Okay, so Arrow has some good action scenes, including the now-obligatory use of parkour for violence. It's when you actually think about the logic of the action that everything tail-spins. For instance, the parkour scene ends up with Ollie catching up to his assailant and killing him in cold blood to keep his secret identity intact. I know Green Arrow can get pretty vigilante-y, but maybe start at child molesters and work your way up to "Wrong place, wrong time, buddy." And the climactic fight scene has Green Arrow (sorry, 'the Arrow', I guess) going up against a male model-y security chief, ending with him throwing an arrow into the bastard's chest. Only we're never given any indication that Male Model is a bad dude. He works for a bad guy, but does that merit an arrow to the heart? Maybe the producers should've thought about that before they made their adaptation about a guy whose principle power is sticking arrows into people.
Now the bad. It just continues this weird cottage industry of Green Arrow showing up on TV literally because he's an off-brand Batman when DC has like twenty off-brand Batmans. Seriously, this show would work a lot better if it were about Nightwing. Everybody likes Dick. And whereas Smallville made Ollie one-half of an erstwhile World's Finest, this straight-up wants to be Green Arrow Begins. After five years in vaguely Asian superhero training (apparently Asians still use bows and arrows, because Green AK-47 is a bad name for a superhero), Ollie returns home determined to reclaim 'his city', fighting the corrupt, yadda yadda. Basically, the first act of Batman Begins, since Hollywood doesn't do third acts anymore, with Ollie fighting a never-ending series of Carmine Falcones. He has a mentorly Russian maid (who he speaks to in Russian to show how nice he is), a friendly black executive in his father's company who is now married to his mom (those Lisa Ann pornos aren't so hot now, are they Ollie?). There's also a bit of Smallville in there, with an evil parental figure and a best friend destined to turn to evil (he's involved with Ollie's girl, so three guesses as to how that'll roll out). The difference being, who gives a shit about Merlyn? Lex Luthor is an interesting character, but you can't just say "they used to be good friends!" about any old antagonist and expect that to make them a great villain. It's like at the end of Transformers when Optimus 'revealed' that Megatron was his brother. Yeah, you really blew my mind there, Michael Bay.
Let's see, what's new. They turn 'Laurel' Lance into, well, basically Rachel Dawes--she's not even blonde. Only here, she was Ollie's boyfriend, but he was cheating on her with Laurel's sister when their ship sank and sis was killed in the midst of her tryst. That's just gross. Even Nicholas Sparks wouldn't try to sell a romance around "she has to forgive him for that time he slept with her sister and she died." I mean, God, people wonder why we ship Black Canary with Oracle.

And I know the whole idea is that Ollie's changed, but ten minutes after they're reunited, he assumes Laurel wants to get back together with him, so he does a whole "no, I'm a heartless playboy who only wants sex" routine. Which wraps all the way around from "I'm nobly letting myself be seen as a douche" to "I actually am a douche" because you slept with her sister and she died. I'm pretty sure Laurel's going to let the option on your dick expire.
Also, there's a really bizarre tendency to put in fanservice, despite the characters not looking, acting, or being named the same as their comic counterparts. For instance, Ollie has a little sister. Harmless enough. Only he calls her Speedy, despite the fact that the character has no relation to Roy Harper or Mia Dearden. It's like if there were an episode of Smallville where Clark called a farmhand Static Shock. Makes no sense, right?
Oh, and Ollie is given a black bodyguard who he has to ditch when he wants to be a superhero. The second time this happens, Ollie was at a party, passing by a container full of balloons, so I was like "Oh, he's going to do something clever with all those balloons to get clear." But no, the white guy just puts his black employee in a headlock (maybe some unfortunate connotations there). I'm pretty sure this is the point where, in real life, the bodyguard would quit and file a lawsuit against his asshole billionaire boss for physical assault. Besides which, where does this running gag of Ollie cleverly giving his bodyguard the slip have to go if they've already escalated to KO by headlock? I could see that working down the road, when someone's in danger and Ollie has to put on his costume and apply his eyeshadow so he can save the day in the nick of time, but when he's already willing to do it in the first episode just so he can meet an arbitrary deadline he gave a villain? Like, breaking into a bad guy's lair and killing all his men wouldn't intimidate the 'Starling City' underground if he did it twenty minutes past the "You'd better pay up!" deadline? He didn't even say he would be there at eight o'clock, just that the bad guy had to pay by eight o'clock. He could come back a week later and do the superhero thing and still be well within dark avenger of the night parameters. Besides which, I thought Ollie's whole thing was caring about the little guy. If he heard that Batman punched out Lucius Fox so he could go fight the Joker, wouldn't he be going "Fuck you and your pointy ears, Bruce"?
But what really bugs me is this: We have no idea what Green Arrow's motivation is. No kidding. He starts off a selfish playboy, right, on his way with his dad on a yacht to an island for Some Reason. The yacht ship-wrecks, possibly due to enemy action--although that makes the big storm quite a coincidence (either way, in fact). On the life raft, his father confesses Something to him--apparently that he and some other people are being mean to Starling City (not that this seems to be a big secret, with the first target on Ollie's list being a guy facing a class-action lawsuit for stealing houses). Then daddy kills himself and another guy to give Ollie a chance to survive. Ollie lands on the island where Somehow he learns martial-arts and archery and becomes such a badass that if you touch him while he's asleep he will throat-chop you the fuck out, man.
Okay. So why's he want to kill mobsters, though? Is it revenge, because it doesn't seem like the bad guys did anything to sink the boat? It's not out of some social conscience, because why would being ship-wrecked alone on an island make him develop that? Is it just because his dad told him to? That seems like the only reason we have to go on. His dad told him to fuck with these guys, so he's going to do it. Although why he should take the word of his dad about these people being corrupt, when his dad is the one who claims to be corrupt and then kills a man and then commits suicide... search me.
And I would actually buy "Living with nothing taught me to appreciate how much I had, and how little so many others had. I decided if I ever got home, I would fight the people who kept others down." But the voiceover narration is more of a "Let me tell you something that is either blindingly obvious, that has already been revealed, or that's about to be revealed."
Sample line: "She was right. The island had changed me." You don't say.
I'm alright with there being some mystery about a character, but we have to understand their basic goal, that's Drama 101. No one knows what the story is behind the Doctor and the Master, but the show articulates that the Doctor loves exploring and helping people, and that the Master wants to rule the world and kill stuff. That's all we need. With Arrow, it seems like Ollie's motivation is something they expect people to know about from the comics and/or Smallville. But they've changed the character and the context so much that you can't really buy it in the same way. So that just leaves "yeah, he's gonna fight crime now, why not? That's the appropriate reaction to any situation. Mine cave-in? Fight crime as the almighty Mine-Man. Mother kill and eat your pet pig? Fight crime as the overwhelming Pig-Girl. Favorite show got canceled? Fight crime as the underrated Firefly-Boy."
Now the bad. It just continues this weird cottage industry of Green Arrow showing up on TV literally because he's an off-brand Batman when DC has like twenty off-brand Batmans. Seriously, this show would work a lot better if it were about Nightwing. Everybody likes Dick. And whereas Smallville made Ollie one-half of an erstwhile World's Finest, this straight-up wants to be Green Arrow Begins. After five years in vaguely Asian superhero training (apparently Asians still use bows and arrows, because Green AK-47 is a bad name for a superhero), Ollie returns home determined to reclaim 'his city', fighting the corrupt, yadda yadda. Basically, the first act of Batman Begins, since Hollywood doesn't do third acts anymore, with Ollie fighting a never-ending series of Carmine Falcones. He has a mentorly Russian maid (who he speaks to in Russian to show how nice he is), a friendly black executive in his father's company who is now married to his mom (those Lisa Ann pornos aren't so hot now, are they Ollie?). There's also a bit of Smallville in there, with an evil parental figure and a best friend destined to turn to evil (he's involved with Ollie's girl, so three guesses as to how that'll roll out). The difference being, who gives a shit about Merlyn? Lex Luthor is an interesting character, but you can't just say "they used to be good friends!" about any old antagonist and expect that to make them a great villain. It's like at the end of Transformers when Optimus 'revealed' that Megatron was his brother. Yeah, you really blew my mind there, Michael Bay.
Let's see, what's new. They turn 'Laurel' Lance into, well, basically Rachel Dawes--she's not even blonde. Only here, she was Ollie's boyfriend, but he was cheating on her with Laurel's sister when their ship sank and sis was killed in the midst of her tryst. That's just gross. Even Nicholas Sparks wouldn't try to sell a romance around "she has to forgive him for that time he slept with her sister and she died." I mean, God, people wonder why we ship Black Canary with Oracle.

And I know the whole idea is that Ollie's changed, but ten minutes after they're reunited, he assumes Laurel wants to get back together with him, so he does a whole "no, I'm a heartless playboy who only wants sex" routine. Which wraps all the way around from "I'm nobly letting myself be seen as a douche" to "I actually am a douche" because you slept with her sister and she died. I'm pretty sure Laurel's going to let the option on your dick expire.
Also, there's a really bizarre tendency to put in fanservice, despite the characters not looking, acting, or being named the same as their comic counterparts. For instance, Ollie has a little sister. Harmless enough. Only he calls her Speedy, despite the fact that the character has no relation to Roy Harper or Mia Dearden. It's like if there were an episode of Smallville where Clark called a farmhand Static Shock. Makes no sense, right?
Oh, and Ollie is given a black bodyguard who he has to ditch when he wants to be a superhero. The second time this happens, Ollie was at a party, passing by a container full of balloons, so I was like "Oh, he's going to do something clever with all those balloons to get clear." But no, the white guy just puts his black employee in a headlock (maybe some unfortunate connotations there). I'm pretty sure this is the point where, in real life, the bodyguard would quit and file a lawsuit against his asshole billionaire boss for physical assault. Besides which, where does this running gag of Ollie cleverly giving his bodyguard the slip have to go if they've already escalated to KO by headlock? I could see that working down the road, when someone's in danger and Ollie has to put on his costume and apply his eyeshadow so he can save the day in the nick of time, but when he's already willing to do it in the first episode just so he can meet an arbitrary deadline he gave a villain? Like, breaking into a bad guy's lair and killing all his men wouldn't intimidate the 'Starling City' underground if he did it twenty minutes past the "You'd better pay up!" deadline? He didn't even say he would be there at eight o'clock, just that the bad guy had to pay by eight o'clock. He could come back a week later and do the superhero thing and still be well within dark avenger of the night parameters. Besides which, I thought Ollie's whole thing was caring about the little guy. If he heard that Batman punched out Lucius Fox so he could go fight the Joker, wouldn't he be going "Fuck you and your pointy ears, Bruce"?
But what really bugs me is this: We have no idea what Green Arrow's motivation is. No kidding. He starts off a selfish playboy, right, on his way with his dad on a yacht to an island for Some Reason. The yacht ship-wrecks, possibly due to enemy action--although that makes the big storm quite a coincidence (either way, in fact). On the life raft, his father confesses Something to him--apparently that he and some other people are being mean to Starling City (not that this seems to be a big secret, with the first target on Ollie's list being a guy facing a class-action lawsuit for stealing houses). Then daddy kills himself and another guy to give Ollie a chance to survive. Ollie lands on the island where Somehow he learns martial-arts and archery and becomes such a badass that if you touch him while he's asleep he will throat-chop you the fuck out, man.
Okay. So why's he want to kill mobsters, though? Is it revenge, because it doesn't seem like the bad guys did anything to sink the boat? It's not out of some social conscience, because why would being ship-wrecked alone on an island make him develop that? Is it just because his dad told him to? That seems like the only reason we have to go on. His dad told him to fuck with these guys, so he's going to do it. Although why he should take the word of his dad about these people being corrupt, when his dad is the one who claims to be corrupt and then kills a man and then commits suicide... search me.
And I would actually buy "Living with nothing taught me to appreciate how much I had, and how little so many others had. I decided if I ever got home, I would fight the people who kept others down." But the voiceover narration is more of a "Let me tell you something that is either blindingly obvious, that has already been revealed, or that's about to be revealed."
Sample line: "She was right. The island had changed me." You don't say.
I'm alright with there being some mystery about a character, but we have to understand their basic goal, that's Drama 101. No one knows what the story is behind the Doctor and the Master, but the show articulates that the Doctor loves exploring and helping people, and that the Master wants to rule the world and kill stuff. That's all we need. With Arrow, it seems like Ollie's motivation is something they expect people to know about from the comics and/or Smallville. But they've changed the character and the context so much that you can't really buy it in the same way. So that just leaves "yeah, he's gonna fight crime now, why not? That's the appropriate reaction to any situation. Mine cave-in? Fight crime as the almighty Mine-Man. Mother kill and eat your pet pig? Fight crime as the overwhelming Pig-Girl. Favorite show got canceled? Fight crime as the underrated Firefly-Boy."