Tell me why I shouldn't give up on Arrow

[omega 616]

I'll say "it's the best thing on tv right now", I think GOT is porn with a story, that kills off people just to get new "talent" on screen.

To be honest, a lot of your questions get answered if you just watch the show, it might not answer all of them but they are setting up things to get you interesting and wanting to know what happens next ... so you jump on a forum and want answers? Do what everybody did and watch it!

It might or might not live up to the comics but well, it's not meant to.

I watched a video the other day that explains it pretty well ... films like spiderman, avengers etc are made to make oodles of money, not to cater to the couple of thousand people who buy the comics. The directors don't give a huge shit about canon, they want to make a super hero movie to make money ... the people who are like "yeah, superman is cool but not cool enough to warrant hoarding stacks of comics", it's more of an interest, than an passion.

It's entertaining, has cool fight sequences and awesome costumes, just sit back and enjoy ... don't analyze and nit pick, it's how you ruin things for yourself.

snip

Spoiler

Lets be honest about this. Before Oli left, he was a "playa", he slept with women as a sport ... so he went out with one sister, did the dirty and went after the other sister, then he thought Sarah had died and at the same time grew close to shado.

Granted he is still going after both sisters as new and improved Oli but I am chalking that up to being a "playa" biting him in the ass 'cos now he has feelings for both sisters

 

[faefrost]

Arrow learned the same thing that has so far plagued Agents of SHIELD much earlier. That the fans really do want to watch a show about their beloved comic characters, and not simply constant wink and nod Easter eggs with no payoff. From about halfway into season one they start to dive full bore into the DC Universe and make no appologies. The addition of Felicity Smoke to the main regular cast does wonders as well. It almost becomes a parade of New Teen Titans characters and story arcs brought to live action. The amount of named recognizable villains is fantastic. It basically becomes the Batman show we always wanted, just without Batman. By season 2 they swear off killing and the show starts taking on a much more classic comics tone. Deathstroke in all his glory, Suicide Squad, absolutely dead on perfect Black Canary, Brother Blood, to name just a few elements. The first Huntress episode marks were things start to change from dark emo CW show to full blown well done DC Universe show.

 

[Ieyke]

It's awesome. Keep watching.
There's not really much else you need to know.

 

[happyninja42]

Arrow is annoying as it has some great parts like making their female characters really annoying

OMG yes. I swear, listening to Oliver's sister talk while she grits her teeth almost makes me want to smash my tv. It's SO ANNOYING! Seriously, whenever she speaks, she is doing it in this little growly, grumbly way, while her teeth are clenched, and she's speaking out of the side of her mouth. And it doesn't...stop!!

 

[Lazy Kitty]

From those questions, I can only suggest that you should keep watching.
Questions get answered. I'm not going to, because that would be spoilers.
I'm now waiting for season 3 to get more answers to more questions.

 

[Linksmash]

Just to point something out, when questioned by Ollie as to what he wants the dark archer responds with
' i want what every Archer wants......TO SEE WHO IS BETTER!'
One of the worse lines of dialogue in recent memory.

"If I learned anything as a successful businessman, it's redundancy."

I think that just about evens it out.

I must admit to really not liking John Barrowman, one of the most overexposed actors(on british tv, anyways) so i groaned when i saw who he was playing. The line about what every archer wants puts me in the mind of the following quote from the greatest wordsmith of our age:
Arrows are deceitful. When a cowboy fires a gun, there?s a bang, it?s a warning. Gives you a chance to duck. When a cowboy has an arrow fired at him, he hears nothing. If he?s lucky, it sticks in his hat, and he just looks daft. But more often that not, it sticks in his back, and he dies slumping forward on the horse that rides off with him, just on top of him, going like that [Impersonates a dead cowboy on top of a horse]
Dave: Yeah, OK. Bye, Alan. See you later.
Alan: And, also, archers. I hate archers, ?The Archers? and Jeffrey Archer. You?re all deceitful cowards. I just realized then, that only applies to archers and Jeffrey Archer. But not ?The Archers?, who? to be fair, are a mixed bag. Goodbye.

 

[AngloDoom]

If you really enjoy watching Lidl's own-brand Batman doing chin-ups half-dressed, then I wouldn't quit just yet.

(This is based entirely off of about seven/eight episodes of Season 1. Perhaps it gets better but - fuck me - Heroes got killed off for less than this.)

 

[Sean Renaud]

I've really enjoyed Arrow, it has some bad episodes but every show has a few duds. The majority of the questions above read like a "Wow, this show has given me lots of questions to think about! I don't want to find out what the answers are convince me that these very interesting things that I'm questioning will have satisfactory answers!"

The police dropped the charges on Ollie because they didn't have any evidence other than one bit of video that he explained poorly. That combined with the Detective having a Hate On for Ollie and the Archer making a public appearance across town threw them off. Also Ollie is still thought of as a stupid playboy. If they were really interested in catching the Arrow they'd figure it out sooner than later but Starling City's primary difference from Gotham seems to be the police aren't all that corrupt or even overwhelmingly incompetent. It's never outright stated but I think it's fairly obvious that the cops are pretending to chase him while most of them are happy someone is cleaning up the shit hole. By comparison (until Gordon takes over) Gotham is chasing Batman as much on the behest of the Mafia Families who actually run the city as they are because he's a vigilante.

I'm not telling anybody to watch the show. I would never tell anybody to skip the first few episodes so much as I'd tell them to hold their breath and trudge through it. Nearly ever "good" show spends at least five episodes to an entire season kinda crappy because nobody really enjoys spending an hour learning who the cast is, why they do the things they do, so on and so forth but it's important. You need to understand the relationships so they can build on them and episode 6 wouldn't make sense without the first five.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I watched both seasons so I can say this: stick through it to the end because it's worth it.

 

[Plinglebob]

Arrow is now my go to example of how to use the criticism and desires of your fanbase to improve a show. As everyone else here has said the 1st half of season one is dire (I originally stopped watching at the mid season break), but once you get to the second half of season 1 it really picks up with the final episode making a surprisingly ballsy move. The production team then hit the ground running in season 2 after obviously making notes of people complaints of what worked and what didn't and retuning things accordingly (except Thea Queen. She never stops being a pain in the arse). The 2nd season also has a much more interesting arc with a better connection between the story and the flashbacks, with the season 2 finale being all sorts of cheesy awesomeness. While I would never try to say its the best thing ever, Arrow is by far my favorite show running at the moment

Finally, Arrow is the first show in a long time to really surprise me.

Spoiler

In the penultimate episode, Thea shooting Malcolm Merlyn was, in my opinion, a brilliant play on expectations by using the standard tropes (monologue into the cliffhanger, music swell) and then suddenly interrupting it. So glad I live alone as it would have been hard to explain my shouting of "Fuck me" at the TV

(This is based entirely off of about seven/eight episodes of Season 1. Perhaps it gets better but - fuck me - Heroes got killed off for less than this.)

Heroes managed to suck sizable donkey dick for 3 seasons (partly through bad use of listening to the fanbase) on a major network before it was finally killed off. Arrow is on a network where Smallville lasted for 10 seasons (with at least 3 of them being absolute tripe) and where Supernatural has been bouncing along with a much lower viewership for 9.

 

[rosac]

Slade Wilson is reason enough to watch it, the 2nd series is so much more intense towards the end. Also, when it finally decides to get more comic-booky the quality shoots up.

 

[faefrost]

If you really enjoy watching Lidl's own-brand Batman doing chin-ups half-dressed, then I wouldn't quit just yet.

(This is based entirely off of about seven/eight episodes of Season 1. Perhaps it gets better but - fuck me - Heroes got killed off for less than this.)

To be fair to those that aren't into that, starting in season 2 we start getting Black Cannary, half dressed, doing chin ups. Which makes for some truly compelling television.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Spoiler

In the penultimate episode, Thea shooting Malcolm Merlyn was, in my opinion, a brilliant play on expectations by using the standard tropes (monologue into the cliffhanger, music swell) and then suddenly interrupting it. So glad I live alone as it would have been hard to explain my shouting of "Fuck me" at the TV

Ah, glad to know I wasn't the only one that did that

 

[sXeth]

They pull back on some of the pilot's sillier bits about midway through the first season, when he gets an actual hacker on team (instead of somehow having inexplicable magic computer skills himself, as well as his buddy/conscience, and starts officially going non-lethal (before that they seem a little confused about whether he's killing or disabling people, both are mentioned as plot points)

The whole LOST-flashback stuff does kind of hurt them for most of season 1, as Oliver regularly seems to ass-pull whatever skill or equipment happens to be needed from his magic box (or gets a fancy crossbow out of ???? Amazon? ???). I haven't gotten to season 2 as yet, but there were still a fair number of weird holes (like the Russian mob thing) that don't seem readily explainable unless he got off the island and then ended up back there again.

Oliver's also a blatant hypocrite constantly, particularly when dealing with other vigilantes, so if thats really grating, its not gonna get too much better.

 

[madwarper]

I haven't gotten to season 2 as yet, but there were still a fair number of weird holes (like the Russian mob thing) that don't seem readily explainable unless he got off the island and then ended up back there again.

Just watch season 2. He'll meet a Russian on the island that will be "a friend for life". Whether that actually is his way into the Russian mob is yet to be seen.

And, the whole "I can do stuff because of ... reasons" get's called out at the end of the season 2 finale.
"If you were on an island for 5 years, when did you learn to fly a plane?"

Spoiler

In the final scene (in a flashback), after they torpedo Slade's ship, Oliver wakes up in Hong Kong under the care of Amanda Waller. Which is presumably when and where he was taught his computer skills prior to Felicity joining the team. We'll have to wait for season 3 to find out.