ARROW Season 2×02, “Identity” recap

Welcome back, Arrow-heads!  See what I did there?  It’s a play on…sigh…you know, I should just recap what happened so far.  Diggle and Felicity track down Ollie on the island he was stranded on years ago, who’s in self-imposed exile since the Glades was left in ruins.  He’s brought back to save his family’s company from being bought out, by its also to get him back into protecting Starling City.  He agrees to, but wants to do it in a new way: one that doesn’t involve killing his enemies.

“Does this mean you’re ready to launch Crusade 2.0?”  After another Oliver shirtless and exercising montage (I’m waiting for a few seasons down the road, when this trope will escalate into Ollie fighting tigers in a pit), we get to witness the robbery of a medical supply truck that Roy fails to stop (and puts him in police custody), and the culprit looks to be China White.  When Thea gets called to collect Roy, Ollie joins her and tries to straighten him out.  Would be a good plan, if Laurel wasn’t just trying to do the same thing minutes earlier, while also revealing she’s more interested in taking down the Hood than Roy’s late night attempts at do-goodery.  Roy does give Ollie during their little “I know your pain” exchange a place where he might want to start his new mission, namely the hospital handling those displaced from the Glades that was supposed to be getting those supplies that were stolen earlier.  All that vigilante stuff makes Thea give Roy an ultimatum: give it up or give their relationship up.  Plus, that nifty totem Ollie gave to Thea is given to him.  Good thing there was that “previously on” montage reminded us of that, as we’ll see later on…

Secret Identities.  Ollie checks out the hospital and meets Sebastian Blood, the alderman who is helping out the Glades, and gets chewed out by Blood in a big way for his family’s involvement in this whole mess.  While Ollie is floundering in his public image, his setup with his own compatriots goes less well.   He wants to promote Felicity to being his “executive assistant” for a cover more than anything else, which she’s not happy about.  And Diggle has it as bad with things, especially since Oliver’s plans to have Diggle and Carly out to dinner is minus one person: Carly.  Diggle broke up with her during Ollie’s exile over his own issues, and Ollie kind of failed to notice that.  Then again, he’s got a lot of stuff to deal with this episode.

Felicity Smoak, Executive Assistant: she’ll figure out some way to not make you coffee.

Arrow, Meet Tiger.  Another supply truck gets hit by China, but that robbery gets interrupted by Ollie, who gets a new player to fight against: Bronze Tiger, a guy with some hook-on Wolverine claws and who was really hoping to get a more kill-crazy vigilante to fight.  That little scuffle gets interrupted by the cops and Laurel, and Oliver is off to lick his wounds, like the fact his ex-girlfriend is more interested in stopping him than the criminals that were trying to steal those supplies.  Good thing Ollie wouldn’t let that blind him and make him reach out to Laurel with his hood on.  Oh wait…

The Smell of Blood.  At least Ollie is trying to patch things up publicly as well as personally, and on the public end, he reaches out to Mr. Blood (and that’s a hard to write name for me without thinking about how awkward dating is for him when he mentions his last name) and suggests helping out the Glades by having a charity event to raise money.  When Ollie has to bolt before the event to stop another truck robbery, Blood takes the opportunity to sully Ollie’s name publicly again.  And why?  Because when you hear of a guy whose last name is “Blood”, you immediately think, “that sounds like a gracious human being”.

Arrow and Tiger, Round 2.  With Felicity rigging up some fake surveillance footage to draw the cops away from the robbery, Ollie and Diggle deal with China and Tiger.  Ollie uses a trick arrow to electrocute Tiger, and gets there in time to imprison China.  And despite China’s attempt to goad Ollie into killing her, she gets arrested (no note on what happened to Tiger though, so that’s a problem left in the air), and as she suggests, the Hood gets no real credit in the media for the bust.  Ollie does make a step towards setting up new alliances, by appearing as the Hood to Roy and offering him a job providing intel on things going on in the Glades.  So, Roy can reconnect with Thea, and still do something to help the city.  I’m sure that will go badly soon enough.

Trouble in Paradise.  Hey, remember that totem Thea had given to Roy, and he returns after getting that offer from the Hood?  Well, we find it again in the island flashbacks, but not before Shado decides to console Oliver over the murder of that pirate last episode, by sleeping with him.  Slade stumbles onto them resting and lingers just a bit too long before telling them about what he discovered on the dead pirate.  He was looking for “graves”, and they find a lair with dead Japanese soldiers from World War II, with that totem, which is a necklace on one of the dead soldiers.  So now we know the totem is going to be a big piece of the season.

Someone Invited Friends.  Laurel has been really hung up on capturing the Hood, and he comes to find out why earlier in the episode.  Well, she thinks he didn’t try to save Tommy from dying, and wants him to pay for that.  When he comes back to see her after China is arrested, she’s still not willing to listen.  And unfortunately for Ollie, she also was prepared for him to come back, and triggers a trap in a whole squad of SWAT cops who encircle him.  Well, at least we can see Laurel is good at her job.

“Hey guys! How’s it going? (pause) No? Really?”

–Comic book connections: another carryover from the DC universe in Bronze Tiger, and Brother Blood, ahem, Sebastian Blood may just be another villain in the making as well.

–Laurel is aware Tommy had a giant slab of rebar sticking through his heart and was going to die even if Ollie helped, right?  Something tells me she’s going to piece together how wrong her crusade is in a way that’s going to be painful.

–In another long line of guest stars, we get Michael Jai White as Bronze Tiger.  You may recognize him from his most well-known role…

I…no, no.  His most well-known role.

Thank you.

–I smell a love triangle brewing with Ollie, Shado, and Slade.  And as we all know, love triangles always go smoothly without problems on TV.

–Felicity drops another accidental double entendre regarding Ollie when talking about “spending the night with him”.  At least she gives him a consolatory cup of coffee after all that stuff with Blood and China White is over.

–“It could be worse.  My secret identity is his black driver.”  That and mentioning how he’s bothered by Ollie referring to himself in the third person is why I like Diggle.  Not so much for the healthcare joke.

 So what did you think about the episode?  How is Ollie going to get himself out of this predicament?  Leave your comments and we’ll be back with the next episode, “Broken Dolls”…

Tags: Arrow, Comics, Green Arrow, Reviews, Stephen Amell, Stewart, Television