I look forward to the reactions from those who are new to the GAF Arrow OT.Oh I have a few in mindSeason 3 will bring my best work yet.
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ARROW Season 3 |OT| Welcome to the New Age
- Thread starter Clevinger
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Oh I have a few in mind
oh god
Okay, this post has been a long time coming. I have FINALLY finished off Season 2.
I said this show sucks. It does, but it does have it's high points, and the finale was the show at it's best. An army of super soldiers vs the league of assassins. That is awesome. Deathstroke vs Green Arrow. This is awesome. That gambit played by Felicity and Ollie. Diggle and Deadshot's growing friendship, Amanda Waller (despite her not being fat) and ARGUS and the Suicide Squad, League of Shadows lower members being given more elaboration. Awesome awesome awesome. If the show was focused exclusively on things like this, it would be be amazing. Honestly, Black Canary's entire arc was handled far better than I expected, and I think they could have just as easily called it Canary instead of Arrow without losing anything. There, that's my praise. I hope you enjoyed it, because the rest of this post is going to be me skinning this show alive.
I won't repeat my issues with how the show handles women from the lttp thread. I'll just say that many of my complaints remain relevent. I think the show is trying to be better about it, with characters like Nyssa and Black Canary, and using the damsel trope against the villain at the end...but that doesn't change the fact that the show's MO is still using women as emotional pressure points between a struggle between males and there still isn't enough variations in the relationships.
One thing I will repeat is that this show is TOO DAMN LONG HOLY SHIT. Season 2 was basically a strong first few episode, a wasteland of shit in the middle with the occasional interesting episode, and then a decent last few episodes. I said in my post that 15 or so would serve the series better, but looking back, it shouldn't get more than 12 at best. IF you're going to have that much screentime, you have to use it, and the writer's don't.
The worst victim of this is Thea. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that she should have been a character. I'm not going to say she's badly written (well, she is, but...) or unlikable (also true, but...) but she shouldn't exist in this show because all she is is an ordinary teenage girl. She has a stupid shallow relationship with Roy that is based entirely on physical attraction instead of any genuine interactions between the two. Even for Arrow, their 'love' is insipid. Otherwise, she exists for only one thing; To be betrayed and hurt, at which point she lashes out, only to cool down, and then rinse and repeat. The end of the season FINALLY has her put a stop to the bullshit and go "fuck it, I'm going with my psychopath dad to train to be a badass. I'm out, bitches", but holy mother of fuck, did we need to spend thirty hours watching this transformation that takes place at the speed of grass growing? Did we have to see her trust, be betrayed, mope about it, then be betrayed again and again like a dog that's determined to prove pavlov wrong before she finally decided she wasn't going to be this stupid little girl that the audience has grown to resent her for? This transformation could have happened around episode 15 of season at most, but for some reason they felt the need to stretch it out this long.
And this shit doesn't just affect side plots. Through the magic of being boring as shit, they utterly neutered Slade as an antagonist for the majority of the season. "I'm going to take e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g from you" and he never fucking does. His plan is so longwinded that if he simply pulled out his sword and started cutting the Queens from the beginning, he would have won! Ollie would never have gotten the cure, and he'd have been unstoppable. It's unreal how many opportunities he's had to fuck up Ollie's life without consequence and he didn't. He captured Thea and the worst thing he could do is tell her that Merlyn was her daddy? Like, why the fuck does she even believe him? Any why, even if she does, does she not identify him as her kidnapper? Evidence or not, that kind of witness testimony should have something. But she forget about her kidnapping because she was told this. Apparently, this is worse than say, cutting out her lips and mailing them to Oliver. He kills Moira, but despite telling him he'll take 'everything' from him, he lets Thea live, because for some reason he gives a shit about moira 'sacrificing' herself when the whole reason he was doing it was to fuck with Ollie. Does not invalidating her mother's sacrifice not hurt him more than abiding by it does? For fucks sake, even at the end, when he thinks he's going to kill Oliver's woman, he only targets Felicity and Laurel. Where's Thea, Diggle, Officer Lance, Laurel's mother, Sarah, Ollie's russian friends? Why does he not desecrate Tommy's and his Dad's graves or cannibalize his now dead mother? If you want to make Slade a psychotic monster, you can't keep him intimidating if he's going to be going "I'll get you and everyone you love....next time!" (Also, did he even ever use those camera's for anyhting? Or was that just for the finale to get an excuse for why he got fucked in the end?) . Once he started actually doing shit at the end, yeah, he got interesting, but HOLY FUCK, you can't wait that fucking long to do it, show!
And these characters...ugh....I hate most of them. I really really do. Roy is easiest to pick on. Season 1, he was just basically Ollie but poor, but season 2 just turned him into a roid rager for 95% of the episodes. I'm genuinely baffled as to why they didn't kill him or why they pretended to have this deep friendship to him that afforded him special treatment. His connection to Thea is shallow and insipid, his mentorship with ollie is just him being constantly pissed off, and his interaction with others is minimal if not nonexistant. Laurel was just a chore to sit though, as was Thea, and Moira.......christ, Moira. Before I get to her, I need to emphasize how utterly stupid and bitchy and unlikable this cast is as a whole. The writers tackle a few themes here, namely identity, blame, the morality of killing and lies.
The morality of killing and lies are the most insipid. Killing, as a first....well, the fact is, it started for no real reason. Ollie says it's because Tommy's first reaction is to be offended that his best friend is a killer. Well, apparentlly he wasn't offended enough to report his ass over it. I mean, people might be surprised at this, but even mass murderers have loved ones, but that doesn't make them not mass murderers. If killing itself is wrong, then Ollie saving his dad, while good, doesn't mean him going on to kill others is acceptable. But Tommy does accept it. Maybe it was just a bro moment where he is conflicted and doesn't know what to do, but he never does report it even as he grows to hate Ollie. He seemed to be more offended when he glanced through the window of the new age, new age than discovering his friend was a killer. So Ollie basing his no kill policy off this isn't meaningful. The episode went on with the hooded killers killing in his name, and at the end they say he taught them it...but these people are clearly unstable individuals. They don't keep to his moral code outside of killing bad guys (as they accept collatoral which he as the arrow didn't). Even if Ollie hadn't killed since the beginning, it's kind of obvious these guys would when they imitate him. So that doesn't fly either. The only real argument against killing comes at the very end, where Ollie trying to kill out of revenge Slade ended in a worse situation than if he just cured him, but that is WAY past the expiration date on this being good character development.
So then comes lying. This whole thing was just...just so fucking stupid. I don't think there was more than one or two instances where a character lying or keeping some greater truth hidden to protect another person (usually a woman) didn't blow up in their face. I had to face palm when Ollie got pissed at Moira for keeping the truth of Thea's parentage away from Thea for her own protection, before he does the exact same thing for the exact same reasons. And it's sooo patronizing. "Oh no, I can't possibly tell X the truth about Y, because that would break their minds and they would have to, I don't know, take a minute and deal with it." Notice how at no point does the truth of any of the reveals actually hurt the person (except for slade) as much as the fact that the trusted person in question lies about it. ANd they do this over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over.....These people never fucking learn, and they'll do it more in season 3 as well, I guarantee you. And funny enough, they liars keep getting believed. Like, when thea is pissed over Isabel thing, and Ollie comes in saying that their dad chose their family over Isabel, she doesn't seem to care, but she never imples she doesn't believe him, even though he has no proof of it whatsoever. Like 90% of the things said, don't have proof behind them, but are believed anyway.
As stupid as lying is the issue of responsibility of actions. Slade's deal is the most prominent of the show, so I'll use it to illustrate the point, but like the lying thing, just about every character engages in this to some extent. While there is such a thing as indirect responsibility, the fact is that Slade blaming Ollie is bullshit. The logic goes that because Ivo set up a certain set of rules for Ollie to abide by, the choice of who lived and who died was in Ollie's hands. Therefore, Ollie would be to blame for whoever died. This may be obvious to some of you, but I have to state this is bullshit. This isn't like gravity, where if you let something go, it will fall towards the ground no matter what you do. It's not a natural event. Ivo set some arbitrary rules and then choose to pull the trigger. Even if Ollie had gone "Yeah, I pick Sara, shoot Shado" from the word go, Ivo isn't a machine that is programmed to do whatever Ollie says within the context of those rules. Even if he were, somehow, he's the one who set the rules in the first place! He's the one to blame, and no one else! Of course, Ollie may not agree, but that's survivor's guilt, that's not rational or true. Obvious right? Well, that's not what happened according to the show. Slade believes Ollie to be responsible. Ollie believes ollie to be responsible. Sara essentially tells him "shit happens" but does not refute the idea that Ollie bares responsibility for making the choice on who lived. Diggle and Felicity do the same. Rational people who are not affected by the truama of survivors guilt just say that Ollie was in a shitty spot rather than telling him that he holds no blame in the choice. The show, to the very end, puts the blame of Shado's death in Ollie's hands, not unsympathetically, but it validates Ivo's stupid game. This is fucking stupid, and it's frustrating when it's the main tension on which the plot relies on. It's another reason Slade is essentially neutered as an effective antagonist for most of the show. On top of hte fact that this show is such shit at writing relationships. Shado and Slade barely fucking talked for christs sake, but he holds this deep love for her? Bullshit....
Where was I? Right, Identity. A LOT of talking went into this, a LOT of screentime. This is actually a compelling topic for me. What makes up who you are? Well, here we got a "You are a killer Ollie!" "You're not a killer Ollie!" "You're a good person" "You're a bad person" and so on, to the point it just get asinine. Ollie is a killer. He is a murderer. He's done it, and however he has changed, he's always going to be a murderer for having murdered someone. The show takes the premise that one's actions come from who one is. But this philosophizing gets buried in bullshit when it's so nonsensical because people claim someone is X when they are doing X or similar to X, yet somehow the show implies it's true because they struggle with it or something. It's such a waste of time. Batman's right, and he have to drone on and on about it to prove it.
This is part of the reason the bulk of these episodes are so unwatchable. Even if I happen to like the character in question (Ollie, Felicity, Diggle), they're all so fucking stupid whenever they try to talk about anything. But the worst thing this show is built on is it's theme of love.
Love is an odd thing to acknowledge in the power fantasy land that is the superhero genre. But the fact is that a lot of them can be taken as love stories, and Arrow goes above and beyond in this regard. Again, badly, but...just think about how many girls actually develop feelings for Ollie when by all accounts he should be nothing more than a fuckbuddy. The entire reason that the damsel in distress trope is played so often in this show is that it is built on Male X loves Female Y whose in danger and must save her in order to win affection. It's not all romantic love, but a lot of it is, and it is the crux of a majority of it's plotlines. As such, love is often used to paint more morally iffy actions as just. Despite his new found no killing code, Ollie kills the count because he is threatening Felicity (though given his talent with shooting, I found that scenerio contrived. Why couldn't he just shoot his shoulder or something....whatever). To protect her children, Moira went along with Merlin's plan. Because Slade loved Shado (again, I cannot emphasize enough how forced and contrite this one-sided romance and devotion he has for her is, even premiracuru), he is going on this idiotic rampage of revenge. But aside from the sheer monotony of this plot device being used over and over ad-nausium, it just gets.. Look, Ollie's dad cheating on a college girl and then staying with his family is treated like it's some kind of gracious act of kindness bullshit. The constant damseling and handling of women as objects to be prized and protected by men is bullshit. It's not just bad writing, it is advocating values that I would strongly argue are harmful.
Moira's final scene has her flashbacks of before Ollie left is the worst of them. Ollie got a girl pregnant and is not panicking over being a father. So moira brings her over and persuades/coerces the girl into accepting money to move to another city and not say anything about her baby. She does it because she loves ollie and wants to protect him. Considering this flashback is shown in the context of her noble sacrifice to Slade, in addition of the fact that 'love' is so often used as a way to excuse or humanize immoral actions and characters, even those of a psychopath like Merlin, I can only conclude that this was shown as to emphasize what a good mother Moira is. What. The. Fuck. If my mother did anything resembling this to me, I would never speak to her again. This is vile. This actually had me upset and pissed off at the writers for even suggesting this can possibly be a good thing.....for fucks sake, She's is seperating a child from it's father (however irresponsible he may be at the time) so the father can continue cheating on his loving girlfriend. She doesn't even object to him cheating on Laurel, nothing resembling 'Uh...you're kind of being a scumbag to laurel here, Ollie. I raised you better than that'. No, she's perfectly willing to have a kid spend his life without a father and not give Ollie the chance to step up so he can continue cheating on his girlfriend because....because love?! No, this is fucking evil. And the way it's framed, given the history of the character, I'm wondering if I'm supposed to infer that this is a regular thing Moira does.
This isn't just bad writing. It's offensive. it is repugnant to me to think that someone wrote that because they think it's good mothering, and there is simply no defending it on any level.
This show sucks. It has it's charms, it has it's strong points, but they are few and far inbetween. I'm still debating on whether or not to watch season 3, because I know it's going to start off strong, and it's going to end strong, but everything inbetween is going to be one long sludge of stupidity and contrivances and tired old tropes that should be gone from the modern age, and the same bullshit will happen over and over and over....For those of you who like the show, I hope you continue to do so. I don't begrudge your enjoyment of it. But I can't share in it. There is too much wrong here.
I said this show sucks. It does, but it does have it's high points, and the finale was the show at it's best. An army of super soldiers vs the league of assassins. That is awesome. Deathstroke vs Green Arrow. This is awesome. That gambit played by Felicity and Ollie. Diggle and Deadshot's growing friendship, Amanda Waller (despite her not being fat) and ARGUS and the Suicide Squad, League of Shadows lower members being given more elaboration. Awesome awesome awesome. If the show was focused exclusively on things like this, it would be be amazing. Honestly, Black Canary's entire arc was handled far better than I expected, and I think they could have just as easily called it Canary instead of Arrow without losing anything. There, that's my praise. I hope you enjoyed it, because the rest of this post is going to be me skinning this show alive.
I won't repeat my issues with how the show handles women from the lttp thread. I'll just say that many of my complaints remain relevent. I think the show is trying to be better about it, with characters like Nyssa and Black Canary, and using the damsel trope against the villain at the end...but that doesn't change the fact that the show's MO is still using women as emotional pressure points between a struggle between males and there still isn't enough variations in the relationships.
One thing I will repeat is that this show is TOO DAMN LONG HOLY SHIT. Season 2 was basically a strong first few episode, a wasteland of shit in the middle with the occasional interesting episode, and then a decent last few episodes. I said in my post that 15 or so would serve the series better, but looking back, it shouldn't get more than 12 at best. IF you're going to have that much screentime, you have to use it, and the writer's don't.
The worst victim of this is Thea. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that she should have been a character. I'm not going to say she's badly written (well, she is, but...) or unlikable (also true, but...) but she shouldn't exist in this show because all she is is an ordinary teenage girl. She has a stupid shallow relationship with Roy that is based entirely on physical attraction instead of any genuine interactions between the two. Even for Arrow, their 'love' is insipid. Otherwise, she exists for only one thing; To be betrayed and hurt, at which point she lashes out, only to cool down, and then rinse and repeat. The end of the season FINALLY has her put a stop to the bullshit and go "fuck it, I'm going with my psychopath dad to train to be a badass. I'm out, bitches", but holy mother of fuck, did we need to spend thirty hours watching this transformation that takes place at the speed of grass growing? Did we have to see her trust, be betrayed, mope about it, then be betrayed again and again like a dog that's determined to prove pavlov wrong before she finally decided she wasn't going to be this stupid little girl that the audience has grown to resent her for? This transformation could have happened around episode 15 of season at most, but for some reason they felt the need to stretch it out this long.
And this shit doesn't just affect side plots. Through the magic of being boring as shit, they utterly neutered Slade as an antagonist for the majority of the season. "I'm going to take e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g from you" and he never fucking does. His plan is so longwinded that if he simply pulled out his sword and started cutting the Queens from the beginning, he would have won! Ollie would never have gotten the cure, and he'd have been unstoppable. It's unreal how many opportunities he's had to fuck up Ollie's life without consequence and he didn't. He captured Thea and the worst thing he could do is tell her that Merlyn was her daddy? Like, why the fuck does she even believe him? Any why, even if she does, does she not identify him as her kidnapper? Evidence or not, that kind of witness testimony should have something. But she forget about her kidnapping because she was told this. Apparently, this is worse than say, cutting out her lips and mailing them to Oliver. He kills Moira, but despite telling him he'll take 'everything' from him, he lets Thea live, because for some reason he gives a shit about moira 'sacrificing' herself when the whole reason he was doing it was to fuck with Ollie. Does not invalidating her mother's sacrifice not hurt him more than abiding by it does? For fucks sake, even at the end, when he thinks he's going to kill Oliver's woman, he only targets Felicity and Laurel. Where's Thea, Diggle, Officer Lance, Laurel's mother, Sarah, Ollie's russian friends? Why does he not desecrate Tommy's and his Dad's graves or cannibalize his now dead mother? If you want to make Slade a psychotic monster, you can't keep him intimidating if he's going to be going "I'll get you and everyone you love....next time!" (Also, did he even ever use those camera's for anyhting? Or was that just for the finale to get an excuse for why he got fucked in the end?) . Once he started actually doing shit at the end, yeah, he got interesting, but HOLY FUCK, you can't wait that fucking long to do it, show!
And these characters...ugh....I hate most of them. I really really do. Roy is easiest to pick on. Season 1, he was just basically Ollie but poor, but season 2 just turned him into a roid rager for 95% of the episodes. I'm genuinely baffled as to why they didn't kill him or why they pretended to have this deep friendship to him that afforded him special treatment. His connection to Thea is shallow and insipid, his mentorship with ollie is just him being constantly pissed off, and his interaction with others is minimal if not nonexistant. Laurel was just a chore to sit though, as was Thea, and Moira.......christ, Moira. Before I get to her, I need to emphasize how utterly stupid and bitchy and unlikable this cast is as a whole. The writers tackle a few themes here, namely identity, blame, the morality of killing and lies.
The morality of killing and lies are the most insipid. Killing, as a first....well, the fact is, it started for no real reason. Ollie says it's because Tommy's first reaction is to be offended that his best friend is a killer. Well, apparentlly he wasn't offended enough to report his ass over it. I mean, people might be surprised at this, but even mass murderers have loved ones, but that doesn't make them not mass murderers. If killing itself is wrong, then Ollie saving his dad, while good, doesn't mean him going on to kill others is acceptable. But Tommy does accept it. Maybe it was just a bro moment where he is conflicted and doesn't know what to do, but he never does report it even as he grows to hate Ollie. He seemed to be more offended when he glanced through the window of the new age, new age than discovering his friend was a killer. So Ollie basing his no kill policy off this isn't meaningful. The episode went on with the hooded killers killing in his name, and at the end they say he taught them it...but these people are clearly unstable individuals. They don't keep to his moral code outside of killing bad guys (as they accept collatoral which he as the arrow didn't). Even if Ollie hadn't killed since the beginning, it's kind of obvious these guys would when they imitate him. So that doesn't fly either. The only real argument against killing comes at the very end, where Ollie trying to kill out of revenge Slade ended in a worse situation than if he just cured him, but that is WAY past the expiration date on this being good character development.
So then comes lying. This whole thing was just...just so fucking stupid. I don't think there was more than one or two instances where a character lying or keeping some greater truth hidden to protect another person (usually a woman) didn't blow up in their face. I had to face palm when Ollie got pissed at Moira for keeping the truth of Thea's parentage away from Thea for her own protection, before he does the exact same thing for the exact same reasons. And it's sooo patronizing. "Oh no, I can't possibly tell X the truth about Y, because that would break their minds and they would have to, I don't know, take a minute and deal with it." Notice how at no point does the truth of any of the reveals actually hurt the person (except for slade) as much as the fact that the trusted person in question lies about it. ANd they do this over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over.....These people never fucking learn, and they'll do it more in season 3 as well, I guarantee you. And funny enough, they liars keep getting believed. Like, when thea is pissed over Isabel thing, and Ollie comes in saying that their dad chose their family over Isabel, she doesn't seem to care, but she never imples she doesn't believe him, even though he has no proof of it whatsoever. Like 90% of the things said, don't have proof behind them, but are believed anyway.
As stupid as lying is the issue of responsibility of actions. Slade's deal is the most prominent of the show, so I'll use it to illustrate the point, but like the lying thing, just about every character engages in this to some extent. While there is such a thing as indirect responsibility, the fact is that Slade blaming Ollie is bullshit. The logic goes that because Ivo set up a certain set of rules for Ollie to abide by, the choice of who lived and who died was in Ollie's hands. Therefore, Ollie would be to blame for whoever died. This may be obvious to some of you, but I have to state this is bullshit. This isn't like gravity, where if you let something go, it will fall towards the ground no matter what you do. It's not a natural event. Ivo set some arbitrary rules and then choose to pull the trigger. Even if Ollie had gone "Yeah, I pick Sara, shoot Shado" from the word go, Ivo isn't a machine that is programmed to do whatever Ollie says within the context of those rules. Even if he were, somehow, he's the one who set the rules in the first place! He's the one to blame, and no one else! Of course, Ollie may not agree, but that's survivor's guilt, that's not rational or true. Obvious right? Well, that's not what happened according to the show. Slade believes Ollie to be responsible. Ollie believes ollie to be responsible. Sara essentially tells him "shit happens" but does not refute the idea that Ollie bares responsibility for making the choice on who lived. Diggle and Felicity do the same. Rational people who are not affected by the truama of survivors guilt just say that Ollie was in a shitty spot rather than telling him that he holds no blame in the choice. The show, to the very end, puts the blame of Shado's death in Ollie's hands, not unsympathetically, but it validates Ivo's stupid game. This is fucking stupid, and it's frustrating when it's the main tension on which the plot relies on. It's another reason Slade is essentially neutered as an effective antagonist for most of the show. On top of hte fact that this show is such shit at writing relationships. Shado and Slade barely fucking talked for christs sake, but he holds this deep love for her? Bullshit....
Where was I? Right, Identity. A LOT of talking went into this, a LOT of screentime. This is actually a compelling topic for me. What makes up who you are? Well, here we got a "You are a killer Ollie!" "You're not a killer Ollie!" "You're a good person" "You're a bad person" and so on, to the point it just get asinine. Ollie is a killer. He is a murderer. He's done it, and however he has changed, he's always going to be a murderer for having murdered someone. The show takes the premise that one's actions come from who one is. But this philosophizing gets buried in bullshit when it's so nonsensical because people claim someone is X when they are doing X or similar to X, yet somehow the show implies it's true because they struggle with it or something. It's such a waste of time. Batman's right, and he have to drone on and on about it to prove it.
This is part of the reason the bulk of these episodes are so unwatchable. Even if I happen to like the character in question (Ollie, Felicity, Diggle), they're all so fucking stupid whenever they try to talk about anything. But the worst thing this show is built on is it's theme of love.
Love is an odd thing to acknowledge in the power fantasy land that is the superhero genre. But the fact is that a lot of them can be taken as love stories, and Arrow goes above and beyond in this regard. Again, badly, but...just think about how many girls actually develop feelings for Ollie when by all accounts he should be nothing more than a fuckbuddy. The entire reason that the damsel in distress trope is played so often in this show is that it is built on Male X loves Female Y whose in danger and must save her in order to win affection. It's not all romantic love, but a lot of it is, and it is the crux of a majority of it's plotlines. As such, love is often used to paint more morally iffy actions as just. Despite his new found no killing code, Ollie kills the count because he is threatening Felicity (though given his talent with shooting, I found that scenerio contrived. Why couldn't he just shoot his shoulder or something....whatever). To protect her children, Moira went along with Merlin's plan. Because Slade loved Shado (again, I cannot emphasize enough how forced and contrite this one-sided romance and devotion he has for her is, even premiracuru), he is going on this idiotic rampage of revenge. But aside from the sheer monotony of this plot device being used over and over ad-nausium, it just gets.. Look, Ollie's dad cheating on a college girl and then staying with his family is treated like it's some kind of gracious act of kindness bullshit. The constant damseling and handling of women as objects to be prized and protected by men is bullshit. It's not just bad writing, it is advocating values that I would strongly argue are harmful.
Moira's final scene has her flashbacks of before Ollie left is the worst of them. Ollie got a girl pregnant and is not panicking over being a father. So moira brings her over and persuades/coerces the girl into accepting money to move to another city and not say anything about her baby. She does it because she loves ollie and wants to protect him. Considering this flashback is shown in the context of her noble sacrifice to Slade, in addition of the fact that 'love' is so often used as a way to excuse or humanize immoral actions and characters, even those of a psychopath like Merlin, I can only conclude that this was shown as to emphasize what a good mother Moira is. What. The. Fuck. If my mother did anything resembling this to me, I would never speak to her again. This is vile. This actually had me upset and pissed off at the writers for even suggesting this can possibly be a good thing.....for fucks sake, She's is seperating a child from it's father (however irresponsible he may be at the time) so the father can continue cheating on his loving girlfriend. She doesn't even object to him cheating on Laurel, nothing resembling 'Uh...you're kind of being a scumbag to laurel here, Ollie. I raised you better than that'. No, she's perfectly willing to have a kid spend his life without a father and not give Ollie the chance to step up so he can continue cheating on his girlfriend because....because love?! No, this is fucking evil. And the way it's framed, given the history of the character, I'm wondering if I'm supposed to infer that this is a regular thing Moira does.
This isn't just bad writing. It's offensive. it is repugnant to me to think that someone wrote that because they think it's good mothering, and there is simply no defending it on any level.
This show sucks. It has it's charms, it has it's strong points, but they are few and far inbetween. I'm still debating on whether or not to watch season 3, because I know it's going to start off strong, and it's going to end strong, but everything inbetween is going to be one long sludge of stupidity and contrivances and tired old tropes that should be gone from the modern age, and the same bullshit will happen over and over and over....For those of you who like the show, I hope you continue to do so. I don't begrudge your enjoyment of it. But I can't share in it. There is too much wrong here.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Does it hurt? I hope it hurts. I started watching this after not feeling the first 8 episodes on your recommendation. In the tradition of Arrow logic, I hold you responsible for my having watched it.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Frankly, it really surprises me that you didn't like it. Like, I read all your complaints, and while they are valid, overall, I ended up loving the show a ton. I really figured you'd like it. I mean, there's CWness... but yeah, eventually you roll with it.
You planning on checking out Flash?
*shrug* Yeah, I guess. Atleast I feel the flash isn't likely to have as many asshole characters. Chances are the ratio will instead favor idiots, but maybe it will have enough charm to win me over. I doubt it, but I'm willing to give it a shot.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Look. Maybe Season 1 and 2 didn't leave the best impression on you. That said, I think you should live-watch Arrow Season 3 with me.
Let's hug it out.
To be honest, I thought season 2 was shit. Season 1 was pretty good and the first few episodes of S2 started strong but by the end, the plot was just so dumb.
The show's just so fun to watch though, even when it sucks.
Look. Maybe Season 1 and 2 didn't leave the best impression on you. That said, I think you should live-watch Arrow Season 3 with me.
Let's hug it out.
We're coo, but live watching arrow? Where I can't skip the commercials and have to subject myself to it for even longer periods of time? I'm sorry my friend.
I love dark and gritty and grounded superheroes. I love the DC universe. Maybe it's the CW-ness of it (this would be my first CW show, so I didn't know to expect the tropes that are apparently part of the network), but those parts of arrow are straight up poisonous. Maybe if season 3 just altogether drops the attempt to emotionally connect to the audience through bullshit teenage drama, I'll give it another chance, but for now, I need to take a break.
Want to know whats funny though? The last few episode had me really into it. If they could keep that fast pace, good comic book action, with more genuine emotional moments instead of relying on romance shit, awesome female characters, i would be totally into this show. If I were going off the impressions of the last few episodes, I'd give the show a total thumbs up, a few problems aside.
In fact, that's why I like Lemire's run on Green Arrow. It's like he watched the show, and was like "No, that's not...here, let me show you how to do it..." and basically wrote the show in the same format, but removed all the bullshit, and even put his own spin on things to make the Green Arrow Mythos grow instead of just being batman lite.
They should just adapt that into a show.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Komodo is coming in season 3. I bet its only a matter of time before The Outsiders.
call_kotaku
Member
I can't say I disagree with any of your criticisms, but I've realized I've set my standards particularly low for TV shows, yet I'm still constantly disappointed. I just want atleast 2 charismatic regulars, a charismatic villain, and for the protagonist and antagonist to both actively do stuff, but almost every show on TV is just a bunch of Laurels running the same procedural case every week.
I would put Arrow in the same category as House of Cards, where I wouldn't ever say it was a good show, or that the actors actually act well, but because of how engaging a couple of core actors are and how fast the plot seems to move I'm willing to overlook a ton of stupidity and will watch every week. Manu as actual Deathstroke in Starling in S2 gets a ton of attention, but I feel like his contribution to the show was being so visible in all the Island flashbacks in S1, because without him that whole plot would've been completely insufferable. Same with Barrowman for the later half of S1, because his character actually made Tommy and Oliver and the central plot engaging and meaningful.
I'm not worried for S3 as long as Merlyn is prominent, because he continually delivers, but I am worried about the Flash. Judging from the leaked pilot, Barry and Law and Order guy are the only consistent performers, and if the writing is on the same level as Arrow I don't feel like it would be engaging at all without the characters (and shirtless workouts) to compensate.
I enjoyed S1 and S2 a lot. Sure there were problems and few very underdeveloped [annoying] characters, but for CW production this can only be called a masterpiece.
I am really fortunate to not have watched a CW show before this then. I honestly can't imagine how bad it can get if this is supposed to be a masterpiece.
Discotheque
Banned
with roy getting his own suit and rising in importance, and slade off the past arc this might potentially be the worst season of arrow tbh. but i could be proven wrong too.
you're right about the series length. a lot of the dudes in here love that 25 episode season shiet but i feel like on a rewatch it's going to feel tedious. 12-15 is the perfect number for all shows imo. everything else and you can literally point out the filler every episode. thea and roy always giving us that pointless drama.
you're right about the series length. a lot of the dudes in here love that 25 episode season shiet but i feel like on a rewatch it's going to feel tedious. 12-15 is the perfect number for all shows imo. everything else and you can literally point out the filler every episode. thea and roy always giving us that pointless drama.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Run before its too late.
Discotheque
Banned
he writes the relationship scenes in arrow. so he gonna be mad when reads that post.
Like, all of them? Yeesh. I feel like I just made an enemy for life.
Wiktor
Member
Meh...12 is nice for some cable drama, but nowhere near enough for a superhero show. And I can't even imagine how crazy ArrowGAF would get if every year the show would last only 3 months. Scary.
Did someone slip this guy mirakuru?
Wiktor
Member
I hope they will. Mostly because while I enjoyed Lemire's run issue to issue, as a whole I think it's extremely underwhelming. it was simply cut way to short. He was introducing incredible ideas left and right and then never developing them properly. If his run lasted 40-50 issues I think it could have ended up as one of the greatest runs in superhero comics history. As it ended it's merely a great tease that never truly materialized it's potential.
That's why I hope Arrow will take those ideas and give them run to grow. With Katana and Komodo coming in S3 I think it's pretty obvious they're setting up Outsiders for S4
Look at it as Battlestar Galactica on SyFy. Sure, SyFy makes unholy amount of trash, but they know from time to time to create good stuff that has some amount of flaws in it that are often there because of the "general aim of the network's programming".
If Arrow was on "big 4" or on cable channels [Starz, AMC, HBO, Showtime], there is no way in hell that Thea, Roy and Laurel will be as they are on CW. Because of that, I ignore and forgive some jankiness on CW/SyFy, and just go with the flow.
However, I still think that Arrow is a great show, no matter who is making it.
Yeah, I'm finding this to be an issue with many comics. If your not Snyder or Morrison or some other DC Golden Boy, no one seems to get the time they need.
Gail Simone had to give a really unsatisfying ending to an arch enemy she has been building up for years, I feel Azzarello could have gone on building the mythology for a lot longer, and, like you said, Lemire managed to complete his arc where he introduced Emiko as a cool side kick, and then the new writer just wrote her off as saying "oh, she's off training with shado somewhere. Now lets enjoy the adventures of Green Arrow and Diggle as the African Hulk." And if you want to read a fantastic run cut short, look at Rucka's Wonder Woman. He managed to get the ball rolling on some of the coolest plots Wonder Woman can have, and the best of them are never going to see completion.
TacticalFox88
Banned
And once again reading a Veelk essay depresses the hell out of me...
:/
:/
Why?
I don't want to come across as a 'if you don't like the show, don't watch it' guy because I was that guy during Lost S2, and had a great time trashing it online. But I loved Lost S1, I wasn't in a 'meh, S1 wasn't great maybe S2 will be better' mindset. That logic never works because Arrow amped up everything from S1, it didn't suddenly become a brand new show. Same flashbacks, same dilemnas, slightly different character configurations.
It's a well-written piece, but if you've watched this show for two seasons and are still watching it in S3 then you KNOW all the flaws. And shrug them off. Because even with all the flaws taken into account, at least it isn't The Avemgers.
And that's something we should all be thankful for.
Also, Veelk - please watch Supernatural. If you think Arrow has problems, watch the story of two brothers and how every single women they ever meet either dies horribly, or is left because if she stayed she'd die horribly. For ten years.
Wozzly is Stephen Amell, here he can set loose his libido
TacticalFox88
Banned
Am I the only one who genuinely wonders if krypton exists in the Arrowverse?
Flash pilot spoilers:
We know that at some point in the future, Superman does exist in the Arrowverse, as does Batman.
Great post. I agree with a lot what you said.
I love the show, but whenever I stop turning off my brain and think about it for more than two seconds I'm always stunned with just how stupid and badly written it is.
Jorok Goldblade
Member
The CW (and its prior incarnation, the WB) are basically where all of the tropes that we now associate with YA were groomed.
TacticalFox88
Banned
I wonder if it's even possible to have a superhero flick with the same level of quality writing as the Sopranos.
Wiktor
Member
Dark Knight was close and I doubt we'll see anything superhero related reaching this level anytimes soon, let alone surpassing it.
It's not a bad thing though..superheroes are mean for dynamic entertainment. Trying to make anything more out of them misses the point.
……forgetit
Member
I guess I can see the point, I'm just salty because I like The Atom and him being relagated to a business man pisses me off a bit. I mean the Solomon Grundy thing from last season was annoying enough. If he doesn't shrink then the character is flat out wasted in my opinion.
Totally disagree. Superheroes can be anything they want, and if a writer has the ambitions and talent to turn them either into a character study or social commentary or whatever, there's no reason they shouldn't.
That said, Superheroes have an inherently harder time doing this. The Sopranos are set in the real world, and that allows them a suspension of disbelief that is not afforded to superheroes, particularly (ironically) realistic ones.
While I'm not as much of a comics connoisseur as I'd like to be, I would say that the greatest work in superheroes I've seen is the comic Watchmen. I haven't seen enough of Soprano's to articulate how similar they are in quality, but it works on so many levels, with such depth to it's characters, that it easily can be considered a classic. If we got anything from superhero comics on this level, that'd be great.
Razgriz-Specter
Member
LOL, oh man.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Arrow should be approached like a funnybook in TV form. It has ups and downs and a degree of cheesiness mixed with some drama. If you enjoy comic books, you can easily enjoy Arrow. If you are not that much into that kind of media or just expect a Nolan-like approach to the character, you'll only end disappointed.
The beauty of Arrow is that it knows what kind of show is and instead of trying to appease everybody, keeps going at it. It embraces its nature and doesn't take itself any more seriously than it needs. This is excellent if you already like the formula, but also not so great if you'd like to see it improved in some regards.
About Arrow's treatment of women, I think you are half right. I'm a bit bored of the whole damsel in distress subplots, but at least the show also features a bunch of powerful female characters who can stand by themselves and kick plenty of ass.
Still, I'd like to bouch for Clevinger and recommend The 100. That show is doing some pretty damn interesting things with young female protagonists. Groundpounding breaking, even.
This part, however...
... is very, very wrong. Girls catching heavy feelings after sex is the most common thing in the world. It may even be the only plausible thing in Arrow.
Edit:
You may need an adult for what lays ahead of this path.
The beauty of Arrow is that it knows what kind of show is and instead of trying to appease everybody, keeps going at it. It embraces its nature and doesn't take itself any more seriously than it needs. This is excellent if you already like the formula, but also not so great if you'd like to see it improved in some regards.
About Arrow's treatment of women, I think you are half right. I'm a bit bored of the whole damsel in distress subplots, but at least the show also features a bunch of powerful female characters who can stand by themselves and kick plenty of ass.
Still, I'd like to bouch for Clevinger and recommend The 100. That show is doing some pretty damn interesting things with young female protagonists. Ground
This part, however...
... is very, very wrong. Girls catching heavy feelings after sex is the most common thing in the world. It may even be the only plausible thing in Arrow.
Edit:
You may need an adult for what lays ahead of this path.
CreeperBlocks
Banned
Yes. It's actually Greg Berlanti & Marc Guggenheim Sharing a GAF account.
Wiktor
Member
And that's why they aren't all that suited for it. It';s like trying to paint a portrait using your mouth instead of fingers. Sure, it can be done....but what's the point besides showing it can be done? All the time you will be fighting against the nature of the genre itself. Heck, the way superhero comic book work make it pretty much impossible to tell a truly ambitious story. Not when you're faced with constantly changing writers and the whole world being stuck in endless limbo.
The few superhero comics that tried for something more ambitious and succeeded were mostly about deconstructing their own genre and most of all, they usually are limited series, which allows them to avoid most of what kills regular superhero comics.
I love comic books, and I agree that the show is at it's best when it focus' on those elements. But for a good chunk of it's run time, it just doesn't or delays those comic book moments pointlessly.
"A bunch" of them would be Sarah and Waller, if were counting main characters exclusively. Everyone else has either been damseled or is a side character that only appears every so often.
No, girls are people and thus come in all types, but my point is that the writers can't seem to write platonic relationships if the characters are in the same age group. You can't generalize to say every girl falls in love at every sexual encounter. But the writers can't seem to not write romances between Ollie and his encounters. In particular, Helena as they wrote her does not come across as the kind of character that should give a shit about Ollie once he stood the way of her revenge. The only casual sexual encounter he's had was with Isabel, but she had the same basic thing happen to her with Queen's Dad.
It's just the lack of variation. If they're going to make Ollie this much of a slut, you'd think that atleast some of the women in Olliver's life would just want casual sex without the strings attached.
Your analogy isn't appropriate, because your asserting the end product would be the same as if it were in a different genre, just harder to create. Genre's aren't merely catergories in which a work is classified, they are elements that, if used correctly, enhance the shows in unique ways that no other genre can replicate. By creating a superhero work on that level, it would need to find new convnetions to more effeciently tell a superhero story to compensate for it's limitations. By this being done in the superhero genre, it will create a unique work that cannot be replicated in other genre's. Which is nothing to say of how that will impact the story telling medium as a whole. To reach the levels of things like the soprano's, the writer would have to think of new story telling conventions that compensate for the limitations of the comic books, and from there, other writers will use those conventions to tell their stories, which create a different atmosphere of superhero stories as we know it. The question will cease to be "Superheroes are good, but can they tell the kind of story that's only possible in shows like Soprano's" and become "These crime shows are good, but can they tell the story that seems to be possible only in Batman's?"
And while I like deconstruction stories in general, and I have no idea how that in any way takes away from what comics are capable of, there are plenty of equally acclaimed reconstruction stories and traditional stories.
Wiktor
Member
What about Moira? Arrow seems to have a good mix of various female characters. Pretty much the only one that's constantly damseled is Laurel (and let's be honest, everything about her sucks) and making every single female charcter be strong independent and ass-kicking would be pretty silly.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
On the first: All? No. Many? Yes. Not necessarily love, but feelings in general that may lead to scorn. Arrow being Arrow, you can replace scorn with attempted mass murder.
On the second: That wouldn't make for a compelling storyline (as trite as Arrow's may be) unless the CW were aiming for the Starz demographics/tone set by Spartacus.
Writers could work around this by making Ollie flirty with a number of girls and cutting to a scene of him/her waking up in the same bed, but then he would be labeled a male pig and a champion of the patriarchy and what not.
I frikken hate Moira. Is she strong though? Eh, debatable, I guess. She was victimized by Merlin the whole way in season 1. Maybe you could say she told him to back the fuck off, but considering that all she really did was tattle on him to the League of Assassin's so they'd solve her problem for her. I'd be more impressed if she had used her own wits or resources to get Merlin or whoever to back off. But I can't think of to many incidents where that happens. Even her campaign as mayor basically relied on Ollie giving him her support, because the city trusts his word for some reason.
Seemingly any scene where she displays what can be considered strength is defined by her going "I am a mother, and will do anything to blah blah blah". So what was she before she had Ollie and Thea?
The thing about good, strong characters is that they aren't entirely defined by any one thing, and even if we agree Moira displays strength in some scenes, the way she attributes it to her being a mother takes away from her being awesome as a person.
One: Define heavy feelings. In my experience, it's more like "Hey, sex was good. So you want to date?" "Nah. " "*Shrug* Your loss. So next friday then?" "You know it."
Two: That's because Arrow has conditioned you to think that romance is the main aspect of these women's lives. You can write a character that's deep and interesting, who also happens to have a shallow love life.
Three: No, that'd just make him a slut, which he is anyway.
Wiktor
Member
And I think those specific elements of the genre by themselves make it almost impossible to pull off ambitious storytelling. What makes superhero genre unique is also what pushes it toward simple entertainment
You know...I get pretty sick of people trying to create impression that the only comics around are superhero comics and that's what you're doing right now. I know it's not intentional, but that's still the message you're sending.
And there's nothing wrong with stories that deconstruct it's genre, but there's only so many times you can do it.
I'm not saying it isn't hard. I fully acknowledge the limitations of the medium. I just don't see why that's any excuse not to do it, and I don't buy that "You can do the same thing with nonsuperhero medium, so whats the point" as an excuse. Doing it in the superhero medium will create a unique work that can't be replicated in another genre.
Well, that's what we're talking about right right now. Superhero comics. If you want to talk about graphic novels as a whole, then that's a different discussion, but the original question was pretaining to the superhero genre. I just say "comics'' because it's a shorter word to write out than "superhero comics" all the time.
And there are critically acclaimed reconstructionist stories and traditional stories. I happen to like deconstructionist more but it's hardly the only thing the medium is capable of.
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