Update: Arrow is Still Trash

Since I haven’t done a post in a while, I might as well check back in with comic based television. I know I said I was done with Arrow last season, but after seeing the trailer for the new season, I got curious as to where they were headed. The result is my first real hate-watch since Smallville. I mean….there are just so many bad things taking place, but the small handful of good things keep me interested in how they’re going to maintain them.

First off, I talked about this before but the whole thing with Oliver Queen maybe/maybe not doing murder is just getting silly. The whole point of a superhero is that they stand on a very basic code of morals, whatever that code may be. It’s hard to know if you’re the kind of superhero these people want to stand behind if that code is changing from season to season. If the writers are going to be so deadset on modeling the Green Arrow after Batman, he’s gotta be less indecisive than that.

And this whole Arrow Academy storyline wavers between “trash” and “kinda tolerable fan service.” And the main problem isn’t that the new team is garbage (although the new team IS garbage); it’s that the only reason there’s a new team is because the writers realized they’ve written all of the old team into a corner. Diggle has fallen so far from awesomeness, he had to run off to the Army just to have a sense of identity. A SUPERHERO had to quit superheroing and rejoin the Army just to feel like somebody. That’s a problem. Meanwhile, Ollie’s sister, Thea has quit being Speedy/Red Arrow to join her brother in politics just to have a credible storyline that isn’t focused on either a). her daddy issues or b). her consistently terrible choices in boyfriends. And Felicity is sick of being Oliver’s enabler even though she stuck around to continue serving as Oliver’s enabler. Because make no mistake, one of the primary reasons that the Green Arrow is an asshole is because Felicity spent four seasons telling him that his best, most dickish self is the key to beating the bad guys. Granted, this week’s episode was probably the best one thus far simply because the scene of Team Arrow assembling was epic (not to mention Stephen Amell settling his wrestling beef yet again with Cory “Stardust” Rhodes who played the villain of the week).

The problem with this show digging so hard into the Batman well is that Batman doesn’t work in a weekly CW show. Batman works well in comics and movies because either you’re not reminded constantly of what an irredeemable douche he is.

In any case, the show is probably going to crawl along on this redemption run until the Green Arrow finally throws down with Prometheus because there’s only room for one Impossible White Man in Star City. But for the most part, it feels like the show is trying so hard to gain its viewers trust back, it's just a reminder of how much they've fucked up.