10 Radical Ideas To Save Arrow
1. Dance With The Girl That Brought You To The Party
Arrow became a success because, on the back of the Dark Knight movies, audiences wanted to see that shadowy ninja/broken protagonist thing happen on television. It’s how the show originally sold itself, and how the first season presented itself.
Today, we have far too much narrative emphasis on doomed romance and soap opera style ‘lessons being learned’. The casual approach to plotting, the foregrounding of the relationship most discussed on social media, the increasingly lazy action scenes, the worthless flashbacks, the inconsistent approach to satisfying comic geekdom… everything mentioned in this article really boils down to one thing. Arrow is no longer the same show that it was in the first and second seasons.
Add to that the unfortunate tendency for Arrow to borrow a goofy vibe from The Flash, and you’ve got a sugar-free, safe, frictionless version of Arrow: one with all the rough edges filed off, desperate to appeal to the largest possible demographic.
The frothy tone of The Flash just doesn’t fit here. A shared universe doesn't mean that the style and the villains need to cross over: there's a reason why different heroes have their own rogues gallery.
Most of the cast are bringing their A-game: frankly, it's embarrassing that such good performances are being lost within such pointless storytelling. Stephen Amell, in particular, has stepped up so far since the first season that he now absolutely nails everything required of him, even in thankless roles with cringeworthy dialogue in nothing episodes.
Arrow needs to return to the glory days of season two, when it was perhaps the best iteration of superhero tropes ever seen on television. It’s alarming how far it’s slipped since then… but there’s still time to dance with the girl that brought it to the party. Who'd let a date like that slip away anyway?
What do you think is needed to save Arrow? Do you think it's in need of saving at all? Let us know in the comments.