Arrow 1.19 "Unfinished Business" Review

rating: 3.5

This week's episode of Arrow sees the character's pasts coming to haunt them again. For Oliver, his nightmare of the return of Vertigo as a new and more potent concoction rips through Starling City. For Tommy, his past indiscretions end him up as a prime suspect in an investigation into drug dealing. Finally for Diggle, the fact that Deadshot is free has gotten to him, working without Oliver to track Deadshot's targets. Finally, while Shado, Yao Fei's daughter, reveals nothing of Fyre's plan, she does reveal what her father has to do with it, as well as how she got to the Island in the first place. While the plots covered in the episode are equally balanced, the usual transition between shots is weaker, and key plot lines which have been explored over the last few weeks were completely ignored in this weeks episode, such as Thea and Roy and Moira's feud with Malcolm. The writers also seem to have completely forgotten about Oliver's step-father Walter, who has been missing for several episodes with no indication of returning since we were presented evidence that he was still alive during episode 11. After someone partying at Oliver's club, Verdant, it was discovered that she was on Vertigo. The re-emergence of the drug leads Oliver to suspect the Count, who had been responsible for the creation of the drug, as well as it's dispersion earlier. However, after having an Arrow-side conversation, Oliver realised that he was not capable of distributing the drug, as his brain was still completely addled, but after the news of The Count's escape from the assylum hit the news, Oliver is determined to track him down. This storyline, and bringing back the Count poses an interesting question for future episodes. With Oliver's success rate at the start of the show, catching the bad guy and "putting arrows in them", he would surely run out of people to kill, let alone bad guys. Will it go down the path of creating a new bad guy every episode or will the show highlight the ineptitude of the civil service in Starling City by allowing criminals to be freely released, or helpless in preventing escapes from the prison cells. However, this episode manages to deliver that question as the twist at the end of the plot line, and is well played out. At the same time, Detective Lance finds incriminating evidence against Tommy Merlyn, leading Tommy to try and clear his name believing that Lance still hated the fact that his daughter was dating Merlyn. When it turns out that the last number the girl who died messaged was Tommy, Lance suspects him of selling drugs, demanding they search the club. This causes tension between Oliver and Tommy, as Oliver knows a search of the club will turn out the Arrow Cave, exposing either Tommy or Oliver to being the vigilante. After it was revealed that Tommy bribed one of the city officials against completing an inspection, Tommy's anger at Oliver comes out, which has been on and off in the episodes since Oliver revealed to Tommy that he was the vigilante. It seems as thought the writers aren't sure whether or not Tommy is still friends with Oliver, going from hating the fact that Oliver never trusted him enough to tell him, to acceptance and now to hatred of what Oliver does as the Vigilante again. However, it seems that by the end of the episode the writers had decided which path Tommy was going to take. In this episode, Diggle finally gets to show a bit more of his independence from Oliver, chasing up Deadshot, a former enemy of Oliver's, who is an assassin for hire. For Diggle, his vendetta against Deadshot is personal, as Deadshot is believed to be the assassin that killed Diggle's brother, and he seems to believe that killing Deadshot will allow Diggle to avenge his brother's murder and allow him to move on with his life. This is a great addition, and Diggle is a great character that doesn't get enough screen time. After initially trying to establish an equal partnership between him and Oliver, Oliver has dominated their exchanges, with Diggle very much playing the role of the side kick. It's good that the writers noticed this and decided to restore a little bit of Diggle's character and independence which made him such an excellent character at the start of the season. In amongst these scenes, flashbacks to the Island consisted of Shado, Oliver and Slade back at the camp, hiding from Fyers' men. Shado plans to teach Oliver skills, despite Slade seeming to believe that Oliver was "unteachable". However, Shado's training seems to set Oliver down the path to which he can eventually end up as the character with all the skills of the vigilante. Shado also reveals that she believes that Fyers' plans to use her father as the scape goat for his plans on the Island, especially concerning the missile launcher. Shado confided that her father, Yao Fei, had already been scapegoated for a previous massacre, which is why he was sent to the Island in the first place. The addition of Shado, to the team of Oliver and Slade, gives the chance for more showdowns with Fyers, but many questions about the Island still remain, that really add intrigue to the show. This episode was good, without being great. It needed more from Thea, and could have been interesting to see developments in the story line involving Malcolm and Moira, but these will probably be saved for later episodes. While some of the scenes in the episode seem to contradict parts of other episodes, overall it was still a good episode, and reveals some possible great points for the future episodes.