Arrow

IMDb

Sigh.

Where do I begin with this one?

DC’s Arrow. A story about a spoiled billionaire’s son who spends five years on a hellish island and receives the epiphany to become a vigilante and right his father’s wrongs. He returns home, where led by a notebook left by his late father, he embarks on his mission to rid the city from the corrupt and powerful.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

Any premise can be ruined by a photoshop filter, plastic characters, cliche plotlines and enough melodrama to keep the local grandmas talking for a few decades to come.

I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s well shot, okay acted, maybe it’s the show you’ll love, a dark brooding hero, some decent action, spiffy sidekicks, some romance, too much family drama and unnecessary plotlines... Yeah, let’s just say I didn’t enjoy it.

For me, Arrow is bland, boring, crowded, and features a toad faced protagonist who hardly moves his neck. Pass.

But let’s take a look at the Pilot episode before burying the DVD’s in the backyard. Oh god... Does that mean I need to watch it again? Heaven’s help me…

Also spoilers ahead.

The episode opens with a man running in a forest. Shortly, we see that he’s on an island and trying to get the attention of a nearby boat by lighting a fire in the most convoluted way. With an arrow, from a hill, hitting a pile, on the beach, and sure if he was far but it looked like he purposely ran all the way to the other side to light the bloody fire.

Luckily, the old chinese fishing couple spots his fire and whisks him away.

Meanwhile, Oliver, as the narrator who won’t shut up, tells us all about how he needed to forge himself into the man who can survive the island. All nice and well and dramatic but why couldn’t we see that through the actual action and scenes and all that? The series do have those, so what’s the point of all the narration?

Is it to keep with the spirit of a comic book? Well, it’s annoying. Narration can be useful, but in Arrow, it’s quite unnecessary and exists only to hammer dramatic tension into the viewer.

That said, I do think the series is well shot and well composed. Apart from the plastic filter that makes things look extra glossy and extra fake. Also the dark, gritty feel can get rather tedious, but that lets off as the series progresses so I’ll leave it alone.

But moving on. Next we get the exposition from the doctor about all the scars and fractures Oli had. “The Oliver you lost, may not be the one you found.” Whooo, dramatic...

Then we meet the whole family, and Rosa, the maid, who we never see again after this episode.

And so we get this nice, overlong establishment of everyone we should care about in the series. Sigh.

When is the action coming back? I’m bored.

So we continue meeting people and the next on the list is Lauren, Oliver’s ex girlfriend. Whom no one bothered to tell of Oliver’s return. Even if her sister died on the boat that shipwrecked. No, poor Lauren need to learn it from the news. That’s okay though, I never liked her anyway. And her addiction/alcoholism issue they play in season 2 was a joke. Did I mention Oliver cheated on lauren with her sister?

And we get more dramatic narration, and more flashbacks, and more new characters... Where’s the guy in the green hood shooting arrows at people that I was promised? Come on give me something to chew on other than endless disappointment.

And an awkward family diner follows. Because of course we need to have one in a family drama. Wait, you say this is comic book action series? I thought it was a family soap opera.

And, flashback.

I’m getting a pattern here. Boring character introduction, boring backstory flashback, I get it, you’re taking it slow in an action series, but my god just move on already.

You know, I’m gonna go real speedy here. Oliver meets Laurel, who hates him, but loves him, but hates him, and you get the idea. She’s boring, and he’s boring, and they’re all boring. And they talk. And she’ll date his best friend. Who’ll die. And Oli will swear to never kill again. But I digress.

About 15 minutes in, we get the first action scene where… oh wait, flashbacks to interrupt our scene. Oliver is kidnapped by some schmuck with a taser who interrogates him about his father. And then he kills them all. Yay... Not before the obligatory snappy dialogue exchange though.

And the sound explodes. Did I mention the sound is really badly levelled through the entire series? It’s something I noticed happen in most DC powered TV projects.

So they fight, and even the action scene drags on forever, yet it’s over in a blink and we go back to meeting characters. Laurel’s father that is, who’s also a detective. With a personal vendetta against Oliver, of course.

And it’s all flashbacks, new characters and establishment until the end. And one obligatory party scene. Oliver also takes down a baddie at some point. In case I forgot to mention. It’s all rather dull.

From what I hear, they also introduced magic, or the like, later on. You know, sometimes, even if your universe contains certain elements, it’s best to keep them separate. Because honestly, you can hardly sell to me that oh by the way magic/super powers exist in a series that have been playing it straight so far.

I think my biggest problem with Arrow, other than the over-packed plot, is the drama. It just tries too hard to build dramatic tension to the point we’re repeatedly smacked in the face with it. The series feels more like a spin off of the Bold and the Beautiful rather than a comic book adaptation. And sure, I understand this kind of purple drama is often found in comic books, but I still find it unnecessary in how overblown dialogue and performances can be. Not to mention soundtrack. Sure, it’s pretty, but if you play dramatic music over a boring scene it doesn’t make it any less boring.

That said, we do get some nice performances though the protagonist is kind of wooden. Might be due to the character, not the actor, but still he can be such a non presence it’s startling. And that’s another problem I had, how exaggerated the characters can be at times. Exaggerated in a single trait that is. Usually brooding, or perky, or dramatic.

The series is not so bad as to make me sick to my stomach, but elements often breach the line between decent and trash making it mediocre at best. Might be just tastes, other people might be tickled the right way by the exaggerations. I certainly wasn’t.

Arrow was boring, dragged out, over packed, exaggeratedly dramatic, and I only forced myself to watch it because everyone else is going crazy over it and I wanted to see what the deal was. I only managed to the end of season 2, when I finally said, you know what, you bore me series, you bore me, I’d rather go watch paint dry.

I just don’t like it. I genuinely do not like these series.