Arrowphone

Arrow

Episode Report Card

Montykins: B | 1 USERS: B+

YOU GRADE IT

Arrowphone

By Montykins | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.16.2013

In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description!

Oliver is maintaining his shirtless workout regimen, but he's lost his ability to shoot tennis balls out of the air. Diggle thinks that's because Oliver's been feeling fear ever since he almost got killed by the mysterious Black Arrow. Whatever the reason, people are starting to notice the lack of vigilante activity.

In other news, there are a lot of fires in Starling City. And sometimes firefighters die, but now they're being murdered by someone who apparently likes to hang out inside burning buildings. The first firefighter this happens to is the brother of Joanna, Laurel Lance's coworker who usually gets one line per episode. So Laurel is invested in the issue, but her father says the police don't normally get involved with internal Fire Department issues. Does that make sense to you? Well, it makes sense to everyone else, so obviously Laurel has no choice but to steal the phone that Oliver gave to Detective Lance so she can beg the vigilante to investigate the situation.

Diggle finally makes himself useful and discovers that there was a pickup truck near the last fire. And now it's across the street from another fire! So Oliver has to rush over there, but he's too late to save another firefighter. He spots a firefly tattoo on the bad guy's hand, though, so it's not a total waste. It turns out that three people with firefly tattoos have died mysteriously in the middle of fires (well okay… not that mysteriously) in the last six weeks. And the culprit is pretty clearly the other guy on the firefly team, Garfield Lynns, who died two years earlier.

At the end of the episode, there's a big firefighter benefit gala at the Arrowlair, because Tommy Merlyn has to do something with his time. And Garfield Lynns shows up and sets the whole place on fire because he's mad that the fire chief left him to die two years earlier. Diggle hustles everybody out and Oliver saves the day by shooting a Zippo lighter out of the air. Then Garfield walks into the fire. The public opinion is starting to consider the Starling Vigilante a good guy, which I think is a good idea, dramatically speaking. And Detective Lance puts a bug on the Arrowphone before giving it back to Laurel.

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Want more? The full recap starts right below!

There's a fire! And explosions! But everything's under control, because the fire department is on the case. One fireman is walking around inside the flaming building, which appears to be a warehouse of some sort. There's another one in there, and he's in a neat all-black fireman outfit that covers his face. He walks up to the regular-looking fireman and sprays him down with something. We don't get told what it is, but it must be pretty flammable because he goes up like a torch. The black-clad fireman strolls away.

With that out of the way, Oliver does that "move the bar up the notches" thing, then wrestles himself around so the camera can linger on his muscly shirtlessness. Finally, he throws a tennis ball into the air and completely misses it with an arrow. That used to be his signature move! Diggle comes in to tell him that there's no news on Walter's disappearance six weeks earlier. He even works in the part about it being six weeks, which is a good job of exposition. I guess you'd expect Diggle to be good at that, since it's pretty much his only job. Oliver says that his contacts in the Bratva don't have any leads. So he's definitely a real captain in the Bratva. I'd like to see that get explored a little more. But Diggle wants him to get back on the job with the revenge list.

Back to Flashback Island! Remember that scene where Oliver ran away while Deathstroke and Yao Fe fought? Well, here it is again. Enjoy it!

CNRI. That's the legal aid place where Laurel Lance works. They should consider giving that place a real name because we still don't know what "CNRI" stands for. The Internet claims that it's "City Necessary Resources Initiative," which does not really roll off the tongue. Laurel is talking to her friend and coworker Joanna. Detective Lance interrupts their conversation to tell Joanna that brother Danny was killed on duty last night. I guess he was that fireman. Her response is to repeat "No!" a lot while Laurel hugs her. Even when she's part of the plot, Joanna hardly gets any dialogue.

Castle Queen. Moira sadly looks at a picture of herself and Walter until Oliver comes in to bother her. He would like the family to eat Big Belly Burgers while watching a DVD. That's pretty vague. And they're billionaires who live in a giant castle, so you'd think they'd have a chef on the staff. They could certainly do better than takeout hamburgers that have been driven here from the city. Moira doesn't want to participate.

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