I’m largely watching Arrow to see if they do any interesting crossover things with the other CW shows. Arrow itself doesn’t seem to be doing much that’s new. How many Quentin-relapses-due-to-daughter-problems and Oliver-can’t-do-personal-relationships storylines do we really need? Oh, it’s different cause alternate-reality daughter and son-instead-of-girlfriend! Not different enough.
So the last couple of episodes have been fairly decent, I thought. Partly that’s because Rene/Wild Dog is filling the Rory-in-Legends role, tossing around occasional inappropriate comments that add some real humor. And partly it’s the withdrawal of Oliver from active superheroing to focus on his kid, which lets the rest of the team take larger roles. It’s still not entirely new ground, but there’s some improvement.
This week’s big villain plan to take over the Internet by hijacking some bunker that houses a huge server complex, though…ugh. Is that what normal people really think the Internet is?
Whaaat? You mean that the giant server complex running all of the internets is a myth?! There are not three secret “normal people” holding the keys to the internet engine? Yeah, I chuckled a bit when they threw that trope out there.
I don’t care because we got Michael Emerson as the big bad. Also, I have this feeling that by the end of the season they are all going to be the Green Arrow.
Sometimes it sucks to know the characters from the comics. Last season it was pretty obvious as soon as they said his name that Adrian Chase was trouble, and the end of tonight’s episode was likewise completely obvious. On the other hand, it is cool to see the characters used, even if you already kinda know where they’re going.
I thought they were smart about that, though. Subverted expectations – Adrian Chase is The Vigilante in the books. In the show, he was someone completely different at a time when The Vigilante is running around causing problems!
That kind of explains a lot about last season. The whole thing with the vigilante felt tacked on to the main story, but now it makes sense why they did it that way.
Yeah, Vigilante’s presence in the show last season was a mixed bag. I have a history with the character. He was the first character that got me to read a DC book. That cover!
The books don’t really hold up. It was a wonder at the time, though. It came from a different angle than the Marvel books of the era.
The show’s version looked good! He was frightening (to the extent anything is on a show like this), a mystery, and the character’s ethos gets to play off against Oliver’s similar crusade. Are they really above the law? If we a the audience can cheer for Oliver – who routinely steals from the police evidence room, cracks their data security, etc – what is our basis for thinking Vigilante takes it too far? All of that was really good.
On the negatives ledger, though, he wasn’t sufficiently distinguished from Prometheus, and they never really paid off the mystery of who he was. I had to look at the wiki page to see if they ever revealed his identity. It clearly made no impression on me.
I wish he had paid off bigger.
Nailed it.
Anyone watching season 6? I’m really enjoying the Cayden James storyline. If anyone drifted away from the Arrow last season, I’d recommend catching up on this season.
It’s a commonplace that superheroes are only as good as their villains, and the Cayden James actor is really charismatic - he oozes a nerdy, weaselly menace.
There’s also less improbable stuff and less relationship quicksand around. The team’s going through changes too.
Im watching but for me its just ok. I like the new villian but the whole team dynamic thing seems manufactured and the reasoning behind it is ridiculously flawed.
Oh I cant be on team arrow now because Oliver spied on us, so Im just going to form my own group with the guy that betrayed the team, putting us all in danger and bringing about the need for Oliver’s spying. Never mind that this is the second betrayal from within the team and the last one nearly got us all killed, Oliver overreacted!
For those following only the Arrow…
Arrow has been the weak link this year, I hope they can turn it around (getting rid of characters like Mad Dog and Mr. Terrific will help I think - they need to simplify the cast and story to a more pure format, imo).
I see your point, but I’ll be sad if they really do ditch Rene and Curtis since they’re two of my favorites. They did just send Thea off (again) so maybe she’ll stay away for a while to reduce the headcount.
I think I turned against those new characters when the drama started with Curtis and the others being upset about being spied on. I mean, their argument is Arrow only had the new guys spied on… but they were literally the new guys, and one of them was the spy! WTF? Their indignation (especially given how long it took Oliver to be convinced to even train them) annoyed the shit out of me, and it’s only gotten worse as the writers keep inflicting this forced drama/civil war style storyline onto us and it’s not handled well or very interesting. Officer Sonic Voice in particular is written exceptionally poorly, even my son can be heard audibly rolling his eyes at some of her decisions (an impressive feat).
We’re way behind on Arrow this season but I thought last season was so damn good that I expected that would be hard for them to follow up this season. Given it’s renewed, I expect bigger things next year, and we’ll definitely watch this to the end of the current season when we can.
I’d really like to see at least one of the CW shows adopt the SHIELD format with smaller pods of storytelling. It’s time to get away from a season-long problem or big bad.
Hell yes. The biggest problem with all the CW shows (except Black Lightning) is they are telling a 22-episode long story which tends to have mostly stand alone episodes that cover the main story arc for the first and last 5 of the episode. I’d much rather see these shows move to a more (even slightly more) serialized format, like Black Lightning and SHIELD does. I think they are the two strongest shows this year, I can’t help but wonder if that’s at least in part part why.
It has to be part of the reason. It’s really hard to keep a villain interesting for 22 episodes IMO. Comics don’t do that. There is always a gallery of rogues for each hero to foil, and then sometimes you get crossover from other books too, which is always cool. The best part of what the CW shows are doing is using the likes of Grodd or Reverse Flash on Legends. That gets me interested if I’m not keeping up with the other program.
It doesn’t have to be meta of the week or anything. Let a villain come up with something you can foil in three eps. and not tied into a larger arc. Just put the hero or one of the crew in proper danger and it’ll be great!
SHIELD has such great chemistry right now. The cast, the writers, the action… I really hope they can keep going. I’m not entirely convinced that it doesn’t tie into Infinity War!
My son 100% agrees with you, he’s convinced it’s Thanos that’s coming and that’s his ship we’ve seen briefly in the latest episode. I can’t disagree, but how crazy would it be if Thanos was referenced on SHIELD?!
It would be bonkers! I mean, we know that SHIELD’s story runs parallel with events in the films. The fact that SHIELD was so specifically a part of Winter Soldier confirmed that. Don’t forget too that Fury hauled Fitz and Simmons out of the water…
My guess right now is that it does tie directly in that The Confederacy is offering protection for the human race from Thanos. “War is coming” in last week’s episode has to refer to the events in Infinity War.
I think that tracks, but I hope we aren’t setting ourselves up for disappointment. :)