of course. Team Arrow stops them with some decent fight choreography, and the debate carries on, only… we don’t get to see it. Now, I know I said this whole mayoral race thing was stupid, but I mean, let’s at least see the damn debate the episode hyped up. Whatever.
Like with all political elections, dirt has to be found on every candidate. Oliver, obviously is no exception. This brings up Ollie’s past relationship with his college girlfriend who secretly had his son. I feared this would be another subplot that would go nowhere, and in truth, it wasn’t anything exciting, but there was a great interaction between Thea and her brother Ollie. Since Thea is helping with the campaign, Oliver had no choice but to tell her he had a son. Instead of Thea flipping out, she actually understood Oliver’s reasons for not telling anyone. She even encouraged keeping Will, yes, the boy has a name, a secret. That way, he’ll be safe. It was a touching moment. It showed a lot of maturity on Thea’s part. It was a good standout moment, acting-wise, for Willa Holland.
One minor, itty-bitty subplot that seemed like it was meant just for laughs, ended up being an encouraging future plot device. Curtis was working on a secret wedding gift for Felicity, and she almost caught him. Me, figuring it was probably going to be something silly, ended up being something very touching. He developed a microchip that can be inserted in Felicity’s spine, allowing her to walk again. With further testing, his hope is she’ll be able to walk down the aisle. Obviously, we knew eventually, especially in this DC fantasy show, someone was going to create some sort of device that would allow Felicity to walk again, but with the possibility coming from Curtis, and at this time, it made me kinda emotional. I look forward to seeing it happen.
Well, I guess that’s it, another episode is… Oh, crap, gotta mention the flashback, huh? Well, sh*t. I mentioned last week, the flashback plot wasn’t something that interested me this season, but we gotta talk about it real quick, so… Okay, Reiter is forcing the prisoners to dig alongside Oliver to find the power thingy or whatever. They don’t trust him because he killed Taiana’s brother. In a complete 180 from last week, Taiana defends Oliver and his claim it was self defense. In order to gain their trust though, he must kill Conklin. He does, thankfully. Thank goodness, that douchebag was annoying.
Okay, now we can wrap this up. Yeah, this wasn’t a great episode, sadly. With the exception of a couple of action sequences, it wasn’t even that thrilling. The Lance and Donna thing was weak and the political stuff went nowhere. The main villains were hardly an issue. However, we did get some touching moments between some of the characters, and the setup for next week should be interesting considering Damian Darhk now has Oliver’s son… GASP!!!
