Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: C+ | 2 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Put a Sock in It, Roy
By Monty Ashley | Season 1 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.20.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The primary plot involves a jewel thief who steals things by locking explosive collars onto hostages and making them do the work for him. Although he only does that once that we see, so we don't find out exactly how he locks it on. He also has some kind of shock-wand that lets him escape unharmed even when there are three goons pointing guns at his throat.
He starts by stealing a big fake-looking gem, but ends by having to kill the first fence he goes to. The police (and Oliver) are waiting for him at the second fence, but he escapes by using one of his collar-explosives as a grenade. Oliver sets up a trap by putting another gaudy gem up at an auction and it works perfectly. Except that Felicity somehow ends up with an explosive collar, so Oliver has to chase the Dodger on a stolen motorcycle. He keeps Felicity's head from exploding by throwing a dart into a secret nerve ending on the Dodger's arm. Seriously.
While all that is going on, we have more subplots than usual. In one, Felicity quits the team because she objects to Oliver's plan to make an orphan of some kid with a father on the List. But she comes right back when Oliver branches out into fighting jewel thieves. There's also romance in the air when Diggle goes out with Carly and Oliver goes out with Officer McKenna. Diggle can't shut up about his dead brother, who's also Carly's dead husband. But he still gets to kiss her at the end. Oliver's date goes a little better, but he's unpleasantly taciturn when McKenna asks him about the island. Their relationship is off to an awkward start, since Felicity has bugged McKenna's phone and she's just been assigned to the vigilante case.
But that's not all! Because there's also an island plotline in which Oliver has to get some magic herbs to fix Slade's infected bullet wound. Oliver runs across someone else who needs help, but he decides not to help him. And finally, Thea's purse gets stolen by a ne'er-do-well in a red hooded sweatshirt. His name is Roy Harper, which means that he might be Oliver's sidekick at some point. He gets out of jail time by claiming that his mother was hooked on Vertigo, so Thea feels bad for him.
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your next show starts.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!In the opening voiceover, Oliver clearly says, "for five years, I was stranded on an island." So they really shouldn't find a way for him to get off it for specialized training, is all I'm saying. It's one thing for him to lie to the other people on the show, but if he's lying in the voiceover, it's like he's lying to us. And that I will not have.
Moving on! A big, fake jewel is in a museum under a case. A slack-jawed security guard claims he and his coworker are supposed to move it into the vault. But as soon as the case is raised, he whops his buddy over the side of the head. Then he grabs the jewel and alarms go off. As more security guards swarm the place, he ducks behind a pillar and hands it off to tonight's guest star. It's James Callis, who played Gaius Baltar on Battlestar Galactica! The guard is named Jerry and the gem is called "The Sherwood." Jerry has a metal collar around his neck, and he begs to have it taken off. Done!
In the Arrowlair, Oliver beats up one of his wooden training dummies with a bamboo stick. He's preparing to go out and assault Kent Williams, who ran a pyramid scheme. It's awfully convenient that everybody on the List has also committed some kind of crime. What happens when Oliver runs across someone who's just generally associated with bad guys? It'll take some time to find out, because when he gets to the door, Felicity has locked it with her computer skills. So one of the things she did was wire the doors into the computer system? Fancy!
She's concerned because Williams is the widower father of a ten-year-old boy. She's not on board with making the boy an orphan, and she doesn't think Oliver's doing actual good in the city by just hunting down white-collar criminals. Oliver reboots his computer, and Felicity leaves. She feels she made a mistake signing on with him, since all she cared about was rescuing Walter. And they don't seem to have made much progress on that.
Flashback! The plane on the island. Oliver pours water into Slade's mouth. That doesn't really deal with his infected bullet wound, but at least it's something. Oliver decides he has to go to Yao Fei's cave because of those "super herbs" that "heal anything." Those sound useful! And I guess that's the explanation for how they cured two different kinds of poison earlier. These herbs could make someone a lot of money, although I guess Oliver's already set in that department.
Castle Queen. Moira welcomes a man named Frank, who has been in China recently. But he came back because of "The Undertaking." I think that implies that the Undertaking will be taking place shortly. Right? Moira wants to get out of the whole thing because she's afraid of the vigilante. I'm not sure why, since when the vigilante actually threatened her, she just shot him. She says that Robert also had misgivings, and he sought Frank out. But then he was murdered, so maybe Frank isn't the right person to go to? Anyway, she says their goal is to clean up the Glades, not to lay the city to waste. I believe the phrase is "lay waste to the city." Frank got into this because something happened to his daughter Amanda. They're really good at speaking vaguely about stuff!