ARROW Season 5×19, “Dangerous Liaisons” recap

27 Apr

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Now that Adrian Chase has been revealed to be Prometheus, things should be better for Team Arrow, yeah? Well, there’s still the tiny problem that Adrian has fleed his witness protection detail, and no one knows where he is. Then there’s Felicity becoming more chummy with the hacker collective HELIX, and that can only explode in her and her friends’ face. On the plus side, no flashbacks this week, so we can get straight to this…

Arcade Games. It’s been a week since Adrian vanished, and Team Arrow and the ACU have found his last known hiding spot: an old arcade warehouse. Well they score out, and find Adrian has already left. The next day, Ollie is chatting with Lyla about locking down any travel routes for Adrian, but really, do we think he’s leaving the country anytime soon? Meantime, Ollie has to have press conferences where he has to explain how a serial killer has been spending months in hiding under the nose of the Mayor’s office. Imagine if Adrian was the Green Arrow, huh?

At HELIX’s hub, Felicity is talking to Alena, and they think they have found out how Adrian has stayed a step ahead of the manhunt for him. Adrian may have been buying intel from a plant inside ARGUS, so best to find out. Well, that ARGUS mole gets into an elevator and ends up getting out dead. And Alena is there, waiting for him. That’s odd, right?

Okay, how did Adrian create a video game screen for himself in the span of half a day? I mean, did Talia teach him the art of computer coding and graphics for 90’s video game consoles?

Conflict of Interest. The cops are investigating this bizarre death and discover something thanks to a camera unlodged from the elevator. Our mole got into the elevator, got dropped forty stories before the emergency brake kicked in, and cause that fatal head injury he got. Felicity figures out something she confirms later from Alena, which is Alena “accidentally” caused that elevator fatality while trying to find info on HELIX’s imprisoned leader, Caden James. Caden was developing some new tracer technology before he was scooped up by ARGUS, so it might be of interest for Felicity to find out where James is too. It also served a dual purpose in getting them the mole’s security key, which was given to two people who could only access critical intel with both keys. As if we needed to remember that whole mess with ARGUS security last season, Lyla says the Team needs to shadow the other key holder until they get to ARGUS headquarters.

At HELIX, Alena let’s Felicity know about knowing who has the second key, and hiring mercenaries to retrieve it. “Hey, you mean that person my Team is going to escort right now?”, Felicity asks. Well, yes, and you can imagine, both those groups meet up with that second key holder and fighting ensues. Felicity rings Diggle, who has to tell Ollie they need to let this robbery go down, because of what finding James could mean for their Adrian “chase” (to coin a phrase). Well, the mercs get away with the key, and that can only lead to some awkward chats at Arrow HQ.

Being Better People. Before we get there, let’s take a minute to talk about Rene and his kid troubles, thanks to Quentin asking about that progress in maybe getting his daughter back. Rene hasn’t followed it up because he feels he hurt his daughter before child protective services collected her (and he’s kinda right and wrong on this, as he feels guilt from her daughter accidentally burning herself while he was passed out drunk). But Quentin arranges a little meeting with Rene and his daughter, and her wanting to come back to him convinced Rene to follow through with reclaiming his parental rights. Quentin knows a lot about the joy of being a dad, you know.

Back to Arrow HQ, as we see a lot of fallout from this robbery, as Felicity explains why they needed to recover James from ARGUS, but Lyla refuses to do it because of the high security risk he is. Mind you, ARGUS is holding the guy without due process, but both ARGUS and HELIX aren’t on stable ground in this argument. Ollie tries to talk some sense into this overly determined Felicity, and they both aren’t on the best ground to argue their points either. Yeah, Felicity going dark like this is something Ollie is not cool with, but he has done it before. Yeah, Ollie has done that stuff before, but he did it to keep his buddies from doing the same. You see where this goes.

“Is it us? Are we making the women in our life into nutcases?” “Yeah, probably, Oliver.”

The Dark Side of Things. Later on, Lyla decides to lure out HELIX by setting a trap for them using the imprisoned James. Suspecting Felicity might end up joining this little HELIX rescue plan, Ollie tries again to get her off this bad road before she ends up on the wrong side of this. That doesn’t really work either, so the Team heads to shadow the ARGUS facility and await the HELIX team. Well, in another twist, it turns out Lyla doesn’t have James at the facility where they have their stakeout, but in a secret black site. And guess which place is HELIX going to right now?

The Prisoner. HELIX along with Felicity go to the black site, and switch off all the defense turrets and laser grids. They retrieve James just as the Team finally arrives to knock out a few mercenaries. Ollie is about to rush the van taking James away when Felicity gets in his way, and just to make things more awkward, separates them with that site’s laser grid. She hopes he can understand why she did that, but Ollie doesn’t think so. To be fair, why is she doing it, because she’s gone half the season not mentioning her dead boyfriend. Just saying.

That awkward moment when your on and off GF gets in the way of your bullets and puts a deadly laser grid up to stop you.

Severance Package. Ollie decides to stay at the HQ and have some sympathy drinks alone, while Diggle has a chat with Lyla about how her running ARGUS is making her more and more like Amanda Waller. As if not all relationships on this show aren’t on the rocks, Felicity returns to an empty HELIX hub, with a message from Alena, saying goodbye and leaving her that tracker tech to use. Felicity arrives at Arrow HQ to use it, and find Ollie on the middle of a bottle of scotch. Whatever argument they are about to have gets interrupted by that tracer tech finding a hit on Adrian…inside Arrow HQ!

A big explosion happens in front of the two, and…that’s it? Well, next week I guess Olicity gets to play Panic Room!

–Comic book connections: none this week, but let’s take a moment to note Wild Dog and Black Canary will be regulars for next season. Who would have thunk they would have survived the big Team Arrow recruitment drive this season?

–Just a brief close-up on that picture with Quentin and Laurel, which could not mean anything important before the end of the season.

–Rare case of no flashbacks this episode. I expect at least a few more, especially considering what’s on tap for the last few episodes this season.

–Black Canary is finally starting to grow on me with that cool takedown in that black site.

–“You got something to say to me, John?” “Not right now, Lyla.” Ice cold chat right there. They should get past it, I hope.

–“Thank you, Hoss.”

–“It was vintage.”

That’s it for now, so comment below and come back next week for the recap of “Underneath”…