ARROW Season 6×02, “Tribute” recap

20 Oct

Welcome back, Arrowheads! The explosion at Lian Yu certainly left a few marks on Team Arrow, with Ollie’s baby mama dying and Thea being laid out in a coma. And there’s plenty of change besides that, like Ollie now adding raising his son William among the list of things to juggle in his life, and Diggle hiding some injury that is affecting his job. But the Team has a more pressing and unexpected problem: someone has leaked a photo of Ollie in the Green Arrow getup to the press!

Press Tour. The next day, Ollie arrives at the Mayor’s office, nicely blowing off that bombshell photo, but internally, he’s worried about that and the 20 million dollars he’s about to approve going back to rebuilding the city police force. Waiting for him is FBI agent Samanda Watson, who in the most “no B.S.” way, tells Ollie she’ll be investigating the claims of him being the Green Arrow. While Felicity and Curtis examine the photo for its authenticity, Ollie and Quentin have other things to do for the day, like take the press on a tour of property they are renovating in town.

This day of still avoiding questions from the press about this whole Green Arrow thing doesn’t end with the press tour of the property, and the Markovian investors there to help save face. Then, gunmen rush out and attack the security force, leaving Ollie and Quentin to rush everyone back in the press tour van to escape. But they are surrounded by even more gunmen, and out comes…Anatoly. Instead of the usual friendly chit chat, he takes the Markovian investor and some of the reps hostage, and leaves everyone else behind. So what gives?

“I’m here to complain about your fillet mignon! Its too BURNED!”

Deal Making. While Felicity and Curtis chit-chat, multitask finding Anatoly’s location and figuring out that photo, Ollie gets more bad news: the “hostage-takers” want $20 million for their hostages, which hey, sounds like the exact amount Ollie has for rebuilding the police force. Ollie is not for negotiating on this, but he can’t linger on that long, because he gets a call from William’s school. William was attacked by bullies, and Ollie arrives to take him home. The bullies heard all that scuttlebutt about Ollie and the Green Arrow and picked on William, to which Ollie suggests if they do that again, to just punch the biggest bully in the nose.

I’m sure William had more pertinent questions regarding that strategy, but Ollie is distracted because Felicity calls him with info on where Anatoly is. The Team meets up outside a Bratva owned restaurant and raid the place, knocking out some of Anatoly’s goons. Ollie retrieves the hostages, only to find the CEO is not among them. Also, Diggle’s still has some shakes, which is still worrying Dinah to no end.

Juggling It All. At the Mayor’s office, the Team is meeting to figure out their next move. While Felicity and Curtis try to track Anatoly, Ollie has to go see Quentin and Rene at FBI headquarters for an interview with Watson. She’s not happy about Ollie being late, and even less when Ollie has to cancel to answer a family emergency at home. William is really upset about things, especially the way he abruptly left that conversation with Ollie earlier. But it’s more than that, because William is afraid to lose the only parent he has left to this vigilante business.

When you only have these chuckleheads for helping your alibi.

Speaking of that business, Anatoly rings up Ollie on his phone. Anatoly has fallen out of favor with the Bratva because of helping Ollie, so he’s using the windfall of cash Ollie has procured to help fix that. He also realizes Ollie needs some incentive, so he shows the CEO has been infected with a virus that is causing a paralysis in his body that will be fatal in several hours. That incentive works.

Nerves. Based on examining the cell phone footage, the Team figures out what is affecting the CEO, and Dig and Dinah go to the hospital to collect the antidote. When the always helpful Dr. Schwartz asks Diggle how he’s doing, Dinah finally confronts him as to what’s going on. He tells her some shrapnel hit him during that mess on Lian Yu, and it’s causing degenerative nerve damage. So yeah, this might be something he needs to tell the team about, just not now. Maybe NOW is the time, Dig.

Ollie arrives back at the Mayor’s office, and ends up chatting with Rene about raising kids. What Ollie can’t reconcile is that William is right: every time he’s out there, he’s risking making William an orphan, so what can he do about it? And even worse, with news Watson is going to subpoena people to talk to, including William, he may have to ask his son to lie to the authorities. Felicity calls in with Anatoly’s location, at an abandoned shipyard, and both of them head off.

No Friend of Mine. The Team is set up to hit the shipyard, and each has vials of the antidote if any one of them gets to the CEO first. As they go in, Diggle freezes up, and that freezing almost gets Dinah killed. Ollie gets to the imprisoned CEO, and Anatoly is there. Ollie shoots an arrow with the antidote into the CEO, but Anatoly makes that moot by shooting the poor guy dead.

“Ah, I know this game: Who Wounds Tied Up Man Better?”

“Ha! I win!”

Ollie is horrified by this turn by his friend, but Anatoly tells him he could have done worse and threatened William, and didn’t out of honor. When asked if he sent that photo, Anatoly says he never sent it, and leaves. Ollie threatens to stop him, but Anatoly knows him better than that to say he’s made that threat before and never kept it. I guess someone isn’t getting a Christmas card from the Queen household this year.

Future Plans. The next day, Ollie visits Watson at her office, and makes it clear he’ll cooperate with the investigation, but to leave his son alone. Before things get dicey, some news comes through: apparently the photo was faked. While this clears Ollie, Watson is still determined to continue her Green Arrow investigation. At the same time, while briefly wondering who would frame Ollie as the Green Arrow, Felicity suggests to Curtis that they go into business together. At the HQ, Diggle tells Dinah that he needs to tell Ollie about what happened to him.

At Ollie’s place, he comes home to talk to William about being right earlier when saying his Green Arrow gig might take him away. Ollie knows William is scared of being left alone, and he promises to do something to make sure he never is. That night at Arrow HQ, Ollie meets with Diggle, and before Diggle can say anything, Ollie tells him why he’s here. Ollie has realized he can’t juggle being the Mayor, the Green Arrow, and now a parent without giving one up. So he offers the mantle of Green Arrow to Diggle!

Maybe NOW would be a good time to bring up that nerve injury, Diggle, huh? HUH?

—Comic book connections: Ollie mentions Bruce Wayne. Like I have to explain that connection.

—The Team gets their own logos during the opening titles now! About time!

—So Adrian Chase is left out as a potential suspect for that photo, and possibly Anatoly, so who left that photo in that news station?

—I’m glad Curtis asked about who has jobs and who doesn’t, because that can get lost in all of this hurly burly. Also, who is Curtis doing coding on the side for?

—“They could have put Bruce Wayne’s head on that body.”

—“I’m a feminist like that.”

—“Wait, who’s ‘Woz’ and who’s ‘Jobs’?”

—“I do not think you understand how this whole rescue thing works.”

That’s it for then, but come back next week for the recap of “Next of Kin”…