TheMaster666
Potential
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2021
- Messages
- 320
I don't know how popular this show is here. The CW is what the channel Buffy was on eventually became. Same network, different name. I've recently been re-watching this show, and I have some thoughts I want to get off my chest.
As a brief intro, I first watched Arrow many years ago. I was in my first or second year in high school, and when I discovered the show, only the first two seasons were out. I binged those. I remember being a pretty big fan at the time, but when the third season came out week by week, it lost its appeal for me and I stopped watching after that.
Recently I got back into Arrow. I saw it appear on Netflix, and out of a little bit of nostalgia or perhaps curiosity, I decided to revisit it to see how it holds up. I was only going to see the pilot, nothing more. Since anything superhero-related is a big turn off for me nowadays, I honestly didn't expect to care much for it, but I was surprised at how brilliant it was. The first season is really, really good, and I found myself just as much of an obsessive fan as I was when I first watched the show.
Unfortunately, the second season does not hold up as well as the first one. In my memory, Season 2 was just as good if not better, and Season 3 is when the sh*t hit the proverbial fan, but looking back now it seems that the terrible writing and stupid changes began in Season 2.
My main issue with this season is that the writers veered too hard into the comic book direction, even when it made no sense to. This show was supposed to be a re-invention, or re-imagining of the comic book source material, and when the writers created their own spin on Slade Wilson or Deadshot, or added new characters like Dig and Felicity and Walter and Moira and Tommy, etc. that's what made it work. They did have occasional moments of fan service, like Laurel's mom saying, "I'm going back to Central City, should be there in a Flash." or occasionally naming Bludhaven, which I believe is Nightwing's town, but these were just throwaway lines as a little nod to the comic book nerds. In Season 2, the entirety of the plot has to be like it is in the comics, even if it makes no sense.
They wanted Deathstroke to fight the Green Arrow, so they forced that situation to happen, no matter how many contrived events had to occur to reach that point. Oliver Queen in Season 2 is a complete and total idiot, repeatedly. At every possible point, both in the flashbacks on the island, and in the present day, he makes incredibly stupid decisions that were easily avoidable, that lead to drastically awful outcomes. Or he just sits idly by, like a passive actor who bad things happen to, as opposed to being an active participant in the unfolding events and using his mind and abilities to fight back (which he was in the first season). Or extremely contrived scenarios happen where evil guy does evil thing despite it serving him no apparent purpose, because we need that traumatic event as an excuse for Slade to turn evil and become the villain. Slade and Oliver's brotherhood, and indeed Shadow too, was a great relationship that was tossed aside because the writers wanted to slavishly conform to the comic book iterations of characters, rather than having the faith in their own creation to see where their versions of characters naturally go. In trying to force that predetermined comic-book outcome, that led to increasingly outlandish circumstances that eventually made it hard to take the show seriously.
Oliver's also an overly judgmental hypocrite, who constantly changes his mind and acts in contradictory ways. Early in the season his mother is on trial because she was, under fear for her family's safety, complicit in Merlin's plot to nuke the city with a man-made earthquake device. A successful plot which claimed the lives of over 500 people at the end of Season 1. During this trial, it is revealed that Moira (the mother) had an affair with Merlin years earlier. So Oliver forgives his mother for being an accomplice to mass murder pretty easily. He doesn't even hold a grudge against her for cheating on his father (the father was equally adulterous back then, and well, so was Oliver), but where Oliver draws the line is apparently his sister Thea was Merlin's daughter. Which really isn't very surprising in light of the affair, but c'mon, that's the secret for which he acts as if his mother is dead to him? Okay, so mass murder and adultery, turn the other cheek. But hold up, this is where he draws the line? And of all the people to be so totally judgmental about "lies" he if anyone should have compassion given he is the biggest liar and keeper of secrets of them all.
There's another point in the season where Roy, Thea's boyfriend, gets injected with this "Mirakuru" super-serum, and Oliver in the present wants him to watch over Thea, because he can protect her from Slade who might come after her. (Slade also has the same super-power drug in his blood). Literally one week later in the very next episode Oliver tells Roy he has to break up with her because she's not safe around him with his super strength, and as a direct result of pushing her away, Thea walks straight into the arms of Slade Wilson.
At one point Slade just shows up at the Queen family mansion, in part to mess with Oliver's head, and in part to place cameras all over the house. You would think after Oliver finds out his worst nightmare is still alive and a clear and present danger to his family, he might warn them that this guy is a danger and they need to stay as far away from him as possible? Nope, he keeps his secret all the way till the point that it costs him his mother's life. Why? Oh, because the super hero has a secret identity.
But isn't the whole point of a secret identity so that the BAD GUYS don't know it? Because if they did they would just target your family? But Slade of course already knows everything about Oliver, so there's really no point. In fact, it does more harm not to tell his family because Thea walked straight into Slade's hands precisely because Oliver kept them in the dark.
The other rule that superheroes blindly follow is, "Never kill."
Which has always been such a stupid, asinine rule. It's like, how many times does Batman need to put the Joker behind bars before you decide enough's enough and every time you let him live, all the bodies of his next killing spree are on your conscience?
From an audience perspective, he was way cooler to watch when he did kill people. He felt like an action hero in the first season, but now they've made him into a lame superhero. It also cheapens Tommy's death in the first season finale. Because he just became an excuse to get Oliver to be more like a superhero and make a new rule for himself to not kill. Look I get it, restraint is one thing. He could use a little more restraint, fine. But some people just deserve to die, or need to die for the greater good, and now Oliver refuses to go there even when it's absolutely necessary.
Anyway, I could go on and on about how many plot holes there are in this season, which really makes it feel like the writers were just making it up as they went along, and couldn't be bothered to see if it actually contradicted something they said earlier in the season. Or the characters, which used to be three-dimensional, fully fleshed out people with their own motivations and suspicions and aspirations, etc. get reduced to one-dimensional sidekicks.
When Diggle is introduced in the first season, the show made a point about how he was not going to be a sidekick, but a partner, an equal. And true enough there were times when Oliver couldn't see straight, and Diggle held him accountable. He was more of a "buddy cop." Felicity too was considered an equal partner. In Season 2, both of them just blindly follow Oliver's stupidity to the ends of the earth and never question him. Dig even refers to Oliver as, "my boss." Ironically, the one guy who actually did question Oliver's irrational decision-making was the drugged up Roy, who in theory should be the one with the messed up mind. The guy on the Mirakuru was the only one making sense. Felicity went from being an actual person to a glorified plot device who is only there so the writers can give us exposition dump on the villain of the week with the excuse that, "hacker girl found all this."
You used to have characters like Moira, who was morally grey. She was complicit with evil, but also under duress for her own safety and her family's. You had people like Thea and Tommy who were just normal people, entirely oblivious to all this superhero/vigilante intrigue. Those characters served an important purpose, because they helped to ground the show in reality. Having badass fighters only means something if you have normal people to compare them to. But by the end of the second season, it seems nearly everyone on the show is either a superhero or a super villain, or working for one of the two. There is no more room for normal people or morally ambiguous characters.
Take for instance the cuthroat businesswoman who takes over Oliver's company, because again, he as CEO made the ridiculously stupid decision to make that woman full CEO, which she promptly used to steal the company away from him. It is revealed that she too, is working for Slade, under the flimsy reason that she was one of Oliver's father's jilted affairs. She's also a badass killer herself. Why? It's totally unnecessary. Couldn't she have just been kind of a bitch? We already know she's a cold, cutthroat businesswoman who was intent on taking over the family company from the beginning. That's already good enough reason to screw Oliver over. She didn't need to also be a soldier and working for the season's big bad. Why did Sebastian Blood need to be evil? His reason was Slade promised to make him mayor...but he was already a very charismatic politician anyway and could've won without Slade's help. It makes no sense.
Anyway, it wasn't all terrible.
The Diggle-centric episodes were great, all two of them. I like the new character of Layla, Dig's ex-wife and renewed lover, and the maturation of the relationship between Dig and his brother's murderer Floyd Lawton is a great relationship. The actor has a lot of charisma, and there's a strange irony about how for so long he wanted nothing more than Deadshot dead, but now that he can, he seems unable to do it, even going so far as to save Deadshot's life by the end, because there's a sort of mutual respect and honor code they both have. It's a fascinating, complex relationship, and I like it.
The action scenes are also still good. Yes, there's no more killing sadly, but the fight scenes are still well-choreographed, which wasn't the case in Season 3 I recall.
I still enjoyed the season for what it's worth, but I am disappointed. I had actually become a huge fan again, because the first season was pretty amazing, and I frankly expected better. Because I remember this season also being great, but I guess it didn't hold up to scrutiny.
I guess it kind of reminds me of the early vs later seasons of the X-Files. That's the tradeoff with this kind of a show that's half episodic and half serialized. When the writing is good, it's really exciting and addicting because there's this huge, unfolding storyline with dramatic cliffhangers in nearly every episode, and it all builds up to an epic finale. A higher high than what the episodic alone could achieve. But when things get more complicated the longer it goes on, the harder it is for the writers to keep weaving threads without it all getting mixed up in a giant knot. It's harder to do this style and get it right, because the writers have to just come up with the story as they go along and hope it all makes sense once they reach the end. That requires a strict adherence to the series Bible and remembering everything that was established prior. When they don't, it's especially glaring to see those flaws during a binge watch.
As a brief intro, I first watched Arrow many years ago. I was in my first or second year in high school, and when I discovered the show, only the first two seasons were out. I binged those. I remember being a pretty big fan at the time, but when the third season came out week by week, it lost its appeal for me and I stopped watching after that.
Recently I got back into Arrow. I saw it appear on Netflix, and out of a little bit of nostalgia or perhaps curiosity, I decided to revisit it to see how it holds up. I was only going to see the pilot, nothing more. Since anything superhero-related is a big turn off for me nowadays, I honestly didn't expect to care much for it, but I was surprised at how brilliant it was. The first season is really, really good, and I found myself just as much of an obsessive fan as I was when I first watched the show.
Unfortunately, the second season does not hold up as well as the first one. In my memory, Season 2 was just as good if not better, and Season 3 is when the sh*t hit the proverbial fan, but looking back now it seems that the terrible writing and stupid changes began in Season 2.
My main issue with this season is that the writers veered too hard into the comic book direction, even when it made no sense to. This show was supposed to be a re-invention, or re-imagining of the comic book source material, and when the writers created their own spin on Slade Wilson or Deadshot, or added new characters like Dig and Felicity and Walter and Moira and Tommy, etc. that's what made it work. They did have occasional moments of fan service, like Laurel's mom saying, "I'm going back to Central City, should be there in a Flash." or occasionally naming Bludhaven, which I believe is Nightwing's town, but these were just throwaway lines as a little nod to the comic book nerds. In Season 2, the entirety of the plot has to be like it is in the comics, even if it makes no sense.
They wanted Deathstroke to fight the Green Arrow, so they forced that situation to happen, no matter how many contrived events had to occur to reach that point. Oliver Queen in Season 2 is a complete and total idiot, repeatedly. At every possible point, both in the flashbacks on the island, and in the present day, he makes incredibly stupid decisions that were easily avoidable, that lead to drastically awful outcomes. Or he just sits idly by, like a passive actor who bad things happen to, as opposed to being an active participant in the unfolding events and using his mind and abilities to fight back (which he was in the first season). Or extremely contrived scenarios happen where evil guy does evil thing despite it serving him no apparent purpose, because we need that traumatic event as an excuse for Slade to turn evil and become the villain. Slade and Oliver's brotherhood, and indeed Shadow too, was a great relationship that was tossed aside because the writers wanted to slavishly conform to the comic book iterations of characters, rather than having the faith in their own creation to see where their versions of characters naturally go. In trying to force that predetermined comic-book outcome, that led to increasingly outlandish circumstances that eventually made it hard to take the show seriously.
Oliver's also an overly judgmental hypocrite, who constantly changes his mind and acts in contradictory ways. Early in the season his mother is on trial because she was, under fear for her family's safety, complicit in Merlin's plot to nuke the city with a man-made earthquake device. A successful plot which claimed the lives of over 500 people at the end of Season 1. During this trial, it is revealed that Moira (the mother) had an affair with Merlin years earlier. So Oliver forgives his mother for being an accomplice to mass murder pretty easily. He doesn't even hold a grudge against her for cheating on his father (the father was equally adulterous back then, and well, so was Oliver), but where Oliver draws the line is apparently his sister Thea was Merlin's daughter. Which really isn't very surprising in light of the affair, but c'mon, that's the secret for which he acts as if his mother is dead to him? Okay, so mass murder and adultery, turn the other cheek. But hold up, this is where he draws the line? And of all the people to be so totally judgmental about "lies" he if anyone should have compassion given he is the biggest liar and keeper of secrets of them all.
There's another point in the season where Roy, Thea's boyfriend, gets injected with this "Mirakuru" super-serum, and Oliver in the present wants him to watch over Thea, because he can protect her from Slade who might come after her. (Slade also has the same super-power drug in his blood). Literally one week later in the very next episode Oliver tells Roy he has to break up with her because she's not safe around him with his super strength, and as a direct result of pushing her away, Thea walks straight into the arms of Slade Wilson.
At one point Slade just shows up at the Queen family mansion, in part to mess with Oliver's head, and in part to place cameras all over the house. You would think after Oliver finds out his worst nightmare is still alive and a clear and present danger to his family, he might warn them that this guy is a danger and they need to stay as far away from him as possible? Nope, he keeps his secret all the way till the point that it costs him his mother's life. Why? Oh, because the super hero has a secret identity.
But isn't the whole point of a secret identity so that the BAD GUYS don't know it? Because if they did they would just target your family? But Slade of course already knows everything about Oliver, so there's really no point. In fact, it does more harm not to tell his family because Thea walked straight into Slade's hands precisely because Oliver kept them in the dark.
The other rule that superheroes blindly follow is, "Never kill."
Which has always been such a stupid, asinine rule. It's like, how many times does Batman need to put the Joker behind bars before you decide enough's enough and every time you let him live, all the bodies of his next killing spree are on your conscience?
From an audience perspective, he was way cooler to watch when he did kill people. He felt like an action hero in the first season, but now they've made him into a lame superhero. It also cheapens Tommy's death in the first season finale. Because he just became an excuse to get Oliver to be more like a superhero and make a new rule for himself to not kill. Look I get it, restraint is one thing. He could use a little more restraint, fine. But some people just deserve to die, or need to die for the greater good, and now Oliver refuses to go there even when it's absolutely necessary.
Anyway, I could go on and on about how many plot holes there are in this season, which really makes it feel like the writers were just making it up as they went along, and couldn't be bothered to see if it actually contradicted something they said earlier in the season. Or the characters, which used to be three-dimensional, fully fleshed out people with their own motivations and suspicions and aspirations, etc. get reduced to one-dimensional sidekicks.
When Diggle is introduced in the first season, the show made a point about how he was not going to be a sidekick, but a partner, an equal. And true enough there were times when Oliver couldn't see straight, and Diggle held him accountable. He was more of a "buddy cop." Felicity too was considered an equal partner. In Season 2, both of them just blindly follow Oliver's stupidity to the ends of the earth and never question him. Dig even refers to Oliver as, "my boss." Ironically, the one guy who actually did question Oliver's irrational decision-making was the drugged up Roy, who in theory should be the one with the messed up mind. The guy on the Mirakuru was the only one making sense. Felicity went from being an actual person to a glorified plot device who is only there so the writers can give us exposition dump on the villain of the week with the excuse that, "hacker girl found all this."
You used to have characters like Moira, who was morally grey. She was complicit with evil, but also under duress for her own safety and her family's. You had people like Thea and Tommy who were just normal people, entirely oblivious to all this superhero/vigilante intrigue. Those characters served an important purpose, because they helped to ground the show in reality. Having badass fighters only means something if you have normal people to compare them to. But by the end of the second season, it seems nearly everyone on the show is either a superhero or a super villain, or working for one of the two. There is no more room for normal people or morally ambiguous characters.
Take for instance the cuthroat businesswoman who takes over Oliver's company, because again, he as CEO made the ridiculously stupid decision to make that woman full CEO, which she promptly used to steal the company away from him. It is revealed that she too, is working for Slade, under the flimsy reason that she was one of Oliver's father's jilted affairs. She's also a badass killer herself. Why? It's totally unnecessary. Couldn't she have just been kind of a bitch? We already know she's a cold, cutthroat businesswoman who was intent on taking over the family company from the beginning. That's already good enough reason to screw Oliver over. She didn't need to also be a soldier and working for the season's big bad. Why did Sebastian Blood need to be evil? His reason was Slade promised to make him mayor...but he was already a very charismatic politician anyway and could've won without Slade's help. It makes no sense.
Anyway, it wasn't all terrible.
The Diggle-centric episodes were great, all two of them. I like the new character of Layla, Dig's ex-wife and renewed lover, and the maturation of the relationship between Dig and his brother's murderer Floyd Lawton is a great relationship. The actor has a lot of charisma, and there's a strange irony about how for so long he wanted nothing more than Deadshot dead, but now that he can, he seems unable to do it, even going so far as to save Deadshot's life by the end, because there's a sort of mutual respect and honor code they both have. It's a fascinating, complex relationship, and I like it.
The action scenes are also still good. Yes, there's no more killing sadly, but the fight scenes are still well-choreographed, which wasn't the case in Season 3 I recall.
I still enjoyed the season for what it's worth, but I am disappointed. I had actually become a huge fan again, because the first season was pretty amazing, and I frankly expected better. Because I remember this season also being great, but I guess it didn't hold up to scrutiny.
I guess it kind of reminds me of the early vs later seasons of the X-Files. That's the tradeoff with this kind of a show that's half episodic and half serialized. When the writing is good, it's really exciting and addicting because there's this huge, unfolding storyline with dramatic cliffhangers in nearly every episode, and it all builds up to an epic finale. A higher high than what the episodic alone could achieve. But when things get more complicated the longer it goes on, the harder it is for the writers to keep weaving threads without it all getting mixed up in a giant knot. It's harder to do this style and get it right, because the writers have to just come up with the story as they go along and hope it all makes sense once they reach the end. That requires a strict adherence to the series Bible and remembering everything that was established prior. When they don't, it's especially glaring to see those flaws during a binge watch.
Last edited:
