Arrow - S2E2 - Identity
Previously, on Arrow: “City of Heroes”
The episode opens with some gratuitous work out times. Once we’ve got our sweaty torso fill we head downtown where a truck is being pursued by some sinister dudes on motor bikes. Luckily for the hapless drivers, Roy is here to save the day. Or at least he attempts to, before crashing his car dramatically. He really isn’t very good at this whole hero business.
A woman with really horrendous blonde hair kills the truck drivers with some sweet knife throwing skills. It’s that Asian gangster from season 1! They get away with the loot while the police are distracted arresting Roy. Diggle and Oliver are at the club talking about justice. Thea comes over to chat but is called away by her boyfriend’s drama.
For some reason Laurel is the one to interrogate Roy. What’s her job again? She is really fixated on the Vigilante. Oliver and Thea arrive to bail him out. Oliver gives him a big speech about how he shouldn’t be acting like a vigilante. Oh the hypocrisy! Roy tells him that folk are stealing medicine.
Oliver has a flashback to the island, just after he smashed that guy’s head in with a rock. Shado and Slade are doing important things while Oliver mopes about. Shado goes to cheer him up. Back in the present day Oliver and Diggle go to visit the hospital. Out the front some poor people are complaining about how everything in the city is pretty much terrible unless you’re a millionaire. They (pretty fairly) call Oliver out on how his family was responsible for murdering a lot of people. They drive off as the mob yell at them and smash a window.
At the office, Felicity is rightly furious about having to leave her job in IT to be Oliver’s secretary. His arguments about them all having to have secret identities aren’t so good when you consider that his gets to be CEO, while the other two are a secretary and, as Diggle so aptly puts it, his ‘black driver’.
Back on the island, Shado and Oliver are standing in a pond. I’m sure it’s all very sweet, but I keep getting distracted by how very bad his hair is.
The evil motorcyclists are at it again! Luckily for the driver, Oliver’s here! Or not so lucky, given that he still ends up with a knife in the throat. There is a new villain. I don’t know who he is so for now I’ll just refer to him as black wolverine. Their fight is interrupted by the arrival of the police, and they get out of there. Oliver gets into an argument with Diggle, and Felicity calls him out about how completely oblivious he is to anyone else’s feelings.
Roy is sweeping, which is really the most useful thing I’ve ever seen him do. Thea gives him an ultimatum. Either be fired and dumped and go be a superhero, or let it go. He storms off.
The guy who was running the protest at the hospital comes by to meet Oliver. He’s kind of a jerk, but with good reason. Oliver says he wants to have a benefit to raise money for the people screwed over by the earthquake. Is there anyway in hell that Oliver won’t have to choose between attending the benefit or stopping a crime. When will people with secret identities learn NOT to have big gala events that it’s hard to get out of without offending people?
A quick trip to the island, where Slade isn’t too happy about Shado and Oliver distracting each other with romance and such.
The Vigilante swings by Laurel’s office. It is really hard to believe that she wouldn’t be able to recognize someone she knows so well. She tells him how she’s mad at him because she saw him leaving the scene when Tommy died. He slinks off into the night.
At the benefit, Oliver is nowhere to be found. Oliver and Diggle are almost there when they get a call from Felicity telling him about a truck robbery in progress. He makes the obvious choice, and ends up getting crucified in front of everyone for not showing up at his own event.
He gets into a fistfight with wolverine and the blonde chick while Diggle gets the truck. He drives off, but not before picking up a hitchhiker. Oliver electrifies wolverine with a snazzy Taser arrow. He arrives just in time to save Diggle and tie the blonde chick to pole, and decides not to kill her due to the new leaf that he’s turned over.
On the island Slade is kinda smug about being able to recognize a rock from a photograph. They find a cave filled with really old skeletons from WW2. Oliver steals his stone arrowhead from one of the corpses.
Roy hears a noise behind him and instinctively throws a knife at it. Really, Roy? Luckily it’s Oliver and he manages to catch it without getting stabbed in the face, but still. Oliver (as the vigilante) tells Roy that he can help him by getting information.
The vigilante heads over to say hi to Laurel. She is obviously smarter than she seems, and has laid a trap. Uh oh!
