Arrow: The Scientist

Well, that title leaves us in no confusion over who this episode about, and yet despite this being a Poorly Disguised Pilot (don't be fooled by the wording, it's actually a good thing) for the impending Flash spin-off, there's a ton of material in here that makes this one of the juiciest episodes yet.

It's also the first of a two-parter, ending on a cliff-hanger that involves yet another person being brought in on Oliver's secret. That person is Barry Allen, the guy who will become The Flash, and when we first see him stepping off the train and into Starling City, the whimsical tootling music tells us that this is a super-special guest.

Face hidden for maximum suspense.

There's been a burglary at a Queen Consolidated warehouse, in which a super-strong man has made off with a centrifuge for reasons unknown – and (I assume) killed two security guards after one of the fakest-looking gunfights ever committed to the screen. Barry Sherlock Scans his way across the crime scene, posits a theory that we know is correct, and starts cozening up with Felicity to figure out how exactly the assailant managed to tear up the place with his bare hands.

It was interesting to watch all this knowing what I do about The Flash spin-off. I've actually watched the first few episodes of that show (call me crazy, but I rather enjoy watching things out of order), so this played out a bit like a prequel in regards to Barry's motivation. Once Oliver learns that he's arrived in Starling City without the knowledge of his boss, we hear a condescend version of Barry's backstory: his mother's death, his father's arrest, his need to track down strange and bizarre cases in the hopes of figuring out what really happened that night.

There's always a risk with episodes designed to set up a spin-off character that they'll end up completely dominating the story to the detriment of everyone else in the cast. Of course, it's never that big a deal since it's only for one episode, but I'm impressed by the way the Arrow writers handled Barry's introduction.  If I didn't know a spin-off was impending, I'd assume Barry was simply going to be a recurring guest-star like the Huntress – a familiar name/face from the comics brought in to temporarily shake things up a bit.

Only towards the end, when Oliver is mortally wounded and Barry is roped into help save him by Diggle and Felicity, does it really start to feel like there's more to him than just a one-off visit.

But the fact that this all takes place over two episodes means that plenty of screen-time can also be devoted to other subplots that have nothing whatsoever to do with establishing Barry. Over in the flashbacks, Shadow has the correct reaction to learning that Oliver was on-board the Queen's Gambit with his girlfriend's sister:

On a more serious note, things are really starting to get interesting on the island, all the more so since the show is starting to forge serious links between what happened there four years ago and what's currently happening in Starling City. Before this episode, Oliver's painful memories have been reason enough for him to keep his mouth shut about what he endured in his five-year absence. But now for  what feels like the first time, Oliver opens up to Felicity and Diggle and divulges information about things that we haven't yet seen happen in the flashbacks.

Oliver confirming that Professor Ivo is dead and that he burned the last of the super-soldier serum feels like a storytelling risk – after all, this is giving away plot-points of the ongoing island arc. But it also opens up questions of "how?" and "why?" particularly since Oliver doesn't go into any significant detail. There are plenty of nuances in Stephen Amell's performance that provide a satisfying sense of continuity (as well as that little tingle of anticipation you feel on knowing things that other characters don't), such as his comment that he's seen men like Cyrus Gold before, his alarmed reaction to Roy's photo of the corpse with bleeding eyes, and his little correction when he says: "we – I..." on relating his island recollections, hastily erasing Shado, Slade and Sara from his story.

But for now all we get is the island gang deciding to head to the submarine in the hopes of finding a cure for Slade. They find the Mirakuru swiftly enough, and give it to Slade without the necessary sedative. Not a good idea, all things considered, but they're out of options.

In what is unfortunately one of the clumsiest shortcuts of this episode (if not the show), Slade confesses to Shado that he has feeling for her right before the serum is injected. Despite a few little hints here and there, I've seen no real evidence of this, and I'm placing the blame on the writers' apparent need to establish an Oliver/Shado relationship instead (which has been subtle, but certainly more pronounced than anything between Shado/Slade). Apparently having the Lance sisters on either side of Oliver's island sojourn simply wasn't enough action for their white male hero. I mean, we have to keep reminding the audience that he's a stud, right?

By this point Slade's confession was clearly signposting an upcoming plot device that I'll be ranting about when the time comes (hoo boy, there'll be ranting), but for now let's just say that since Slade's affection for Shado is a vitally important part of his motivation and story-arc in later episodes, they needed to do a hell of a lot more to sell it. Namely by cutting out the largely unnecessary Shado/Oliver romance and focusing on Shado/Slade instead.

Heck, it didn't even need to be a romance. Given how young Shado looks, I'm surprised both men don't look upon her as their little sister.

***

But we're not done with subplots yet. Elsewhere, Sin enlists Roy and Thea's help to track down her missing friend Max. They check out his apartment, suspiciously eye a Sebastian Blood pamphlet for a blood drive, get spotted by one of Blood's cronies, and eventually find what's left of Max lying in an alleyway with blood pouring from his eyeballs.

This was mostly set-up than pay-off, and a couple of elements grated (there was no real reason for Roy to lie to Thea, and he somehow manages to sneak behind police lines to take a picture of dead Max mere seconds after Sin has been ejected from the exact same place) but I still really enjoy the on-going adventures of the mini Famous Five (minus two). They're running parallel to Oliver's A-Plots in a very smooth and organic way, even if Oliver and Roy's meeting outside the club ended extremely unexpectedly.

Despite Roy not having much of a plan – come on, he was clearly just letting off steam – Oliver turns around and shoot an arrow through his leg after he threatens to investigate the deaths without him. Shoots an arrow through his leg!!

Perhaps we were meant to assume that Oliver was protecting Roy from the dangers of serum-injected soldiers, or that the scene was conveying just how tense Ollie is at the prospect of facing these guys again – but it really did come across as way too much for what the situation called for.

***

And there's even room for one last wisp of a subplot, in which Moira doesn't get a particularly-warm-welcome back – not at the company and not at home either. Personally I think the elite of Starling City would have turned up en-masse to a party where they might gawk at the woman who managed to escape the death penalty, but whatever.

As it happens, Malcolm Merlyn pops up again, demanding that Moira tell Thea about her true paternity. There's some good (albeit brief) stuff here: Moira pointing out that he's responsible for Tommy's death, a reminder that Merlyn trained on Nanda Parbat, and finally Moira telling Malcolm that she's tracked down Ra's al Ghul to tell him of his whereabouts. And since Malcolm abandoned the League of Assassins, Ra's al Ghul isn't particularly happy with him.

It's great to see Moira back in Lady Macbeth mode, but – well, is John Barrowman a very good actor? I watched him on Doctor Who and Torchwood, where he seemed to be playing himself most of the time, and I really don't get any sort of intimidating vibe from him as Malcolm Merlyn. He can emote and he certainly has presence, but seeing him opposite Susanna Thompson's isn't doing him any favours.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Those were some great stunts in the Oliver/Cyrus Gold fight, especially regarding the damage done to the truck.

I like that Oliver's secret identity isn't treated as that big a deal – obviously he's concerned with protecting it, but the writers are prepared to let other people find out on a semi-regular basis.

That said, it seems a little daft that Quentin still hasn't put two-and-two together and realized that the girl working with the vigilante also accompanies Oliver Queen almost everywhere he goes. There's a chance the writers are prepping themselves for a joke that reveals Quentin knew the whole time who the vigilante really was, but that ship sailed on Merlin, and it'll likely do so here as well.

So it wasn't hard to notice the strains of jealousy apparent in Oliver when Felicity starting spending time with Barry. Look, I know that Olicity is the juggernaut ship in this fandom, but don't expect too much of it from me. I'd like to care more about it, but I just don't – especially since it was refreshing to have at least one female character who wasn't related to him that Oliver hasn't slept with.

Some of the foreshadowing for Barry's subplot was a bit on the nose, but we'll let it pass because most of it was pretty cute: the endless new reports on the particle accelerator, the steadily growing thunderstorm moving toward the city, and Barry's line: "I'm not too good on my feet." It was interesting to hear him narrate what we'll later see (or in my case, have already seen) on The Flash regarding his mother's death, which again was something of a storytelling risk. The premiere of The Flash is essentially showing us what we've already learnt on Arrow, but the writers are banking on an audience's interest in seeing it all play out. More than that, it also corroborates his story, what with the consistency that exists between what Barry tells us here, and what we actually see later on.

If there's one thing this show and its team of writers do exceptionally well it's handling a dozen or so different plots. I don't think I've ever seen it done on this scale before: not only do we have the island flashbacks and the contemporary story running parallel to each other, but also the on-going arcs of supporting characters, namely Laurel Lance and Roy Harper's journeys toward Black Canary and Arsenal respectively. There's the Lance family drama, and the trio of Thea/Roy/Sin, and Malcolm Merlyn's return, and Sara Lance and her connection to the League of Assassins, as well as Sebastian Blood's plotting and Slade's island flashbacks becoming increasingly relevant to the present day, and how all of these components are linked to each other in varying ways (Thea being Malcolm's biological daughter, Sin being friends with Sara, which links her to Roy and then Oliver by proxy). And in this episode alone we had Barry's background explored in fairly smooth exposition that sets up his own spin-off.

It's pretty incredible how the writers are keeping a handle on all of this, for they really seem to have mastered the tricks of continuity and the overarching plot, with everything flowing beautifully and neatly into everything else. It's the bigger picture, rather than the individual episodes, in which Arrow excels.