ARROW Season 7×15, “Training Day” recap

14 Mar

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Last we left Team Arrow, they are still working under the SCPD, but have been also pursuing a heavily connected super criminal only known as Dante. While they have finally seen the elusive criminal up close, he escaped, and then we learn how close he is to hitting the team when we see Emiko knows him! Add to that, Dante’s contact, Ricardo Diaz, got torched in his cell by an unknown assailant, but considering Diaz helped ARGUS track Dante, it’s hard not to put together who’s behind that human barbecuing. On another end, Ollie has finally learned Felicity is pregnant, which is great news as he’s a legit crime fighter now, right? You would think that…

Recruits. We join Ollie, Diggle, Felicity, and Rene as they are getting some police training, at the insistence of the mayor. They are to integrate with the SCPD, and that means learning how to behave and work like cops. Ollie knows this is going to be a challenge for the Team, but he seems okay with this status quo for now. Also he and Felicity seem to be okay with keeping this whole pregnancy thing to themselves.

Meantime in another part of town, some tied up hang members are getting shot in the arm and the leg, and green goo oozes from them as their skin turns black. So that may be a problem for Team Arrow to solve.

Rene: “So which one of you makes noises out of his mouth? Which one is the Mahoney on the group?”

Melt and Burn. Evil Laurel gets a call from Slabside prison from Bronze Tiger, who wants to see her regarding getting him out of prison. He mentions Ricardo Diaz is dead, and the crime is being covered up, but he’s seen who did the murder, and thinks that will help buy him a ticket out of jail. When it’s clear that might not do it, he offers to tell her what he knows in exchange for seeing his son. So the next day, she brings his son–Connor, his little “Hawk”, hint hint–and he tells Evil Laurel he saw someone there who was wearing the Green Arrow garb, but wasn’t Oliver Queen. Hmm…

Meantime, we learn the police have found those dead gang members and that the bullets were laced with some deadly poison, and that there’s a big buy for those bullets being made later tonight. Unfortunately for our Team, they have to got to go to the buy with the SCPD, in SCPD uniforms and minus their gear. Double unfortunately, miscommunication between both the SCPD and the Team lead to the bust going sideways. During this, Dinah tried to use her Canary cry, only to have it conk out on her.

Protocol. Things get testy after the bust at police HQ when it’s clear Ollie says outloud that the SCPD’s methods fouled up the whole thing. But there is one lead: the name of James Midas, a chemical company owner was dropped as expected to be at the meeting, and those bullets found at the scene have a substance exclusively made by Midas Chemicals. While Dinah and Rene search for a way to get a search warrant in old files, Ollie says “screw that”, and intimidates Midas outside his factory with a barrel of acid to confess to what he knows. Well that goes over like a lead balloon with everyone, because Mayor Pollard chews out Dinah and company for locking up a “dear friend” after he is freed to go.

Dinah is understandably pissed at everyone at this, and we learn where most of this anger is coming from during a chat with Rene: she thinks that throat slashing she took has damaged her Canary cry abilities, maybe permanently. She thinks that she her job as police captain might be the only thing she can hold onto right now as an identity. Rene tells her she is still that, no matter if her metahuman power is damaged.

“Felicity, just be prepared for the day you learn a certain someone messed with time and changed the gender of your kid by mistake. It’ll happen. IT’LL HAPPEN.”

New Way. Ollie and Felicity turn on the lights to the old Arrow Bunker, now cleaned up after the last time they were there, planning to just go after Midas without the SCPD’s help. Diggle is called in to help, and once he learns Felicity is pregnant, he sees why Ollie and Felicity might be in a rush to fix the city. He sees that this plan will just put them in the same place they were in before Ollie had to turn himself in to the authorities. They need to compromise somehow, become a different kind of Team.

Dinah and Rene are asked down to the Bunker to hear that they got a lead on Midas: he’s moving his supply of that poison out of an unlisted warehouse personally, which seems like the right time to nail him, and even better, this was all legally discovered. Ollie says they can team up with the SCPD, but they need to do some things their way…like getting to use their gear, for starters. And good thing they are getting back into the field, because Midas is planning to dump all that poison into the city reservoir, because nothing says deflecting suspicion than massive water poisoning. The Team arrives with the cops, and Dinah arrests Midas with all that poison, all without the help of her Canary cry.

Everything New Is Old Again. Afterwards at the Bunker, the Team has some good news awaiting them. Dinah used the mayor’s comfy relationship with Midas to get the Team turned into a task force for the police with far less restrictions, and that pesky anti-vigilante ban likely removed. It’s all great news, even as Diggle notes Felicity seems to be working on something else with her tech that we can guess what that might be in the future. Also, Ollie and Felicity decide to name their kid Mia, after Ollie’s mom (um, Mia isn’t short for Moira, guys).

Evil Laurel is at her office when Emiko shows up, because Evil Laurel wanted to let her know that she knows Emiko is the Faux Green Arrow and the killer of Diaz. She knows Emiko is lying about her true intentions, and Emiko counters with knowing Evil Laurel was Black Siren, and also, who would believe her if she called out Emiko? This approach may not have been the best plan, Evil Laurel.

“So people used to make, “mixtapes”, using this stuff?” “No, larger types of tape, but yes, ‘mixtapes’.”

A Message For The Kids. In the future, William and Mia are wandering a flea market, looking for a player for that micro cassette. Mia tells William to not do anything while she checks out something on her own, but he can’t resist buying a player when he sees it at a seller’s booth. Too bad it gets snatched by a little girl working for that seller, and worse when that seller threatens to call the cops on Mia if they don’t leave. Well, William has a rather novel solution to that: make the cops leave the market to chase Black Canary on a false call, then steal the player from the seller.

At their hideaway, William is hesitant to play the cassette, but eventually does. It’s a message from Felicity to both of them, who expresses regret for her parenting of the two, but offers up some coordinates to give the Team and tells them to get out of town as fast as they can. Those coordinates are familiar to Mia, because they are dead smack in the middle of The Glades! We’re going over the wall…maybe next episode?

–Comic book connections: The Blackout gang is a gang that existed in the comics as a foil for Batman.

–So, Tiger’s son, Connor “Hawke”, might be adopted by Diggle in the future? I wonder how that happened, but we got the rest of this season and the shortened last season to start putting that puzzle together.

–Diggle gives Felicity some chips that Lyla used for her pregnancy, because that’s what a friend does.

–Look, I’m not convinced Diaz is dead. More because if there’s a cover-up as to what happened, what will happen if someone from Team Arrow or ARGUS comes by asking to see him? He’s in the can, so you can’t see him? Really?

–Felicity almost crying, staring at the antiquated to her computer system at police headquarters.

–“He does know we have our own uniforms, right?”

–“I want mint chip.”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Star City 2040″…