Arrow (Mostly the CW Show)

...Though I guess that if something major happens to Green Arrow in another medium it would go here as well.

So, rather than cluttering up the general thread with recurring Arrow discussions, I figured I'd move this here.

For those who pay no attention to the general thread, the basics:

• Arrow is a show on The CW Network that is new starting in the Fall 2012 television season
• Arrow is a street-level, depowered superhero show about the Green Arrow
• The Green Arrow's pitch is, spoiled rich asshole kid gets stranded on desert island, gets rescued five years later, starts taking down a list of enemies who have done wrong by the city (presumably these are hooks to the social justice themes that Green Arrow was famous for in the seventies)
• Arrow has been picked up for a full season at this point and, if it can sustain, is probably a lock forever at its current numbers

Things I Like About the Latest Episode: We've got the beginnings of a justification for Black Canary (though she'll need some Q-Corp technology for the Canary Cry); Diggle Who I Will Probably End Up Calling Andy Before We're Done is in on the whole scene.

Things About the Latest Episode About Which I Am More Dubious: Wow, but that was a quick exit for Deadshot. I'm guessing there are more people who can take the title? Also, having seen Deadshot, and understanding the necessities of the way the CW has to staff this show (NO OLD PEOPLE EVAR), I hope that they just don't do Deathstroke until they're in a position where they can have a supervillain over the age of 25. I never encountered him before the New 52 relaunch, but I REALLY liked Deathstroke as an older guy.

I've been watching. Like what we have seen so far. My knowledge of the comic at this point is null and void.

I know nothing about the comic either. Which person is supposed to be Black Canary?

I will never get tired of the opening workout sequence.

Laurel, the ex-girlfriend. In the comics, Black Canary is Dinah Lance. They decided to hide that reveal in the pilot by naming her Laurel and then at the very end having best friend guy call her "Laurel Dinah Lance".

I'm liking the show. And I agree, if Deadshot is truly exiting, that was quick. However, he took an arrow in the super tech eye, which could have slowed it, and will result in him returning with a bionic eye later. He doesn't have to be dead.

That also wasn't much of a showing for Dead Shot. Even though it's not Floyd, his ethic is right there in the name. He's a dead shot. The name's not "spree killer" or "random gunfire" or "amateurishly bungled hit", after all. Although those would all have been better names for that guy. Maybe "folds like a house of cards", or "really should have spent less time shooting pillars" shot.

Me and my Arrow
Straighter than narrow
Wherever we go, everyone knows
It's me and my Arrow

Deadshot's one of my favorite DC bad guys. I'm disappointed with the psychotic tattoo artist the featured on Arrow. At the very least they should have had Ollie look back toward where he shot Deadpool and see the body missing. That'd be some straight up comic book shit.

Her name in the comics is Dinah Laurel Lance. In this instance they just decided to focus on the middle name.

Two episodes ago: I'm disappointed in two things. First, that crack about the fishnets leads me to think that Black Canary isn't going to be traipsing about town dressed like a very angry stripper, and that would be unfortunate. Second, I think I was very clear when I demanded that Deathstroke be an old man. And those pajamas were kind of silly. One of these villains needs to be old, though. Deathstroke would have been perfect, but somebody needs to be old.

Last episode: So, Keystone City is fine but Star City is too much of a reach? Well....okay, though it's quite hilarious that they've elected to include the city with possibly the third most inappropriate hero for the format the show wants (zero powers). On the other hand, a lot of the other details the show seems to be going out of its way to include are really appreciated (except Diggle - while I respect the intent, you've now named one of your most significant characters something that makes him sound a little bit like a pokemon). And why is Speedy wearing what sure looks like leather pants and bowling shoes to an upscale private brunch? Granted - that's something that I would wear, but 1) I'm not a beautiful girl; and 2) nobody wants to fuck me anyway, so it's not like I have an image to worry about. And third, let me just ask that you be a little more consistent with your power levels in the future. Ollie should not be the world's badassest ninja when fighting some chick with a sword and a wig and then suddenly display an inexplicable weakness to riot gear just because his current opponent is some two bit bank robber. He should have beaten the shit out of those guys without even breaking a sweat. Oh - and can we get the Merlyn turnaround done sooner rather than later? Even if I didn't know he would be a foil of some kind because comic-Merlyn did that, I'd know he would be a foil based on who he is and what kind of story they're telling, which makes the him and Black Canary story fall kind of flat for me (though Merlyn and Speedy is a little more interesting).

Belatedly...

Green Lantern: worst prankster ever.

I don't dislike this latest episode, but I gotta say - Huntress seems a little short. Also, I don't quite buy that having your fiance shot a bunch is quite the same as being stranded on Ninja Island for five years. And I'm a little unclear as to just how talented Helena is supposed to be at fighting and murder and whatnot in the first place (Harry Dresden said that she wasn't any good with a gun, but when it came to kicking Tamoh's ass she did just fine, and she seemed to be on roughly equivalent footing with Oliver when they fought, though I guess the episode next week is going to have her back at maybe not so great, since he's showing her how to work a bow).

Also, question here - how the shit does this guy's bow work? Because it seems to be made of metal, but I don't remember seeing any pulleys, so it can't be a compound bow, but it seems like it can't be a recurve bow either. Please don't tell me that this show thinks that you shoot a bow the same way you snap a nerd's jockey shorts in the locker room.

Glad Ollie ended up doing hot makeouts with Helena. I would've been annoyed if his hypocrisy kept him from banging out.

Edit: This show almost certainly doesn't give a shit how you shoot a bow.

Almost? It gives no shits whatsoever.

I do echo Seiler here when Huntress holds her own against Oliver in hand-to-hand when even Diggle can't. Dig's Special Forces, where the fuck did she learn how to fight like that? Oh, and Ollie punching through the visor of her helmet and pulling it off her head: hahaha. They even had a glass-breaking sound. Well, whatever. Comics.

Yeah. They pretty much don't care about how bows work. Which is fine, I suppose. I'm not really shocked. I do hope that somebody tells Greg Berlanti at some point that the elasticity in one of those things doesn't come from the string. I'm also going to have to get used to this show having a somewhat common CW problem of some of their young actors looking too young for their parts. For instance, Huntress looks younger than Speedy, which is bizarre and unsettling. I do look forward to the season finale, wherein I assume that Dinah is finally going to knock the hair off of the Triad lady's head and end up using it as part of her Black Canary disguise.

Damn but I'm going to be disappointed when Black Canary doesn't actually show up.

Anyway, I will say that I appreciate the show having its own characters recognize the complete impossibility of Merlyn and Dinah as any sort of long-term thing. If that lives out the season it will have been around too long. They're also doing some solid work making Merlyn less of a sleazy, awful, "I'm fucking your girlfriend" type of person and more of somebody you want to like.

If nothing else, I love Arrow for the fact that the hangout is Big Belly Burger.

Arrow's trajectory continues to dive for me. It doesn't help that most of the supporting actors are better than the leads. I felt a little bad for laughing at the, "I don't speak Chinese, so I'll assume you said goodbye," line. But at least it was clever, even if the subtext is reveling in American ignorance.

I had this thought on the next to last episode (I'm behind) but then they don't need her character on the show at all. And they definitely wouldn't have any value in scenes with here and Merlyn.

Surely, I say, Shirley, they would have plotted this far out when the show was greenlit, so there's got to be a purpose. Dinah needs to be driven to vigilantism. My guess is, she needs to go undercover somewhere, to get her into the Canary outfit and wig, and your bog standard close personal tragedy to make her into an amazing hand-to-hand fighter. Death of her father is a good possibility. Or maybe copy the Huntress: she and Merlyn get engaged then Tommy dies (apparently, only to return as a bad guy archer later). Or, better yet, Tommy actually dies and his dad, the fencing Captain Jack is the comic Merlyn analogue - and he wants revenge on the GA for ruining his plans and killing his son, but mostly ruining his plans.

Actually, I think Speedy/Thea looks too old for her part. It also doesn't help that she reminds me too much of Kristin Kreuk. Huntress looked just about right from a comics standpoint (remember, the show is doing origin stories for everyone, not just Green Arrow) and damn it all if they didn't get her costume perfect. Basically just a less colorful version of the one she wears in the comics. Can't forget the mini crossbow, either. I also really liked the scene when they were designing her costume, and we got the "purple, definitely purple" line.

If we see Black Canary or Bad Merlyn this season, I'll be shocked. They're probably going to spend almost all their time developing the underworld plot and introducing GA's token villains/comrades.

Oh, one last thing: the first red shirt Triad guy that ran up the stairs and got owned by Ollie was hilarious. ARROW TO THE FACE

Well, Willa Holland is 21 and looks it. It was really just a weird casting move, but you'll see that happen with shows on The CW. They prefer to cast fuckable whenever they possibly can, and if a show has to make a choice between a character looking like she's fifteen as she probably should and making a character look like it'd be cool to deliver an economy sized package of my genitals, they're not going to go for story consistency. That's why "Beast" in Beauty and the Beast could order sex at a McDonalds and get it, and it's why Boone from Lost, of all people, is occasionally balls deep in high school students on The Vampire Diaries. Molly Quinn would have straight not been on Castle at the beginning if it were a CW show (though she could get in now because she is both hot and legal). I think my biggest problem for Helena is probably with Jessica de Guow herself. Specifically, her face, and it's weird to say it's a problem, but that woman is preternaturally smooth, which works on television for me just like it does in comics and makes her look really, really young, particularly when parked opposite of scruffy Stephen Amell. I liked her much better in her costume (not the motorcycle suit, where she looked very strange in a way that I can't quite put my finger on when the helmet came off), where I was a little distracted from looking just directly at her face by all of the other action the whole getup had going on.

Looks like we have ourselves a Merlyn, folks.

Throughout the episode Quacks and I were going back and forth on whether it'd be Captain Jack or if it'd be Deathstroke but when he actually spoke, which we've yet to see Deathstroke do long enough that if/when he speaks I imagine it'll be a bigger deal, we figured it must've been Merlyn Sr.

So does this mean we're going to see Ollie kill him at the end of the season, thus leading to a sort of Harry Osborne situation?

(Possibly in the same episode where we see the flashback where Ollie defeats/kills Deathstroke? After all, we did see the broken mask in the first episode. I hope Deathstroke lives, though. I didn't like the show's version of Deadshot, but having Ollie killing off his rogues' gallery won't help the writers.)

Ha! Nice fake-out, show. Tommy isn't Bad Merlyn (well, maybe not yet, as Bahi's post suggests) , it's Daddy Merlyn! Liked the costume, and for fuck's sake, learn from the dude and wear a fucking mask. Fit pretty well with the comics in the public display of 'who's the better archer' theme, and seeing Deathstroke again was cool. I'll echo Bahi's sentiment in that this archer vs. archer shit can't last forever, especially since we're going to have Canary on the scene at some point. Arrow getting arrowed 3 times (I used to be an archer like you, until I took... nah fuck it) played out well, and the parts of Merlyn dodging GA's arrows were great. The mask-off was a bit cheesy for the amount of death in this episode, but I can roll with that. Thea is still Thea. Laurel is boring. Ollie needs to stop walking around like he has to take a massive shit, and there needs to be more Dig, but damn did I love the episode. So far, the show has done a really good job of working with the comics' material and doing its own thing. But yeah, moar Deathstroke!

edit: The board-room meeting where Ollie says something to the effect of "we can't just keep calling him Hood or The Hooded Guy, he needs a name!" ...to the reply of random guy saying "How about... Green Arrow!" The approving look on Ollie's face was perfect. Of course, it's never mentioned again in the episode, but at least they threw that bait out there for us.

Okay, show. I'm going to teach you a little exercise so that I don't have to yell at the screen like this no more. When you're forming a sentence that's going to involve a person talking about himself and another individual, instead of just diving in, try making the sentence using each object in the singular. That way, you won't have characters I'm supposed to respect talking about how uncomfortable it must be for Oliver to see Merlyn and I together. I mean, I don't even do this shit for a living and I know that trick.

And Deathstroke needs a makeover. That costume looks like pajamas. I am not intimidated. Which is weird because Deadshot seemed pretty okay to me for the five minutes or so that he actually existed, and Huntress was just about exactly right.

Not that it was a bad episode. We're doing a decent job of introducing believable supervillains. I wish that the gang would get together a little bit quicker (I suspect that Felicity there is supposed to be the show's version of whoever that lady was that was in one of the few things I remember from Green Arrow #1 back when the New 52 started - basically, she's Oracle), and I'd like to see Digglemon actually kick somebody in the ass, but we'll get there.

I've missed the latest but are you hinting that I called it, mostly?

Yes. I was actually referring to Bahi's post about it becoming a Harry Osborne situation where daddy Merlyn dies and Tommy takes up the mantle, er, bow. But yeah, you had it basically pegged before he did.

edit: oh yeah, it didn't bother me so much because well, it's not supposed to be reality, but there's no freaking way anyone in the world could fire 3 arrows dead center chest that fast with a compound bow (Merlyn killing Adam Hunt), not to mention the arrow-off between the two archers near the end. At least GA's a bit more believable in that respect; his bow is not compound and doesn't look like it needs a whole lot of torque to fire off an arrow.

Did you see this thread? (I'm not disagreeing, I'm just spreading this acher awesomenss).

This show desperately needs advice from someone who's actually shot a bow at least once in their life.

Not buying Felicity as Oracle. She's more tech support than anything. She's closer to Smallville's version of Chloe as Watchtower.

Not real Oracle. Like, his personal version. Quarterback on the radio with him and tech person. Because I super cannot remember the name of the lady and that book was long since inflicted upon my nephews.

That's kinda what I meant. She's basically Clark/The Blur's Watchtower.

Is this supposed to be DC Seattle? Because it's never not raining at dude's hideout.

I will, however, praise this show on its selection of villains. It's good that they're not feeling compelled to stick entirely to Green Arrow's rogues gallery (Firefly is a Batman villain).

But possibly my most favorite bit would be the voice transformer. Q-Corp has sonic technology. Now we're only a wig and some fishnets away.

So I'm about seven episodes in and I"m really liking this show. The guy playing Oliver carries it a long way with his charisma. Is it just me, or does he remind anyone else of Tom Brady?

I really do like the actor that plays Ollie, but you'll start to notice in later episodes that he sort of talks and walks like a Terminator when he's not all Arrow'd up. Except it's more like he's just really constipated and is annoyed that he can't shit.

Seeing GA use the voice device was a nice touch, because we'd never seen him use it before. When he runs down to Arrow-up against Firefly, he talks in his normal voice. I'm guessing he felt he didn't have time to grab the device? I mean, the whole place was burning and getting all explodey, so I can understand that. I also liked Ollie's smile when he saw the reporter call him a hero, and Thea asking him why he's smiling. It was a pretty damn good episode all-around, and Dig was awesome.

"Your biceps look like bowling balls." I lol'd.

Hey show - I would really hope that a military grade cryptographic protocol would respect letter casing. What you've got right there in that switch block is a formula for an English-to-e.e. cummings translator. I guess it's designed to work on telegraph messages or something.

More Felicity though. Felicity is actually fun to be around. No dead sisters or evil parents or whatever.

I hate shows that are like "Your father is a jerk but he's still your father."

Fuck that. He's an asshole. Write that guy off.

Felicity should just say to whatshisface next time "Do you think I'm stupid, Arrow?"

Hasn't several months gone by? I like Felicity and all, but I'm wondering if the writers will ever use her involvement with Walter to get her jump-started into the rest of the stories. In fact, I want them to. She can go, hey, I was looking at this list thing for Walter before he disappeared? Suspicious no? and then Ollie can go, "Hey, I know all about a list". and then they can be BFFs with Diggle.

And the rest of us gets more Felicity.

There's definitely a point where Felicity's credibility as a smart person goes out the window if she doesn't peg Ollie for who he is.

Also, show, I appreciate you bringing in canon villains, but stop killing them off! I guess this version of Firefly had nowhere else to go, but man, Deadshot, man. I hated your take on him, but still, Deadshot!

Deadshot's coming back dude, with a real fake eye this time.

Also, Seth Gabel as Count Vertigo! I had a feeling they were setting us up for that with this latest ep.