Arrow

At the best and (to begin with) less frequent moments, like Nolan’s Batman. At the worst and (to begin with) more frequent moments, like Days of Our Lives. Yes, it’s very lumpy and for every plus there are at least two minuses. The rather dark mood, where nothing is black and white, is just right. In fact, where there’s no talking, just action, it can’t be faulted. But as soon as anybody is meant to act and, god forbid, open their mouth, then... What can I say, just awful and it’s a result of the casting where the main criterium was teen heart throb looks more than anything else. But I liked the absence of any super-powers in combination with an uncompromising approach where Arrow appears here as a positive hero, but in shape of a killer and blackmailer who, in support of “his truth", without hesitation destroys property and kills on a scale that would only occur to real villains in their wildest dreams about ruling the world. In any case, it has considerable potential (see episode five for proof), he just doesn't know how to sell it and most of the time doesn’t try. While all it needs is not to play so hard on the soap-opera relationship string and immediately it would have much more than “hard to watch guilty pleasure". EDIT SOME TIME LATER: It was a mistake to write off the series on the basis of half of the first season, because (unfortunately not until) at the end of the first and then during the second season, Arrow completely made up for the initial disappointment. OK, it still has the problems that most of the production from CW suffers from (especially occasional unnecessary trip-ups by turning toward telenovela maladies), but the pluses gradually overcome the minuses which (if they didn’t disappear completely), in comparison to the beginning, moved from the column “unbearable" to the column “annoying in places, but patience pays off". Especially because, apart from exceptions like Laurel, the creators found a way to work with the main characters. And, like the “villain episodes" sometimes didn’t work, the main episodes that umbrella a particular season work wonderfully; their motivations are understandable, not black and white and always have a perfect balance between charisma and respect. S1 3/5: It takes a long time to find its feet in terms of style and quality. It seems like they are shots into the darkness, never hitting the target. But when at last it finds its feet (in the final episodes), it’s well worth it. And it’s incredible that even the very poor screenwriting at the beginning gradually improves so much that it’s often surprising just how clever and bold it can be (not only) for this genre (before the occasional lapse of logic occurs, forcing you to hold your head in your hands in disbelief). In any case, the season as a whole is a promise of “how good it could be someday" than something that could stand alone. S2 4/5: The creators probably read the viewers’ criticisms and took them to heart, because otherwise it’s hard to believe this great leap forward in terms of quality with regard to everything in the last season that was so criticized. All the annoying bits are relegated to the sidelines or completely removed and especially the episodes developing on the main storyline are pure genre pleasure. Too bad the compulsory season quota is in excess of twenty episodes and so there are several filler-style “villain of the week" episodes which are so interchangeable and routine that it’s a disgrace and all the flashbacks are still from nowhere, going nowhere. But as soon as Arrow and Deathstroke’s fateful vendetta storyline takes over, you find yourself nodding your head in appreciation when you see that Arrow has matured to a stage when he is no longer simply attempting to emulate his role model from a position of a B-movie level, would-be stand-in as he was in the beginning, but that he is now on an equal footing with his role model in many respects. And that’s is quite an achievement for this underfinanced series from a channel specializing in products aimed at American teenagers, isn’t it? | S1: 3/5 | S2: 4/5 | (11.11.2012) (weniger) (mehr)