Arrow

Let's take a moment of mourning for the TV plot arcs of yore. Back when shows prioritized the characterizations above the action and, if indeed there was action, it took place precisely in the last 7 minutes of the episode, and was all done with before the close, giving the characters a chance to make light comic banter, close down the storyline, and give the audience a chance to go to the toilet. How many TV shows followed that formula I cannot say, but the number was in the 100s. Now all that has changed. You can now have action many times in the body of a show, it is permitted, even encouraged. And you have action even before the characterizations are fully developed. All this is positive evolution I think. But here the catch. There are no more "closed" story-lines. In the multi-band, multi-channel, multi-device electronic age, where viewers tend to have attention span of a hummingbird, nighttime TV has astonishingly borrowed the Rule Book of daytime soap operas and, lo!, plots never actually resolve, they just become more complex. ARROW is one of the best exponents of the new type of comic-book-derived drama, arguably as good as or even better than SMALLVILLE (which was, thematically, all over the map). Amell is great. He has a whispery kind of delivery which oddly makes what he says that much more interesting. The supporting cast is great. In fact the only thing that prevented me from giving this a "10" are the flashbacks. They are terrible. They are like some silent Hell the viewers must go through to get back to the actual episodes. It is almost as if the lead writer, as a small child, was locked in a closet with a DVD looping KUNG FU, and grew up to believe that you cannot advance 10 minutes of plot in the present, without 2 minutes of flashback to fortify it.

Team arrow is pretty lame. It's like they went from a show for adolescents and adult to a show for kids

I am approaching the end of the second season. Let me just say I had no intentions of ever watching this.I recently finished the 5th season of the Flash and since the Arrow made several appearances on that show, I figured I would give it a go. It is not terrible, but like all shows in this genre, it is overly formulaic. The constant flash-backs are getting tired as well. I do have a problem with the women on the show. The guy that plays Oliver Queen/ The Arrow is fit, god knows his shirt is off enough throughout the series. The women are all models though, and while I am not adverse to looking at scantily clad, gorgeous women, shouldn't someone that is fighting constantly have some muscle???? Maybe I am just crazy.

I used to love this show. When it began, the mere athleticism of Stephen Amell used to give me goosebumps and I would have rated it an 8, even 9. But with the passing of time (I think somewhere around Season 4), the quality of writing started dropping. Actors can do only so much (and they do give their best every time) with this kind of material. Some characters have become sort of hangers on and should be put out of their misery.

I sure hope things pick up in Season 7.

Arrow is the show that started it all for the CW and the Arrowverse and through all the good (The Flash) to bad (Black Lightning) shows that followed, Arrow is still the best of them. Yes, it had a few down seasons but overall the show was terrific! It tells the story of billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) as he returns a changed man after the world presumed him dead when his yacht sank at sea. He becomes the vigilante Green Arrow and tries to clean up the city. He starts off by himself by slowly puts a team together as they fight to put away criminals in Star City. I can't say enough about Stephen Amell and the job he did. He was perfectly cast as Oliver Queen and is the face (along with Grant Gustin as The Flash) of the entire Arrowverse.