Arrow: "Dangerous Liasons (4/26)

There's moral ambiguity, and then there's just amibuity.

There are two huge problems with the big Helix blowoff episode this week. The first is that the whole Felicity/Helix thing is built on Felicity's grief over Billy and desire for revenge against Promootheus, and that's the one thing this season the show has completely failed to sell me on.


And the other problem is, I can't tell what the show wants me to think about Helix. It's like they were going one way with it and then pulled back at the last minute. There's this bullshit line at the end that nobody at Argus was hurt because Helix used "rubber bullets", which, first, fuck you, show, and second, did Helix also put rubber bullets into the Argus turrets they took over and shot a bunch of Argus people with? I know hacking is magic, but still.

Are we supposed to be mad at Oliver for not backing Felicity in her "shceme" to get involved with a shady hacker group just so they could do Magic Plot-Advancing instead of her? Or are we supposed to side with Oliver like we do with Diggle, who can't deal with what running Argus has turned Lyla into? Overall, the biggest flaw of this season of Arrow is when it tries to make moral judgments on character actions on a show whose moral compass has been spinning wildly and erratically for five years.

None of this matters, though, because it's all just moving chess pieces around to get to next week's episode - Oliver and Felicity trapped in the Arrowcave, being hunted by Promootheus, with the Cave and Felicity's legs all knocked out by an EMP. Odds of them using the situation and the format to also work out some of the relationship angst of the last ark 95%. Hooray for metaphors!