Previously on ARROW

I would say the latest episode of ARROW is the least-funny installment in the POLICE ACADEMY series ever, but once Steve Guttenberg left, some of those flicks were pretty bad.

The major challenge for the team this week is the Mayor’s request that the former vigilantes integrate into the rest of the Star City Police Department, so that they can collect evidence and catch bad guys the legal way. Oliver, wanting a safer future for his unborn child, tries to get his team on board with the Mayor’s demands, but when a routine bust goes bad because the SCPD’s plans are, basically, stupid, Oliver loses it.

Making matters worse, the weekly bad guy is a pharmaceutical CEO who has ties to the Mayor and is selling drugs in the form of biological bullets to the gangs of Star City. Not doing things by the book means nothing happening because the Mayor lets the dirtbag walk.

Thankfully, Oliver comes up with a plan to bust the scumbag that falls within legal police parameters and the evidence gets confiscated, ending the threat. Using the CEO’s ties to the Mayor, Dinah manages to blackmail the Mayor into getting Team Arrow out of following police protocols and makes them a black ops team for the SCPD, operating out of the Bunker.

Would it have been possible for the show to find a drill sergeant that didn’t look like he was plucked out of a 1980s buddy cop movie? Everything about Danny Wattley’s Sgt. Bingsley felt like it was pulled out of a real bad cop movie.

Meanwhile, Bronze Tiger Ben Turner requests a meeting with Star City District Attorney Earth-2 Laurel to tell her that Ricardo Diaz is, in fact, dead, and that he knows who killed him. But he’ll only tell Laurel who did it if he can see his kid. Laurel arranges the meet, and Turner tells her it was someone dressed up like the Green Arrow. Laurel, proving that she’s not dumb, summons Emiko to her office and has a nice little chat.

Turner, by the way, calls his kid “little Hawk,” which sounds like we’re being introduced to future Conor Hawke, who Diggle supposedly adopts. And Diggle tells Felicity he’s proud of her and the program she created to keep watch over the city, which ends up causing problems for the kids in the flash forward.

Much like this week’s episode of SUPERGIRL, a bunch of important stuff happened, but the episode mainly felt like it was spinning its wheels, waiting for something bigger. But mainly, it seems to move chess pieces around so the flash forwards can actually happen. With next week’s episode seemingly focusing on adult William and Mia and the rest of their band of merry men, I’m starting to think those parts of the season are more important than anything happening in the present.