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At the end of the last episode, Thea had decided that her mother had cheated on her last two husbands, so she took this new drug called "Vertigo" and drove her new car into a tree. And now she's in danger of going to jail, because the judge has overruled her plea bargain. So Oliver sets out to take down the whole drug operation, because god forbid his sister have to pay the penalty for what she did.
He hunts down a street-level dealer and finds out that Vertigo is being supplied by "The Count." Then he makes Diggle come with him as he negotiates with the Bratva to become a mid-level drug dealer himself. He has to kill someone, but his vast knowledge of nerve pinches keeps his hands clean. When he meets with The Count, the deal is broken up by the police and Oliver gets jabbed with some Vertigo in liquid form. This gives him dizzy spells for the rest of the episode, but it lets Felicity Smoak locate the exact neighborhood it came from. When Oliver gets there, he's barely ahead of the police, but he doesn't quite kill The Count. He just gives him an overdose that might leave him permanently delirious! Hooray!
Thea, meanwhile, gets off with hundreds of hours of community service and two years' probation. So now she'll be working at CNRI and somehow Laurel is in loco parentis even though Thea's got a regular parent right there. At first, Thea wants to go to jail instead, because it will hurt her mother. But eventually Oliver has enough of her nonsense and reveals that instead of their mother cheating on their father, it was the other way around. So now Thea's in a good mood again.
Oh, and Felicity has had enough of Oliver's hilariously unconvincing excuses for needing her help. But instead of confronting him with the obvious knowledge that he's the vigilante, she gives him the notebook she got from Walter.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!The episode is called "Vertigo," but it doesn't have any Swamp Thing in it. What a rip-off. Anyway, it starts with no voice-over explanation. A thug is running through alleys while Oliver stalks him from catwalks. He tries climbing a piece of machinery, and Oliver pins his jacket to the metal with a well-placed arrow. Oliver demands to know who supplies this thug with his Vertigo, and he throws in allegedly menacing lines like, "There's nothing honest about what you do!" and "Whoever you fear, fear me more!" The guy says he gets his Vertigo from The Count, and Oliver leaves.
I should remind you that Vertigo is the drug that Thea took before smashing up her new car at the end of the last episode. The extent of Vertigo's effects are, "It makes you feel floaty," but it's a drug from the bad part of town, so I think we're supposed to pretend it's worse than heroin and iocane powder combined. Of course, Oliver didn't care about Vertigo until his sister took some.
In the Arrowlair, Diggle complains that "The Count" is a dumb name. Well, first of all, it's not a name; it's a rank. Anyway, Oliver wants to go back out, but Diggle thinks Oliver should be by Thea's side for her court appearance.
Thea is brushing hair over an extremely tiny scar. Oliver is here to take her to court. He's full of helpful advice. They have a moment together, and then Moira shows up to drag them along.
At the courthouse, the paparazzi are very interested in this whole thing. In the court, it turns out there was a plea bargain. But the judge is outraged at Thea being treated as a juvenile because she was two days under eighteen. So the plea arrangement is denied, and the case will proceed to trial. You'd think the prosecutor would be ticked off about everything, since they're being overruled in public like this. And Thea has no priors and hurt no one but herself in her crash.
The Queens reconvene at home. Their lawyer says they should prepare themselves for the possibility that it might not go their way, and he goes off to work on the appeal. What, a family of billionaires couldn't afford more than one lawyer? Thea sneers at her mother and slouches off. Moira moans to Oliver (and recaps for us) that Thea took drugs and drove, so why does she have to be made an example of? Oliver says he has to go do something (seriously, that's his entire excuse: "I have to go do something") and he's out.
Back on Flashback Island, Yao Fei looks at Oliver, who's in a bamboo cage and complaining up a storm about how he thought they were friends. He'd like to be let out of the cage, but Yao Fei won't help him. Oliver is positively distraught.
Police Station. Oliver is surprised to see a lady named McKenna Hall. She's a vice cop, and they apparently had a wild, party-filled youth together. Oliver thinks that if they could take down the Count, they could take the heat off Thea. McKenna has a folder of extremely vague information, but she doesn't like Oliver's idea of calling him whenever she learns anything. Oliver leaves, and Detective Lance asks what that was all about. Nothing much comes of that question and I regret recapping it.
The thug from the first scene is sitting alone in a warehouse when a creepy guy comes in and injects him with something. He explains about how it's filling him with pain, but the thug is making a lot of noise and the background music is pretty loud, so it's hard to make out. Creepy guy gives the thug a gun with one bullet, and the thug shoots himself. Creepy guy muses, "The Hood. Coming for me. Interesting." So he's The Count, then. Count Creepy. In comic books, he'd be Count Vertigo, but that's the name of the drug already.
Now we're in a soft-lit room with soft-rock while someone uses Windows 8. But it's not a commercial! Laurel is just reading up on Thea's legal issues. Tommy Merlyn strolls in and points out that if he works all night on the club and she works during the day on law stuff, they won't have much time together. And that's enough of them: Oliver's here! He wants Laurel to talk to her father on Thea's behalf. They're acting like it's awkward to be talking with Tommy there, but they've gotten through that situation several times already.
The Lances talk. Detective Lance doesn't want to help out Thea because he hates the Queens. Laurel says Thea is just like her sister Sarah was. Sarah was arrested for shoplifting and her father made it go away. Detective Lance points out that maybe if she'd had to go to jail, she wouldn't have ended up a party girl who died on the Queens' shipwreck. Laurel makes a heartfelt plea, and her father says he'll make some calls.
Oliver has taken Diggle to the Bratva headquarters. He warns Diggle to just go along with anything. Then he starts speaking Russian to the local Bratva goons, who are a little suspicious about a Bratva Captain who never shows up to commit crimes. Oliver has a duffel bag of something (I'll just assume it's cash) and wants to get into the Vertigo business. He's got a folder on The Count, which is everything the police have on him. So that should be enough to cut a deal, right? Sure, says the Bratva goon. But he needs a favor first because it's very odd for an American billionaire to be a captain in the Bratva. It is revealed that Oliver saved the life of someone named Anatoly. A backup goon drags out a terrified man, and Oliver is told to kill him to prove his Bratva cred. He puts the man in a sleeper hold, and he falls. "Spasebo," says the goon. "What are friends for?" answers Oliver.
And then! The police are here! Gunfire! Oliver should probably get out of there. He runs after The Count, who gets him in the chest with a couple of needles. "No witnesses!" he says, before fleeing down a staircase. Oliver's friend shoots up the Russians' car and makes it stop. Diggle finds Oliver and helps him up.
Back to the Arrowlair! Diggle sets a shirtless Oliver on a table and mixes up some herbs. Oliver grabs him by the neck for no apparent reason, but Diggle gets the mixture into his mouth. Oliver screams!
Back on the island, Oliver is fighting Yao Fei in the circle. Yao Fei gets him in a sleeper hold, then lets him fall.
Oliver wakes up handcuffed to the table. He promises not to kill Diggle, who obligingly uncuffs him and gives him a shirt. Apparently he only got a half-dose. But they came away with some Vertigo. Oliver refuses to rest up from the massive drug overdose he just recovered from.
Castle Queen. Detective Lance and Officer McKenna are here to talk to Oliver. I realize "McKenna" is her first name, but "Officer McKenna" sounds cooler than "Officer Hall." There was a drug deal last night, and an eyewitness saw Oliver there. And that eyewitness was McKenna, which is awkward for Oliver. Oliver admits that he was checking into The Count, hoping to get a look at him. Moira is a little stressed out by this. So is Detective Lance! But he's willing to accept this story. Before the cops leave, Oliver thanks Lance for helping Thea. When they're alone, Moira shouts at Oliver about sneaking around with drug dealers. Oliver thinks she's really angry about him telling Thea about their father, and then Thea comes back in. Now she's all sad and repentant. They have a tearful hug. Oliver walks out of the room.
Diggle's waiting in the hallway. Oliver's still planning on investigating the Vertigo. He starts to claim that because it's in liquid form, it contains water. So maybe they can trace the water! This is clearly nonsense, so it's a good thing he gets overwhelmed by wooziness and falls down.
Flashback! Oliver's body is about to be tossed off a cliff. Yao Fei says he'll do it, which gives him time to do the magic wake-up nerve touch. But he still throws Oliver down a fifty-foot drop into a lake.
Oliver and Diggle have gone to Q Consolidated. Diggle thinks they should go to a hospital, because they don't know what's in Vertigo. They're here to see Felicity, their all-purpose genius. Oliver claims that his buddy is starting an energy drink company, so he'd like Felicity to run "a spectroanalysis" on this liquid to find out exactly where it's made. Felicity asks why this alleged energy drink is in a syringe, and Oliver claims he ran out of sports bottles. I am really enjoying how lame his excuses have gotten.
Felicity joins Oliver at a cafe. She tells him she's not an idiot, but she thinks she can trust him even with all these ridiculous lies. Then she brings out the copy of the secret notebook that Walter gave her. It's in better shape than Oliver's! He keeps his eyes down as he asks where she got it but he can't maintain his cool when he learns it was from Walter. Felicity says Walter thought Moira was hiding something. We end on Felicity saying, "I think this list might have cost Walter his life."
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.