This week’s new Arrow episode had some very high points and a few very low points. The comic book feel was captured well, as Arrow had to save a bus full of innocent people, shoot a trick arrow, and the entire team worked as a unit throughout. The Clock King, a famous Batman villain, was the “bad guy of the week,” and he worked. I hope to see him again.
Where the episode failed was in the Lance Family subplot and the island stuff. One was incredibly gut-wrenching melodramatic, the other completely useless. The saving grace for the entire episode happens at the very end and it gave me goosebumps. I hope this is a sign of good things are on the horizon.
1. What is it?
Arrow Season 2, Episode #214, titled ‘Time of Death.’
2. Who’s in it?
Stephen Amell stars as Oliver Queen/Arrow; Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance; David Ramsey as John Diggle; Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak; Willa Holland as Thea Queen; Colton Haynes as Roy Harper; Susanna Thompson as Moira Queen; Paul Blackthorne as Quentin Lance; Manu Bennett as Slade Wilson; Guest stars this week include Caity Lotz as Sara; Bex Taylor-Klaus as Sin; Robert Knepper as William Tockman/Clock King; and Alex Kingston as Dinah Lance
3. Who made it?
‘Time of Death’ was written by Wendy Mericle and Beth Schwartz. The episode was directed by Nick Copus
4. What is it about? (**spoilers galore**)
‘Time of Death’ opens with a heist in progress as two individuals are infiltrating Kord Enterprises with the help of an all-seeing guide who has a thing for exact timing and clocks. The two thugs take a mysterious device, known as the “skeleton key,” which can be used to unlock anything that is secured. Anything, apparently.
Team Arrow is practicing with bo staffs, and later they compare scars, and Felicity (Rickards) feels left out. Sara (Lotz) and Ollie (Amell) have to leave to go to a party that Ollie is throwing for her at his estranged mother’s house. Diggle (Ramsey) notices that Felicity feels inadequate–and possibly jealously towards Sara.
William Tockman (Knepper), the mastermind of the opening heist, is forced to kill one of his thieves when the thief demands more money. He stabs him with the hour hand of a clock.
At the party, Quentin (Blackthorne) confronts Ollie and apologizes for being a dick all this time. Then he gets a call as there’s been a body discovered in an alley. I wonder if anyone told the writers that beat cops don’t get called in off-duty for things like this. Ollie and Sara also react to the call and soon, Arrow and Canary meet up in the alley with Quentin to learn that the victim was killed with a clock part.
, Back at the Arrow Cave, Felicity is able to trace the use of the skeleton key and Arrow and Canary rush to stop a bank robbery. Tockman, which the media labels as The Clock King, hacks into the Arrow system and then hacks into the Starling City Transit Authority setting up a bus vs. train scenario. Arrow rushes to save the bus while Canary goes after the bank robbers. Tockman is able to get away, but not before catching a thrown baton to the head, and Arrow is able to stop the bus from disaster.
Sara is able to use a blood sample off the baton to figure out that Tockman suffers from Macgregor’s Syndrome just by looking at his blood sample. She is able to track down and find that William Tockman is the culprit and that he has a sick sister and needs the money to take care of her. Felicity is steamed that her one job on Team Arrow is now in jeopardy.
Tockman, realizing that he is close to being discovered, hacks into the Arrow Computer and blows it up, as I guess computers can do that now. Felicity blames herself and sees herself as an utter failure.
Ollie devises a plan to sell off 800,000 shares in Queen Consolidated to try and bait the Clock King into stealing it from the bank and then springing a trap. Felicity, needing a computer to run the op, goes to the bank itself and Team Arrow rushes in to not only protect her, but to nab the Clock King. During the scuffle, Ollie uses a trick bolo arrow–which was fun–and Felicity sacrifices her safety to save Canary, taking a bullet to the shoulder in the process.
The Clock King is arrested and back at the Arrow Cave, Sara stitches up Felicity–who is proud that she now has a scar and a story. When left alone, Ollie confronts her and tells her that she never has to worry and that she will always be “his girl” on Team Arrow.
On the island this week, Team Olladera(?) tracks the Amazo just as a small passenger plane flies over. Before they can signal it, it is shot down and crashes. Ollie and Sara find the pilot alive, but just barely. She sends Ollie and Slade back to the fuselage for the first aid kit while she stays with the man–an American–in Chinese airspace. The man, who is dying, gives Sara a picture of his young daughter and asks her to look out for her–because this world only consists of the Island and Starling City, apparently. Then the man dies and at the end of the episode, we learn that the girl in the photo is Sin (Taylor-Klaus).
Additional subplots this week concern the Lance Family, as Quentin tries to reunite with Dinah (Kingston) by staging a family dinner at Laurel’s apartment–even though Laurel hates Sara and blames her for every tragedy in their lives. Laurel agrees and then Sara shows up with Ollie as her date. Then in the course of the pizza dinner, Dinah informs Quentin that she is seeing someone. A fight breaks out between Laurel and, well, everybody, and she storms out of her own home. Ollie catches up to her and gives her a good old talking to. The episode ends with Laurel reconciling with Sara–who is now the bartender at Verdant–and then Laurel goes to an AA meeting with her dad. Could her sad, over-dramatic arch finally be ending?
Lastly, on the Queen family front, Moira (Thompson) tries to talk to Ollie at a party thrown for Sara at the Queen estate as Thea (Holland) begins to suspect things are amiss. Ollie will have nothing to do with it, and tells Moira as much. At the end of the episode, Ollie gets an emergency text telling him to come home and when he does, he finds that Thea has staged it to try and get mother and son talking again. Unfortunately, at that very moment, Moira is taking a meeting with a very prominent businessman: Slade Wilson, who is introduced to Oliver Queen and things are about to get interesting.
5. Any revelations, tie-ins, easter eggs, etc.? (**SPOILER!**)
KORD Enterprises/Industries is used as setting; Diggle’s favorite restaurant, Big Belly Burger, is from the comics; a few different uses/references to the number 52; Ollie uses an actual bolo arrow.
6. Will we watch next week?
The last scene all but guaranteed continued allegiance to this fine show. The stakes have been raised. And while the Lance family drama was a bit melodramatic for my tastes, the show is beginning its back half run and things are going to get crazy.