Arrow: Blind Spot

It's a Laurel-centric episode (for the most part) and personally, I think the writers did a pretty good job with her this time around. Not a great job, but definitely better than usual. This character's real potential lies in her relationship with her family and her tenacity when it comes to doing her job (whatever she considers that job to be). With the Laurel/Oliver soap opera put on the backburner, she emerges here as less of an accessory to his story and more of a main character in her own right. And though the writers still couldn't bring themselves to forego yet another kidnapping, it was Laurel's actions and decisions that drove most of the action throughout this episode.

The cold opening is a bit of a stretch, with Sebastian Blood getting spooked enough about Laurel's snooping that he heads over to the psychiatric hospital to murder his own mother in cold blood. Not helping is the fact that Maya – who seems to live in terror of him, and is in the mental clinic in the first place because of this terror – unhesitatingly spills the beans on exactly what she told Laurel.

But Laurel had enough foresight to ask the hospital to call her if Maya's condition improved – which means that when they ring her to tell of her demise, Laurel is three steps ahead of Oliver when it comes to tracking down the man in the skull mask. Oliver is still trying to scare the relevant information out of petty criminals on the street, and the fact the audience knows Sebastian Blood is just a pawn in someone else's much larger game plan, makes his efforts seem all the more futile.

Naturally no one believes Laurel when she shares her ideas about what Sebastian is really like. Paul – er, Adam has no real reason to put his neck out for her, and to be fair there's plenty of room for doubt both in Laurel's story and her demeanour. Katie Cassidy does a nice job delivering her lines just a tad too frantically for anyone to believe her unquestioningly.

But the best part of this episode was the fact that Laurel is unequivocally RIGHT about everything. Having grown suspicious of Sebastian and tracked down appropriate leads, she's reached a conclusion about his true identity that we the audience know is 100% correct. Which of course makes it all the more frustrating when Laurel is stymied both by her own foibles (substance abuse) and Sebastian's counter manoeuvres (getting Officer Daly to impersonate him).

Having contacted the vigilante via her father, Laurel meets with Arrow to share information. With some help from Felicity, the two come up with a plan to get a hard copy of the police file pertaining to the death of Sebastian's father. It's located in the City Archives and there's some fun teamwork between Oliver/Laurel at the site and Felicity hacking into the security system from the club.

After evading an awful lot of cops that had been called in for a minor break-in (yes, they seemed to know they were after the vigilante when they arrived, but the security guards certainly didn't identify him as such on the phone) Laurel realizes that the file has already been cleaned out. Dead end.

It's rather indicative of Laurel's storyline on the whole. Just as the island was Oliver's crucible, this downward spiral is Laurel's, and it has to get a lot worse before it gets better. But this deliberate "one step forward, two steps back" pattern doesn't make it any less frustrating to watch, and it seems to further set the majority of fandom against her.

But if one thing stuck out in this episode, it was how well Laurel and Oliver worked together. Chemistry is a funny thing; though people will claim its existence or dismiss it entirely, it's not a wholly subjective element. Katie Cassidy and Stephen Amell don't have particularly strong romantic chemistry, but watching Oliver and Laurel together in the capacity of cohorts demonstrated the familiarity between them; the bond of old lovers (even though one of them wasn't aware of it).

In fact it occurred to me that Laurel has demonstrated absolutely no romantic interest in the vigilante whatsoever. Usually with this sort of female lead/ male alter-ego relationship you can guarantee the former will be drawn to mystery of the latter, much to the exasperation of the guy behind the mask. It was the touchstone of the relationship between Lois and Clark/Superman and Mary Jane Peter/Spiderman, and seems to exist to a slightly extent between Iris and Barry over on The Flash (don't quote me on that one, I haven't caught up).

But here? Nope. Laurel looks to the vigilante as an ally and nothing more.

In short, this show has often made a big song and dance about how Laurel and Oliver understand each other – but for the first time, I actually believed it here. Which makes it all the more ironic that the episode knocked a massive hole in what Oliver considered Laurel's infallibility.

But undoubtedly, Laurel's best scene is the one in which she's confronted by her father at the police station. I don't know what hurt more, her "you have to believe me" or his "I don't baby." Damn, both actors really brought it, and you can feel all of their history together in that moment. I've said it before, but my personal head canon is that Sara was always Detective Lance's "favourite" (I know parents say there's no such thing, but c'mon, every child knows there is) whereas Laurel was the daughter in which he saw himself. So when he's faced with evidence of Laurel stealing his medication, he immediately assumes the worst – because he's measuring her up against himself.

In light of that, Laurel's umpteenth kidnapping seemed like a walk in the park. Officer Daly willingly allows himself to be stitched-up to clear Sebastian's name, and so although Laurel gets some credence back, she's still a known addict who promptly loses her job. As they say, when you hit rock bottom the only direction you can go is up.

***

Over in the B-plot, Roy is still struggling with the side-effects of his mirakuru injection. Oliver has been keeping an eye on him, knowing full-well what happened to him and the events of the rally in which he saved Moira's life, but for the most part Roy strikes out on his own.

Well, not entirely on his own. He goes to Sin and demonstrates his newfound super-strength, and after informing her that he's not prepared to scare Thea by telling her the truth (Sin: "you're not worried about scaring me?") enlists her help in gauging just what he's capable of.

Sin's plan is to send him after a lawyer who regularly murders prostitutes.

Wait, what? As with many B-plots, limited time restrictions mean a certain amount of lunacy inherent in the setting up of necessary circumstances, all of which can be summed up by Roy's hilariously nonchalant expression when he hears what Sin has come up with:

So using Sin as bait, they manage to find the evil serial killer and lure him to a carpark, after which Roy beats him to a bloody pulp. How does Roy manage to track them there? Why don't the police arrest him? Wouldn't the carpark have security cameras? Can't the man identify his attacker? Doesn't Thea have some serious questions about what the hell's going on? Sorry, this is the B-plot and there's simply no time for anything to make sense.

But despite the irritating cliché of Roy doing the stupid yet inevitable withdrawal thing in order to protect his girlfriend (which NEVER works by the way and only results in estrangement) I still appreciate the fact that all three of these characters are three-dimensional enough to carry a subplot that's only tangentially connected to the show's main character.

And it ends on a most interesting note, in which Oliver's words suggest it's nearly time to take Roy under his wing; the next big step in a slow-boiling storyline that's been one of my favourite parts of the show.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Laurel described Roy as the vigilante's "groupie". Heh. It's true though.

In terms of divided opinion on the matter of Sebastian Blood, it really came down to Sebastian's word versus Laurel's, which was reflected in the stances that Diggle and Felicity took. Diggle was sceptical while Felicity was inclined to believe Laurel. Add to that the fact that Sin was encouraging Roy to tell Thea the truth, and the theme of this episode seemed to be "trust in the womenfolk!" 

According to Roy: "The Arrow once told me I was only good for taking a beating" Huh? I don't remember Oliver telling him that. Anyone care to refresh my memory? But in any case, it goes to show how deeply Roy is invested in the vigilante.

Over in the island flashbacks, we get some weird insight concerning Laurel/Oliver through an anecdote shared by Sara. According to her, she sneaked out of the house to go to a party because she knew Oliver would be there. Laurel knew her sister had a crush on him, accordingly called the cops to break up the party, and in a matter of a few days was dating Oliver herself. Obviously none of this reflects particularly well on Laurel, it's not how I envisioned the beginning of their relationship (which was as childhood sweethearts), and altogether I'm not particularly sure what it was supposed to prove.  

On a better note, Sara mercifully doesn't take up Ivo's offer (or rather, believe his bullshit) when he propositions a way for her to leave the island, despite all the usual "you rescued me, the darkness is coming, you're the only one who can save me" nonsense that guys like him try to pull. Professor Ivo is hardly a well-drawn antagonist, but he at least gives Sara the chance to draw a line in the sand. Now it's her and Oliver against the freighter.

Why does Laurel still live in that apartment? She's been kidnapped from it so many times.

Also, is this is the first time she's killed a person? The death of Officer Daly should have been given a lot more weight, and between it being treated as a non-event and her frequent kidnappings, I'd say that the most damaging thing about the way Laurel is written is that the writers cherry-pick what traumatic experiences are going to have an effect on her. There's a veneer of falsity surrounding certain elements of her life that aren't delved into properly, and it leeches the integrity of the character as a whole. I suppose this latest near-death experience is just meant to be another reason for her to down more glasses of alcohol, and it's disappointing that no one around her is picking up on this.

The closest we got was Felicity asking: "did Laurel really shoot him?" because yeah – THAT'S A BIG DEAL.

Why did Slade kill those five guys? Sebastian has to dispose of five bodies just so Slade could make a point?