Thursday, February 12, 2015

Television Review: Arrow Seasons One and Two


As it happens, the first two seasons of "Arrow" are both on Netflix and my biggest recommendation to anyone interested in starting the series is to treat these first two seasons as one long season even though they do total 46 episodes.     I remember staying up late to finish Season One, the earthquake season, only to realize that it ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger and I was then just as eager to begin Season Two.   Luckily, Season Two did not end on such a cliffhanger and I can feel some sense of peace (and rest) until Season Three hits Netflix and then I am hopefully able to keep up with the show in real time on Hulu +.

Okay, quick question for everyone who watches this show from week to week... How did you survive from Season One to Season Two?  I couldn't imagine waiting a single week to see what happened let alone a number of months... Wow, just wow.

Spoilers time.

Season One of "Arrow" centers around the return of Oliver Queen and, well, if you read comic books or at the very least know what they are this is an origins story.   It isn't too much unlike "Green Arrow: Year One", which is kind of cool.   There are a lot of fun characters to meet along the way, in both seasons, and as much as this feels like "Smallville" at times it just has a bit of a darker edge to it.   (Oliver Queen is definitely not the good boy Clark Kent was portrayed to be in "Smallville")

While Season One ended with an earthquake which took us into Season Two, the second season focused more strongly on Slade and his revenge on Oliver Queen.    This is just a layered cast of pretty decent characters and it seems like once I start to get tired of a certain character or feel like they're not needed they get killed off and that's fine by me.

Perhaps my favorite part of this show, which is just my own guilty pleasure, is that every time a new character appears I either have to say "That's so and so" if I recognize the name or google them with the words "DC Universe" to see what comes up and who they might be.    We've already seen Huntress and Black Canary so now I'm just waiting for the inevitable Oracle to complete the Birds of Prey but it's going to be hard without the lives of Batman crossing over somehow.   (I'd be fine with Felicity somehow becoming the replacement Oracle, yes, but you don't have to paralyze the character for that, thanks)

I actually somewhere read the slight spoiler for Season Three that there was an episode about the origins of Felicity and it was supposed to be called "Oracle" but then they changed the name.   It just further fuels the speculation and as we only heard the voice of Harley Quinn in Season Two it makes you wonder whether or not we'll see her come out and actually lead the Suicide Squad, who are actually a fairly big part of this show now.

At the end of Season Two I speculated that the Suicide Squad would somehow assemble to try and take down the Green Arrow only for them to fail and then ultimately, some seasons down the line, have to break Slade out of jail to lead them in this endeavor.   It makes for good sense, with other random DC characters along the way thrown in for good measure, but having Slade locked up in that prison and not dead is like their ace in the hole that they can use should they ever run out of other ideas or generate low ratings.

Whether or not you read comic books "Arrow" is a show based around drama, suspense and action with that small bit of comedy also added for good measure.    It has everything you'd want in a show, including characters that either are great or if they seem annoying they die (Well, most of them have so far, there are still a few I could do without... namely Thea Queen... Ugggghhh...)  I'm hooked and I never had a doubt in my mind that I wouldn't be from the first episode I watched.

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