Arrow S01E23 – Review

By: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg (story)

The Story: Sometimes it feels like your whole world is tumbling down around you.

The Review: Phew.  Let me tell you: covering a TV series from start to finish requires quite a bit of commitment, and the task is made even more difficult by a show like Arrow, which is still, even here in its first season finale, trying to find itself.  It’s a show that’s got so many genres and elements mixed together that finding the right balance among them all could take another season or so yet.  But here, it proves itself worthy of investing in its evolution, however long it takes.

This episode works because while it has the same over-the-top energy that defeated the show’s credibility in other instances, it channels that energy in all the right places.  Malcolm’s speech to a trussed up Ollie starts as a drag of a villain’s monologue, crowing and condescending at the same time: “You can’t beat me, Oliver.  Yes, you’re younger, and you’re faster, and yet you always seem to come up short against me.”  But after all that’s out of the way, he reveals his choicest lines: “You want to know why?  Because you don’t know in your heart what you’re fighting for—what you’re willing to sacrifice.  And I do.”

Arrow S01E22 – Review

By: Drew Z. Greenberg & Wendy Mericle (story)

The Story: Every good mother-son relationship is built on honesty—even if you have to threaten it out of them.

The Review: Last night I was talking to a friend online and when I mentioned that I watched Arrow, he asked, “Oh, yeah—how is that?”  I told him what I felt was the truth.  “It’s a truly mixed bag.”  And it really, truly is.  There have been some standout episodes this season, and ones that I could very easily forget, but overall, the average showing of Arrow is usually an uneven combination of high points and low points.

For example, can we be spared the pointless and awkward exposition already?  Dinah meets with Ollie at his club, then proceeds to give him a recap of what happened between them last week, starting, unbelievably enough, by saying, “Last week, I told you that I wanted to get back with Tommy—that I needed you to go to him and explain to him that you didn’t still have feelings for me.  But instead, you told me that you did.”  She might as well have preceded the line with, “Previously, on Arrow…”

Arrow S01E21 – Review

By: Jake Coburn & Lana Cho (story)

The Story: Felicity and Ollie take a bet on their teamwork as a duo act.

The Review: With the season winding down, it’s just about the time for the show’s writers to start tying all their various plot threads together into something suitable for the finale, a big task for a series as active as Arrow.  Over the last twenty episodes, we’ve seen a number of characters introduced, killed off or shooed away, then returned; a handful of romances sparked, some of which have already petered out; and the addition of several major cast members.

Through it all there was always the looming threat of Malcolm Merlyn’s Undertaking, ostensibly a final attempt to clean up the Glades for good, but really just an extreme strike back against the place which took his wife.  With all the other craziness happening in the show (e.g. Tommy discovering Ollie’s secret, Diggle going after Deadshot), the Undertaking has taken a bit of a backseat, and we really don’t know too many details as to what it’ll entail just yet.

Arrow S01E20 – Review

By: Ben Sokolowski & Beth Schwartz (story)

The Story: I suppose we can’t flip a coin to decide which assassin to take down first.

The Review: A few years ago, I took a course on opinion writing for my journalism major.  As a beginner’s exercise, we all had to write a short piece expressing our point of view on pretty much anything that came to mind.  One of my classmates delivered an impassioned tirade about Twilight, mostly about how Edward Cullen “sparkled,” which drove her insane because “Vampires don’t SPARKLE.”  She had strong opinions about supernatural figures, you see.

I can’t say I have too many pet peeves when it comes to fiction—and none that gets me riled up like sparkling vampires did for my classmate.  But there are little things that pop up in stories that sometimes bother me.  The one that gets to me the most is when writers subjugate characters to their story, turning them into means to an end, rather than figures who have personalities and lives of their own, separate from whatever story the writer has in mind.  This episode reminds me how Arrow often reduces the characters to mere objects, all orbiting around the show’s star.

Arrow S01E19 – Review

By: Bryan Q. Miller & Lindsey Allen (story)

The Story: Clearly, Starling City needs to institute a better D.A.R.E. program.

The Review: I have to say, sometimes it’s a blessing to have a short-term memory.  I had known both Geoff Johns and Miller would write episodes on this show at some point and looked forward to them—but then forgot all about it.  When “Dead to Rights” aired, I enjoyed it quite thoroughly, far more than I’d enjoyed any prior episode, and was delighted to discover that Johns had penned it.  It’s nice to know that my own biases had no chance to affect my judgment.

Well, the same thing happened here.  About halfway through the show, I found myself more genuinely engaged with it than usual and by the end credits, I was not only curious, but really kind of excited for next week’s offering.  Only then did I learn Miller had his hand in it.  Again, the belated discovery made a lot of sense, as this episode had a number of things going for it that previous episodes did not.

Arrow S01E17 – Review

By: Jake Coburn & Lana Cho (story)

The Story: Everyone duck and cover—Ollie’s crazy ex is back in town!

The Review: Because I’m nothing if not an optimist, I like to think that every time a piece of fiction reintroduces a character, it has the opportunity to strip away the problematic parts in favor of someone more nuanced, complex, and accessible to the audience.  What Arrow has frequently done instead is reduce major DC figures to the simplest incarnation possible.  In the show’s attempt to make these characters more grounded or edgy, it’s also made them rather monotonous.

It doesn’t help if other characters tend to view each other in taglines and bywords.  When both Diggle and Felicity refer repeatedly to Helena Bertinelli as Ollie’s “psycho ex-girlfriend,” they’re reinforcing the one-dimensional nature of Helena’s personality.  Vengefulness is already a somewhat inert character trait, and vengefulness towards one’s own father—to the point where one doesn’t even want to risk letting him have a “second chance”—is even less impressive.

Arrow S01E16 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story)

The Story: For once, it’d be nice to get decked out for a party and not get shot at.

The Review: While I can’t claim to be the kind of critic who can, just from writing style alone, tell who the writer is, I can usually notice when there’s been a change in the storytelling duties.  So though I couldn’t quite pin it while watching this episode, I knew something was very, very different.  Later, I went online to check for the writing credits, as per habit, and when I saw that it was Johns who wrote the screenplay, suddenly the whole thing made sense.

I’ve often observed (read: complained) that while the show has introduced a lot of interesting elements and characters, it’s never done a terrific job melding them all together into a cohesive whole.  Figures that it’d take Johns, the master of continuity massage, to do what nearly every previous writer could not figure out.  Instead of every plotline and its players keeping their distance from each other, they finally feel like they exist in a close, interactive world.

Arrow S01E13 – Review

By: Lana Cho & Beth Schwartz (story)

The Story: The awkward moment when a father and daughter realize they’re after the same man.

The Review: In all my television-viewing years, I don’t remember a time when the WB (now CW) had a real, big hit on its hands.  It never had a beloved sitcom like Friends or an anchor drama like Law and Order.  If the network ever won an Emmy, it was rare and far in-between.  Seeing as how I’m in the business of guessing at things I have no direct experience in, my theory is that WB/CW shows never really manage to take risks that break them free of old formulas.

Arrow provides an interesting case in point.  A mix of different genres, it doesn’t really excel in any one, nor does it manage to balance its various stories well.  The characters generally feel like second-grade, cookie-cutter carbons of other, more famous figures.  The show often seems to take plotlines from a recycle pile of stories, gives them a good buffing, then integrates them into an episode.  It all comes across as vaguely knockoff, like clothes from Gorgio Armooni.

Arrow S01E11 – Review

By: Gabrielle Stanton (story)

The Story: Diggle attempts to get someone off of Ollie’s naughty list.

The Review: For the last couple episodes, the show has started drifting away from its usual pattern of crossing off names in Ollie’s list in favor of some more spontaneous heroics, drawing us a little closer to the Green Arrow we know and love each time.  I heartily approve of this transition, because the list has long become an extremely gimmicky plot device, fitfully generating a passable conflict for Ollie to tackle when all else fails.

Basically, stories drawn from the list have resulted in safe but bland episodes for the show.  Even last episode starring Firefly, which I largely panned, at least had some risk you could enjoy.  Here, ex-military and present military nut Ted Gaynor breaks somewhat out of the corporate mold of previous list names, but even he proves to be fairly pedestrian as an opponent.  He’s just mercenary, which makes no villain stand out unless he’s Deathstroke.

Arrow S01E10 – Review

By: Moira Kirland & Ben Sokolowski (story)

The Story: If people are dying by fire, there’s only one thing to do—throw a party.

The Review: I give a lot of unsolicited advice in these posts—granted, one could argue that every single review we do is unsolicited, but let’s set that aside—and I think it comes from my conditioned instinct as an editor and also my innate desire to control things.  About 99 percent of the time, all suggestions go unheeded, probably because no one in any position of power actually reads or cares about them, but once in a blue moon, I get the thrill of being heard.

It’s all a delusion of grandeur in my mind, of course, since no one will change anything just because some upstart blogger suggests it.   More likely, it’s a matter of my just happening to tap into a problem so obvious that even the creators can’t really ignore it anymore.  I’m pretty sure that’s the case with my point back in the fifth episode, where I thought it was a waste the show didn’t capitalize on the legal/police drama it had going for it.

Arrow S01E08 – Review

By: Beth Schwartz & Andrew Kreisberg (story)

The Story: Every couple should find a hobby to do together—like ruthlessly taking down mafia.

The Review: Just like anything else, the introduction of a new character into a story must generally serve the story, either by advancing the plot or revealing some character.  If, by the end of a story, the character hasn’t made much of an impact, then probably the series would’ve been better off never running into that character.  The worst shows, as you might expect, are the ones where you have a whole episode of events and absolutely nothing changes.

Now that I’ve gotten us started on a low note, let’s get back to a high one, because Helena actually does serve a purpose for Arrow.  Her wild card personality gives the plot of Ollie’s latest target some greater stakes and a little more complication than his usual missions, although it doesn’t result in the big gangster war that the episode promised.  I suppose I was expecting something that would really infect the city, rather than a shootout on the Bertinelli estate.

Arrow S01E07 – Review

By: Andrew Kreisberg, Geoff Johns, Marc Guggenheim (story)

The Story: Shouldn’t the fact that you and your date end up sparring after dinner be a red flag?

The Review: I have a friend who has an obsession for instant noodles—you know, the bags, cups, and bowls of slippery Asian-styled soup.  Actually, that statement is somewhat misleading because in reality, my friend doesn’t care for the actual noodles so much.  I’ve seen her cook up a whole pot of the stuff, only to dump everything but the broth and drink the whole thing down, every last, savory, MSG-enriched bit of it.  It’s the culinary version of missing the point.

I can somewhat relate because as the show goes on, I find myself in the awkward predicament of liking nearly everything about it except for its lead character.  In fact, the closer characters get to Ollie, the less I like them.  I’ve noticed that lately, Ollie only interacts with the rest of the cast so as to get nagged by them.  He looks pretty tired of it, but he should keep things in perspective.  It can’t be half as tiresome as for us to needlessly watch him get nagged.

Arrow S01E06 – Review

By: Moira Kirland & Marc Guggenheim (story)

The Story: Thanks to the recession, even bank robbers are down on their luck these days.

The Review: A few weeks ago, I was on a late plane going to D.C., bored with nothing to do except stare out into the inky darkness and ponder my meaningless life in the endless void, so I pulled out my laptop to watch an episode of Arrow.  A friend of mine who was also on that flight suddenly piped up excitedly, “Is that Arrow?”  I told her it was.  “I love Arrow,” she told me, in much the same way someone might have said, “I love Mad Men” a year ago.

I should say my friend is a sweet, feminist law student whom I would never imagine watching a weekly action-drama featuring a comic book character who fought crime with preposterously antiquated weaponry.  But after that revelation, I started paying closer attention to the show and began to recognize its crossover appeal.  This is ostensibly a show about Green Arrow, but in execution, he’s merely a platform to deliver all the things people want out of TV—action, crime, justice, relationships, and family—but with more breathing space for the fantastic.

Arrow S01E03 – Review

By: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg (story)

The Story: If arrows work so well against bullets, how do you explain the Spanish empire?

The Review: As a show grows, it usually does one of two things: keep on doing what it does best or constantly trying new things in an attempt to reinvent itself—or perish.  Following my usual pattern of analogizing things to NBC sitcoms, I give you two examples: 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation.  At some point, 30 Rock embraced its weirdness and never looked back, perhaps to its detriment.  Parks and Rec, meanwhile, continues to evolve week by week.

In the end, Parks and Rec remains nearly as solid as it began, while 30 Rock has waxed and waned as it struggles to find new variables to fit into its comedic formula.  Arrow will do well to emulate the P&R strategy.  It simply cannot sustain itself with a weekly pattern of Ollie taking down yet another scummy CEO in an urbanized “Monster of the Week” format.  Thankfully, we see the show continuing to take steps to break up the rut before it digs itself too deep.