Arrow, ‘Trust But Verify’

Arrow, ‘Trust But Verify’ On air discuss

By: Dan

I’ve just had the pleasure of watching the latest episode of Arrow, ‘Trust But Verify’.

The episode opened with an armored truck robbery that seemed pretty well orchestrated. After doing some research, Oliver traced the military grade formation back to, well, the military. Diggle took a beat when he realized he recognized the name attached to the signature style. Ted Gayner was his commanding officer in Afghanistan; a man who’d saved his life. There was no way in hell Digg was going to turn on his superior, let alone someone he trusted with his life; Oliver, though; he only trusts the damn book. Ted’s name was in the book. Tommy’s father Malcolm called after being intentionally absent from his son’s life for several weeks. He offered to take Tommy and Laurel out to dinner to get to know her better, and even went as far as to say he wanted to be close with Tommy again.

Thea wanted a hot sports car for her eighteenth birthday. Both Moira and Oliver rejected the request. Thea and her mother decided to spend the day together; for about an hour, at least. Moira ditched Thea after a shopping spree that consisted of one hot dress purchase. Malcolm called, and he needed her urgently. Thea snuck along and caught Moira and Malcolm whispering sweet nothings.

We’d heard the entire conversation. We heard Moira offer to eliminate her peer’s plans to gentrify the Glades, and we heard her ask for a picture of a real live Walter as compensation. “Trust but verify,” she insisted. Even Moira knows Malcolm is a snake in the city. Thea completely misconstrued the entire situation, assuming her mother was having another affair with Malcolm. That’s right, she got this thing twisted twice! According to what she confided in Oliver, she also though Moira to be cheating with Malcolm while their father was alive.

Oliver attempted to speak to his mother one-on-one regarding the situation. Of course, Moira couldn’t come up with a lie that saved her own ass without incriminating someone else, so she told Oliver that it was his father who had issues with infidelity and lying. She claimed she was trying to preserve the man’s memory by hiding his shady secrets. Arrow decided to hit the Black Hawk organization’s headquarters hard, in an attempt to get Ted Gayner to come clean about his heist. Unfortunately, Diggle showed up to thwart his partner’s plan. Still, Arrow managed to swipe a flash drive off of Gayner’s desk before zipping away in a cloud of smoke. Diggle found himself with a job offer to work at Black Hawk.

Back at the lair, an absolutely livid Oliver ripped into Diggle for going above him. They both found themselves in a place where they didn’t fully trust one another. In an attempt to prove his friend’s innocence, Diggle decided to accept the position and work as a double agent for a short period.Tommy, Laurel, and his father had a pretty nice dinner date, followed by an absolutely awful conclusion. After feigning any interest at all in Laurel’s life, even going as far as to mention that his late wife would have liked her, Tommy’s father whipped out paperwork for him to sign; paperwork required to shut down his mother’s free clinic. This clinic seemed to be his mother’s life’s work, and Tommy wasn’t about to tarnish her legacy. He refused, and stormed out of his father’s life for good. Laurel attempted a little more arguing, but Malcolm shut her down kind of hard. His wife died in the street with a bullet in her head.

Oliver Queen’s personal computer geek, Felicity, also showd up. Oliver needed the flash drive cracked, and used the ridiculous excuse of competing in an adult scavenger hunt to get her on board. Not that Felicity actually cared. Still, he offered her some awesome wine as her prize for getting past the pin number. Within a few hours, the woman had revealed all of the information Oliver needed to convict Ted Gayner of the heist. Poor Felicity never got her wine, though. Diggle and Ted caught up at the diner, and Paul Knox, another officer working for Black Hawks, showed up to rain on Diggle’s parade. Apparently, the two never really got along. Gayner noticed Diggle’s sister-in-law getting a little flirty, and suggested that she had feeling for Digg. Diggle felt inappropriate, considering the fact that his brother was killed.

Diggle became concerned regarding Knox, and was ready to pin the heists on him; however, as Gayner put it, if he hadn’t hired these men, Knox included, they’d probably be robbing banks and holding up liquor stores. There isn’t much use for a soldier’s expertise when they aren’t at war. All the while, Arrow had been preventing another attack on an armored truck, even injuring one of the Black Hawks in the process. Inside the getaway van, we did indeed catch a glimpse of Knox at work. Thea’s 18th party ended with Thea storming out with pills, after an argument with her mother. She caught Moira and Malcolm talking in private upstairs. They seemed a little too close for Thea’s liking, so she confronted her mother face to face. While Moira was actually receiving her compensation a current pic of a living Walter, Thea lambasted her for cheating on her father. In her blinding anger, Thea took some drug called Vertigo that had been gifted to her by some gal pals and left her own party. Speedy sped for a few minutes before totaling her car and landing herself in the hospital.

The flashback to the island picked up just where it’d left off; with Oliver in disguise as an evil soldier. In an attempt to rescue his friend, he made his way into their camp and introduced himself as a new soldier looking to transport the prisoner. Unfortunately, the man in charge recognized the fear in his eyes through his mask and had Oliver imprisoned. It turns out that Oliver’s hooded friend is actually one of them!

Diggle had been snooping around the Hawks’ warehouse when Knox showed up and seized him. At first, Diggle seemed to feel accomplished in his correct accusation of Knox. That is, until Gayner emerged from the shadows as the team leader! Strangely, Gayner had no intention of letting Diggle go. Instead, he wanted to force him to join the team, even going as far as threatening to kill his sister-in-law. The girl sat gagged in the van as Diggle, having no choice in the matter, took his position on the street. Just before using the grenade launcher on the armored truck, Diggle stepped aside, prompting the other men to get out and confront him. Diggle, however, had the grenade launcher. After the explosion, Diggle’s potential new lady-friend fled, leaving him to deal with his enemies alone. Thankfully, Arrow showed up just in time to kill Gayner before he shot Diggle.

After clearing himself with the police, Diggle apologized to Oliver for not trusting him. Of course, Oliver apologized back for putting too much faith in the list and not enough in the people in his life, specifically Digg. The episode also closed with Thea being released from the hospital and arrested for D.U.I.

It was a great episode, which set up some interesting new storyline sfor the coming episodes (I’m thinking sidekick and Colton Haynes!). I can’t wait for more!

Thanks for reading.