Hawke has escaped from custody and got a new face, but the Mob boss in charge since Hawke's incarceration wants him gone for good… and so does Dinah.

Definitely better than usual, the return of some kind of emotional storyline again does big favours for the show. It's not hugely impressive – that would be too much to ask – but it does give more depth to Jesse and allows the best actor on the show, Rachel Skarsten, to really show what she's made of. Okay, so she's still not kicking any butt, but at least she's given more to do than stand about looking pretty and whining about how she's not allowed to do anything. She's threatening enough that you really believe she'll kill Hawke when they meet, and there's a lot of power when she meets up with Huntress and is stopped.

The Helena/Jesse relationship is still a bit of an irritation as both stand about and admire each other from a short distance, but at least Shemar Moore is given something to work with thanks to the inclusion of his father in the plotline. It's slightly weird from the perspective that guest star Mitch Pileggi doesn't seem to have watched the previous Hawke, Stephen McHattie's, performance, or he'd not come across like a totally different version of the same character. He's more emotional that the first time out, which helps, but you can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right. The ending makes up for this a little bit when he tells Jesse he doesn't really want to change and would rather escape and live out his life. The fact that Jesse takes him in is good, as you're not quite sure which way he's going to jump, yet if he hadn't we'd all have been very irritated by the outcome.

Poor Babs, on the other hand, gets the delights of sitting about in the clocktower again; it seems she's only allowed out on occasional dates and to try on her Batgirl suit again with ill-advised consequences. And what's happened to Harley? Shouldn't she be the big villain of the season in some way? She hasn't done much so far.

So not a bad episode, then, and it's a little smarter than the usual fare from BOP, but there's still a ways to go.

***

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