Recap / Arrow S 1 E 16 Dead To Rights

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On the island, Slade sarcastically suggests that the two of them should build a bamboo boat to escape. Instead of working on this idea, Oliver attempts to repair the radio transmitter. He succeeds and begins to hear static and voices, but is unable to communicate with anyone. One of the voices is Fyers, who is talking about Scylla, a monster from The Odyssey. Slade and Oliver figure out that Scylla is a Russian missile launcher on the island that could take out airplanes.

In the Present Day, The Hood stops a hired killer, Guillermo Barerra, and steals his phone. Oliver asks Felicity, in the time she’s not being trained by Diggle, to break into the phone because Barerra’s work was unfinished. China White provides Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot, with a fresh eye and a job.

Oliver and McKenna attend Tommy’s birthday celebration at Laurel’s apartment. Malcolm Merlyn shows up, uninvited, to inform Tommy that he wants his son to be there when he receives the city’s humanitarian award.

Later on, Oliver dines with Tommy and they start discussing about their fathers. Tommy reveals his father has been emotionally cold and distant to him ever since his mother's death. Oliver informs Tommy that he still has a lot of anger towards his late father, but would do anything to have him back, and encourages Tommy to reconcile with Malcolm. Afterward, Oliver excuses himself to interrogate a man in the kitchen about who the Triad is targeting for death. The man does not know, but says it will happen tomorrow.

While Oliver shows McKenna his future nightclub, Felicity and Diggle learn that the target is Malcolm. The Hood relays the information to Detective Lance over the phone.

While Malcolm accepts his award, China White remotely cuts the power and creates chaos. Malcolm locates Tommy and leads him to his panic room. Deadshot shoots Malcolm numerous times, but since Malcolm was wearing a vest, only one bullet pierces his skin and poisons him with curare. After a face-off with China White that was interrupted by McKenna, the Hood finds and informs Tommy that he must perform a blood transfusion to save his father. Tommy is initially hesitant, but agrees once Oliver reveals his identity.

At the hospital, Malcolm orders Moira to find the traitor in his organisation who he believes attempted to kill him. Outside Laurel’s door, her mom Dinah surprises her and says Sara may be alive.

Tropes applying to this Episode:

• Anti-Air: Fyers has brought in a Russian S-300 long range missile launcher. Slade says he could use it to take out a commercial airliner or start a war.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Curare is deadly, but all it causes is paralysis of the voluntary muscles. The heart will continue to beat, even though the lungs can't breathe. All that's needed is artificial respiration, not a blood transfusion.
• Assassin Outclassin': Two examples:
  • The Hood throws around China White and would've killed her had McKenna not found the two of them.
  • Malcolm beats the crap out of two Triad gunmen and headshots one who aimed at Tommy.
• Beneath the Mask: Tommy is shocked on seeing his father coldly Boom, Headshot! the man who tried to kill him.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Tommy clearly doesn't take finding out that Oliver is the Hood well. After Lance questions if he knows who the Hood is, he says he has no idea who he is. You can tell he isn't lying.
  • Played with when Oliver admits to Tommy that he feels a lot of anger towards his dead father, though he still feels love for him.
• Brutal Honesty: After Oliver revealed himself as the Hood to Tommy and saved his father:
  Oliver: I know you must have a million questions.
  Tommy: Yeah, but for now, just one: Were you ever gonna tell me?
  Oliver: (Beat) No.
• Double Meaning: When asks if he knows who the Vigilante is, having just discovered that it's his best friend, Tommy responds, "I've no idea who the hell he is." For all that he's staying loyal to his friend, it's also clear that Tommy realises he has no idea who Oliver is any more.
• Dating Catwoman: McKenna is on the Vigilante taskforce.
  Diggle: You may not want to go after the girl who's hunting you down.
  Oliver: Well, it's slim pickings for us vigilantes.
• Debut Queue: Laurel's mother Dinah Lance finally makes an appearance.
• Dramatic Irony: Oliver saving Malcolm, who's been plotting against him and is the Dark Archer.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: When trouble starts at the ceremony, Merlin's only thought is to get his son to safety.
• Eye Scream: How Oliver keeps his Chinese "informant" from seeing his face: hot sauce in the eyes.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Oliver can speak Chinese well enough to be confused with a native speaker. As with his Russian fluency, it's a while before we get the full story on how this happened.
  • Malcolm reveals a lot about his motivations for the Undertaking when accepting the humanitarian award.
  • Malcolm talks of a man at Nanda Parbat who helped him find purpose during his missing two years.
• Friendship Moment: A low-key version, but when Slade goes to find out what Fyers is up to, he asks if he's going alone. Oliver smiles and picks up a knife to go with him.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: While in the Chinese restaurant, Oliver excuses himself to go to the toilet, beats up some Triad henchmen, then calmly returns to his seat to ask for the Check, Please! as a pissed-off thug rushes past searching for the man responsible.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: Malcolm tells Moira to find the 'traitor' who arranged his assassination.
• Hope Spot: Against expectations Oliver gets the radio working, but it can only receive. However Slade then uses it to eavesdrop on the mercenaries, only to find that Fyers now has acquired a long-range missile launcher for an unknown purpose.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Jack Hartness and River Song are acting opposite each other again! I mean, Malcolm Merlyn and Laurel's mom...
• Internal Reveal: Tommy finds out that Oliver is the Hood and Felicity learns that Deadshot murdered Diggle's brother.
• Inspector Javert: The Vigilante tries to get Quentin's help in stopping the assassination, asking him to just hold a perimeter while he takes down the villains. Of course Quentin has no intention of playing along, given that he runs the Vigilante Task Force.
• Iconic Item: Deadshot gets his red-tinted eyepiece, in the form of a cybernetic eye to replace the one the Hood shot out.
• Ironic Echo: Malcolm assures his fellow conspirators in the Undertaking that "We won't fail this city."
• Kick the Dog: Referenced by Felicity by name, though the act that actually happened is not the case. "This Lawton kick his dog or something?"
• Kill and Replace: The Triad assassins kill and take the place of the waiters.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name:
  Felicity: Barerra's got cobalt-level encryption on his phone. It's not going to be easy to break. But codebreaker is my middle name. Actually, it's Megan.
• Montage: Of Oliver brooding, Felicity and Diggle working to hack the encrypted mobile, Tommy contemplating a family photo taken in happier times, and a nervous Moira dressing for the award ceremony where Malcolm will be assassinated.
• Mugging the Monster: Two Triad mooks learn the hard way not to try to kill Malcolm Merlyn.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Malcolm mentions going to Nanda Parbat, a DC Universe location that first appeared in the Deadman comic book stories.
  • Deadshot is found by China White in his apartment at Bludhaven.
  • The restaurant that is the front for the Chinese Mafia is called the "Jade Canary"; Lady Shiva, master assassin, once called herself Jade Canary in Birds of Prey.
  • Laurel talks of the Black Canary her father bought for her sister Sarah, and mentions how loud it was.
  • Guillermo Barerra, the hired killer stopped by Ollie is known as Brutale in the comics, a frequent villain of Nightwing.
• My God, What Have I Done?: While waiting for Malcolm to be assassinated, Moira notices Tommy in the crowd and her face falls as she realises she's going to deprive him of a father as well as a mother.
• No-Sell: Malcolm has a panic room with Lexan windows, but Deadshot blasts a hole in it with a grenade launcher and shoots Malcolm through the hole. Then it turns out Malcolm is wearing a Bulletproof Vest, but the minor wound he receives as a result is still enough to endanger his life from the curare bullets used by Deadshot.
• Not Quite Dead: Turns out that arrow in the eye didn't kill Deadshot, just turned him into a Jaded Washout. China White however brings him a cybernetic eyepiece enabling him to regain his former skill.
• Out Of The Shadows Reveal: For both China White and Deadshot.
• Parental Substitute: Tommy says that he felt more at home with Oliver's family than his own, after his father disappeared for two years after the death of Tommy's mother, and returned a cold and distant man.
• Papa Wolf: One of the assassins starts turning his gun from Malcolm to Tommy; that man is dead before it ever gets to Tommy. In fact, as soon as something even remotely bad happens (the fire alarm goes off), Malcolm's first thought is to make sure his son is okay.
• Parrying Bullets: The Spanish assassin the Hood confronts in the Batman Cold Open uses his knives to deflect an arrow shot.
• The Perils of Being the Best
  The Hood: Guillermo Barrera. You have failed this city.
  Barrera: You've built quite a reputation.
  The Hood: And you should have stayed overseas.
  Barrera: I thought about it, but then I remembered—I've got a reputation, too.
• Pet the Dog: Malcolm makes an attempt to reconcile with his son, which despite an initial cold shoulder Tommy eventually accepts. Ironically the attempted assassination draws them together just as the revelation that Oliver is the Hood threatens to destroy Tommy's friendship with Oliver.
• Save the Villain: Even though he doesn't actually know it, Oliver does this for Malcolm.
• Shout-Out:
  • Slade sarcastically suggests they make a boat of bamboo like in Gilligan's Island.
  • Another code taken from the The Odyssey, with the Scylla.
• Smoke Out: McKenna is holding the Vigilante at gunpoint while he in turn is holding China White at bowpoint. So he shoots a fire extinguisher and escapes in the subsequent spray of gas. Unfortunately so does China White again.
• Sarcasm Mode
  Malcolm: They're bestowing me with their annual Humanitarian Award.
  Tommy: What, they ran out of actual humans to give it to?
• Stunned Silence: When Oliver informs Diggle that Deadshot is still alive, Diggle just walks off.
• Un-Confession: While in hospital, Malcolm looks like he's on the verge of telling Tommy everything when Moira enters and he clams up again. Tommy also just misses seeing Malcolm's Dark Archer outfit as the explosion went off just as his father was opening the false wall to his hidden arsenal.
• The Unmasking: To save Malcolm's life, Oliver reveals his secret identity to Tommy.
• The Unreveal: Malcolm's on the verge of revealing himself to Tommy as the Dark Archer, but Lawton's grenade takes out the Lexan window to the penthouse and triggers the panic room's closure.
• Visual Pun: Oliver is trying to repair the radio in the crashed airplane they've taken shelter in. Slade has just killed a boar and brought it back to eat. He says Oliver will get the radio working when pigs fly. Just then Oliver gets it to work, and Slade throws the boar off his shoulders as he rushes over to the radio.
• Weapons Understudies: The Scylla brought in by Fyers men doesn't look anything like an actual S-300.
• Wham Episode: Deadshot is revealed to be alive. Tommy finds out that Oliver is the Hood. Laurel's Missing Mom comes back, claiming that Sara is alive.
• Workout Fanservice: Played for laughs when Island!Oliver can barely make four pull-ups.

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