Arrow, Season 5, Episode 20: Underneath
After the huge Helix debacle in the last episode, we take yet again another detour from the Prometheus plot, although Arrow has been excellent at making all its episodes still kind of tie to the main Prometheus storyline instead of just a cursory 'oh yes, Savitar is totally behind the random villain-of-the-week' name-drop like Flash has been doing throughout its third season.
So the plotline of 'Underneath' has Prometheus trap Felicity and Oliver in their underground base, shutting everything down with an EMP bomb and turning it into a death trap. Oliver and Felicity end up having to work out their issues over the whole hypocrite thing, while the rest of the Arrow Team have to try and rescue them from above. In practice, though, the episode seems to lean too much about solving the whole Oliver/Felicity shipping conundrum, especially with the Bratva flashback taking yet another backseat in favour of a flashback that runs between episode 4 and episode 5, which is basically 'Unresolved Sexual Tension: The Movie'.
The flashback is annoying because, shit, it teases showing Team Arrow hunting down Werner Zytle, a.k.a. Count Vertigo... but it happens offscreen and is ditched for basically more romance drama. It could've been a perfect way to show how sometimes Felicity's reasoning trumps Oliver's, like, say, showing how ineffective Team Arrow is when it's just one person (instead of the recruit drive that happened in season 5), but no. The romance scenes are at least quite well-done, and probably some of the better ones we've ever gotten, but it's still annoying since we get basically the same thing in the present-day scenes.
The cliffhanger is decent, I suppose, with the reveal that Chase has been spending in which Team Arrow is preoccupied to track down William, and, well, he's just a fucking creepy fucker in that scene, isn't he? And while, yes, putting William in harm's way is kind of a rehash of that one Damien Darhk episode in season four, it's still pretty freaking effective! Especially since Chase is a lot, lot more unhinged than Darhk's more mob-boss style threats.
The episode kind of... fails to be as engaging as it should, mostly due to the roundabout way that it handles the hypocrisy that Oliver is showing. He's basically pulling off a 'do as I say, not as I do' judgement on Felicity, not faulting her but at the same time not really offering much in lieu of platitudes. The show acknowledges that while Felicity kind of made a mistake in fully trusting Helix, it also acknowledges that Oliver did basically the same thing allying himself with the Bratva. and he's done a lot of questionable things (killing people in season one, becoming Al Sah-him in season three, allying himself with Malcolm Merlyn god knows how many times) in the name of the mission, so why shouldn't Felicity do the same? The show and Oliver really don't offer much explanation beyond 'well, Felicity doesn't need to be infected with the same badness that Oliver has'. Which probably sort of ties in with the whole Oliver-ruins-everyone-he-touches mentality that Chase is trying to force down Oliver's throat. And the episode comes so close to having something actually great and thought-provoking, but kind of... loses its point by repeating the same arguments over and over.
The actual procedural of the episode is decent enough. Oliver and Felicity had to tinker their way out of the base, Team Diggle had to tinker their way in. Felicity's crippled legs kind of give them an additional disadvantage, Oliver's pride and bull-headedness comes to bite him in the ass when he falls down and gets stabbed, Curtis uses his T-Spheres well, Diggle and Lyla have that talk -- which is honestly kind of felt like 'eh, that happened'. It's a nice talk, well done, well-paced and not at all annoying, and both actors convey their emotions well but it's just not very interesting. Maybe it's because the Diggle/Lyla argument felt so similar with Oliver and Felicity's own arguments? I dunno.
The conclusion of the episode was where it felt the most sour, I think. The escape ended up being relatively simple, as far as these things go, and Felicity randomly decides that, yeah, she's in the wrong and she's the hypocrite, and Oliver kind of gets away scot-free other than his own self-loathing. It's not as annoying as some shows make it, because at least Oliver's flaws are being acknowledged, but the fact that he gets entirely vindicated at the end is a weird stance to take.
Overall, though, after ignoring Oliver's love life for the majority of this season -- while both Oliver and Felicity found new love in the season, neither romances really got that much focus -- the episode kind of took a step back by changing what could've been a great moment of introspection for both Oliver and Felicity of their past actions and basically turning it to another shipping episode. It's not an episode that I really had a lot of problems with while watching it, but now, sitting back and reviewing it, it ends up not panning out well at all.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- During the flashback, Oliver, Felicity and Curtis apparently go up against Werner Zytle, the second Count Vertigo, who has been MIA since season 3. He's apparently taken down off-screen.
- We get a brief reference to the spine implant that allows Felicity to walk after her crippling injury in season four, which is shut off by the EMP.
- In addition to a fair amount of references to the state of Team Arrow in the first season, Felicity also lampshades the amount of times that any Arrow Lair has been breached by villains. Cisco being the architect of the current Arrow Cave is also brought up.
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