ARROW Season 6×07, “Thanksgiving” recap

25 Nov

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Team Arrow has had its share of problems this season, primarily dealing with the controlled machinations of evil superhacker Cayden James and his right hand woman, the evil Laurel Lance, Black Siren. Add to that Ollie and company being investigated by the FBI, Diggle trying to find a way to deal with his nerve damage, plus Felicity and Curtis trying to jumpstart a new joint business venture, and they are going into the holiday season with a lot on their hands.

Ruining Thanksgiving. It’s before Thanksgiving, and Ollie is doing some nice mayoral work, like helping run a food drive for the less fortunate and about to open the new police HQ. But leave it to Agent Watson to drop in during the middle of all this niceness to arrest Ollie on charges of being the Green Arrow! Ollie gets to talk to William to reassure him he hasn’t been in the hood for some time, and that he’ll be home soon. The rest of Team Arrow is concerned, but in the meanwhile, Curtis implants Diggle with some prototype tech like Felicity’s spinal chip to clear up that nerve damage.

Diggle is worried that any news of the Green Arrow being arrested is going to be a boon for criminals, and as we see, he’s right. Because later that day, Cayden James sends Black Siren to retrieve a volatile substance called nano-thermite, which sounds dangerous as all hell. Meantime, Ollie is not about to consider escaping custody, which I’m sure would not have been an issue for season one Oliver Queen.

Arraignment. Ollie gets taken to court for his arraignment, and besides learning his new D.A. has to now prosecute him, he is getting a significant bail of 5 million dollars. Felicity offers to pay the bond with money from the start-up, which I think she should have consulted with Curtis about that. Curtis is not quite innocent in not telling a business partner about using their resources, as he gets to see that tech has seemed to have fixed Diggle’s nerve damage.

“Oh man! Big Belly Burger wasn’t lying when they said their new six patty burger would get you in the chest!”

But back to our robbery from earlier, because this nano-thermite needs some accelerant to work properly, and it turns out Black Siren is stealing some from an Amertek facility at that moment. The Team arrives and as they fight, Diggle seems to collapse in pain. He tells the Team to go on without him to stop Black Siren, and well, they don’t, and she leaves with the accelerant she came for. But what about Diggle?

Turkey Shoot. At the HQ, Felicity finally learns about Diggle’s condition for the last few months, and oh yeah, her partner using their prototype tech on Diggle without consulting her. She’ll get to talk to Curtis later, because he’s with Diggle at the hospital, and it appears the tech had a unexpected reaction to those drugs that are still getting out of his system. Curtis heads back to the HQ when hearing all those materials Black Siren has collected can make a pretty fatal fire cloud for anyone within a few hundred yards of its blast radius. Both Felicity and Curtis argue over using that prototype tech on Diggle, and you’d be right to realize later on when she reveals she used their finances to bail out Ollie, this working partnership may have problems.

Back at the hospital, Ollie visits Diggle, and thanks to tattletale Felicity, he knows about all the problems Diggle has. He is clearly upset when knowing Diggle could have endangered the Team by not letting him know about his injury, but Diggle is not about accusing Ollie of being a bit selfish in his actions. That tense conversation over, Ollie visits the still comatose Thea, and confesses he needs her to wake up.

You May Be Wrong But You May Be Right. Based on some computer voodoo, it looks like the Team has found the target of this thermobaric bomb: a packed Thanksgiving concert with Billy Joel! Ollie tries to shut down the concert by using his Mayoral tricks, but that doesn’t work. While that is going on, Quentin is having his own moral quandary as he confesses he didn’t stop Black Siren when he had the chance earlier this season, and she confesses she did the same thing when confront her ex-partner, the Vigilante. So they both can’t bear to kill people they care about, parallel dimensions or resurrected cops or otherwise.

Ollie returns to apologize to Diggle for not realizing he put Diggle in a difficult position, and it’s one made worse by troubling news: Diggle’s health was affected for the worse and unless they can workaround it, and further amount of heroics could lead to permanent damage to Diggle’s back. Diggle tells Ollie that he shouldn’t think he selfishly put Dig in that position, because he wanted to be that kind of hero to begin with. With that, Ollie comes back to the HQ, and is ready to help the Team stop James’ plan.

Is Billy Joel the real Big Bad of season six? Ok, he’s not, but that would have lead to some nice musical interludes is all I’m saying.

All For Show. With Ollie back in the Green Arrow garb, the Team heads to the Billy Joel concert and splits up. Ollie heads down into the stadium to find the bomb, while the rest of the Team tries to evacuate the place. Only the police are waving people back in, leading to the realization the cops aren’t cops. Easier to punch them, thinks the Team!

Then Ollie discovers the bomb he has found is nothing but a decoy, set up so James can have a brief chat one on one with the Green Arrow (and other things we’ll see later). We learn James has some kind of personal beef with the Green Arrow, something about taking his son. It’s obvious this is the start of some bigger confrontation, and James leaves with the help of Black Siren and some modified T-Sphere (so that’s why that was snatched way back in the season premiere!). Later at the HQ, we learn the other reason James staged this: to capture some footage of vigilantes beating cops (fake or not) to sway the upcoming vote in the anti-vigilante bill, and it seems to work because it passes.

And what about James’ claim the Green Arrow took his son? Well they find a child named Owen who Cayden was claimed to be the father of, but he vanished a year ago. What does this mean? Who knows.

Family Meal. The next day, Ollie has a press conference where he discusses the anti-vigilante bill passing and hopes he is found innocent of his recent charges. Agent Watson drops by to just be the cold bucket of water to everything, warning Ollie his time may be up because vigilantes are bad people or whatever. Man, I’m starting to really hope she’s just a patsy for Cayden James, because there needs to be reason she’s this much of a jerk. Also, who is supplying her with the evidence to even try Ollie in court?

At the hospital, William joins Ollie to say hello to Diggle, and Ollie lies about the Green Arrow not being at the stadium to his son. The way Ollie sees it, he can do that if he’s only filling in while Diggle, the Green Arrow, takes time to recover. And then, some news for Ollie comes in: Thea’s awake! She’s got a lot to catch up on, but in the meantime, she gets to have a Thanksgiving dinner in her hospital room with family and Diggle, and everything ends okay.

Man, how many Queen relatives have recovered, died, or been in a coma in that hospital room? I’m surprised Ollie isn’t paying rent on that place.

Oh, and next week is interdimensional Nazis and tons of other heroes, so be ready for that. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

–Comic book connections: In the Billy Joel footage, he sings “No Man’s Land”, which by choice becomes a reference to a pivotal story arc in the Batman books where Gotham City was quarantined from the outside world.

–So Thea got some new drug to wake up comatose people and she’s up and running (figuratively). Well, she’s very well preserved for someone who’s been on a fluid diet for months!

–So Billy Joel didn’t actually appear for filming of this, being its footage from a 2015 live performance. Odd choice, but then again, Rene is a big fan of Joel’s The Stranger album.

–Felicity is more into The Flash than the Green Arrow, which, let’s be honest, wasn’t that the real hookup you wanted, Olicity peeps?

–You think it would be easy to discredit that video with the Team beating those fake cops, but apparently not. Kind of lazy to fall asleep on that, Team Arrow.

–“Why can’t you just savor the anticipation?”

–“I’m gonna go work on an algorithm over there once I figure out what an algorithm is.”

–“How is it you don’t put an arrow in all of these people?”

–“I’ve seen every episode of The Closer. Twice.”

That’s it for now, but come back next week (a bit earlier than usual) for part two of the big DC TV crossover event, “Crisis on Earth-X”…