Arrow: The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak
November 6, 2014 3:07 AM - Season 3, Episode 5 - Subscribe

In which we learn that Felicity had a goth phase in college, Thea likes having money, and 'cyberterrorist' means a dude with 15 monitors displaying winamp visualisations.

Actual synopsis:
When a cyber attack brings Starling City to its knees, Oliver and Felicity are pushed to their limits to contain the destruction. Life gets even more complicated for Felicity when her mother stops by for a surprise visit. Ted Grant questions Laurel’s motives. Thea buys an apartment with Malcolm’s 'estate' money.
IMDB entry
AV Club recap.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts (32 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This is my first Fanfare post! The Red Thoughts consert hates Arrow, so you guys are my only outlet for this show. I tried showing her the Salmon Ladder clip but she was unmoved. She has a heart of stone, clearly.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:19 AM on November 6, 2014


Ollie hasn't done the Salmon ladder in a while anyways!

Mr. RoyalSong and I are contemplating that Roy is either..

- Brainwashed possibly related to the Mirakuru somehow
- Some kind of telepathic projection from a Super Human from S.T.A.R. Labs/The Flash

I was very happy with this Felicity episode. I love her. I'm not entirely sure this show would be a hit without her. I do get grumpy about her outfits, though. I wish they'd stop putting her in sexy short dresses.

To me, it looked like Malcolm wasn't happy that Thea had Ollie in there with her.
posted by royalsong at 5:02 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I find it kind of hilarious how Merlin keeps appearing undisguised - he's a famous mass-murderer, yet he had that whole scene with Ollie in a crowded public space previously where not a single passer-by said boo, and in this episode he's out on a balcony in broad daylight. Like, they're not even bothering to have him dress down & wear a hoodie or something, he's just going full Merlin all the time.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:35 AM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


posted by His thoughts were red thoughts

Roy-ponysterical.
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:54 AM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


I was also really happy that Felicity saved her own self with only distraction assistance from the Arrow.
posted by royalsong at 6:12 AM on November 6, 2014


Nice that they at least acknowledged it might could be a problem that his sister now owns and is reopening the club on top of his secret lair. Obviously, Oliver doesn't yet know she's Malcolm Merlin's evil protege, but I still don't see how he can possibly hope to get by with that "The entire sublevel is flooded" bullshit for more than a few days, maybe a week or so tops.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:40 AM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


The Red Thoughts consert hates Arrow

Time to get a new consort?
posted by Justinian at 10:03 AM on November 6, 2014


Ugh, that episode was really bad, especially the scenes between Felicity and her mother. She deserves better.
posted by homunculus at 10:29 AM on November 6, 2014


Came in for the eye of sauron tag and stayed for the mention of the winamp visualizations.
posted by the webmistress at 11:08 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Came in for the eye of sauron tag and stayed for the mention of the winamp visualizations.

It's nice to be appreciated. Seriously though, I feel like set design for this episode was stolen from Hackers. Or maybe it's just part of Felicity's unspoken backstory that she and her crew were really into 90s Angelina Jolie movies.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:10 PM on November 6, 2014


Time to get a new consort?

She has many other fine qualities.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:10 PM on November 6, 2014


Nice that they at least acknowledged it might could be a problem that his sister now owns and is reopening the club on top of his secret lair. Obviously, Oliver doesn't yet know she's Malcolm Merlin's evil protege, but I still don't see how he can possibly hope to get by with that "The entire sublevel is flooded" bullshit for more than a few days, maybe a week or so tops.

He really should have covered over that door when Thea took over, and just used his side entrance that leads to the alley.

Seriously though, what happened to the Queen mansion? And how is Oliver funding the Arrowcave? Or is he just coasting off the investment in good equipment before he went broke?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:13 PM on November 6, 2014


To be fair, if they'd gone full Hackers, their screens would have projected their contents on their faces.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:17 PM on November 6, 2014


Also there would have been more roller blades.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:22 PM on November 6, 2014


I also liked the Saw voice that the l33t hackerz!!1 guy used.
posted by the webmistress at 2:42 PM on November 6, 2014


Next week on Arrow: Oliver explains to Thea about how the basement of her new club has a mold issue. Then tune in the week after, as Oliver explains how the mold removal process has created a toxic cloud, so they can't go down there. And then the week after, as Oliver explains how the guys who cleared out the toxic fumes left some sandwiches down there, so now there is a rat and roach infestation.

Etc. etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:54 PM on November 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ugh, that episode was really bad, especially the scenes between Felicity and her mother. She deserves better.

When Felicity's mom was saying that she knew she was stupid compared to Felicity and her father, and that she couldn't keep up with her daughter when Felicity was *six,* it got under my skin. The character doesn't *have* to be smart, but it rubbed me the wrong way that she was really painted as a bimbo in every way possible, just a cardboard cutout of a bimbo basically.*

Probably not a huge deal, but I'm (over)sensitive about Felicity being a snob, because it really got under my skin last season how Felicity would go on about how ~absurd~ it was for her to be an executive assistant. Even her line that they repeated in the "previously" montage for this episode about how if she hadn't wanted "more," she would be a cocktail waitress in Vegas like her mom, aggravates me. Why are the day jobs that Felicity's had, in QC's IT department or as Oliver's EA or at that tech storefront, so much better? And what's wrong with being a waitress or an EA anyway?

Felicity's outspoken contempt for the EA gig especially rubbed me the wrong way because meanwhile, at that time during S2, Drunk!Laurel *also* at one point went off on a joke/rant about how ~ridiculous~ it would be for her to apply to work at Verdent or as Oliver's EA. I don't even know why the show makes such a point of how ~lowly~ Felicity and Laurel apparently find service work. Especially since meanwhile, Roy's a busser, Sara was a bartender, Thea seems to be Verdant's floor manager day-to-day, and apparently Felicity's mom is a cocktail waitress, so it doesn't even make sense that other characters would be so loud and proud about similar work being beneath them.

/rant.

I liked how peppy the episode was, it just seemed like there were a lot of little details that were yanking me out of it. Like how Felicity's mom made that big strange point that her ex had abandoned *them both* (why would you want to emphasize that to your daughter?), or how when Oliver was giving Felicity that pep talk/Ode to Felicity, he ended it awkwardly on "[pause for even more emphasis] her," which got me off on a train of thought about how weird Oliver is about pronouns (talking in the third person, mostly), or how the Evil Ex Boyfriend had turned from NSA wunderkind into supervillain yet still was completely in the dark about Team Arrow (I guess), especially given the contrast his ignorance-against-all-odds made with Oliver meanwhile giving Thea the flimsiest excuses possible not to just walk right into the basement and stumble on their lair. I dunno, it all just felt a little half-baked to me.

Thea is beginning to thoroughly creep me out, though -- in a good way. She seems like she's trying to set Oliver up? That invitation for him to move in with her made sense, since that apartment is basically their family home now, and since it's got to be perplexing to Thea where Oliver is even sleeping...but I got the feeling it was part of some sort of Merlyn-inspired/dictated surveillance plan. Poor Oliver, if it turns out that this whole time Thea has been playing him and betraying him, it's going to destroy him.

*I would have forgiven this if her mom had been Kimber Henry (out of love for Kimber Henry).
posted by rue72 at 6:58 PM on November 6, 2014


When Felicity's mom was saying that she knew she was stupid compared to Felicity and her father, and that she couldn't keep up with her daughter when Felicity was *six,* it got under my skin. The character doesn't *have* to be smart, but it rubbed me the wrong way that she was really painted as a bimbo in every way possible, just a cardboard cutout of a bimbo basically.*

That bugged me also. There was no reason to make her as dumb as a box of rocks except for cheap laughs. It also concerned me to see Felicity exhibit such a lack of compassion towards he own mother, when she has nothing but compassion for everyone else.

And the throwaway mention that her deadbeat father was super smart also. Like Felicity is smart because of unearned natural ability, and it has nothing to do with her studying hard and learning and working to be as good as she is.

Still, that pistol whipping was great.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:27 PM on November 6, 2014


This episode felt weird and disjointed to me, like a bunch of disparate strands that they aren't even trying to pull together thematically (except for something completely banal like "family is important"). It felt like the episode ended five different times, which I always think of as bad pacing.

It seemed to me that the whole Brother Eye thing was way more complicated than it needed to be for a simple heist. Cooper's plan seemed more designed to create various points of tension throughout the episode than anything else.

I'm wondering if the references to the super-smart dad are going to lead to some big reveal that Felicity's dad is some mad scientist or supervillain in DC's stable.

I would love it if Roy's apparent murder of Sara was due to long-term side effects of Mirakuru, rather than him being controlled by someone else. Though I suppose that they've built up the Sara Murder Mystery too much already by now for it to be something so mundane.

I'm also wondering if Laurel will be able to continue abusing her DA authority with impunity, or whether there will be actual consequences from her bosses.
posted by creepygirl at 8:23 PM on November 6, 2014


I'm completely susceptible to Felicity's charms so I loved this episode, despite some of the criticism here being very reasonable. Felicity's mom was a caricature and I feel like the episode made Felicity meaner to her than necessary to bring out the drama. The "dumb parent/smart child" dynamic doesn't need that to work. I also found Felicity's costume change from Goth Felicity to be a weird moment, like they decided they needed a costume change to complete the origin story trope, even though it wasn't explained and made only a little sense.

Also, is it weird that the villain turned out to be supervillain Aaron Schwartz? That's weird, right?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:37 AM on November 7, 2014


Especially since meanwhile, Roy's a busser, Sara was a bartender, Thea seems to be Verdant's floor manager day-to-day, and apparently Felicity's mom is a cocktail waitress, so it doesn't even make sense that other characters would be so loud and proud about similar work being beneath them.

I dunno, Felicity being such a jackass about it meshes quite well with the sort of thing I've seen from folks in real life who managed to get up a rung on the social status ladder. The subject of our cultural attitudes about work where people get their hands dirty is a complicated one; in the US we do a fantastically good job of being completely hypocritical about simultaneously mythologizing things like farming while also thinking they're uneducated rubes. Noble Savage Laborer, I guess.

Which isn't to say it's not really ham-handed in Arrow but really, that's pretty much par for their course, no? I love the show but subtle or nuanced it ain't.
posted by phearlez at 9:01 AM on November 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Regarding the executive assistant position, I kind of liked the part in Season 2 where Isabelle Rochev thinks that Ollie is sleeping with Felicity, because Felicity isn't in any way qualified to be an EA to a CEO. At the time I thought it was kind of a subtle indication that an EA position is something that requires actual skills and experience, and not just something you hand to just anyone with no experience, no matter how bright she may be. Of course, Isabelle turning out to be a revenge-obsessed pawn of Slade, so I'm not sure how much we're supposed to trust her judgment in retrospect.

I think the hacktivist-turned-supervillain thing was mostly for "a dramatic moment when Felicity finds out that someone she'd loved had abandoned his one-time ideals" and not particularly well-thought out, like a lot in this episode. Maybe trying to introduce two new characters and have them get self-contained arcs for them within the episode, was a bit too ambitious.
posted by creepygirl at 9:49 AM on November 7, 2014


it's got to be perplexing to Thea where Oliver is even sleeping...

Oliver doesn't sleep. While the rest of us are sleeping, Oliver stands in a thoughtful pose in an artistically lit corner and has ~8 hours of flashbacks.

Then he goes for Starbucks.
posted by kythuen at 7:28 PM on November 7, 2014 [12 favorites]


Thea to Ollie: "Well, now you're just being melodramatic."

Me: "Hello? Have you seen the show you're in? Now he's being melodramatic?"

Which is to say I rather liked this episode - you just have to sort of accept that the show has really essentially become a CW (thus full of impossibly good-looking people) soap with a costumed vigilante overlay. (Which is not all that different from actual modern comic books, come to think of it.) And on those terms, this one worked pretty well.

The "Felicity's mom is a dumb blonde" angle got played way too hard at the beginning, and the supervillain scheme was entirely too complex for no reason, but hey, Felicity's mom got more complex as the show went on, and there were some nice emotional moments between Felicity and her mom, and some real character development for Felicity, and the supervillain scheme made for some good action set-pieces, and it looks like the Laurel story arc is developing nicely (and far more slowly than I expected, which is a good thing), and even Ray Palmer is being slightly less creepy and more just "oblivious with a large helping of over-enthusiasm."

(Speaking of Ray - the conversation where Felicity has gone to the QC office to be alone for a minute, and then Ray walks in, and she asks if he ever invented something he thought was unimportant but that turned out to actually be really important? And he says, "Yeah, those inventions are the best kind?" That felt like a hint of things to come to me.)

And the icing on the cake of the Roy reveal at the end. (My vote is for fake implanted "memories.")

I wish they'd stop putting her [Felicity] in sexy short dresses.

No argument there, but how about that outfit Thea had on at the end? A skin-tight midriff-baring top doesn't really seem like the kind of thing anyone would actually wear to unpack boxes on moving day. It's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all aware that she's an attractive young lady. Couldn't you at least make a vague nod towards verisimilitude and put her in a "Starling City Univ." t-shirt or something?"
posted by soundguy99 at 8:11 PM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh, and I can't believe I didn't comic book reader squee here about Felicity's BF wearing a Starro shirt in the flashback.
posted by phearlez at 8:17 PM on November 8, 2014


I adore Felicity so I wanted to like this episode a lot more than I did. Basically it was a "all the drama happened because people were stupid", like Felicity who knows that Oliver came back from the dead being Totally Shocked by the dead ex being not so dead. And the clothing choices were Not Subtle in a way that seemed even beyond the lack of subtlety in the costuming in most episodes. Mom was painted as an unbelievable moron ("oops I forgot to send the text, tee hee") and that was annoying. And while I understand more about why Felicity is the way she is now, her sneering about her mom's sacrifices until they were rammed home to her in a near-death experience was just kind of sucky. Last but not least: PLEASE let someone tell Felicity how to dress a little less revealingly. I get it that her mom was a cocktail waitress but her cute midriff-baring outfit was not work-appropriate.

Things we thought at our house: Ray's dream sequence might be a red herring (please); Merlyn looked jealous when he was looking at Ollie and Thea watching the movie; could they make Ray into Steve Jobs but nice any more obviously?

Also I'm sad we missed the Starro shirt.
posted by immlass at 10:04 PM on November 10, 2014


I dunno, "lost in the ocean and presumed dead" is different from "offed himself so as to not to go to prison dead."

I think the issue with Felicity's mom is that she has street/heart smarts rather than tech smarts. Of course, we're all drooling morons next to Felicity on those.

I think Felicity's objections to being a waitress/EA are probably after seeing whatever sexual harassment her mom puts up with in her job. Being an EA might be the "classier" version of service for a living, but it's still getting a guy coffee and putting up with whatever he dishes out to some degree. And hell. if you're a tech genius who did college like she did, why should you have to put up with lowly service jobs? You shouldn't have to if you're a genius!
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:16 PM on November 13, 2014


Oh, and it was odd that they were all, "Felicity is nothing like her mom" when hello, they're both gorgeous blondes. Even if Felicity claims to dye it, girl got her looks from mom's side of the family.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:17 PM on November 13, 2014


Just got around to watching this episode. I did like the opening with the triple(!) training montage (Roy with Oliver, Laurel with Ray, Thea with Malcolm)...followed by a cut to Felicity doing situps. Kudos to the editor.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 5:20 AM on November 20, 2014


Single mother raises genius daughter who got into MIT but can't manage to send a text and doesn't know about all the "cybery stuff".
I know this is just s soap but ugh, just ugh.

Also, Oliver not being comfortable about the baby being in the lair? "tough shit ya fricking manchild."
(ok, I admit I just wanted to see Diggle kick arse with his baby strapped to his chest.)
posted by fullerine at 2:16 AM on December 9, 2014


The detail that stood out for mrs chazlarson [and she couldn't believe that there was no snark about it here] is that Felicity's mom looked like her older sister, not her mom. Same complaint about Tommy and Malcolm. Malcolm does not look old enough to have a late 20s son.
posted by chazlarson at 1:53 PM on December 27, 2014


Looking at IMDB, though, I see that Charlotte Ross was born in 1968 and Emily Bett Rickards in 1991. Clean living, I guess.

Colin Donnell [Tommy], 1982, and John Barrowman in 1967.
posted by chazlarson at 2:01 PM on December 27, 2014


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