Haters gonna hate; I love Arrow on the CW. You scoff at first: you know the CW for shows like The Vampire Diaries; The Carrie Diaries; other such diaries of boring hot people. Perhaps you remember Arrow’s marketing campaign predicated primarily on Stephen Amell’s shirtlessness. But look deeper. Because beneath those toned pectoral muscles beats a heart of well-told, genuine, high-stakes superhero goodness. Todd’s recommendation earned the show enough of my trust to carry me through the soapier half of the first season, and my trust has not gone un-rewarded. The show evolved, from a trashy-TV brain-drain to get me through HBO’s dry season, into a full-blown passion of mine. The more boring and clichéd attempts at family drama fell by the wayside as the show-runners learned their leads’ strengths (and gently canned a few duds), and soon Arrow hit its stride, combining the juicy stakes of the soap opera with a tightly-structured take on the superhero story, amounting to a “Supe Opera” (my phrase, you may use) that matched many cinematic entries of the post-2000 hero movie renaissance for action and plot but now had the time to develop their ensemble cast at a pace that feels more like real life, achieving with the initially stiff Stephen Amell a hero’s journey ten times more nuanced than that of many of his blockbuster counterparts. To be sure, a handful of episodes out of each season’s 23 accomplish little more than filler-ing in the time slot, and not every weekly performer is a shoe-in for the Emmy. But your lead cast (several of them likely hired respective of their ability to perform their own stunts) is almost all strong with some true stand-outs (Felicity, Slade); the plot dawdles occasionally but usually moves forward without trepidation; the action is always of the highest-quality; and short of Avatar: The Last Airbender I can’t think of a show that consistently turns in so thrilling a season finale. Not to mention its commitment to female and POC characters (passes among its lead players with a ComicsAlliance Harvey/Renee ratio of 1:2), its exciting flashback structure, and its love for the time-honored delight of watching a guy shoot arrows into baddies, this show is my guilty pleasure no more. Fresh off of the first two seasons (currently available on Netflix) I am now a full-on devotee, and to anyone who considers themselves a fan of the superhero genre, I would strongly suggest that this series deserves your immediate attention. There, I said it.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 20:28:18 +0000
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