Before we talk about the episode, I read something earlier this week where someone was talking about the strengths of the writing this season and one thing the writer mentioned that stuck with me and I thought about as I watched this episode was how the focus of the show is now on OTA and everyone else acts as support to them. Last season we had so many different storylines going all over the place and to the degree where NTA seemed more important than Oliver himself. This season we're all spread out but we seem to have an Oliver story, a Felicity story and a Diggle one with all other characters acting as support to them. It's such a beautiful way to write this show and it allows us to have this huge cast yet give them all something to do while also reminding the audience what's most important.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's start with Oliver in prison. We finally got to level 2 and though I was kind of hoping that we'd get a bunch of old criminals like we did on level 1, I was shocked to see Talia. Last week I was talking about how I thought that either Parker or Stanley were the Demon cause they were both so sketchy and a lot of people were talking about how awesome it would be if it was an Al Ghul and I thought the same but really didn't expect anything out of it cause why in the world with a Al Ghul be in prison near Star City but low and behold, it really was an Al Ghul. We didn't really get a reason why Talia was here though she did drop a line about visiting an old friend in Gotham (cough Bruce Wayne cough) but I really seriously didn't care cause it led to a great team up between Oliver and Talia. I really did expect Oliver to escape with her tbh but it made more sense for him to stay back. Parker turned out not to be the Demon but just a super sketchy doctor who somehow convinced either the guards or the prison director to allow him to run an off the books experiment in a very Dr Hugo Strange manner. It's kind of funny though that after everything Oliver did he's back where he started without much punishment so good for him I guess! I'd like to imagine that Talia killed Parker at the end and I kind of hope she sticks around this season or comes back later now that she and Oliver have burying the hatchet. She would be helpful in taking down Diaz afterall.
The second major storyline this week had to do with Felicity, Dinah and Laurel. This might be the first week I actually liked Black Siren so I've decided to start calling her Laurel in my reviews as she's earned it. I loved that the crusade for Diaz took a backseat to Felicity's worry over Oliver cause of course he'd be the most important to her. It was really fun seeing the girls work together and how much Dinah cared for Felicity and how Laurel grew to care for her too. Felicity was much less desperate and manic this week and I kind of hope that this continues and that it was due to Laurel's talk last week about how Felicity needs to play the long game and use her brain and not because she was focusing on something other than Diaz. I kind of wanted to see Talia meet up with the girls but she ended up leaving the flashdrive anonymously instead. This week felt very Birds of Prey style and it was written much much better than most of the previous girls night out episodes (ugh looking at you Flash) even if we didn't really get any fighting. They were able to discover something wrong, research it and fix it in one episode cause my girls are amazing. I was living when Laurel asked Felicity to go out for pizza at the end of the episode. Can we get more of this please?? I kind of love their dynamic.
Also sidebar but Felicity met Stanley this week and did anyone else feel a weird vibe from him when she told him to tell Oliver that she has a lead on Diaz? I felt it again when he told Oliver at the end of the episode and I don't know why but I was expecting him to say something super creepy and threatening about her. I will die of laughter if it turns out that Stanley is just weird and has nothing to do with the plot cause the amount of screentime he's given is too much. I'd rather Oliver befriend antiheroes like Talia and Bronze Tiger!
The final storyline this week had to do with Diggle and Curtis going undercover. As much fun as I had a few weeks ago with Diggle going undercover with ARGUS, I was super bored this week with this story. It kind of feels like we're watching two different shows with Felicity and Oliver doing one thing and Diggle waaaay over there. I still think that whatever this thing that is happening at ARGUS is connected to Diaz cause it wouldn't make sense to spend so much time over at ARGUS running all these ops without it connecting back to the main storyline. I could even see Diaz being taken out halfway through the season and then whatever this threat happening at ARGUS taking over. Either way, I do hope that the connection comes out earlier rather than later cause if I'm zoning out a bit over here, so is most of the audience. Also I really hated the Curtis story in this with him suddenly being terrified of being out in the field. Like Dinah's anti-vigilante stance, it doesn't track cause he's been out in the field as a vigilante before so why be gun shy now.
We capped the episode by finding out that the Silencer was in Moscow (which props to their teleportation which took like a day to get from the States to Russia) and Diaz seemed to have killed a whole lot of Bratva in order to get to Anatoli. I do hope that he's okay cause I love Anatoli!
The preview for next week seems to show us that most of the episode will be about getting Oliver out of prison through an appeal which I'm sure will work out cause like I predicted last week, episode 9 is the crossover so if Oliver gets out in episode 6 or 7 (I think it'll be 7), he'll get some time to get himself back together before running off to have fun with Barry and Kara. We also see that Anatoli is fine and maybe back in Star City so that's a load off! Diaz probably sent him to threaten the others. Either way, it should be good.
I'll see you all tomorrow for my Flash review!
xoxo Allie
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