February continues to be the month of 2 for ones on my site.
Starting with Kill Bill, and now two seasons of TV, Arrow Season 2 and The
Flash.
Now you may ask why I would combine these two shows, and the
answer is pretty simple.
These two shows are the beginning of a really cool thing
that DC has started on the CW. I have said a lot of bad things about the CW and
I still don’t think it’s the right network for DC to really make a dent in the
superhero world, however, I do have to respect what DC has created with their
shows on the CW and it started with these two seasons.
These two seasons have created a world where Oliver Queen
and Barry Allen can show up on each other’s shows more than Thor can show up in
an Iron Man movie, or anybody from the movies can show up in Agents of SHIELD.
When they announced that The Flash was coming to the CW, I
questioned whether or not this world was going to be connected to the DC
cinematic universe being started by Batman v Superman. Since then, I have
figured out that these world are totally different and they have casted a new
Flash to be the Flash of the movie universe and Grant Gustin would be the Flash
of the TV universe.
At first I thought this wasn’t a great choice, but now I
think its one of the best choices that DC could have ever made and I will
explain in the review.
So how this is going to work is I will do a brief overview
of both seasons, tell you what I liked and disliked about both, and then I’m
going to talk about the world building they are doing between these shows and
others like it, and then I’ll talk about some theories and implications that
could happen because of what these shows started.
I will actually do these posts in a series of parts. Stay tuned each one will come up soon enough.
Even though I watched The Flash first, I will start
chronologically and that starts with Arrow Season 2.
Arrow Season 2
Now, I was not a big fan of Arrow Season 1. You can go back
and see why, but something that I don’t think I mentioned enough was the fact
that it didn’t feel like a superhero show, it instead felt like a CW soap opera
that just so happened to focus on a vigilante who shoots arrows.
Season 2 did a lot of the same thing.
Season 2 starts a little bit after the events of Season 1
and The Glades of Starling City have been decimated by the actions of Malcolm
Merlyn in the first season. Oliver Queen (played once again by Stephen Amell)
and the hooded vigilante have disappeared (coincidence?) and there have been a
number of copy cat vigilantes in his wake.
Moira Queen is in prison for her involvement in the
undertaking of the Glades from the first season. A new alderman named Sebastian
Blood has risen to popularity in the high crime and low infrastructure of the
Glades since the undertaking.
Probably the only person doing well is Thea Queen who has
taken over Oliver’s club and has a good relationship with her boyfriend Roy.
Laurel Lance is still grieving the loss of Tommy from the
first season and her father is now a patrol officer after losing his detective
badge from events of the first season I had forgotten at this point.
Obviously Oliver comes back from his disappearance and he
finds his family’s business at risk of being taken over by a new sexy business
woman.
Now that I’ve caught you up with what has happened since the
first season, its pretty obvious what happens.
Oliver returns as the vigilante but he has decided to honor
the memory of Tommy and not kill the criminals he goes after. He is once again
joined by Felicity Smoak and Diggle.
Throughout the season there are flashbacks to Oliver’s time
on the island and his journey with Slade Wilson and the others he met on the
island in the first season.
The first thing to say about this season is that it is a
drastic improvement.
One of the biggest problems of the first season was I felt
like there were a lot of filler episodes and a lot of them were populated by
dumb soap opera bullshit that I was not interested in. I didn’t care that Thea
was on drugs and all the drama between Moira and her new husband, I wanted to
see how it connected to the larger story.
Season 2 is a lot more streamlined.
It however is not totally immune to the CW stink that still
permeates in this show pretty badly. The show still feels like a CW show that
just happens to center around a guy who shoots arrows… but it does do a little
bit better of a job, and a lot of that comes with the comic book feeling this
show has over its CW drama feel. They bring in superhumans in this season. They
some out of the ordinary elements and it begins to feel a little bit more like
a comic book show as opposed to a CW show.
The characters once again are navigated by whatever is
profitable for CW audiences and the performances follow in suite, that being if
the actor is attractive, there is a strange belief that because of that they
can act too. However, there were a couple twists and turns that despite not
being surprised by them, I did end up enjoying their pay out.
Instead of the flashbacks hurting the continuity created by
the earlier season which I’ve seen a lot in Once Upon a Time, Arrow has created
a good amount of time to play around with and while they’ve breach on
breaking that continuity, they have done
a decent job at using flashbacks and introducing new characters because of it.
The heroes of this show are pretty good and they have been
really forming into a good team. Stephen Amell still hasn’t impressed me as an
actor but he continues to be a serviceable hero for this show. Other characters
like Felicity, continue to annoy me because they only got the job because they
were attractive, however some have begun to grow on me, like Felicity. One
thing I will say about this season is that Oliver and his loved ones are always
the subject of attack. It always seems like Laurel is being held hostage, or is
in danger in this season and it gets a tad ridiculous and over the top.
Speaking of which, Laurel was actually kind of an
interesting character in this. The show takes her to a pretty dark place, and
while she’s not that great of an actress and is probably only there because of
her looks, she does a decent job at it.
The romantic drama between Oliver and his girlfriends
continue and they really bring out the dumb in people, however its not the
worst I’ve seen. Can be dumb still, but not horrible.
Before I move onto the villains, I do want to talk about a
character that they brought back that at first I was really skeptical about but
ended up really liking and that is Sarah.
An essential part about Oliver’s redemption and journey was
the fact that he cheated on Laurel with Sarah and Sarah paid with her life on
the Queens Gambit. It was such a huge blow for the Lance family that it really
defined the struggle and their eventual forgiveness of Oliver as they see he’s
a changed person.
Then suddenly, Sarah turns up totally alive.
Now I actually figured this out not by watching the 2nd
season of Arrow, but by watching the first episode of Legend of Tomorrow (we’ll
get to that later). I originally saw this as kind of a cheap ploy to add a
character. I’m sure she existed in the comics but I thought it would have been
better to keep her dead.
And to a certain extent, I still do think that. I think that
having Sarah die because of Oliver’s choices was great choice and adds to the
number of reasons why the Lance’s hate him and eventually get over that hatred.
But Sarah proves herself to be a really great character by
the end of the 2nd season. There’s so much in her backstory that I’m
sure they will jump into in the third season, but her involvement makes things
interesting. I still don’t think it was great to have her come back, but the
way they use her after they poorly explain why she’s alive is done very well
that I’m able to forgive it for the most part.
But I do want to talk about the villains of this season
because it takes a good long while for the main villain of this show to
eventually show up. This was the case for the first season and I think the show
suffered because of this but the second season made things pretty interesting
from the get go
And unlike the first season, everything seems to eventually
connect and be apart of a larger story. And that story all centers around the
plot of Slade Wilson.
Now I go back and forth my thoughts on Slade Wilson because
on one hand, he looks like a badass. He looks like the Slade Wilson you see in
pictures and different mediums he has been in. But on the other hand, he’s not
the greatest actor in the world. I can’t say I’ve seen Manu Bennett in a lot of
things and I understand why. Unfortunately he really falls into the categories
of a lot of CW villains in that they look intimidating and there’s a certain
level of attractiveness to them, but they’re horrible actors and that is the
case with Slade Wilson.
I think at the end of the day, Deathstroke is more of an
intimidating figure than he is a great villain. I thought the scheme he hatches
throughout the show is really well done and it really is the crux of why the
second season is done very well. Deathstroke is just an example of when good
writing overrides a performance. It doesn’t matter how bad of an actor the guy
is, as long as his actions affect the people who range from mediocre to good in
this show, I actually don’t mind it at all. I’ve been reading things recently
that have said that Deathstroke is involved with other DC projects and probably
won’t be returning to Arrow for quite a while and that is a shame. But if they
put the good writing into a villain that actually has a quality actor behind
it, I think the future of Arrow is in good hands (however I have heard that the
3rd season is not that good so I’m not holding my breath.
The big take away from Arrow Season 2 is that this season is
done well. The writing got a lot better and it makes up for the crummy acting
and the cheap budget of a CW show. But I still go back to the fact that haunts
this show for me in that it still has that CW stink about it.
There’s still the family drama, there’s still the characters
that are not relatable due to their social standing and their rich white people
problems. There’s still the dumb situations that nobody in their right mind
would get into, like Sarah bringing Oliver to a family dinner trying to keep
the secret that they are sleeping together, because we all know that that’s
going to get out. These dumb situations just lower the bar for me and again, it
doesn’t matter how many cool pull ups or arrows Oliver Queen fires, there’s
still a CW stink about this show and it hinders me from taking it seriously.
To be continued... (The Flash)
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