It was always a given that a season of Arrow would suffer the occasional bummer of an episode. A logical flaw, a storytelling inconsistency, a bad character moment or underwhelming direction. A lot of those issues were present in "Training Day", though this chapter was probably more frustratingly mediocre than awful.
As strong of a decision it was to deputise vigilantes on the show's part, the writers clearly missed the mark on that front. The vigilantes are there, with their own gear and tactics to reinforce the SCPD, not to merge with them completely. The fact that Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Renee (Rick Gonzalez) actually have to spell that out to the cops is even more infuriating. Dinah's (Juliana Harkavy) decision to let the de-powering persists connects fine with her character, but even she didn't fully realise the faults in the police plans until it was too late. Her "de-canarifying" moment during a poorly calculated assault was a standout moment.
Team Arrow and the joint police force also encountered a fairly average bad guy in James Midas (Andrew Kavadas). A generic, evil businessman with some chemical related weapon. Furthermore, each episode of Arrow has at least one or two standout action scenes. First-time director Rubba Nadda was either handed a lame script or was reluctant to experiment with her fight scenes as most of them came off as pretty standard.
The saving grace of this episode were the flash-forwards kicking into gear, finally pushing Mia (Katherine McNamara) and William (Ben Lewis) into exciting territories, unraveling newer mysteries in a bleak Star City. Moreover, Laurel (Katie Cassidy-Rodgers) managed to salvage her sub-plot with a few well-written lines with Ben Turner (Michael Jai White) at Slabside.
"Training Day" balanced out its lesser elements, namely an illogical plot, bland villain and uninteresting fight sequences with enough quality drama and flash-forward progression to make it count, but this episode was really bordering on being pretty darn bad.