Review: Arrow

Marc Guggenheim and company have done what many others, including geek apostle Kevin Smith, have failed to do:  make Green Arrow cool.  In the comic book world Green Arrow was kind of like Aquaman in a character who's been around for a while but wasn't all that highly regarded and only sporadically was able to keep his own comic book title.  He's the kind of character who'd show up for a Justice League comic or two but wasn't really part of the first-string team most of the time.  In the '70s he was actually attached to the Green Lantern title as sort of a foil for the square Hal Jordan.  He was largely known for having a variety of trick arrows like a boxing glove one and so forth.

With "Arrow" the Robin Hood-esque character gets the Christopher Nolan treatment.  After 5 years on a deserted island, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns to Starling City on a mission to take out a group of rich jerks who've been screwing over the little people.  He of course does this in flamboyant, impractical fashion by running around in a green hooded costume and shooting arrows at people who are armed with guns.  When not dealing with "the list," he tries to reconnect with his mother, sister, and friends.

That's how it starts but gradually more comic book elements are introduced into the storyline.  As well what seems at first like a simple Robinson Crusoe story on the island turns into a Lost-esque saga.  And like Spider-Man he keeps revealing himself to people.  It starts with his bodyguard John Diggle and then a nerdy IT girl named Felicity and then his best friend.

Really by halfway through the first season the original concept of the show--killing people on "the list"--gradually takes a backseat to more superhero-type fare like going after drug dealers and arms dealers and the like, which made the intro to every episode increasingly irrelevant.  I don't find that all that bad of a thing as the evolution of the story is fairly natural.  It's a lot less jarring than say this fifth season of "Archer" where the creator of the series decided to burn everything down and turn the whole thing into "Breaking Bad."  It seems only natural that eventually Oliver would have to branch out because when you set yourself up as the city's protector you can't be so narrowly focused as to miss all the terrible "normal" crime going on under your nose.

The problem with the show is something that I complained about with my Scarlet Knight series of books.  It's that the series is picking up too many characters, which makes some like Diggle increasingly irrelevant as new people are brought in.  Oliver's best friend Tommy became so irrelevant in the first season he had to be dealt with--perhaps permanently.  Plus you end up with all these loose plot threads all over the place as you have all these different villains, some of whom aren't seen for weeks.  It can be hard to keep track of everything.

In a way the show is a victim of its own success as DC has seen it as a way to springboard other new series like a Flash series due out next fall.  In some ways I preferred the simplicity of the early first season episodes, but as I have learned it's hard to keep a series that simple.  Especially with a weekly series you have to have twists and turns to keep viewers interested.

There are sometimes some logical problems, like I'm pretty sure an 18-year-old can't operate a nightclub that serves alcohol.  I mean by all rights they shouldn't even be able to admit her.  Plus you have Oliver's indiscriminate boner; by now he's screwed (or wanted to) every woman on the show except his mom and sister--there's something for next season!  I mean it starts out he loves Laurel, but oh wait he loves her sister Sara too and really he could love Felicity but he doesn't want to screw up their friendship and just for fun let's have a quickie with Summer Glau.  I don't know how he gets any crime fighting done at all!

Even though there are more comic book elements being introduced, so far they've done a good job keeping with the "hyperrealism" of the Nolan Batman movies.  Oliver does have trick arrows but instead of a boxing glove he has ones with explosives or listening devices, or ropes, stuff that's not all that inconceivable.  It definitely provides the superhero action people were probably hoping for with "Agents of SHIELD."  I really wish though they could wrap up the whole island thing soon because it's been dragging on for two years now.  I wish they could have kept that part simple where he lands on the island meets Friday who teaches him how to survive and eventually gets rescued.  Then there's more time to focus on the present.

I keep mentioning the Nolan Batman movies and in fact the series doesn't shy away from the Batman comparisons, especially now that they've included a notable Batman villain featured in the first and third Nolan movies.  Besides that there's the whole idea that he's a billionaire playboy who owns a big company and in public pretends to be a dumbass while at night he dresses up in a costume to beat up criminals but eschews guns and killing people--the latter in the second season at least.  Now he's even got a sidekick!  All he needs is a spotlight with an arrow on it.

Perhaps the highest praise I can give is that the show has managed to crack my TV watching schedule.  Only a handful of current shows can say that.

That is all.