DJ Watches: Arrow Season Five: Episode Two: The Recruits
After a somewhat inauspicious start balancing life as both the Mayor and crime fighting vigilante of Star City, Ollie is at a crossroads – his former team are off leading their lives and not all the interested in suiting up again, but the war for his city’s underworld is heating up far too much for just one guy in a hood shooting arrows. So, after finishing a deal with a not-at-all suspicious corporation, Amertech, to support a free clinic to try and help out some of the ailing citizens of Star City, Oliver begins doling out invitations to a handful of the vigilantes or vigilante wannabes from around the city, namely to Evelyn Sharp, an underage Black Canary impersonator from last season, and Wild Dog, who is perhaps not particularly trusting the of the Green Arrow’s offer since he did shoot him in the leg last episode.
Still, when all is said and done, both, along with Curtis, show up at the meeting with a suspiciously unmasked Felicity overseeing the proceedings, here Oliver……then proves he has learned nothing about training or leading a team from the last four years and, with good intentions, instead copies the same exercise he was put through during his Bratva initiation back in flashback land. After pounding the stuffing out of his prospective students all afternoon, he discovers that Amertech has suddenly backed out of the funding deal because a mysterious hooded figure attacked one of the executives who facilitated the deal, causing the president and board to worry about further backlash. Oliver and Thea, much to the latter’s chagrin, sweeten the deal and hire extra security at the PR opening ceremony, as well as comp the corporation to lead the president to hesitantly continue the deal. Part of said extra security turns out to be the prospective Team Arrow recruits disguised as non-combatant volunteers, as well as Ollie himself. Thea, for her part, puts in a call to Quentin Lance, to try and get him back on his feet.
Both attempts work out not particularly well.
While Ollie is busy shaking hands and patting kids on the head while mugging for the camera, the recruits are muttering about being put in restricted duty, unable to do anything beyond be eyes and ears for some pretty boy mayor. Quentin, however, shows up late, and Thea realizes that hiring an alcoholic with nothing left to live for was a poor judgment call, even if made with the best intentions. The former Speedy doesn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it, however, as the mysterious, rag covered hooded stranger appears, attacking the Amertech president and swearing vengeance. Ollie somehow managed to slip out and suit up in record time, as he appears and confronts the mystical powered man in rags. However, despite the use of a net arrow, the stranger escapes, perhaps due to Wild Dog – Rene Ramirez when not in his Sportsmaster gear – tackling him in a futile attempt. Ollie again proves he’s a great leader when he berates everyone and just yells for awhile, leading to a near empty house next time they meet for training. Curtis finally grows a backbone, and retorts that, despite his intentions of ringing the damn bell being meant to force the recruits to work as a team, it was all hollow, as Oliver did was grumpily insult and put everyone down.
Oddly enough, the script and Felicity in fact call Ollie out on this, pointing out that, yes, he is in fact a terrible leader, even back when he had a team under him, since he was always so busy trying to solve problems and fight villain he ended up, inadvertently using everyone – Arsenal, Speedy, Spartan, and even Felicity herself – as tools instead of teammates. She even points out that the only reason she didn’t leave with everyone else was that Felicity had seen the real, honest Oliver who genuinely wanted to save the city, before he started to build the wall around himself with more members of the team.
Speaking of former team members, Thea, after a failed meeting with the Amertech board to smooth things over, overhears a conversation between the president and someone else. Trailing her with not-at-all wasteful parkour to climb a building, she peers over and notices that the president is dealing with Tobias Church, the newly moved in so-called leader of the underworld of Star City, which makes her want to look into things. Meanwhile, over in nondescript foreign country, Diggle and his squad are on a secret ops mission to discover an illegal nuclear weapon. Yeah, that’s all. Something about a new, bright eyed young recruit under his command who will totally survive to the end of this season and beyond.
After some digging between both Felicity and Thea, Ollie finds that this rag covered man has traces of radiation that can be tracked, and is on a vendetta against Amertech, which to the surprise of no one is a horribly corrupt company reeling from its unintended involvement in last season’s apocalypse plot. That is, many of the nukes Dahrk hijacked were manufactured by Amertech, specifically the ones that hit the quiet, small idyllic American town and blasted it and everyone in it into oblivion. The obvious reaction to this nightmare? Obviously, you sell all your remaining weapons to a crime lord trying to take over the city so you no longer have them in stock. Naturally, the trio are pretty okay with letting Ragman – it’s his comic name, let’s just go with it – take the pres out, but ultimately decide that maybe they should just follow him so he leads Ollie to the deal going down between her and Church.
It…actually goes pretty well. Green Arrow breaks in, takes out a handful of guys in another decent action scene, and has a slightly more equal fist fight with Church while Ragman goes and scares the bejeezus out of the president, explaining how he’s the only survivor of the nuclear strike and he blames her and the rest of the company for it. GA seemingly goes down against Church, and it looks like is about to be defeated when he calls out to Ragman for help, who, not surprisingly, lets the president go in order to give him a hand. On the rooftop at a non-specified time later, Green Arrow and Ragman confront each other, the latter unmasks and reveals that the rags he wears are a mystical artifact from ancient times, imbuing him with power and saved him from the nuclear attack while everyone else burned. Green Arrow points out that he stopped exacting vengeance on Amertech because clearly, his father would’ve wanted him to be a hero, and not a monster, and extends a hand in partnership, which Ragman accepts.
The olive branch is similarly extended to Evelyn, Curtis, and Rene later, as he comes clean and reveals himself as Mayor Queen, and points out that while the training will still be hell, an he won’t be sorry for being tough, he didn’t quite get the other half of the equation required to be the leader or trainer they needed. All agree to give him another shot, as meanwhile, Thea, too, wishes to give Quentin another chance to clean himself up and have a reason to stay sober.
Oh, and Diggle gets captured by a corrupt other squad, gets his entire team killed, and will be blamed for trying to steal a rogue nuke. Something something to give the actor something to do this episode.
And in flashback land, Ollie and the rest of the recruits ring the bell after they learn to work together, except the Russian mobsters shoot everyone other then him since it was only him who rang the bell. Surprise!
Meanwhile, as Church leaves a club of some sort, two of hi men are struck, killed by arrows, as he smirks and jokes about Green Arrow not being able to leave him alone, only to be struck by something most assuredly larger then an arrow and pinned to the ground. The new, mysterious archer threatens Church to keep his hands off the green one, as he is his to kill, and no one else. When asked for his name, he merely states, ominously, Prometheus.
This was a surprisingly good episode of Arrow, it had a solid plotline from beginning to end and most everybody acted like real human beings instead of good looking CW robots raised on a farm having lines fed into them by a teleprompter. The show actually goes and call Ollie out on the fact that he’s acting like a violent asshole and not a leader, and in fact was never a great leader even if he meant well. The new team should hopefully shape up well now with the trio in training, and Ragman was actually weirdly effective and potentially cool to have on the team, something I’d never thought I’d say. If this keeps up, I’m absolutely looking forward to Oliver building up a team of vigilantes, maybe ending up with a weird version of the Seven Soldiers of Victory. Thea offering Quentin the deputy mayor job is a little weird and rushed, but I suppose it won’t be public knowledge that he’s a drunk right now so maybe it’ll work? John’s foreign adventures seem flat and are only there to give him something to do, but who knows at this point.
I’m still not super sold on Church as an antagonist, it seemed like he was actually able to put up a fight this time after getting completely punked out by Green Arrow last episode, but then it turned out Ollie was going easy on him to get Ragman’s attention, so there goes that. Prometheus humiliating him in an instant also didn’t look good for him. Speaking of, this is pretty clearly a different take on that character, as he was never an archer before, but I really hope they keep his reverse-Batman backstory, i.e. he had two wealthy criminal parents who were gunned down by the cops, and swore vengeance on law makers everywhere. Plus, given what happens between Prometheus, Arsenal, and Green Arrow in the source, I’m curious what if anything from that will be adapted.
Not much, since Cry For Justice sucked, I hope.
So, yeah, not a bad episode! I’m till wary since this show has burned me plenty of times before, and this could all completely fall apart by the next episode. Still, maybe things are on an upswing now?