'The Flash' Is So Much Better Than 'Arrow' It's Not Even Funny Anymore
You know what breaks my heart? The fact that
Arrow has descended even further into soap opera nonsense, to the point where it’s become difficult to feel anything more than apathy for the season’s villain or plot. Who cares about HIVE? About Diggle’s brother? Who cares about the Green Arrow for that matter? All that really matters anymore is what’s going to happen with Oliver and Felicity and the messy tatters of their relationship.
Arrow has always been a bit of a soap opera, but in the first two season it was also a show about a super hero and his team. As the team grew, the relationship drama grew along with it, finally becoming the monstrosity it is today. I had hoped Oliver’s bid for mayor would breathe new life into his character, and that some shaking up of the cast would make Team Arrow both slimmer and more interesting. These things could both still happen, but the show sure is taking its sweet time getting us there. Instead, Oliver continues to make the same mistakes he always has. It’s just that
Arrow focuses more and more on the relationship drama, and less and less on creating an interesting story.
I suppose in some ways it’s a step up from
the days of Quentin Lance being really, really, really annoying, but only just. Season 3 isn’t a very high bar to cross in terms of quality, but even if Season 4 has edged above it, the show still fails to live up to its first two seasons.
Wednesday night’s episode was largely about Felicity and Oliver being awkward around one another. Oliver making promises Felicity knows he won’t (and maybe can’t) keep; Felicity being really unpleasant to Oliver in front of the Team. All very awkward viewing.
A while back I said
Olicity was ruining Arrow. I’m not sure if the writers are truly ending that relationship, or if they’re just dragging it through the mud for a while to keep the Olicity shippers on the edge of their seat, but guess what? Olicity is still ruining
Arrow, maybe now more than ever.
For one thing, Felicity isn’t likable in any of these roles. She’s not much fun as the sobby love interest we suffered in Season 3. Then, just as she was getting back to her normal, funny self in Season 4, she was shot and paralyzed—which would have been fine, a very real, human struggle for her character—except that
voila! a miraculous cure is shoe-horned in. And at the same exact time it starts working, she leaves Oliver.
(Note: The “cure for paralysis” thing is probably the most heroic single moment in the span of this show but it’s just brushed over entirely. Nobody bothers to mention that A) this could make Palmer Tech a bajillion dollars or that B) it’s a revolutionary thing that will benefit the lives of thousands of people. Nope, only Felicity gets it. Too strange.)
At this point, Felicity just comes off as…kind of stupid honestly. I hate to say that, because at one point Felicity was one of my very favorite characters on the show. But now she’s pretty much intolerable.
Felicity fell in love with Oliver knowing full well his tendency to keep secrets. She went in eyes wide open, a good head on her shoulders, and even left the perfect relationship with Ray Palmer to be with Oliver, warts and all. She had the perfect guy, who would be loyal and honest completely, and she left him for the deeply flawed Oliver.
At the time, I was pretty sure that
Felicity the character wouldn’t really leave Palmer to be with Queen. The two were really good together. They had chemistry, similar brains, the works. I’m pretty sure Felicity was stripped of much of what made her character true in order to force her to be with Oliver to please Olicity shippers. But there’s basically no chemistry between Oliver and Felicity. There was between Oliver and Sara Lance, but not here. Or with Laurel.
Anyways, Felicity leaves Ray even though it’s really hard for her, and goes to be with Oliver who she knows has lied through his teeth to just about everybody under the sun including her.
Unless she’s very naive—and she’s a brilliant hacker and CEO of a major tech company, plus a super hero so I’m guessing she’s not that naive—but unless she is that naive, she can’t possibly think that she can or should change someone just because she’s with him now…can she? Because that’s really not how it works.
If you love someone and want to be with them, part of the deal is you don’t get to change them. That’s a very twisted version of love. You can’t change people, and you shouldn’t want to.
But now it’s some huge surprise when Oliver keeps a secret from her? Now she realizes she can’t be with famed liar and keeper of secrets Oliver Queen because he kept probably the second most-sensible secret possible from her? (The first being his secret identity which he should have kept secret much better from the get-go.)
Oliver was backed into a corner with an impossible choice that most people would hear about and greet with quite a lot of empathy, but Felicity
who knows he’s a liar and leads a very difficult, dangerous life and who loves him anyways decides to end things.
Are you kidding me, Felicity?
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t blame Felicity for this one. Maybe I should blame whoever came up with this obtuse, convoluted plot. Because it’s ruining
Arrow, a show that has the potential to be
so much better—and even keep some of the sappy romantic drama around. Right now both
The Flashand
Legends of Tomorrow are a lot more fun to watch than this. They’re goofier shows in many ways, but
The Flash even does the serious stuff better.
The Flash in particular is so much better than
Arrow that the two shows are hardly even in the same ballpark anymore. Just this week, we had some serious revelations about Zoom’s true identity—though Team Flash is still a bit off the mark there—which came after several awesome twists and turns over the past few episodes. The balance between character drama and the main story is much better in
The Flash, though it’s not without its problems in that department. Basically, whenever Barry take’s Joe’s advice and starts acting like Oliver, lying to everyone and sundry, the show starts to drag. It starts to feel more like
Arrow, and not in a good way. It’s always about “protecting” somebody, and they always end up getting hurt. Rinse, wash, repeat.
The Flash just does it less.
Look at the last episode of
The Flash, though. In ‘Trajectory” there’s a ‘meta-human of the week’ sub-plot about a female Speedster who, it turns out, was using Velocity 9 to gain super speeds. This sub-plot ends up tying directly into the overarching season’s plot when Trajectory turns blue and then disintegrates.The blue light reminds Barry of Zoom, whose own speed gives off a blue aura. The addictive nature of the drug and its deleterious effects, remind Team Flash of Jay.
Through these clues and Cisco’s vibing, the team discovers that Zoom is actually the man they believe to be Jay Garrick. (He’s not, but they’ll realize that soon enough I imagine.) It’s some great storytelling, which is what we’ve come to expect from
The Flash.
Frankly, I don’t know what the future holds for
Arrow. It can’t keep this up, though. They need fresh ideas in the writer’s room, and they need to stop bowing to the whims and desires of a niche group of fans who care way more about Oliver and Felicity soap opera drama than about making a great comic book TV show adaptation. That’s what
The Flash and
Legends of Tomorrowdo so well. They capture what it means to be a comic book—the action, the drama, the suspense, and the humor.
Arrow just doesn’t feel all that comic book these days, but it should. It should be the somewhat darker, grittier counterpart to its two younger siblings.
Oliver should never have dated his band-mates, because now things are just awkward. Now other than Thea, the entire female wing of Team Arrow is Oliver’s ex-lovers. That’s a barrel of fun if ever there was one. He shouldn’t have gone Batman-lite either. The Arrow was a better vigilante as a killer, and the show should have taken its time confronting that and changing it. “You have failed this city” followed by an arrow to the chest was pretty cool. “Don’t leave me Felicity,” followed by teary eyes? Not so much.
I’m honestly not even sure what to suggest at this point.
Arrow needs a lot of work. It doesn’t just need to pare back the relationship drama, it needs to figure out what kind of show it wants to be. That includes coming up with villains that want to do more than simply destroy Star City. It means creating dramatic tension that stems from something other than people lying to one another or holding long grudges. What does
Arrow want to be?
I want it to be a superhero vigilante show. I don’t mind if it’s also about people and their lives and loves and regrets and all the rest. But it’s lost sight of itself in the process.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...rrow-its-not-even-funny-anymore/#5b2d843c1dc3
