S04.E21: Monument Point

[Angel12d]

So...what was up with Damien at the end? Were they all the 'souls' of the people killed by the nuke and he's taking them in as more power or something? They did say death gives him power.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Angel12d

[Morrigan2575]

2 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

So...what was up with Damien at the end? Were they all the 'souls' of the people killed by the nuke and he's taking them in as more power or something? They did say death gives him power.

I believe so, Oliver said that earlier in the episode.  They also gave a reason for why Darhk didn't want anyone as mayor and then put his wife up instead.

Way to tie up the loose ends show. I'm so proud i could cry.

[Lady Calypso]

1 minute ago, Angel12d said:

So...what was up with Damien at the end? Were they all the 'souls' of the people killed by the nuke and he's taking them in as more power or something? They did say death gives him power.

Yeah. I think it was Oliver who said earlier in the episode that him nuking a city would kill everyone and that would give him power to become unstoppable. So yes, that was him taking in all that power. I mean, Felicity did stop him from becoming super unstoppable, so that's a plus. But I guess her changing the GPS or whatever to another city didn't chang the fact that Damien did send the nuke to kill, so he killed those people.

Also, I have to say....shout out to Kaliningrad, Russia. That's my birthplace, so it's surprising and kind of exciting to see that get recognition.

[BkWurm1]

1 hour ago, wonderwall said:

My face got so red and hot towards the end because it was so tense! This hasn't happened to me in a while. So for that, well done Arrow!

The fights are so much better when the outcome actually matters.  This story had dire stakes. 

1 hour ago, Angel12d said:

Thea/Malcolm's story is so overdone at this point I really don't understand what they're doing anymore. I actually roll my eyes whenever they have a talking scene because I know it's the same old, same old. But I did like what Anarky said to Thea, that she doesn't have to be dependent on a man or whatever it was. And that she's not a pawn. Cheesy but effective because yes. Enough with Malcolm trying to save her and Oliver rushing to save her. Just stop.

Maybe Thea can drop being Speedy and become Red Arrow ala Nightwing to Batman next season.

59 minutes ago, catrox14 said:

Also, I can't believe they legit nuked a city. HOLY FUCK. Malcolm must be so jealous right now

He's so going to needle Felicity about that if he gets the chance (I ony killed 503, but you Miss Smaok...)

50 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

Also yes I did notice and appreciate my little Delicity scene where Diggle rushed in and asked Felicity frantically if she'd been hit. YES. 

I actually loved everything they did with Felicity tonight. I've found some of their choices for her this season (post 415) a bit...eh...but I thought she was great tonight. I loved her face when she found out she was probably conceived to Lionel Richie music (yikes TMI TMI!) and I was genuinely surprised that they fired her from PT. It shouldn't be surprising really but I didn't think they'd go there. Smoak Tech here we come maybe? But I really like the potential of the fallout to her changing the GPS for the nuke. It's not her fault and she saved more lives in the long run but you could tell it's going to affect her a lot. There's a lot of potential there. 

I have a hard time believing that we'll never see all those sets again but if she no longer has the responsibility of running PT she can vanish over the summer with the rest of the team.  :(

22 minutes ago, popgoesculture said:

I also thought Donna's scene was odd, but kind of telling that she has this rigid inflexibility about lying (and really, what was the point of the scene?), which sits in sharp contrast to Noah's criminal side... and Felicity is the odd combo of them, with the ability to lie but for the greater good.

ALSO, who is living in the loft? I thought Felicity and Oliver moved out?!? Is Donna just living there? What happened to Vegas? 

The Loft really didn't have a lived in look and Felicity and her mom greeted each other like it had been weeks, not earlier that day when they were living together in the same place.  That said, Felicity can't be living in PT if she's now banned from the building. 

I think though you've hit the nail on the head of what the Donna scene was all about.  She has an extremely narrow viewpoint on lying since she's been so badly burned.  So there's Donna that won't accept even a lie for a good reason vs Noah that sees absolutely nothing wrong with it and then there's Felicity in the middle. 

It was also IMO a chance for the writers to prop Laurel as Black Canary with Quentin showing his faith and support in what she did. 

Was it really the right thing to do?  It was framed as such though it doesn't really fit in the world the show works in but it does show that Quentin isn't willing to risk his relationship with Donna.  I do like that he chose love over a job. 

Donna is going to be soooo pissed that Felicity is lying to her and yet you know suddenly Donna is going to see the wisdom of keeping somethings secret. 

[EmeraldArcher]

I'm rewatching, too.

I just realized Oliver and Noah's conversation about dual lives, and Oliver's admission that was why he [Noah and Oliver] lost her was about Oliver's dual lives in Star City and Central City, not Oliver's dual lives as OQ and GA.  So, yay!  Oliver is finally verbally acknowledging that he lied and that his keeping Felicity out of every aspect of his life was where he messed up--exactly what she emphasized when she broke up with him.  So, maybe that conversation between Oliver and Noah was more meaningful for Oliver's development than my first impression.  Now, he just needs to have these conversations with Felicity.

[Angel12d]

Stupid question probably but why didn't Felicity just send the nuke to the ocean? Or did it need an actual city as a location to drop? I literally have no idea about these things.

[Happy Harpy]

OTA! OTA! OTA! <-- me chanting with a looney smile while watching this episode.

Finally, after two seasons my show is BACK! So much goodness. Oliver and Diggle on the field together; their disagreement making sense, but not blown out of proportion in order to justify that Diggle turns to someone else. Oliver not being a self-righteous hypocrite and so very likeable again. Mission: Impossible at PT <-- me squeeing while watching this episode.

Bye Alex? I'm sorry to say that I won't miss you. I really didn't like Anarky, but I found the actor less OTT this time around and in the end more believable as a complete, creepy lunatic. He'd be a good Nemesis for Thea, yes. She needs her own nemesis but above all, Thea needs Roy like this show needs OTA. And no matter what I think of Malcolm's overstaying his welcome, JB and WH do have great father/daughter chemistry. I still have hope for her storyline, and for once it's "hers".

Noah is a keeper. Aren't the Smoarks a little snarky bunch. I'd like if he were a "regular" recurring character and I'd be very interested in seeing him interact with Quentin.

More Lyla is always a good thing. She really fits seamlessly for me.

I did appreciate this more serious face of Donna. I understand her hatred of lies, I loved that she wasn't just that bubbly easy-going person but showed some unyielding sides, too; she had to have some since she raised Felicity alone and it gave me another insight on why Felicity is unyielding when it comes to honesty, too. Also, I love that she didn't let Quentin compromise because from what I've seen of Quentin he would have regretted it at one point.

My poor Felicity. I loved that she didn't care about her personal situation but about what it meant for the mission, when she was fired. The nuke thing is going to hit her hard.

Minimum magic, minimum flashbacks, maximum goodness!

[way2interested]

2 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

Stupid question probably but why didn't Felicity just send the nuke to the ocean? Or did it need an actual city as a location to drop? I literally have no idea about these things.

I think she said that she could only move it x amount of miles? Rewatchers?

[Lady Calypso]

Oh, and another thing is that I love that without Laurel and Thea, each character on Team Arrow got something good to do and they were not useless. Oliver, Diggle, and Lyla got to fight, Felicity got to work on the comms with her father, and Quentin got to drive the getaway car for the Palmer Tech break-in!

[apinknightmare]

6 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

Stupid question probably but why didn't Felicity just send the nuke to the ocean? Or did it need an actual city as a location to drop? I literally have no idea about these things.

Just taking a wild guess here, but nuking the ocean is probably a really bad idea, haha.

[statsgirl]

Felicity couldn't hack into the nuke to directly send it to another location (e.g. into the water where all the fishes and water would be radioactive).  All she could do is change the GPS on the nuke and send it to another site other than Monument Point where millions of people lived. She moved it to a different location but couldn't pin point the target enough not to be a town.

It's kind of silly though, everything within a couple of hundred miles would be affected, not the just town itself.  The area around Chernobyl still hasn't recovered and it's been 30 years.

Edited May 12, 2016 by statsgirl

[apinknightmare]

10 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

Donna is going to be soooo pissed that Felicity is lying to her and yet you know suddenly Donna is going to see the wisdom of keeping somethings secret. 

I'm not sure how this is going to work. She was mad that Quentin was going to lie about not knowing what Laurel was up to, so I took that as kind of...disappointment on her part that he was distancing himself from his daughter to save his job. She didn't seem to be at all upset that he knew that Laurel was the Black Canary and didn't tell her. So it seems like maybe she already understands the importance of keeping a secret identity secret? 

[bijoux]

There were once again callbacks to earlier episodes and seasons. The scene with, I don't know, followers in indistinguishable suits being directed to their new homes was creepely like a concentration camp and thereby a callback to 409 and the gas chamber. Then, there was that awesome, awesome PT job, which is a callback to season 1 in the best ways. Everybody just fell into place. And even Dig at the lair made sense this time. Oliver should be able to handle field work better than he does, Felicity and Noah were crucial and Dig's got to be better with the coms than Lance. Whose appearance was super fun in this instance. Lastly, nuking that town was a total callback to the season 1 finale, my favorite of the four so far, for me. The team won, but lost at the same time. I am a big fan of that beat. And Felicity's reaction got me the most in the episode.

 

1 hour ago, Delphi said:

I love Lonnie,  he should come back,  reform and be Thea's Lil helper or something. 

I wasn't into him before, but he was fun even before he started dropping truths on Thea this time. Lonnie Machin, a card-carrying feminist.

58 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

I just realized that Oliver outright admitted to lying. Maybe he could tell that to Felicity next time, hmm?

Also, where exactly is the scene where Noah and Oliver have a talk that leaves Oliver rattled, per the episode description? I did not get that impression from their scene AT ALL. CW PR fail. 

I didn't really see Oliver as rattled, more like he finally GOT what he did wrong in his relationship with Felicity, namely, not letting her in completely and trying to comportmentalize his life. Now, if only we can get him to have the conversations he had with Dig and Noah with Felicity before the season ends.

42 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

Did Felicity just cause the death of tens of thousands of people?  Does that make her the biggest badass on the show?

Malcolm is going to develop such an obsession with her. He's alwas given off a vibe that he's lowkey turned on by her. I can only imagine it ratcheting after this. Nifty catcher's mit, by the way, dude.

My biggest hope for the next episode is to find out that Mr Dennis took a quick trip to that town that was nuked. I really need that bastard dead before the season ends.

[Angel12d]

1 minute ago, way2interested said:

I think she said that she could only move it x amount of miles? Rewatchers?

Oh, that's right. 

 

8 minutes ago, apinknightmare said:

Just taking a wild guess here, but nuking the ocean is probably a really bad idea, haha.

Haha, I know. I just assumed that's what they would have done seeing as I'm pretty sure I've seen that in a couple of movies. LOL.

[Actionmage]

At least we will be ending our time with Flashback Island next week, right? At least until the flashbacks synch up with the pilot? If this year was supposed to harden Oliver, which I'm not sure it was supposed to at this point, we really didn't need this many trips there. The one(s) about Constantine and a more condensed grouping of The Totem of Evil. But that may be my boredom.

Thea cannot catch a break. Laurel promised a spa weekend, but ended up LP'ing Sara. Thea took Malcolm at his word that she'd be able to not have to have anyone "protect" her ever again, but there she is under a damn dome because Malcolm. Alex promises a quiet weekend away, but drugs her and takes her to a bunker, as per Ruve/Malcolm. I hope Thea ends MM and/or DD. I hope Anarchy helps her and gets away. I am not entirely sure if Alex is dead, but ,sadly, I'm not too upset if he is.

If anyone comes gunning for Felicity for her actions, they had best come uber-correct because Ms. Smoak just ensured there were folks to come calling for her. ( Okay, Noah did stuff too.) There also better not be any of the " us being heroes brought out the loonies" because The League of Assassins was around long before costumed vigilantes came on the scene. People have been inhumane to others forever, just not to this scale. So, again, the nukes weren't Felicity's fault. Another madman found  codes that a paranoiac had written in order for her to insure she could micromanage insanity. Unfortunately, Lyla didn't destroy the damn drive, but that doesn't lessen Lyla in my eyes. It's a hard call, period.

John, hon, when Oliver is saying lying doesn't work? Maybe believe him instead of proving his point by using examples. You respect the awesome that is Lyla, but she gets it.

Donna? I understand you being pretty scrupulous about liars after Noah. Yet, Quentin is all about helping the city and its people as an officer of the law. You are also not there to be his mom. He understands Right form Wrong. If you are able to support him, then I'll happily shut up. If not, then maybe allow him to return to his job. ( OTA has read Donna into the circle of trust, right? If she hasn't, the scene makes more sense, as Donna has no idea what Felicity does other than be a CEO and date billionaires. If she does, then the previous stands.)

Oliver. I agree; they are way too expensive for "mere" Halloween costumes. Even Cisco would sniff in indignation. Other than him kicking asses and giving Brick whatfor, nothing but pleasure seeing S2 Oliver rocketing around trying to save the world.

[AyChihuahua]

15 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

It's kind of silly though, everything within a couple of hundred miles would be affected, not the just town itself.  The area around Chernobyl still hasn't recovered and it's been 30 years.

Weirdly, the wildlife in that area is going gangbusters. Tons of wolves, etc. 

[bijoux]

10 minutes ago, Actionmage said:

At least we will be ending our time with Flashback Island next week, right? At least until the flashbacks synch up with the pilot? If this year was supposed to harden Oliver, which I'm not sure it was supposed to at this point, we really didn't need this many trips there. The one(s) about Constantine and a more condensed grouping of The Totem of Evil. But that may be my boredom.

 

John, hon, when Oliver is saying lying doesn't work? Maybe believe him instead of proving his point by using examples. You respect the awesome that is Lyla, but she gets it.

Donna? I understand you being pretty scrupulous about liars after Noah. Yet, Quentin is all about helping the city and its people as an officer of the law. You are also not there to be his mom. He understands Right form Wrong. If you are able to support him, then I'll happily shut up. If not, then maybe allow him to return to his job. ( OTA has read Donna into the circle of trust, right? If she hasn't, the scene makes more sense, as Donna has no idea what Felicity does other than be a CEO and date billionaires. If she does, then the previous stands.)

Oh, they'll definitely include flashbacks in the finale. They want to line up Oliver taking down the past evil dude with the current evil dude. It's their way. But I am lead to believe that my longtime wish for Oliver to kill Poppy will come true in the next episode. Talk about a course correction. If this is the last thing I predict correctly on this show, I'll be okay.

Oliver has totally surpassed Dig in the relationship advice category. On the one end there's Dig Oh-Just-Give-Her-Time-She'll-Come-To-See-How-Your-Lying-Makes-Sense, on the other there's Oliver-Don't-Lie-To-Your-Badass-Wife. I'm giving him and Felicity my blessing for a quickie wedding as soon as he says the same things to her.

Despite the repetetiveness of Thea's storyline, that scene with Donna and Lance is my least favorite. The acting was on point, I even get Donna's stance, if not her coming down this hard on Lance over the daughter he's just lost. What gets at me was the show selling it as her being 100% in the right. Which she is not in this situation. If Lance hadn't agreed to it so quickly, I think I'd be okay with it. Then it would just be one character's point of view which makes sense considering her experiences.

[statsgirl]

Now that the two headed goats are gone.  People still can't move back though, which may be why the wildlife are going gangbusters.  There are a few who stayed but most of those who did have died (although after 30 years, that's not surprising).

[Xenith22]

Okay so first of all this little gem from that first Donna/Quentin conversation set my stupidity sense ablaze:

Donna: Why would you have to protect her if she was a superhero.
Quentin: Now exactly, you see.

Hey umm Donna, Quentin...I know it's been awhile but remember that one time when Darkh murdered Laurel and said it was payback for your going against him?  No?  Yes?   Because call me crazy but I think the argument that just because Laurel dressed up in leather at night meant that she could have handled herself against Darkh seems somewhat flawed when your consider that he uh killed her?  To me that  pretty effectively proves that Quentin was indeed right in believing that despite being Black Canary she still could not hold her own against Darkh and may indeed have needed his protection to last as long as she did.   Am I missing something here?

With that said I would think there still would be an absolute shit load of character/conflict of interest issues justifying the force not wanting anything to with Quentin if he knew the truth about Laurel mainly stemming from the time he had been the head of the anti-vigilante movement while knowing full well his daughter was one of said vigilantes and said nothing and possibly aided in who knows what illegal crap.   Plus assuming Ruve has not revoked her anti-vigilante stance post Laurel reveal how could the police really think they could trust Quentin to do his job and not help out the people Laurel ran with at night?  Honestly I am not sure how he was not going to be locked up for admitting he has known...

----

On a completely different and unrelated note...did anyone else think it sounded waaaay too much like everyone but Donna was saying Raven sperm?  They really should have come up with a better name...

Edited May 12, 2016 by Xenith22

[EmeraldArcher]

1 minute ago, bijoux said:

Oh, they'll definitely include flashbacks in the finale. They want to line up Oliver taking down the past evil dude with the current evil dude. It's their way. But I am lead to believe that my longtime wish for Oliver to kill Poppy will come true in the next episode. Talk about a course correction. If this is the last thing I predict correctly on this show, I'll be okay.

Oliver has totally surpassed Dig in the relationship advice category. On the one end there's Dig Oh-Just-Give-Her-Time-She'll-Come-To-See-How-Your-Lying-Makes-Sense, on the other there's Oliver-Don't-Lie-To-Your-Badass-Wife. I'm giving him and Felicity my blessing for a quickie wedding as soon as he says the same things to her.

Despite the repetetiveness of Thea's storyline, that scene with Donna and Lance is my least favorite. The acting was on point, I even get Donna's stance, if not her coming down this hard on Lance over the daughter he's just lost. What gets at me was the show selling it as her being 100% in the right. Which she is not in this situation. If Lance hadn't agreed to it so quickly, I think I'd be okay with it. Then it would just be one character's point of view which makes sense considering her experiences.

I don't think Felicity is going to be up for a quickie wedding--I have a feeling that she's going to have a hard time recovering from diverting the nuke and not being able to save every life.  Lyla might be able to focus on the number of lives saved, but Felicity's going to focus on the lives lost.  Hopefully, she and Oliver go to therapy over the summer.

It wasn't until I read your thoughts about the Donna/Lance scenes that I realized they made Donna too much like LL in being Lance's moral compass.  I forget which episode it was (one with Lonnie Machin), but LL went full-blown Javert from Les Mis and was pretty righteous about following the letter of the law.  It was pretty nonsensical that she drew her line there, but now Donna is adopting some of the same filters that eliminate grayscale. I appreciate that they at least tried to give Donna consistent context, whereas LL could as easily attack a man in a hospital bed as she could call out Oliver for taking down a criminal, but I really wish they wouldn't force LL's beats on Donna.  I think it was especially bad that Donna easily admitted she was snooping when Quentin called her out for going through his stuff.  I don't mind if Donna has layers, but I think the layers should be part of a cohesive whole and not some cobbled together quirks and traits.

[Angel12d]

Even though I miss romantic happy together Olicity, I didn't really get any vibes about them getting back together this season. Something is going to happen because they touched on Oliver lying to her, and how Noah and Oliver lost her because of their double lives. So I do think they'll talk about things but I'm sensing a pretty ambiguous 'What now?' kind of ending for them in 423 tbh. As long as Felicity doesn't go off with Noah or something stupid, I'm cool with that.

[bijoux]

5 minutes ago, EmeraldArcher said:

I don't think Felicity is going to be up for a quickie wedding--I have a feeling that she's going to have a hard time recovering from diverting the nuke and not being able to save every life.  Lyla might be able to focus on the number of lives saved, but Felicity's going to focus on the lives lost.  Hopefully, she and Oliver go to therapy over the summer.

It wasn't until I read your thoughts about the Donna/Lance scenes that I realized they made Donna too much like LL in being Lance's moral compass.  I forget which episode it was (one with Lonnie Machin), but LL went full-blown Javert from Les Mis and was pretty righteous about following the letter of the law.  It was pretty nonsensical that she drew her line there, but now Donna is adopting some of the same filters that eliminate grayscale. I appreciate that they at least tried to give Donna consistent context, whereas LL could as easily attack a man in a hospital bed as she could call out Oliver for taking down a criminal, but I really wish they wouldn't force LL's beats on Donna.  I think it was especially bad that Donna easily admitted she was snooping when Quentin called her out for going through his stuff.  I don't mind if Donna has layers, but I think the layers should be part of a cohesive whole and not some cobbled together quirks and traits.

I'm not saying they will get married, although with the pacing of this show it's not out of the question. What I'm saying is that I'm sold on Oliver seeing the light. He just needs to verbalize that to Felicity.

Want me to make the Donna thing worse and even more Laurel adjecent? I think there's more than a decent chance we'll find out she lied to Felicity about something to do with Noah next week.

[popgoesculture]

Quote

 was pretty nonsensical that she drew her line there, but now Donna is adopting some of the same filters that eliminate grayscale. I appreciate that they at least tried to give Donna consistent context, whereas LL could as easily attack a man in a hospital bed as she could call out Oliver for taking down a criminal, but I really wish they wouldn't force LL's beats on Donna.  I think it was especially bad that Donna easily admitted she was snooping when Quentin called her out for going through his stuff.  I don't mind if Donna has layers, but I think the layers should be part of a cohesive whole and not some cobbled together quirks and traits.

I don't know that this storyline even counts as a trait of Donna's, necessarily, or if it's just a way to write/allude to Quentin's outcome this season in the clunkiest way possible (if he ends up not getting his badge or something; I have no clue). Once again, it's the characterization being sacrificed for the plot, but to a lesser degree than some of the show's more egregious instances...because they have to cram in all the things in the last three-four episodes because who cares about pacing your storylines over the season? Sigh.

[statsgirl]

7 minutes ago, EmeraldArcher said:

It wasn't until I read your thoughts about the Donna/Lance scenes that I realized they made Donna too much like LL in being Lance's moral compass.

Paul Blackthorne has been saying in interviews that Laurel was Quentin's moral compass and now that she's gone, what is he going to do?  And then he finds Donna to take over the job.

It sounds like the writers decided that Quentin's moral compass reacts in "X" fashion, and when it was Laurel she said the lines, and now that it's Donna, she's saying the same lines whether it makes sense for either Laurel or Donna to behave like that or not.

[catrox14]

GUYS! I'm just SOOO HAPPY about this episode!

[EmeraldArcher]

14 minutes ago, bijoux said:

I'm not saying they will get married, although with the pacing of this show it's not out of the question. What I'm saying is that I'm sold on Oliver seeing the light. He just needs to verbalize that to Felicity.

Want me to make the Donna thing worse and even more Laurel adjecent? I think there's more than a decent chance we'll find out she lied to Felicity about something to do with Noah next week.

I admit that I've been holding out hope for them to get married, especially when the S3 finale showed how fast things can change for the better in their relationship.  A married Olicity feels right to me because the show has made that the indicator of them at their happiest and as realizing their truest partnership.  After tonight, I'm a little worried that Oliver and Felicity's timing will be off--he's finally seeing the light, and even though we had every indication last week that she seems ready to renew their relationship, this separate trauma might prevent her from being ready for it now.  I guess I anticipate it will be the opening up/closing in dichotomy the show has used for Oliver in the past and even for Felicity recently. 

And, @bijoux, please don't make anything "even more Laurel-adjacent" again.  I'm begging you! ;-)

[quarks]

A bit disjointed, but overall, better than some of the other episodes this season.

Good things:

1. Really liked that Arrow once again showed the consequences of trying to combine a day job with Team Arrow stuff. As Oliver said, it doesn't work - unless, like Barry, you can speed through your forensics stuff - even if it provides some benefits, like being able to use corporate jets. Though on a related note, OLIVER! FELICITY! STOP USING THE CORPORATE JET! It always gets you into trouble.

I also liked Felicity saying that yes, yes, what she was doing was really important and that the board would understand if they knew....and then having her mother walk in, with Felicity unable to tell either what the real mission was.

2. And speaking of consequences, kudos to Arrow for genuinely upping the stakes/death count for this season's finale - and for not holding those stakes back for the season finale. I'm interested to see where the show goes with this.

3. Lyla Michaels. Ok, yes, she failed to destroy the computer chip when she could have/should have destroyed it instead of HIDING IT IN HER ARM, but we've all made mistakes.

Also, the Hallowe'en comment.

4. Malcolm. I know I'm in the minority here, but his whole, "I just love that H.I.V.E. thinks in even larger terms of destruction than I do!" was hilarious.

5. Stunts! I especially liked the stairwell fight.

6. Capers are back! And paying attention to the fact that for four seasons now, the QC/Palmer Tech building has been the hands down easiest place to get into, outside of the Arrow Cave. The only really surprising thing is that Team Arrow didn't take the usual route through the window.

7. Loved the Calculator multitasking on stealing and family bonding. Heh.

8. It was a very minor point, but I did like that after some questionable 3rd season production errors, we have now reestablished that Star City is probably in the Pacific Northwest, which is where the first season thought it was.

9. And on another very minor point, I cracked up when Felicity complained about repairs not getting made but she's the one getting fired.

10. Liked the way the show interwove multiple agendas - Team Arrow, H.I.V.E., Palmer Tech, Noah, and then threw a random element into the mix, Anarky. More of this, show. Arrow works much better when it's presenting multiple outlooks and agendas.

11. We had EXTRAS again! Actual extras wandering through Palmer Tech and creepy underground suburb areas and even in the flashbacks! I can't remember the last time Arrow had so many extras for so many scenes, but wow, does that help establish that yes, the show is taking place in a real world and is affecting multiple people - needed for that nuclear strike to make an impact.

12. Ok, Donna telling Felicity those kinds of details about the cabin, thirty kinds of inappropriate, but I laughed.

13. Really liked that Felicity figured out a different approach to the problem - adjust the GPS location. Even if it didn't quite work. And although I appreciate the attempt to cheer her up, Lyla, I think a nuclear explosion twenty miles away is still going to present some issues for Monument Point people.

Questionable things:

1. After season two, I realize I should stop hoping that the financial stuff on this show will make any sense, but I'm still puzzled. Last we heard, Ray was able to take over Queen Consolidated because he was able to buy the company outright, and the Board of Directors liked his offer more. Next, Ray gave Felicity the company, which was questionable, but whatever. Now, the board of directors can just fire her? Doesn't she own the majority of shares? Or did Ray just purchase the majority of the shares and then had the board elect him as CEO? In which case, how did he "give" that position to Felicity since it has to be elected?

2. Speaking of which, I get why the board had doubts about Felicity earlier this season, but since then, HELLO, she and Curtis presented a new high tech battery that could power an entire building and do all sorts of other wonders, which really should have bought her a slightly longer grace period.

I am, however, amused that Felicity and Oliver share one thing in common: their inability to make QC/Palmer Tech meetings on a regular basis does cost them their jobs. I also liked that Arrow had some real world consequences to Felicity spending so much time with Team Arrow and taking off with the corporate jet last season.

3. Why didn't Team Arrow just call Curtis and have Curtis steal the thing, since it was in his lab? "We were already paying for a lot of guest stars" is really not the best answer here.

4. So the president really is just going to let a few ARGUS agents, an IT girl, a criminal and two people in Halloween costumes stop a nuclear attack? That seems unpresidential.

5. Ruve seems like a stylish sort of person, so she couldn't get these drugged H.I.V.E. people into better clothes? Come on, Ruve! You're starting a brave new world here. You don't want everyone badly dressed for it!

6. The Quentin/Donna scene was important for establishing just how Quentin is going to get back on the police force, not to mention hammering home again the whole DON'T LIE TO YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER theme of the episode, but it didn't quite work for me for a couple of reasons - mostly because, apart from the general theme of lying, and reminding viewers that Donna and Quentin are now a couple and Noah can't be trusted, it felt all of out of place in this episode, which sort had the much larger issues of IMCOMING NUCLEAR BOMBS and Anarky running around killing drugged people. It wasn't the worst pacing issue of this episode - once again, all of that was in the flashbacks - but it was a close runner up, especially in an episode with a pretty important development about Felicity's long term career, and really should have been in the earlier episode that focused on Laurel's death.

7. So...as we saw a few episodes ago, the PT board were shown the secret elevator down to the old lair. The Only Board Member Who Ever Talks then boarded it up - but somehow failed to ask WHY the Palmer Tech CEO needed secret access to the basement? Or DID he, and is THAT why he wanted Felicity fired, because he connected her to Team Arrow? DUN DUN DUN!  (Please, show. I mean, Anarky now knows Thea's secret identity. No reason for everyone at Palmer Tech not to be in on it.)

In either case, hoping that eventually, Felicity gets to fire him. After all, if he hadn't wasted her time by firing her, she and her father might have been able to stop all of the bombs. 

Incidentally, great job, Palmer Tech board! First, you fail to notice that Robert Queen and later Moira Queen are involved in an Evil Undertaking. Then, you let Isabel Rochev buy up most of the shares and let the untrained and unqualified Oliver Queen take over as CEO, then name Isabel the CEO, nearly bankrupting the company and allowing Ray Palmer to take it over, and now, by obsessing over how to make money from spinal implant technology, you've got tens of thousands of people killed. Worst corporate board ever. Can we just go ahead and let Luthercorp buy it now? I feel we'd all be safer. 

[bijoux]

4 minutes ago, quarks said:

9. And on another very minor point, I cracked up when Felicity complained about repairs not getting made but she's the one getting fired.

 

2. Speaking of which, I get why the board had doubts about Felicity earlier this season, but since then, HELLO, she and Curtis presented a new high tech battery that could power an entire building and do all sorts of other wonders, which really should have bought her a slightly longer grace period.

I am, however, amused that Felicity and Oliver share one thing in common: their inability to make QC/Palmer Tech meetings on a regular basis does cost them their jobs. I also liked that Arrow had some real world consequences to Felicity spending so much time with Team Arrow and taking off with the corporate jet last season.

9. was terrific.

As for Felicity getting fired, it was primarily because her hippy plan for the spinal implant was undercutting their bottom line. But hey, it's a nice match to Oliver's hippy plan to clean up the bay during his mayoral run. His & hers.

  

  

The Smoak-Kuttler clan, aka Stealth Ninjas.

A nice bit of character detail is Felicity calling him Noah throughout the episode. He was Dad when he first showed up. You messed up, dude.

[quarks]

Bad things:

1. We've discussed before the issues with "Why don't they just call Barry?" and wow, was that on tonight, with a bonus of "Why don't they just ALERT Barry and Team Flash that NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE ABOUT TO GO OFF EVERYWHERE?". I realize that Barry was trapped in the Speed Force this week and also has a huge army of metahumans led by Zoom on the way, so probably couldn't have been all that much help this episode, but given that Felicity just gave them some dwarf star stuff - which may have been an added reason why she was fired, given how much effort Ray went into getting it and how rare it supposedly is, and given that Barry had plenty of time to hang out in graveyards and muse about dinosaurs this week, maybe a little communication between teams would have been great. JUST SAYING, Team Arrow!

2. Of all the apartments in Star City that she could presumably choose from, naturally, Donna ends up in the loft set. And equally naturally, the temple set from the island just happens to reappear beneath Star City because of course a Nexus would create identical primitive looking temples everywhere - wait, did I say "of course?" I meant to say, Flash, I apologize for saying that deciding to trap Zoom at Jitters was one of the worst attempts to justify these reused sets yet, because this is even worse. Several more points pulled for reusing one of the Legends of Tomorrow sets for the first Anarky/Thea confrontation, not to mention the Flash promo that warned us we're all about to head back to the Arrowverse's favorite outdoor staircase.

Look, Berlanti.  Supposedly, the entire point of filming in industry-friendly Vancouver is that it offers all kinds of relatively inexpensive location shots. Next season, let's celebrate Arrow's fifth year and Flash's continued dominance and Legends of Tomorrow not getting cancelled by, I dunno, EXPLORING VANCOUVER.

3. Yay that someone finally pointed out to Thea that it's past time that she stop being a pawn of various men, minus several points that it took a bad guy to do this. Also, when the script also points out that this is hardly the first time she and Malcolm have had this conversation, that is also a problem. Find some new conversations for them.

And as others have observed, uh, Thea? A) Alex was not exactly dead all that long. Try CPR. Also try remembering that this area is filled with H.I.V.E. operatives, not all of whom are drugged up and at least some of whom may have medical experience. Try getting help. and B) Alex was an evil H.I.V.E. drone who got you stuck in an underground hideout with your evil father, several evil drugged people, a psychotic mass murderer who just tried to kill you, and bird song recordings. You really don't need to feel particularly upset about him or his death. I'm totally on Anarky's side here.

4. I don't like Brick. There. I said it. I loved Vinnie Jones on Galavant, but I am not loving him here. I feel that H.I.V.E. should have more entertaining evil henchmen. For my sake.

5. Among the many things I should not ask for is for the flashbacks to make sense, but -

The island has a boat? Since when? Why aren't Oliver and Poppy and the nameless people all running straight for it instead of doing whatever it was they were doing? Since Reiter now has a boat and infinite cosmic power, why isn't he just taking his infinite cosmic power to the boat instead of tossing Oliver around and around? How could Poppy shoot anyone given that she'd already run to the boat?  Why did Oliver and Poppy take the idol with them instead of just destroying it? Does Oliver have some weird fetish for ugly idols that we don't know about, or was he already thinking about various ways to kill Amanda Waller?

In related news the flashbacks are still awful.

[wonderwall]

Why did they have to be nukes... Why couldn't they have been something less extreme like regular non-nuclear missiles or something...

Edited May 12, 2016 by wonderwall

[catrox14]

7 minutes ago, wonderwall said:

Why did they have to be nukes... Why couldn't they have been something less extreme like missiles or something...

Is it a baby nuke?

[bijoux]

It makes sense if Darhk wants to burn the world down. It would take a lot of missiles to accomplish that. I was thinking that Darhk being alive for a bajillion years made him learn how to do magic without the jaundiced look. Yet he developed them in this episode as well. I would theorize it was the effect of juicing up on recent kills, but then Oliver had them last week and he didn't kill anyone. Will no one think these things through?

[benteen]

AV Club did bring up a good point about the nuke.  If you use it, then you have to treat it as a huge deal afterwards.  With acknowledgement on the other Arrowverse shows.

[Angel12d]

I wonder if Damien even truly believes in his 'world needs a reset' plan, but just wanted all the power from the deaths the nukes would have caused. Hmm.

[quarks]

25 minutes ago, bijoux said:

9. was terrific.

As for Felicity getting fired, it was primarily because her hippy plan for the spinal implant was undercutting their bottom line. But hey, it's a nice match to Oliver's hippy plan to clean up the bay during his mayoral run. His & hers.

Right, but Mr. Dennis specifically said that she was being fired because she hadn't shown up to board meetings despite repeated requests. I suspect that the corporate jet from last week (which the script said he wasn't happy about) and the dwarf star stuff (which admittedly wasn't mentioned on this show, but given the whole "Palmer Tech owns all of this!" was also probably something Felicity shouldn't have just handed over to Team Flash) didn't help, but the not going to a board meeting because she had to stop incoming nukes was the final trigger.

[bijoux]

This is an extremely painful analogy. How far we've come.

  

  

2 minutes ago, quarks said:

Right, but Mr. Dennis specifically said that she was being fired because she hadn't shown up to board meetings despite repeated requests. I suspect that the corporate jet from last week (which the script said he wasn't happy about) and the dwarf star stuff (which admittedly wasn't mentioned on this show, but given the whole "Palmer Tech owns all of this!" was also probably something Felicity shouldn't have just handed over to Team Flash) didn't help, but the not going to a board meeting because she had to stop incoming nukes was the final trigger.

Mr Dennis is a petty prick, who I have no doubt counts how much post-its she goes through. The meetings she's missed would have been a chance to defend her actions, but I still believe the board on the whole had the biggest issue with her undercutting their profits with the spinal implant. Which I believe is extremely near sighted of them, but there it is.

[apinknightmare]

8 minutes ago, benteen said:

AV Club did bring up a good point about the nuke.  If you use it, then you have to treat it as a huge deal afterwards.  With acknowledgement on the other Arrowverse shows.

Barry opened up a singularity with a portal to another earth that hasn't caused any issues on Arrow. As long as the show deals with it

Spoiler

(and considering the blast was on the covers of the newspapers in BTS shots from the finale, I think they will)

, I think it's fine. 

[La Dee Da]

That was one of the best episodes of the season - a straightforward and fast moving storyline with fantastic fights  (did they put more spandex in Oliver's suit this week?  He hasn't moved that much in forever), fun capers at PT and a calamitous ending to overcome as we move toward the finale. I'm eager for next week's show - it's been awhile since I've felt that.

Tom Amandes was a great get by the show - he does grey really well.

2 hours ago, BkWurm1 said:

 At least they fired her because she didn't want to gouge the world's population of paralyzed people.  If you have to get canned, might as well be for noble reasons.   

That irked me almost as much as the firing the owner nonsense. Should the Board be upset about that, beyond maybe not being involved in the decision? Between the power cell/battery thing and the bio-stimulant, PT has inventions that will change the global economy. Once they go to market, PT will be richer than most nations - it's financial clout will make Apple's resources look like the equivalent of a kid's paper route.  And giving the bio-stimulant to help disabled persons, a corporate social responsibility win, doesn't prevent them from profitting in other ways. Felicity was simply being a good CEO, mean Board! Boooooo- I need to read my first paragraph again.

1 hour ago, BkWurm1 said:

It was also IMO a chance for the writers to prop Laurel as Black Canary with Quentin showing his faith and support in what she did. 

Was it really the right thing to do?  It was framed as such though it doesn't really fit in the world the show works in but it does show that Quentin isn't willing to risk his relationship with Donna.  I do like that he chose love over a job.

It's a night for quoting you, Bkwurm1 :) looking at it this way makes the most sense to me.  It's an opportunity to demonstrate his processing Laurel's death and the relationships he'll build and rely on to move on. I think that fits with the themes of the season, that no one walks alone. 

[Angel12d]

I actually don't mind that Felicity was fired. As @quarks said, I like that there's real life consequences to working with Team Arrow. Even though it sounds like she was producing great things (the battery, the spinal chip implant, the processor they stole), she had clearly missed a lot of meetings and had probably used the jet way too many times and it seemed like they didn't care about her being shot and paralyzed. I'm sure the incident with the bees didn't help either.

Plus I kinda want to see her start her own company from the ground up. 

Edited May 12, 2016 by Angel12d

[BkWurm1]

Quote

So the president really is just going to let a few ARGUS agents, an IT girl, a criminal and two people in Halloween costumes stop a nuclear attack? That seems unpresidential.

I loved that they got a POTUS shout out but I was rather dismayed that Felicity was reduced to IT girl.  It's too reminiscent of how women are always reduced to their most banal job.

 

2 hours ago, Angel12d said:

Stupid question probably but why didn't Felicity just send the nuke to the ocean? Or did it need an actual city as a location to drop? I literally have no idea about these things.

 

1 hour ago, statsgirl said:

Felicity couldn't hack into the nuke to directly send it to another location (e.g. into the water where all the fishes and water would be radioactive).  All she could do is change the GPS on the nuke and send it to another site other than Monument Point where millions of people lived. She moved it to a different location but couldn't pin point the target enough not to be a town.

It's kind of silly though, everything within a couple of hundred miles would be affected, not the just town itself.  The area around Chernobyl still hasn't recovered and it's been 30 years.

Did she alter the GPS on the bomb or directly on the satellite since it was a prank she'd pulled before that made all users of GPS think they were 20 miles off?   

1 hour ago, Angel12d said:

Even though I miss romantic happy together Olicity, I didn't really get any vibes about them getting back together this season. Something is going to happen because they touched on Oliver lying to her, and how Noah and Oliver lost her because of their double lives. So I do think they'll talk about things but I'm sensing a pretty ambiguous 'What now?' kind of ending for them in 423 tbh. As long as Felicity doesn't go off with Noah or something stupid, I'm cool with that.

I'm feeling it's a lot more likely that Felicity WILL be going somewhere at the end of the season.  Still hope I'm wrong but now she no longer has that pesky company tying her down. 

4 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

I wonder if Damien even truly believes in his 'world needs a reset' plan, but just wanted all the power from the deaths the nukes would have caused. Hmm.

My thought as well. 

4 minutes ago, quarks said:

Right, but Mr. Dennis specifically said that she was being fired because she hadn't shown up to board meetings despite repeated requests. I suspect that the corporate jet from last week (which the script said he wasn't happy about) and the dwarf star stuff (which admittedly wasn't mentioned on this show, but given the whole "Palmer Tech owns all of this!" was also probably something Felicity shouldn't have just handed over to Team Flash) didn't help, but the not going to a board meeting because she had to stop incoming nukes was the final trigger.

She was fired without a say because she didn't show up to talk to the board but she was fired because she insisted on not charging a fortune for the bio stimulant. 

[wonderwall]

26 minutes ago, catrox14 said:

Is it a baby nuke?

Hee I forgot to add 'regular non-nuclear' missiles :p

[Trini]

35 minutes ago, quarks said:

1. We've discussed before the issues with "Why don't they just call Barry?" and wow, was that on tonight, with a bonus of "Why don't they just ALERT Barry and Team Flash that NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE ABOUT TO GO OFF EVERYWHERE?". I realize that Barry was trapped in the Speed Force this week and also has a huge army of metahumans led by Zoom on the way, so probably couldn't have been all that much help this episode, but given that Felicity just gave them some dwarf star stuff - which may have been an added reason why she was fired, given how much effort Ray went into getting it and how rare it supposedly is, and given that Barry had plenty of time to hang out in graveyards and muse about dinosaurs this week, maybe a little communication between teams would have been great. JUST SAYING, Team Arrow!

I swear, there must be some BTS drama between the two shows, because after the big crossover in the fall, they all seem to so over any crossovers and/or overlap. Who even knows if the shows are even concurrent.

[catrox14]

1 minute ago, wonderwall said:

Hee I forgot to add 'regular non-nuclear' missiles :p

LOL I was thinking more that it was not necessarily an big ass ICBM but smaller megaton nuke so it's "manageable" with fallout and such....

[apinknightmare]

7 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

I'm feeling it's a lot more likely that Felicity WILL be going somewhere at the end of the season.  Still hope I'm wrong but now she no longer has that pesky company tying her down. 

I wouldn't read too much into it. She quit her job to leave town at the end of S3 - she stayed in Ivy Town after Ray died and she took over the company. The pesky job never tied her down to begin with, so I don't think not having it really dictates what she's going to do next. 

[Angel12d]

I just realized that Oliver and #Poppy never had sex in flashbacks like everyone feared. Haha they must have realized that everyone was so bored of her that they changed their plans. Because we definitely didn't get that contrast to Olicity crap they were babbling on about at the start of the season.

[bijoux]

16 minutes ago, Angel12d said:

I actually don't mind that Felicity was fired. As @quarks said, I like that there's real life consequences to working with Team Arrow. Even though it sounds like she was producing great things (the battery, the spinal chip implant, the processor they stole), she had clearly missed a lot of meetings and had probably used the jet way too many times and it seemed like they didn't care about her being shot and paralyzed. I'm sure the incident with the bees didn't help either.

Plus I kinda want to see her start her own company from the ground up. 

I'm all for her to start up her own things, but Felicity has accomplished so effing much in six months. It's extremely near sighted to dock her for the use of the corporate jet. If anything, they could have appointed someone to handle the day-to-day operations. Replacing Felicity is not easy. Oh, Curtis can do it? Gee, I wonder who he'll chose, the people who planned to fire him using his own algorythm or the woman who saved his and his co-workers' jobs. I hope you have fun looking for cardboard boxes to rent, fellas.

16 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

She was fired without a say because she didn't show up to talk to the board but she was fired because she insisted on not charging a fortune for the bio stimulant. 

This. Although I don't think she could have swayed them even if she had showed up.

[catrox14]

2 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

The only moment of the flashbacks I didn't fast forward through was #Poppy turning into the yellow eyed demon. Ok, but serious question: is her name actually Poppy? Because I'm pretty sure it isn't, but I have absolutely no idea what it is. 

Welp I'm calling her Azazelette now

[quarks]

The implication was that if Felicity had shown up to the board meetings, she might have saved her job despite the "what? You won't let us make money on the spinal implant even though we're making money on the battery?"  Or maybe not - really, Curtis, not Felicity, saved Palmer Tech with that battery even though Felicity saved Curtis for Palmer Tech. And Felicity has been doing a lot of questionable things - secret elevators, misuse of corporate jets, funding Oliver's political campaign and so on. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure we were supposed to be reading the board this episode as a group of selfish evil people who were trying to profit off of disabled people.

In any case, Felicity has had several moments of doubt this season over the Palmer Tech job, and for all of her speech to Thea about wanting to make a difference, not necessarily with Team Arrow, her heart has really been with Team Arrow. QC was her job, not her company, and Palmer Tech is Ray's legacy that she was directing while he went off time traveling. I think she'll be fine - she honestly seemed more angry than devastated over losing the job, and didn't really feel devastated until that bomb hit.

Or this is just me kinda hoping that we have finally seen the last of that CQ set.

Regarding the consequences of the nuke versus the consequences of the singularity on Flash:

1. In general, Arrow has done a better job of showing consequences than Flash has - part of season 2B's plot was specifically focused on the financial and social issues caused by the destruction of the Glades, and season 3 and 4 continued to discuss those issues. It's part of why Oliver ran for mayor and why the complete unknown Ruve could win - because at this point, nobody else will. And Arrow just showed Felicity and Alex dealing with the consequences of their earlier decisions tonight. Arrow's not always consistent on this point, of course, and sometimes the consequences either don't last long or get trampled under the need to make another plot point - for instance, the Quentin and Donna scenes tonight. Yes, Quentin concealed the real identity of the Black Canary and worked with H.I.V.E., and his record was kinda questionable even before this, but on the other hand, Star City cops die virtually every other episode, and by this point, if any cop is willing to still work in this city, Star City should be jumping with joy, not creating more paperwork.

But still, past history suggests that Arrow isn't going to completely overlook this.

2. I think the death count is different - it's not clear just how many people died in the singularity before Barry started running round and round, but seemingly fewer than the tens of thousands mentioned on Arrow tonight. I think the AVClub is right: this is the highest death toll so far in the present day Arrowverse. Just that fact may make the consequences more real.

3. On the other hand, for what I'm positive were mostly budget reasons, Arrow chose to film the nuke at a distance - and then not give us much of a panoramic (as in season 1) or closeup (early season 2) shot of the destruction, instead focusing on the reactions of Felicity and Lyla. That might change next episode, but it's easier to avoid the consequences if you don't really let the audience see it. 

It depends partly upon how Arrow plays out the next episode - are the consequences mostly that Darhk just gained a lot of power from all of those dead people, or are the consequences the dead people?  I'm interested in seeing where Arrow takes this. 

[wonderwall]

People are asking why Team Arrow couldn't have called Barry... IDK He was probably too busy crying to help... 

I'm tired of the double standards where Felicity is whiney for crying (Seriously, I've already seen comments about "here come the waterworks" in regards to Felicity being unable to save 10k+ people) but Barry is applauded for being sensitive... 

[Angel12d]

8 minutes ago, bijoux said:

I'm all for her to start up her own things, but Felicity has accomplished so effing much in six months. It's extremely near sighted to dock her for the use of the corporate jet. If anything, they could have appointed someone to handle the day-to-day operations. Replacing Felicity is not easy. Oh, Curtis can do it? Gee, I wonder who he'll chose, the people who planned to fire him using his own algorythm or the woman who saved his and his co-workers' jobs. I hope you have fun looking for cardboard boxes to rent, fellas.

Oh yeah. It's definitely frustrating considering all she has achieved (and after she went back to work so soon after her injury...what a BAMF). But I also like that there's consequences to just rushing off on the jet and missing meetings. Combine this with the board being reluctant to give her control in the first place way back in 401, it makes sense, IMO.