Starling City’s latest craze is the drug ‘Vertigo’ distributed by pushers garnering the drug from The Count (Seth Gabel). With a family in shambles after Walter’s “disappearance” and Thea questioning her and Oliver’s mother Moira’s fidelity, the danger of drugs enters the Queen family. Oliver wishing to save his sister from prison time must ask of two women’s help while trying to track down the evil Count.
Desperation sets in for Mr. Oliver Queen who looks to salvage his sister’s life while dealing with both staunch Judge Brackens looking to make an example of Thea and drugs infiltrating the city. Oliver calls upon Laurel and her father, Detective Quentin Lance, for extra help to ease the overseeing Judge to ease his punishment. With help of beat cop McKenna Hall, played by True Blood’s Janina Gavankar, Queen garners just enough info to track the Count down.
Next step for Oliver leads him to throwing a bag of cash at the Russian Mob in order for connections to the drug game. While this experience leads to nearly killing a man, he finally garners a meeting with The Count. Meanwhile Laurel and her father talk down the steep charges to merely two years’ probation without jail time for Thea. The catch is that Laurel must keep a close watch on her, thus sparking the nurturing hatred Thea wishes to outrun.
Diggles joins Oliver as he meets with The Count, unfortunately the drug exchange heads south as the Starling City Police Department lead by Detective Lance and Detective Hall lead a sting to take down the Vertigo inducing kingpin. The Count tricks Queen and stuns him with Vertigo with a direct hit to the chest. Narrowly escaping the police and a shootout between both factions, Diggles manages to rehabilitate Oliver to a woozy state of mind, but still leaves just enough momentum to continue his search for The Count.
During Oliver’s rehabilitation, his past rises again as he questions the betrayal by his island protector.
With help from Felicity, Queen is able to pinpoint the location of The Count. Still affected by Vertigo, Oliver uses brute force to surpass the security keeping watch over the drug manufacturing center where The Count resides. Again the police department scrambles to take down The Count, but encounter The Hood injecting The Count with a taste of his own medicine.
The twelfth episode ends with Oliver remembering how his island mentor saved his life. A secret technique to save his life allowed for Oliver to survive and with an added gift of a map of the terrain to assist in his survival. Meanwhile Oliver escorts Thea to be Laurel’s newest work grunt pulling a part law files. Though the biggest kicker comes when Felicity meets with Oliver to hand over what was once Walter’s; more so Moira’s little book containing ‘the list’.
‘Vertigo’ showcases The Count, yet failed to capitalize on developing the character into a truly sinister villain. The episode felt more of filler versus than an episode to progress the series. The action and situations the characters were in dealt good emotional and character response, but the overall plot seemed weak compared to past weeks. Fortunately the episode contained just enough to keep the viewers questioning what may come next, but the lack of The Count and further use of the character hurt the episode. ‘Vertigo’ is still quite the entertaining episode, though not the most memorable.
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