Review for Arrow: Season 1

Introduction

I’m a little out of touch when it comes to broadcast television, totally out of touch when it comes to subscription TV such as Sky, so you wouldn’t expect to me to pounce on the review discs to a new series, sight unseen. The name Arrow, in reference to a US prime time genre show did pass my consciousness, but I dismissed it as one of the fantasy epics that populates the mainstream these days. It’s when I saw the PR for the home video release that my ears perked up. This is Arrow as in Green Arrow, as in the DC superhero. One of the shows that I did watch religiously, good or bad was Smallville, and one of the fun characters on that show was vigilante archer Oliver Queen. If there was one character that deserved a spin-off show, it was Green Arrow, and when the review copies came up for grabs, I decided to get a piece of that action. I put the first disc in and discovered Arrow is not a spin-off from Smallville (although one location seems remarkably familiar). It’s actually a whole lot better!


Not everyone celebrates when billionaire heir Oliver Queen returns from the dead. All the world knows is that he was the sole survivor when his family’s luxury yacht sank during a storm, and that he somehow survived alone on a deserted island for five years. Now that he’s back, it looks like he’s taking up his playboy ways again. But the truth is that he wasn’t the only survivor of the wreck, and he wasn’t alone on that island. He learned how to survive, he learned how to fight, and he also learned just what his father did on the way to making his fortune. He’s returned to Starling City with a mission to make amends for his father’s misdoings, and he’s going to work his way through a list of the rich and powerful who have corrupted the city. He’ll scythe through the city’s underworld cloaked in a cowl, and armed with a bow and arrow. But he’s making some powerful enemies...


23 episodes of Arrow: Season 1 are presented across five discs from Warner Home Video.

Disc 1
1. Pilot
2. Honor Thy Father
3. Lone Gunmen
4. An Innocent man
5. Damaged

Disc 2
6. Legacies
7. Muse of Fire
8. Vendetta
9. Year’s End
10. Burned


Disc 3
11. Trust But Verify
12. Vertigo
13. Betrayal
14. The Odyssey
15. Dodger

Disc 4
16. Dead to Rights
17. The Huntress Returns
18. Salvation
19. Unfinished Business
20. Home Invasion

Disc 5
21. The Undertaking
22. Darkness on the Edge of Town
23. Sacrifice

Picture

Note that Arrow: Season 1 is released on Blu-ray and DVD, but I only received the DVD release to review. It still comes across well enough in standard definition, with the 1.78:1 anamorphic PAL transfer clear and sharp throughout, with minimal signs of compression, and bringing across the image with detail and clarity. Arrow takes a more realistic approach than a show like Smallville, and there’s a lot more in the way of darker scenes, a grittier palette, and an autumnal feel to proceedings. The flashback sequences also undergo the now typical bleach bypass and intentional grain processes to again add to the grittiness, but with the show also set in the upper echelons of the corporate elite, it also remembers to add some gloss and glamour when required. There’s nothing to complain about with the DVD transfer.

Sound

Neither is there any issue with the DD 5.1 English surround track, which brings across the action well enough for a television production. As is the case for current television, squeezing on average of 40 minutes of content into an hour slot with ads, a memorable theme tune is sacrificed for the sake of a brief fanfare of forgetfulness against the show’s title. And I would be hard pressed to describe the show’s incidental music beyond that it works to drive the action forward when required. The dialogue is mostly clear, and when the actors do lapse into the occasional mumble English subtitles are provided. Other language options on the discs comprise DD 2.0 Stereo French, Italian, and Spanish, with subtitles in the same languages, along with subtitles in Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, and Danish.

Extras

Arrow: Season 1 is presented on these discs with static menus, most of the extra features are on disc 5, but across the other discs you’ll find deleted scenes from many of the episodes. You’ll be able to play all of the scenes in one go from the extras menu, but from the episode select menu, you can play the deleted scenes for the specific episode for which they are available. Across all five discs, there are 25 minutes of deleted scenes in total.


The rest of the extras are on disc 5, over an hour’s worth, beginning with Arrow Comes Alive!, which lasts 28 minutes. In it, the cast and crew talk about bringing Arrow to television, how they were inspired, and the direction in which they mean to take the series.

Arrow: Fight School / Stunt School lasts 18 minutes, and takes us behind the scenes of the stunt work on the show, and the fight choreography.

The Gag Reel lasts just over 2 minutes, and as you would expect harbours outtakes and goofing around.

Finally, Arrow: Cast and Creative Team at the 2013 Paleyfest has some members of the cast and the writers up on stage for a fan event, indulging in a little scripted Q & A. This lasts 27 minutes.

Conclusion

You can thank, or blame Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy for Arrow. Personally I think it’s a great decision to ground the story in the real world, to make it easier to relate to the comic book hero. Of course Green Arrow owes a lot to Batman in the first place, as it’s an example of DC Comics recycling the origin story for its central character. The heir to a billionaire spends time in the wilderness following his parent’s death, being honed and trained to become a crime fighting vigilante. Of course I’m not that deeply into US superhero comics, and even when I did dabble it was with Marvel and not DC. All I know of the Green Arrow is what I saw in Smallville, and I know nothing of the other characters and situations that inhabit the Green Arrow universe. Apparently there are sufficient touchstones in the show for those versed with the comic to be tantalised and intrigued, but apparently this show introduces these characters before they became the people from the comics.


Arrow is really an origin story or rather an origin story twice over. There are two narratives running concurrently in the show, with the main story taking place after Oliver Queen has been rescued from his purgatory, has learned of his father’s sins, and has set about righting his father’s wrongs by donning the hood, and taking up the bow. But, he’s not a hero by any measure at this point. He is a vigilante, taking the law into his own hands, targeting only those he deems unworthy of the city, and more than ready to kill if the situation demands it. He’s cold, damaged, single-minded, and flawed, and he makes more than a few mistakes over the course of his first year back in Starling City.


The other story involves the purgatory that Oliver Queen faced, billionaire playboy washed up on a deserted island; only the island isn’t as deserted as it first looked. He spent five years on that island, and what he faced shaped him into the vigilante force of retribution that returned to the city, and we also get to see just what honed him.


As you would expect from a modern television series, it’s an arc based story, and the show rewards the long term investment. But looking at it overall, I do feel it suffers a bit from length. A strong start really gives the show some kick, and its harder, grittier edge certainly holds the attention. It does begin to lose its way a tad in the middle of the season, slipping into some routine episodes, which are more about introducing universe characters as gifts to the fans, rather than progressing the story. But it does then pick up for the season finale, as it returns to the overall arc, and ramps up the suspense and tension.


What I like about the opening is that when Oliver returns to Starling City and is reunited with his friends and family, it’s like he’s encountering strangers, getting to know everyone for the first time. Five years has changed everyone, his kid sister Thea is now an problem teen with a drug problem, their mother Moira has remarried a close friend and employee of his late father, Walter Steel, his best friend Tommy Merlyn and his ex-girlfriend Laurel Lance (who he cheated on with her sister Sara on that fateful yacht voyage that got her killed) are now an item... It’s as if he doesn’t know who to trust, and no-one seems worthy of trust anyway. If that isn’t enough, Laurel’s father Quentin is a policeman with a big chip on his shoulder regarding Oliver, and an even bigger chip about the vigilante that co-incidentally appears when Oliver returns. There’s an air of paranoia about the first few episodes of the series that certainly engages the attention.


Of course the paranoia is justified. The yacht trip that got him stranded was sabotaged with the intent of killing his father, and his father confessed his sins on his deathbed, urging his son to make right what he had done wrong, giving him a list of names of all the people who had also failed the city. It soon becomes clear that the people closest to Oliver are in some way involved, not least his mother, and not least Tommy’s father Malcolm Merlyn. They are involved at the highest level in a group dedicated to fixing what is wrong with the city, a goal not too dissimilar to Oliver’s own. Only Malcolm Merlyn has decided that what are wrong with the city are its people, and getting rid of them, or rather one specific neighbourhood would fix its ills. That’s the conspiracy that runs through the series, and what eventually alters Oliver’s thinking regarding doing what’s right for the city against pursuing his vendetta.


Helping him with that realisation is his sidekick/partner, John Diggle, a character created specifically for the television show. Diggle is a bodyguard by trade, hired to look after Oliver following his return, and finding his charge too much of a handful, eluding him most nights when he goes out vigilante-ing. It comes to a head when Diggle learns of Oliver’s identity, and is faced with a choice of his own. After all Oliver is a killer, even if he is doing it to help the city. When John Diggle decides to help him, it’s about giving Oliver perspective, and helping him regain his humanity following his time on the island. Diggle is the one that pulls Oliver up and makes him look at his actions again, as well as holding him to account when Oliver ignores his blind spots, and as time progresses a comradeship forms. Of course Diggle isn’t without blind spots of his own. He’s former military, an Afghanistan veteran, and he’s working in the same business as his late brother, while trying to find his brother’s killer and avoiding his feelings for his widowed sister-in-law. Later on, they are joined by Felicity Smoak, a quirky and kooky IT tech from Queen Consolidated, who decides to help Oliver if he’ll help her find someone who was abducted from the company. She too winds up sticking around after this.


Meanwhile we get the first year of Oliver’s abandonment on the island, and the first year of getting that wide-eyed complacency knocked out of him by adversity. He’s initially rescued by what looks like a sadistic hermit, who begins teaching him the rudiments of survival. But Yao Fei isn’t the only inhabitant of the island, and he’s no simple hermit. He’s actually a key component in a plan to foment instability in the region, and there are a group of vicious mercenaries looking for him. These mercenaries will do what it takes to force Yao Fei’s compliance, including using his new Western friend, and his family. At the same time, Australian Intelligence sent a team to the island to investigate, except one member of the team has defected to the mercenaries, while the other is looking for a way to complete the mission, and bring his former partner to account. By himself it’s an impossible task, but with the aid of wet-behind-the-ears Oliver Queen, he might just have a chance.


Keeping it real is what makes this show work, makes it so appealing. The characters are based in reality, they are motivated by understandable forces, and moustache twirling villains, heroes wearing white hats are all absent from this story. The action too is rooted in the real world, certainly no super-powers here (yet), but the martial arts fight sequences are choreographed with intensity, and parkour always looks exciting on screen. And just like the Dark Knight movies, little nudges of fantasy occasionally appear to remind you that this is a comic book tale, with Oliver’s ability with the bow and arrow able to defeat machine gun wielding henchmen, and a suitably ridiculous maguffin dreamed up by the series villain to unleash his vengeance on the hind quarters of the city. But generally the show appears as just a small twist away from the real world, and that makes it quite relatable.


Arrow Season 1 could have benefitted from being five or so episodes shorter. Once we get to mid-season, some stories do feel much like padding to an otherwise lean and effective story. Otherwise the only complaint I have is that the Queens are obviously living in the Luthor mansion from Smallville. You have CGI don’t you? Make it look different!