Carstairs Considers....: TV Show Review: Arrow

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

TV Show Review: Arrow - Season 5

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Action, story, acting

Cons: Still dark; gun rights episode

The Bottom Line:

A personal foe

Arrow still dark and gritty

Mostly entertains

"In Our Town, People Who are Supposed to be Dead Turn out to be Secretly Alive Almost Every Wednesday."

The founding show of the Arrowverse, Arrow, has always been the most serious show out of the bunch. Yes, it has its light moments, but on the whole it is a dark show. Why do you think so much of the show takes place at night? Season 5 wasn’t any different in tone.

As the season opens, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) makes a surprising decision – he’s going to run for mayor of Star City. Why is that so surprising? Because anyone attempting to be mayor doesn’t seem to have a long life span. He figures that his secret identity as the Green Arrow can help break that curse, and this is a way to help the city in both the day and at night.

Of course, this also cuts down on his time to patrol, so he takes on apprentices, including Curtis (Echo Kellum), Rene (Rick Gonzalez), Evelyn (Madison McLaughlin) and Rory (Joe Dinicol). Green Arrow isn’t the best trainer around, causing problems within this new family. It doesn’t help that Diggle (David Ramsey) is still struggling with his actions at the end of the last season. Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) does her best to help reign in Oliver while still running tech for the team. Meanwhile, Oliver’s sister Thea (Willa Holland) has taken on the job of helping him in the mayor’s office where he is also assisted by Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) who steps in as the deputy mayor.

However, someone is out to frame the Green Arrow. His arrows are being found in the bodies of murder victims. Should Oliver use his political position to his advantage? Is this a personal vendetta?

Despite my opening, this season doesn’t go as dark as last season did. Still, it would be nice for the characters to have some fun as they go about saving the day. While there are still some quips, they are fewer than they used to be. I watch TV to escape from reality. This is getting too close to being reality.

Speaking of which, there’s the infamous gun rights episode in the second half of the season. It starts with someone shooting up City Hall, and then leads to Oliver working with a gun rights person on the town counsel to come up with a solution that doesn’t violate the 2nd amendment. I might have respected the episode if they had told us what it was, but they just said they’d found one. The result felt like an hour of preaching and a liberal dream instead of the entertainment I normally sit down to watch. If the show is going to go further down this road in the future, I will drop it.

On the other hand, there’s the show’s 100th episode. It happened during the big four episode crossover event and found a way to include many of the cast members who have been written out of the show over the years as well as including characters who have spun off to different shows. It wasn’t an important part of the crossover, but it was a fantastic 100th episode.

While dark, I definitely still did enjoy the overall storyline this season. With the villain, Prometheus, aiming directly for Oliver/Green Arrow, the stakes were very personal. They surprised me along the way, and I had to keep coming back to see how in the world Oliver would eventually best Prometheus. As always, the action and special effects were top notch.

Likewise, the acting was great. The show puts the characters through their paces, and the actors respond perfectly. A few cast members take several episodes off this season, and I miss them, but it is understandable considering how crowded the cast is getting as this point. In addition to the new characters I mentioned, we also meet Juliana Harkavy’s Dinah Drake, a new Canary, part way through the season.

The flashback story this season finds Oliver in Russian looking to avenge a friend. Fortunately, this also coincides with the fifth year that Oliver was missing, so we’ve been promised that the flashbacks are going away, or at least will be less frequent. This season’s story was at least more coherent and interesting than the last couple, but it still slowed down the flow of the modern day story.

I know all this is sounding like I hate the show. I really, truly don’t. It’s just that it is easy to point out the flaws in the writing. If I truly hated the show, I’d stop watching. Overall, I enjoy the show each week and twists our heroes must face.

This set contains all 23 episodes of season 5 in their native wide screen and full surround. Extras including the 2016 Comic Con Panel, a look at the new members of Team Arrow, a featurette on the villain of the season as well as the cross over episode. Finally, we get deleted scenes and a gag reel.

This is definitely not the place to jump into the show, and considering how much fun they have with crossovers, it is good to watch all the shows in the Arrowverse. Arrow may be the most serious of the bunch, but there is still stuff to enjoy in season 5.

Season 5 Episodes:

1. Legacy

2. The Recruits

3. A Matter of Trust

4. Penance

5. Human Target

6. So It Begins

7. Vigilante

8. Invasion!

9. What We Leave Behind

10. Who Are You?

11. Second Chances