TV Review: Arrow – Season One Recap

Join us each week as we review the latest episode of ARROW. In anticipation of the upcoming third season premiere, we will recap the events of the first and second years of the show.

Season 1 Theme: My name is Oliver Queen. For five years I was stranded on an island with only one goal: survive. Now I will fulfill my father’s dying wish. To use the list of names he left me and bring down those who are poisoning my city. To do this, I must become someone else. I must become.. something else.

Plot: Playboy millionaire Oliver Queen is shipwrecked after his father’s yacht sinks, killing the crew and Sarah Lance, sister to Oliver’s girlfriend Laurel.  While in a liferaft, Oliver’s father provides him with a book containing a list of names and begs him to set right what he did wrong back in their home of Starling City.  Taking his own life, Oliver is left alone and washes ashore on a mysterious island.  It is there that the selfish and cocky Oliver spends the next five years of his life and becomes the man we know as Green Arrow.

Heroes: Our main protagonist is Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) who balances returning to his life of luxury where his reputation preceeds him while also developing his alter ego.  At no point in the first season is Queen known as Arrow despite a throwaway reference at a dinner party during the first few episodes.  We know him as either The Hood or The Vigilante.  Amell is a very likeable actor and balances both sides of the character well.  I don’t think the first season really provides very much in the way of emotional range for Oliver outside of some growling anger and a few tears.  The predominant range we see from the character is in the island flashbacks as we learn what drove him to become the hero we see in Starling City.  One interesting note is the sheer body count that Queen is responsible for as every episode has multiple deaths by arrow.  Unlike Batman or Superman, this DC hero has no qualms about killing anyone in his way to fulfill his quest.

The supporting team around Queen includes John Diggle who starts as Oliver’s security and eventually becomes his partner and Felicity Smoak, the pretty IT wiz at Queen Consolidated who becomes a part of the Arrow’s team.  Both are likeable characters who provide a balance to Queen’s singular mission to fix his father’s wrongs.  I really like the team aspect and it definitely improves the episodes where the trio work together versus the early episodes with Oliver completly on his own.  Oliver’s former love, Laurel, is an attorney and serves on the side of justice in the series.  Her father, Quentin Lance, is a cop investigating the Vigilante and has a sore sport for Oliver who cost him his daughter Sara.  While both of these characters switch wildly between loving and hating Oliver Queen (and his alter ego), they both also represent the good in Starling City and often work in conjunction to make things right.

Other Characters: We are introduced to everyone absent from Oliver’s life while he was on the island including his family: mother Moira Queen, sister Thea, and stepfather Walter Steele.  Moira has involvement with the overall conspiracy in ARROW’s first season but serves primarily as the matriarch to the family.  Sister Thea (Willa Holland) is a very uneven character, quickly switching between spoiled rich girl who hates her family and does drugs to good and loving daughter who missed her brother dearly.  Walter Steele heads Queen Consolidated and is one of the more good-natured characters stuck in the middle of the crazy Queen family dynamic.  We also meet Oliver’s best friend, Tommy Merlyn, son to Malcolm Merlyn.  Tommy is a rich partyboy like Oliver was and slowly grows in his friend’s shadow through the season.  We also meet several minor characters like Roy Harper who will play a bigger role in future seasons.

Villains: While ARROW tries to ground itself in reality like THE DARK KNIGHT trilogy, there are a lot of comic book elements to the show.  The rogue’s gallery of villains are primarily right from the pages of DC Comics with alterations that make for the best part of the show.  Some are minor like Kelly Hu’s China White (awful wig, by the way), Deadshot (goofy looking eyewear), The Count (a drug dealer), and the ambivalent Huntress (Jessica De Gouw).  The main villain for the first season is Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman), father to Tommy and friend to the Queen family.  After the loss of his wife in the section of Starling City known as The Glades, Merlyn vows to destroy and rebuild that part of his hometown.  Merlyn posssesses similar skills to Oliver Queen and wears his own archer costume.  His true origins are unknown.

On the Island: The flashbacks used throughout the season focus on the first months Oliver spent on the island of Lian Yu.  It is there that the spoiled Olver learns to survive from Yao Fei, another resident of the island.  With each episode, we learn more of how Oliver survived via hunting techniques, archery lessons, and battles with the military presence on the island headed by Edward Fyers.  The island was a Chinese prison that now is headquarters for Fyers plan to instigate war on the mainland.  Queen is forced to fight alongside Slade Wilson against Fyers and Deadshot.  Each episode provided flashbacks to the island as we see Oliver grow from a weak boy to the hero he is when he returns home.  All the while, he deals with the notebook his father left him.

In Starling City: Oliver returns home to a loving family full of questions about his five years away.  Oliver attempts to balance his return to civilization while keeping quiet regarding the events of his time on Lian Yu.  Oliver quickly assumes the identity of The Hood and begins crossing names off of his father’s list, mostly by murder.  Diggle and Felicity soon join his team, helping him to not just kill those on the list but also solve some crimes against the innocent along the way.  The bulk of the season’s middle is spent trying to save Walter Steele and avenge Diggle’s brother who was killed by Deadshot.  Eventually, Malcolm Merlyn’s Undertaking to destroy The Glades is brought to light, as is the involvement from Oliver’s parents.  The season culminates with the death of Tommy, the romantic entanglement between Oliver and Laurel, and the destruction of The Glades.

Review: The first season of ARROW came onto the airwaves with the anticipation of being another SMALLVILLE. The CW had become the home to the popular Superman origin series that also was categorized as a copy of BUFFY. Both series featured mediocre special effects and a teen-centric focus, but ARROW quickly proved that it was going to be more in line with Christopher Nolan’s DARK KNIGHT trilogy by presenting a more realistic and gritty superhero saga.  ARROW does fall prey to the same issues a lot of TV shows face in needing to tell a grand story on a small budget.  Some of the special effects are very cheap, but overall the first season feels very cohesive and well structured.  The balance of the flashbacks and main storyline feel like they were plotted well in advance rather than adjusted as the season went on, culminating in a cliffhanger ending to the season that left me surprised to say the least.

To compare the show to other genre series on television, ARROW’s first season is by far the strongest.  It easily outshines the other CW/DC series in terms of quality but falls short of AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. in terms of budget and scope.  I found myself enjoying the show despite some very hammy acting from the leads.  From a scripting perspective, ARROW fits together like a comic book where you really want to find out what happens in the next issue.  I can forgive the show for some of the goofy plot elements because all of the characters are more than two dimensional cartoons.  You even sympathize with the villains despite their megalomania which is a feat rarely accomplished on the small screen.

I would say that overall ARROW’s debut season was a tightly crafted accomplishment with some definite room for growth.  If the second season can provide some more emotional depth for Oliver Queen and figure out what it wants to do with his sister, the show should be solid.

Season Grade: 8/10