Arrow
 

Ok...I realise it is pretty silly, but I am really enjoying Arrow.

Occasionally it's funny for all the wrong reasons (I can't watch the detective guy/father of the campaigning lawyer girl without laughing, especially when he gets really serious about something). The whole thing is way too simple in terms of good guys and bad guys ... but that's ok. Robin Hood and Superman both had that. And it's chock full of badly drawn 2 dimensional characters...

yet somehow it is thoroughly entertaining. I think they've successfully got a comic book feel to it. It feels a little old fashioned in some ways. A little like the stuff we used to watch in the 80s in terms of plot and storytelling. But with a modern edge to it. It's interesting seeing the notion of a Robin Hood type figure fighting for the little guy against overweaning corporate power and corruption surfacing again.


@ Sundae: John Barrowman enters the show as a recurring guest star from ep 5.

Yeah, watched up until I could work out who he was (identity-wise) then Dad remove dit from the sky+ schedule by mistake and I never bothered to put it back on. Sometime soon someone will come up with a comilation of the scenes he was in (like they did with Desperate Housewives). The story just didn't grip me, so I'll wait til then.

But thanks for thinking of me :)

The first few episodes are mainly funny for all the wrong reasons, and the story seemed weak. Have to say though it started to find its feet around ep 6 or 7. There are still some amazingly funny cliches now and then, but mostly it's now funny for the right reasons and the meta story is starting to get quite intriguing.

I'm liking him more and more too. Wasn't sure about him at first but the further along the show gets the more confident it seems to be and him with it. It's starting to click a little now I think.

I'm properly addicted just as I get to the current episode. No more double bills at bedtime :P

And in another bit of crossover Alex Kingston is joining the Arrow cast :)

Well...it happened...I've run out of episodes.

Noooooooooo!

I want more Arrow!

Next one not til the 30th in the US.

Watching programmes weekly sucks. It sucks humungous amounts of donkey dick.

*scowl*

As a child we had to wait 28 days for a trinket from a cereal packet.
Channel your inner child. It's worth waiting for.

Makes me think of this.

I just watched the last episode of Arrow til after christmas. Man that was intense!

i'm liking this series. I didn't think I was going to like it as much as I have. Lasr season I enjoyed, but it meandered a bit and some of the story threads left me a bit cold. I'm likely in the minority of fans of the show who found the League a bit tiresome. They're ok in small doses, but all that delving into their mythology and wandering round that citadel didn't do it for me. And, as good as they look when they have a bunch of them together moving in sync, as soon as there's any actual fighting, 90% of the league seem to suck pretty bad.

I liked the way it tied up though and it shook up the group dynamics in a nice way. What was making me a touch dubious about this season was the move to Green Arrow and what appeared to be a lightening of the tone, which I didn't particularly want. I really, really don't like the Flash. Though I more or less enjoy them, my least favourite Arrow episodes are the crossovers. As it turns out the new tone is lighter in some ways and darker in other ways. I'm liking it.

This last episode though - man they've really upped their game. Stylishly done.

Still don't like the new costume though. The sleeveless look is a bit wank.

I've struggled with this last season on and off. Some aspects of the show have been really unengaging. But the last few eps have drawn me back in.

I just started watching the most recent episode though, and the first scene brought tomind a conversation I had with Foots about the classic dark lord/super villain errors that Dahrk keeps making - in this first scene, he decides not to kill his nemesis and constant thorn in his side, because he wants him to be alive long enough to suffer a terrible death when the world burns, as per his genius master villain plan. Does he lock him up in a deep dungeon, or chain him to a wall? No....he throws him about a bit, proving he could easily kill him then causes a cave in and leaves without ensuring he is trapped.

How many times is he going to not kill his enemy, in order to show how insignificant he is /make him suffer later? This strategy has not been very successful in the past.

All the goofy comic-book cliches are simultaneously great and terrible in these shows.

Arrow probably has too few, which make the ones that are there stick out. Legends of tomorrow has too many, and feels like a parody of recent Doctor Who. Flash feels like it's at just about the right level.

I wonder how this Goldilocks formula will be affected when Supergirl moves to the CW.

I just have not been able to get into Flash. Too light and chirpy. My least favourite Arrow episodes are the ones that intersect with the rest of the Arrowverse.

haha It's an epidemic. Finally, Felicity says what we've been dying to hear, "You have to kill him."

cf Death is not too good for my enemies.

I just watched the finale. It had some good moments. It had some ridiculous moments. It had some moments that were cheesy enough to cover an entire buffet's worth of cold pizza.

The showrunners really need to take their collective heads out of their arses and figure out a direction for the show and the core character. My overall impression of the season, with good and bad taken together is that it was mostly pants.

Ok- so - looks like the showrunners have their heads on straight after all.

Loving this season of Arrow - am back to full-blown Arrow addiction - so much sp that when I ran out of current episodes to watch on binge and dropped to an episode a week as it airs, I started rewatching season 1.

Here I was thinking I could walk away...

You can never walk away

I fell off the fifth season about two thirds of the way in, because Doctor Who

I've been catching up and I really, really love this season's main villain. Chase is way scarier than Damien Dahrk, and the season is much better balanced than either seasons 3 or 4.

This is what the show has been needing - a well-focused, personalised conflict between Arrow and a nemesis figure, that also impacts at a wider level - it's been needing something like this since Season 1 and Slade Wilson. Dahrk could have been great and there were moments when he was, but for the most part he was badly written and made stupid decisions with the thinnest of motives - bit too pantomime at times for my taste. And Ra's al Ghul, despite being well acted and well written was so fleeting a presence as to get lost amid the week to week threats.

Malcolm Merlin was good - always like a bit of Barrowman - but they kind of declawed him and then kept him around and it sort spoiled the character a bit for me.

If the antagonist is weakly written it drags down the protagonist (See: Vikings for an abject lesson in how to write an antagonist so badly it robs the protagonist of all credibility as hero - which is sad because the same show also shows how to write a brilliant antagonist).

Watching Team Arrow get their arses handed to them by an overpowered villain with no redeeming features and a shoddy collection of Dark Lord tropes just made them look like the world's worst scooby gang.

But watching Arrow and his team working against Prometheus and his cat and mouse psychological game really raised the stakes.

Agreed.

Though I would have liked a little bit of justification on how Chase got so much better than everyone at everything.

Yeah - the follow Oliver's journey step for step thing didn't entirely make sense - focused one to one training with Ra's al Ghul's daughter probably helped - but are we supposed to believe he also hooked up with the Bratva?

Other than that though - he's well written for the most part and the actor is really good.

I just have the finale to watch now - coming up on full circle in the flashbacks.

One thing I really liked about this season was that it is a really good counterpoint to season 1. In season 1, the present day Oliver was like an unstoppable killing machine, a one man army, whilst Island Oliver was lost and ill-equipped for what he was up against. This season we've seen Oliver lose his shit more comprehensively than ever in the present day, whilst the flashback Oliver is lethal.