ARROW Season 7×03, “Crossing Lines” recap

31 Oct

Welcome back, Arrowheads! When last we left Oliver Queen, he had fulfilled (more or less) an arrangement with Brick to get in touch with whoever brought in those goons to rough him up in Slabside. Meantime, we met the Longbow Hunters, three mercenaries who proved to be very formidable against Diggle and ARGUS, but not enough to have the plans of Diaz, their boss, thwarted. Felicity is getting a little tired of having to look behind her shoulder now that Diaz openly attacked her, so she goes to the one person who might be able to help: FBI agent Samanda Watson. Oh, and we won’t be discussing and flashforwards this episode because there wasn’t any. Anyhoo, let’s just get into it…

Holding Up Your End. Put aside that brief opening montage of Ollie with a bloody shiv for a moment, and let’s go back to twelve hours earlier. When last we left Felicity, she was trying to get Agent Watson to help out on bringing down Diaz, but it becomes clear that even she has been in the dark about what Diaz has been up to, especially the whole hiring the Longbow Hunters detail. Felicity also took the liberty of hooking up eavesdropping devices in Watson’s office, so she gets to hear Samanda question her boss why was she kept out of the loop on any Diaz activity, especially a warning he broke into the CDC database to look for a particular chemical. Felicity tells Rene this (BTW, they’re roomies now!), and they figure they need to check out the local CDC lab to make sure Diaz doesn’t steal that chemical. But how?

Meantime, Ollie is back into the Slabside population after shivving himself to get that guard pulled out of service, and he asks Brick to fulfill his end of the bargain to meet the guy who arranged the attack on him earlier. Brick calls the guy “The Demon”, and he pretty much is the guy who can get things down in Slabside. He doesn’t know who “The Demon” is, but can arrange a meeting for Ollie. Ollie’s told to wait until later tonight to go to a particular cell. How, you ask? Well, that night, all the cell doors on Ollie’s block open! That works, I guess.

“John Diggle Jr., you have failed my cookies!”

Second (ish) Honeymoon. In ARGUS related plotlines, Diggle and Lyla bring Curtis along for a trip to Amsterdam, and it’s not to try out the local weed. Oh no, this is a spy mission to get information from a bank linked to a lot of criminal organizations, and the married Diggles get to go in, pretending to want to do business while Curtis hacks the bank’s database. The operation goes off pretty well, except for a slight hiccup in the download that goes unnoticed until later on, when Curtis tells Diggle that it was someone copying what he was copying from the bank. The only three people who knew about this operation were them, so if it wasn’t Diggle or Curtis, it was…well, why would Lyla do that behind their back?

Felicity and Rene get in touch with Dinah, hoping they can use her to get into the CDC, but Agent Watson is there, and reluctantly agrees to help them check it out, seeing as how those chemicals Diaz was looking for have now arrived in town. Later that night, Samanda escorts our heroic trio in, and stakeout the lab and wait for Diaz. He arrives with the Longbow Hunters, and our heroes find any way to contact outside for assistance is being blocked (as we discover, by The Silencer, the lady with the sound dampening field on her belt), so our team has to go in to stop Diaz on their own. And surprise, they are unable to stop Diaz from taking off with said chemicals (some kind of body enhancing drug), while Rene chases off after The Silencer on Felicity’s insistence. BUT, she tells Agent Watson that The Silencer has escaped. Now why would she do that?

Another Approach. At Slabside, Ollie ends up with Stanley tagging along as he goes to see “The Demon”, only to find Bronze Tiger there with a few goons. Yeah, Brick set him up, and yes, Ollie kicks Tiger and those goons’ butts. Tiger says the only one who can get in touch with “The Demon” is Brick himself, and he’s a bit busy holding a “party” in the prison cafeteria. Ollie is not invited, but guess who is?

Back in Amsterdam, Diggle follows his wife to some secret meeting with someone, and the. Confronts her as to what’s going on. She finally admits there has been some peculiar things happening at ARGUS behind her back, and she was quietly trying to piece together what was going on. He is a little upset she didn’t trust him enough to bring her in, but realizes like she does that they are better off investigating this ARGUS mystery together. Oh, and Curtis got some actual Swiss chocolate, so good on him.

“Quit squirming! Popping shoulders is hard enough when you squirm!”

The VIP. Ollie and Stanley take Bronze Tiger to the cafeteria, where we Tiger and Ollie talk about them not being too different from each other. It seems like our bad guy might be a bit more sympathetic, even convincing the prison inmates guarding the cafeteria door to let them all in. But this is all a setup to get Ollie inside, because Brick has staged a prison fight for ally he convicts and corrupt guards to bet on: Ollie vs. Sampson! How can Ollie fight Sampson while still spouting an stab injury to his midsection?

Turns out Ollie can fight very well, breaking both of Sampson’s arms in the process. He gets to Brick, and suggests he start holding up his end of their agreement or else. Brick tells him “The Demon” can’t be reached, rather “The Demon” reaches people, and said “Demon” is in Level Two of Slabside, where the real evil criminals are held. So Ollie comes up with a way to get into Level Two: attacking and injuring the corrupt guards at the fight (which puts that cold open montage into perspective now)! Brick is impressed, probably because he also bet on Ollie to win that fight with Sampson.

Going Up A Level. The next day, Felicity visits Agent Watson’s office to find Samanda has been transferred out of Star City to a desk job for not only going against orders to avoid the CDC, but in allowing Diaz to escape with those chemicals. She believes she was right in helping Felicity and the gang for what it’s worth, but only if she knew what we find out later, maybe not. You see, Felicity hid the fact that Rene went after The Silencer, and…they got her secretly imprisoned now! As for Diaz’s haul of chemicals, he’s using it to augment his strength to Mirakuru-type levels. Not good.

Later on that day, Ollie is taken by guards to Level Two of the prison, where Brick warns him the only way anyone has ever left that level is through the morgue. Well, it’s not like Oliver Queen hasn’t been dead before. But we’ll see what that place is about next time.

I hope they at least brought Silencer a bucket, that’s all.

–Comic book connections: The Silencer is a relatively new character in the DCU, and to say more than that might spoil any future plot revelations here, so we’ll just stop there.

–This whole thing regarding the blind spots in the FBI and ARGUS can’t just be a coincidence. I expect we may have a way bigger problem than Diaz at play that will reveal itself.

–Maybe divorced Curtis shouldn’t be handing out marriage advice is all I’m saying.

–I realize there might be little love between Felicity and Agent Watson over the latter imprisoning the former’s hubby, but way to screw over Watson at her job. This can’t end well for Ms. Smoak, I think.

–The rest of the Longbow Hunters (Dart Lady and Shield Man, we’ll call them for now) are a little disturbed by juiced up Diaz, and who wouldn’t be? That guy had a violent temper before taking super juice, imagine it after!

–Stanley is really worried he’s not going to survive in prison without Ollie’s help, and…look, is anyone not convinced he’s The Demon? I mean, who else could it be? An al Ghul sibling, perhaps?

–“It’s better than ”The Belt Lady’.”

–“Did you or did you not eat this entire bag of cookies?”

–“While you guys are there, can you get me a free toaster?”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Level Two”…