Arrow: What We Leave Behind
December 8, 2016 6:12 PM - Season 5, Episode 9 - Subscribe

 
So... they confirmed that Oliver actually kills the henchmen....

Here's Star City's employment breakdown:

5% are employed by tech companies
25% are police (23% are corrupt police)
10% are involved in food service
50% are henchmen, unable to find employment elsewhere they work for the people who hire.
5% are professional warehouse abandoners, they buy functional warehouses and let them fall into disuse and disrepair
10% are involved in construction and repair
20% are mortuary workers, with the staggering death rates burial and cremation services are bogged down, the current wait time for a burial is 5 months.
0.1% are empowered or otherwise skilled and fight for a cause.
5% are professionally evil. They do evil for evil's sake. These are the people who kick puppies and burn down orphanages without provocation.
5% are organised crime administrators, mafia bosses, gang leaders, arms dealers.
3% are hospital workers. This number used to be higher, but the mortuary industry is more lucrative.
10% are gas-leak repairmen, their job is to look busy and not contemplate the actual cause of the explosion.




Like the show's writers, I did not check to make sure this added up or made sense.
posted by FallowKing at 6:47 PM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I think you forgot the 1.25% who are illicit hydro and electricity workers who always manage to get all the abandoned factories back online for the bad guys, not to mention the 2.33% who are black-market IT guys who sell and install all of the computer equipment that is running in said rebooted factories and warehouses.

Okay, I'm torn about this. I really like the concept of somebody from Oliver's past coming back to call him to account for his actions. The problem is it feels like a cheat (because it is) due to the fact this isn't a season one bad guy, but somebody created specifically for this arc and shoehorned into Oliver's history.

I still don't know how the reporter is tied to Prometheus, but I guess we'll have to wait to see how that plays out.

So far Prometheus is doing a good job of getting the team members where it hurts but I have no idea how he predicted that Curtis' husband was going to act as he did and issue the ultimatum. I'm shaking my head at John, because he should have known better. That phone call was an obvious trap, as Lyla wouldn't make a panicked call like that or sound like that.

When Oliver was telling Thea about the trademarked parkour move, of course my mind immediately jumped to Roy, because wasn't that his signature move? I certainly didn't associate it with a Russian (gymnast?) trainer from Oliver's past.

Overall, however I thought it was a solid episode and it's good to see Arrow come right back on track after the crossover.
posted by sardonyx at 8:14 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The camera certainly lingered on that bottle of Russian vodka for a long time...
posted by plastic_animals at 8:36 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I guess they didn't have faith in the viewers remembering her discovery of Oliver's Russian past in the Human Target episode.

I guess I should clarify my comments. I meant the pharmaceutical CEO and his offspring are characters created for this arc. If Prometheus turns out to be CEO Jr. then my comment fully stands. If he turns out to be somebody else, my comment only partially stands in that this CEO wasn't one we watched Oliver actually confront in season one.
posted by sardonyx at 9:14 PM on December 8, 2016


So, do we think Laurel is back & alive somehow, or is this going to be some bullshit hallucination tease a la Legends of Tomorrow's mid-season finale guest?
posted by oh yeah! at 5:43 PM on December 9, 2016


So, do we think Laurel is back & alive somehow, or is this going to be some bullshit hallucination tease a la Legends of Tomorrow's mid-season finale guest

Earth-2 Laurel Lance (Black Siren) is still alive and was being held in the flash-dungeon, I assume this Laurel is that Laurel.

Maybe Laurel was alive in FlashPoint and Savitar brought her back to life in order to make her a metahuman?
posted by FallowKing at 6:19 PM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm starting to really like Rene/Mad Dog. He's had to say some clunky things, and the writers are making him seem kind of dumb a lot of the time (so no different than any other character periodically) but I'm starting to really like the actor, and I like how they're opening him up.

Why isn't the entire group shouting at Oliver "That reporter is playing you, fool!"? I really hope it turns out that he's playing her, but I'm afraid I'll be disappointed.

We need a villain called Upside who captures Oliver, ties him to a chair, forces him to flash back to all the idiotic things he's done and then slaps him upside the head after each one and shouts "Duh! What were you thinking?" The team stands outside the door of the room he's being held in, about to bust in and rescue him, but Felicity holds her finger up and says "Let's not be too hasty."

I still have no idea what's going on with the Bratva stuff. I think I missed a critical piece of exposition. In small-world news, Tim Meunier, who plays Ishmael Gregor, was in the debut episode of Human Target (the one with Mark Valley and Chi McBride).
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 12:59 PM on December 10, 2016


Wild Dog was much less offensive this week but that's because he wasn't really interacting with female characters, mainly just Diggle. It's his attitude toward women that makes me want to hurl him through windows. (He's not quite as terrible when working with Artemis, but let's face it, she's younger, less experienced and not in a position of power or authority or in any hierarchical system deserving of his respect.)

But I do applaud your idea for a villain. That would be highly entertaining.
posted by sardonyx at 1:44 PM on December 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Agreed Wild Dog is warming up on the show, but only because he has some actual writing and directing now. A bit of nuance. Ragman is completely wasted as a character as far as I can tell. And Artemis... Who's that again? Some young woman who's betrayed Oliver and I can't even be bothered to care why and how? Snore.

OTOH Mr. Terrific, you are terrific. I'm so sorry about your breakup. CALL ME baby, I'll make it OK. At least for a night.
posted by Nelson at 2:09 PM on December 10, 2016


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