Arrow was, at one point, my favourite show on TV. It started to be so around halfway into the second season, when things really started to ramp up, and all of the best qualities were on full display. Fantastic action, fun characters (with good acting), an interesting, unpredictable story, awesome and unique adaptations of the comics, and above all, a consistently dark tone that was balanced with humour. It also revolutionized shirtless brooding on TV.
Arrow's first season was a bit rocky for me. I watched it all and liked it, but when the second season came around, I wasn't exactly begging for more. But I stuck with it, and I'm really glad I did, because it just got better. The action got bigger and more exciting, the characters were developed in interesting ways. The villain, Deathstroke, ended up being far superior to Malcolm Merlyn, and it lead up to a final few episodes that has remained the highlight of the entire show.
So when season 3 went into such a sharp decline, it was very unexpected. From the very first episode of the season, I noticed that something wasn't quite right. Things just seemed...lesser. The acting was worse, the action was boring, the story was boring and nonsensical, and the quality of all of those things just kept declining as the season went on. That's really what made the show become so bad; all of the small details started to become worse, and it spread like a virus until the whole show was just terrible. It's really astounding.
The reaction to that season, by fans, was mostly the same as mine. There were countless articles and blog posts about how terrible season 3 was, which I was surprised by. Usually it takes a while for fans to see the decline of a show, but everyone seemed to see Arrow's downfall at once. Because of this, and because I was sure that the producers were aware of the backlash, I was sure that Arrow would return to form in season 4. I was positive that the problems would be ironed over, and Arrow would bring all of the elements that made it great back to the forefront.
So you can imagine my surprise when season 4 turned out to be even worse.
Strap in.
If season 3 was a decline, season 4 was a plummet. I'm 100% certain that it's a lot worse. That people can still watch this show and hold it to the same degree of quality as season 1 or 2 is legitimately shocking to me.
Let's start with what is undoubtedly the worst character in the history of TV: Felicity Smoak.
There has never, ever been a character who went from awesome to unbearable so quickly. Season 3 had a large focus on the relationship between Oliver and Felicity, and that relationship also became the focus of Felicity's character. In every episode, Felicity was talking about Oliver, complaining about Oliver, or worrying about Oliver, and I started to wonder what happened. Felicity Smoak was a cute, funny, quirky sidekick that provided a lot of solid comic relief. But now, all of a sudden, she was just "romantic interest", and nothing else. The most insulting moment came in the season 3 finale, where she was about to let thousands of people to die just to save Oliver. From that point on, Arrow just became "The Olicity Show".
Remember how everyone except the Tumblr fangirls hated that Olicity took the main focus of season 3? In season 4, the writers made the brilliant decision of MAKING EVERYTHING ABOUT OLICITY.
And not just Olicity either, but strangely, almost entirely Felicity, They could re-name the show "Smoak" or "Felicity and Friends" at this point, and I wouldn't see any difference. Which character solves every problem with her magical and infallible hacking skills? Felicity. Which character is talked about by other characters the most, and always about how great she is? Felicity. Which character is mentioned across all shows to reaffirm her importance? Felicity. Who was the only character that went through any sort of significant challenge, only for it to be fixed basically by magic? Felicity.
Which character makes me want to slit my throat? Felicity.
She went from irritating do downright hateful. She took the place of Laurel as the worst character on the show, but only because Laurel mostly did nothing. Laurel used to be the one who was rude and selfish, and made everything about her. The result of this was giving her character development; letting her sink to her lowest point and then bringing her back up again. But Felicity? Felicity just sinks further and further. She's constantly making passive-aggressive remarks and being hostile about pretty much anything, so it's hard to understand how any viewer could consider her likable.
For example, the episode where Damien Darhk kidnapped William, Oliver's secret son. Felicity breaks up with Oliver after finding out about William because "Oliver can't trust anyone". Even though she was told by William's mother that Oliver wasn't allowed to tell anyone, and the fact that Felicity said in the previous episode that sometimes secrets had to be kept. On top of that, she's told repeatedly by characters around her not to blame Oliver, but she just keeps forcing her way into every situation, even if it has nothing to do with her, and then acting like nothing is her fault. Because Felicity Smoak is very clearly Marc Guggenheim's favourite character, so she will never be anything less than perfect. I should have seen this coming when she was the one who got to de-power Deathstroke in the season 2 finale. AND she dragged the rest of her family into the story. Donna Smoak was the worst character to be introduced in season 3, and she was practically made into a series regular this season. What's worse is that Donna is basically the same character as Felicity but more annoying, and spouts the same crap about lying and trust (BROKEN RECORD MUCH, WRITERS ROOM?) Then they brought her dad back, and he's just another, even better hacker (I guess hacking is a hereditary trait now?) Look, I'm not a hacker. All of my knowledge of it comes from Mr. Robot. But I'm pretty sure that there's more to it than just pressing a few keys really fast. I'm pretty sure that you can't hack a drone with a tablet in about fifteen seconds, but Felicity sure can. "Hacking" became such a lazy and stupid plot device this season, because almost every problem could be solved by tapping a few keys.
All of the characters really went downhill this season. Diggle became very bland, and since the beginning of the season was dealing with his damaged relationship with Oliver, the best part of his character wasn't even there. His family drama wasn't particularly interesting either, especially when he was dealing with the fact that his brother, Andy, wasn't actually dead (yeah, seriously). Not to mention, his mask looked just plain ridiculous. It's impossible to take him seriously while he's wearing that thing. Are we supposed to believe that Cisco from The Flash, a character obsessed with superheroes and looking cool, designed that piece of garbage.
Thea had pretty lame treatment as well; everything that had to do with her involved her love life or her inconsistent blood lust from the Lazarus Pit. She had a love interest who seemed important and then was written out of the season. Great. Totally worth keeping her around.
What they did to Laurel was just insulting. To take a character that's so important to the Green Arrow character from the comics, build her up so much over the course of the past four seasons, give her some very solid development, and then, just when she's likable and interesting, and a solid moral backbone for the team, KILL HER OUT OF NOWHERE. What's even worse is that the person who was affected most deeply by the death was, you guessed it, Felicity. Her last words were even encouraging Oliver to go after Felicity. This was the payoff of am ongoing flash forward to a grave, and they killed the worst possible character at this point. It should have been Felicity, because her relationship with Oliver was so solid. With Felicity's death, the relationship between Oliver and Laurel could have grown naturally, and everything could have made sense for once.
I DIDN'T EVEN LIKE LAUREL THAT MUCH AND THIS MADE ME SO ANGRY.
It almost pains me to write about Oliver. At no point in this season did he seem to be even slightly competent, or really possess any of his key character traits. Everything just became about Felicity to him, and when he did go out as the Green Arrow, it didn't feel right. He was supposed to adopt a new identity this season, but there was no real difference. At this point, he's so incompetent it's laughable. This is a man who was trained by Ra's Al Ghul, but he loses to teenagers in fistfights. He basically became Felicity's enforcer, since Felicity adopted all of Oliver's other traits. What makes it hurt even more is that Stephen Amell is such a nice guy, and clearly has so much love for what he's doing, but it's all so bad. The scenes with Oliver out as the Green Arrow felt like fanfiction most of the time, or just action stuff that was filler in between Olicity scenes.
Because that's what we all love about Arrow, right? Relationship drama?
A big part of what made Oliver seem so lame was the action scenes. The action was just horrible this season; I don't know how Arrow went from having some of the best action scenes on TV to undoubtedly some of the worst. The fights all look so clunky and slow, and makes everyone seem so incompetent. Remember when Oliver could take down an entire hallway of armed thugs on his own? In season 4, Oliver, Thea, Laurel, and Diggle were beaten up by a single guy with nunchucks (or some kind of shocky sticks). I have vague, distorted memories of watching Arrow and thinking that it was cool, but I sure didn't get that feeling this year. There was never any sense of stakes or tension because the heroes would just throw horribly choreographed punches at the villains until they won. The final fight between Oliver and Damien Darhk was literally eleven punches to the face back and forth. For a show called Arrow, a shockingly low number of arrows were fired by anyone. One character fired more arrows in a single episode of Legends of Tomorrow than Oliver did for half of the season.
Another big disappointment was Damien Darhk, who might be the worst villain in the entire show. It's bad enough that they just recycled the same old plot of "bad guy wants to destroy the city to make it better"(it was the whole world this time), but Damien is the worst because he has so much potential. They introduced him in the first episode of the season, which has never happened before with a season's big bad, so clearly they had a lot of faith in him. To Neil McDonough's credit, he gave an amazingly charismatic performance, but he did nothing that made him a believable threat. There was never a single scene that made him intimidating, or justified his role as the main villain beyond calling him the main villain. At least he was entertaining.
Remember when seeing a new comic book character show up on Arrow was exciting? I do. But the episodes introducing Vixen and Constantine were some of the most cringy and unwatchable. I didn't even like Constantine's show, but his appearance on Arrow just made me feel bad for him. I mean, he gets a chance to come back from the dead (literally), and this is the best that they could do with him?
The introduction of magic in general has been Arrow's death sentence. It represents the loss of the show's premise in a lot of ways; a huge step away from the gritty and realistic foundation that it was built on. It's okay for a show to evolve as it goes on, and since it's a comic book show, there's hundreds of directions that it could go in, but it was so bad. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention the part where THEY DETONATE A NUCLEAR BOMB ON A TOWN AND THEN DON'T EVEN MENTION IT IN THE NEXT EPISODE? So many plots were started and then dropped, or just had incredibly stupid resolutions. I'm hesitant to even call what happened in this season a "plot", since that word implies some sort of sense.
Like its action scenes, Arrow has become clunky, slow and incompetent. I'd usually say "well, I hope they can do better next year", but I don't care anymore. I'm done with Arrow, because I see absolutely no reason to visit it again. If next season turns out to be amazing, then maybe I'll catch up, but I really don't see that happening. I have no idea why Marc Guggenheim has as much power as he does, but he should not be allowed to exercise this much control. I'm surprised that nobody stepped in and stopped him, and the only solution right now seems to be changing the showrunner of Arrow for the next season.
LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GUGGENHEIM IN CHARGE.
Arrow season 4 is just depressing. It's a hollow, broken husk of its former self, and there are absolutely no redeeming factors. Everything even remotely interesting is gone, so why should anyone care anymore? It's just empty now. It even seems like most of the actors don't care anymore, and the writers certainly don't. I'm willing to suspend disbelief to a certain point, but some of the crap that was fed to us this season was just too much. It was stupider than I ever could have imagined, and I never would have pictured this for the future of the show back in season 2. The only chance for this show is for the Flashpoint storyline in The Flash season 3 to erase this season, and they could do a soft reboot of sorts. But the writers aren't smart enough to take advantage of that.
I know that I said I'm done with the show, but I might go back next season, just to see if it could get any worse. I don't know how the writers could top themselves after this, but anything is possible. I now trust the creative team behind Arrow to screw things up beyond all possible belief.
Someone please end my suffering.
So when season 3 went into such a sharp decline, it was very unexpected. From the very first episode of the season, I noticed that something wasn't quite right. Things just seemed...lesser. The acting was worse, the action was boring, the story was boring and nonsensical, and the quality of all of those things just kept declining as the season went on. That's really what made the show become so bad; all of the small details started to become worse, and it spread like a virus until the whole show was just terrible. It's really astounding.
The reaction to that season, by fans, was mostly the same as mine. There were countless articles and blog posts about how terrible season 3 was, which I was surprised by. Usually it takes a while for fans to see the decline of a show, but everyone seemed to see Arrow's downfall at once. Because of this, and because I was sure that the producers were aware of the backlash, I was sure that Arrow would return to form in season 4. I was positive that the problems would be ironed over, and Arrow would bring all of the elements that made it great back to the forefront.
So you can imagine my surprise when season 4 turned out to be even worse.
If season 3 was a decline, season 4 was a plummet. I'm 100% certain that it's a lot worse. That people can still watch this show and hold it to the same degree of quality as season 1 or 2 is legitimately shocking to me.
Let's start with what is undoubtedly the worst character in the history of TV: Felicity Smoak.
There has never, ever been a character who went from awesome to unbearable so quickly. Season 3 had a large focus on the relationship between Oliver and Felicity, and that relationship also became the focus of Felicity's character. In every episode, Felicity was talking about Oliver, complaining about Oliver, or worrying about Oliver, and I started to wonder what happened. Felicity Smoak was a cute, funny, quirky sidekick that provided a lot of solid comic relief. But now, all of a sudden, she was just "romantic interest", and nothing else. The most insulting moment came in the season 3 finale, where she was about to let thousands of people to die just to save Oliver. From that point on, Arrow just became "The Olicity Show".
Remember how everyone except the Tumblr fangirls hated that Olicity took the main focus of season 3? In season 4, the writers made the brilliant decision of MAKING EVERYTHING ABOUT OLICITY.
And not just Olicity either, but strangely, almost entirely Felicity, They could re-name the show "Smoak" or "Felicity and Friends" at this point, and I wouldn't see any difference. Which character solves every problem with her magical and infallible hacking skills? Felicity. Which character is talked about by other characters the most, and always about how great she is? Felicity. Which character is mentioned across all shows to reaffirm her importance? Felicity. Who was the only character that went through any sort of significant challenge, only for it to be fixed basically by magic? Felicity.
Which character makes me want to slit my throat? Felicity.
She went from irritating do downright hateful. She took the place of Laurel as the worst character on the show, but only because Laurel mostly did nothing. Laurel used to be the one who was rude and selfish, and made everything about her. The result of this was giving her character development; letting her sink to her lowest point and then bringing her back up again. But Felicity? Felicity just sinks further and further. She's constantly making passive-aggressive remarks and being hostile about pretty much anything, so it's hard to understand how any viewer could consider her likable.
For example, the episode where Damien Darhk kidnapped William, Oliver's secret son. Felicity breaks up with Oliver after finding out about William because "Oliver can't trust anyone". Even though she was told by William's mother that Oliver wasn't allowed to tell anyone, and the fact that Felicity said in the previous episode that sometimes secrets had to be kept. On top of that, she's told repeatedly by characters around her not to blame Oliver, but she just keeps forcing her way into every situation, even if it has nothing to do with her, and then acting like nothing is her fault. Because Felicity Smoak is very clearly Marc Guggenheim's favourite character, so she will never be anything less than perfect. I should have seen this coming when she was the one who got to de-power Deathstroke in the season 2 finale. AND she dragged the rest of her family into the story. Donna Smoak was the worst character to be introduced in season 3, and she was practically made into a series regular this season. What's worse is that Donna is basically the same character as Felicity but more annoying, and spouts the same crap about lying and trust (BROKEN RECORD MUCH, WRITERS ROOM?) Then they brought her dad back, and he's just another, even better hacker (I guess hacking is a hereditary trait now?) Look, I'm not a hacker. All of my knowledge of it comes from Mr. Robot. But I'm pretty sure that there's more to it than just pressing a few keys really fast. I'm pretty sure that you can't hack a drone with a tablet in about fifteen seconds, but Felicity sure can. "Hacking" became such a lazy and stupid plot device this season, because almost every problem could be solved by tapping a few keys.
All of the characters really went downhill this season. Diggle became very bland, and since the beginning of the season was dealing with his damaged relationship with Oliver, the best part of his character wasn't even there. His family drama wasn't particularly interesting either, especially when he was dealing with the fact that his brother, Andy, wasn't actually dead (yeah, seriously). Not to mention, his mask looked just plain ridiculous. It's impossible to take him seriously while he's wearing that thing. Are we supposed to believe that Cisco from The Flash, a character obsessed with superheroes and looking cool, designed that piece of garbage.
Thea had pretty lame treatment as well; everything that had to do with her involved her love life or her inconsistent blood lust from the Lazarus Pit. She had a love interest who seemed important and then was written out of the season. Great. Totally worth keeping her around.
What they did to Laurel was just insulting. To take a character that's so important to the Green Arrow character from the comics, build her up so much over the course of the past four seasons, give her some very solid development, and then, just when she's likable and interesting, and a solid moral backbone for the team, KILL HER OUT OF NOWHERE. What's even worse is that the person who was affected most deeply by the death was, you guessed it, Felicity. Her last words were even encouraging Oliver to go after Felicity. This was the payoff of am ongoing flash forward to a grave, and they killed the worst possible character at this point. It should have been Felicity, because her relationship with Oliver was so solid. With Felicity's death, the relationship between Oliver and Laurel could have grown naturally, and everything could have made sense for once.
I DIDN'T EVEN LIKE LAUREL THAT MUCH AND THIS MADE ME SO ANGRY.
It almost pains me to write about Oliver. At no point in this season did he seem to be even slightly competent, or really possess any of his key character traits. Everything just became about Felicity to him, and when he did go out as the Green Arrow, it didn't feel right. He was supposed to adopt a new identity this season, but there was no real difference. At this point, he's so incompetent it's laughable. This is a man who was trained by Ra's Al Ghul, but he loses to teenagers in fistfights. He basically became Felicity's enforcer, since Felicity adopted all of Oliver's other traits. What makes it hurt even more is that Stephen Amell is such a nice guy, and clearly has so much love for what he's doing, but it's all so bad. The scenes with Oliver out as the Green Arrow felt like fanfiction most of the time, or just action stuff that was filler in between Olicity scenes.
Because that's what we all love about Arrow, right? Relationship drama?
A big part of what made Oliver seem so lame was the action scenes. The action was just horrible this season; I don't know how Arrow went from having some of the best action scenes on TV to undoubtedly some of the worst. The fights all look so clunky and slow, and makes everyone seem so incompetent. Remember when Oliver could take down an entire hallway of armed thugs on his own? In season 4, Oliver, Thea, Laurel, and Diggle were beaten up by a single guy with nunchucks (or some kind of shocky sticks). I have vague, distorted memories of watching Arrow and thinking that it was cool, but I sure didn't get that feeling this year. There was never any sense of stakes or tension because the heroes would just throw horribly choreographed punches at the villains until they won. The final fight between Oliver and Damien Darhk was literally eleven punches to the face back and forth. For a show called Arrow, a shockingly low number of arrows were fired by anyone. One character fired more arrows in a single episode of Legends of Tomorrow than Oliver did for half of the season.
Another big disappointment was Damien Darhk, who might be the worst villain in the entire show. It's bad enough that they just recycled the same old plot of "bad guy wants to destroy the city to make it better"(it was the whole world this time), but Damien is the worst because he has so much potential. They introduced him in the first episode of the season, which has never happened before with a season's big bad, so clearly they had a lot of faith in him. To Neil McDonough's credit, he gave an amazingly charismatic performance, but he did nothing that made him a believable threat. There was never a single scene that made him intimidating, or justified his role as the main villain beyond calling him the main villain. At least he was entertaining.
Remember when seeing a new comic book character show up on Arrow was exciting? I do. But the episodes introducing Vixen and Constantine were some of the most cringy and unwatchable. I didn't even like Constantine's show, but his appearance on Arrow just made me feel bad for him. I mean, he gets a chance to come back from the dead (literally), and this is the best that they could do with him?
The introduction of magic in general has been Arrow's death sentence. It represents the loss of the show's premise in a lot of ways; a huge step away from the gritty and realistic foundation that it was built on. It's okay for a show to evolve as it goes on, and since it's a comic book show, there's hundreds of directions that it could go in, but it was so bad. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention the part where THEY DETONATE A NUCLEAR BOMB ON A TOWN AND THEN DON'T EVEN MENTION IT IN THE NEXT EPISODE? So many plots were started and then dropped, or just had incredibly stupid resolutions. I'm hesitant to even call what happened in this season a "plot", since that word implies some sort of sense.
Like its action scenes, Arrow has become clunky, slow and incompetent. I'd usually say "well, I hope they can do better next year", but I don't care anymore. I'm done with Arrow, because I see absolutely no reason to visit it again. If next season turns out to be amazing, then maybe I'll catch up, but I really don't see that happening. I have no idea why Marc Guggenheim has as much power as he does, but he should not be allowed to exercise this much control. I'm surprised that nobody stepped in and stopped him, and the only solution right now seems to be changing the showrunner of Arrow for the next season.
LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GUGGENHEIM IN CHARGE.
Arrow season 4 is just depressing. It's a hollow, broken husk of its former self, and there are absolutely no redeeming factors. Everything even remotely interesting is gone, so why should anyone care anymore? It's just empty now. It even seems like most of the actors don't care anymore, and the writers certainly don't. I'm willing to suspend disbelief to a certain point, but some of the crap that was fed to us this season was just too much. It was stupider than I ever could have imagined, and I never would have pictured this for the future of the show back in season 2. The only chance for this show is for the Flashpoint storyline in The Flash season 3 to erase this season, and they could do a soft reboot of sorts. But the writers aren't smart enough to take advantage of that.
I know that I said I'm done with the show, but I might go back next season, just to see if it could get any worse. I don't know how the writers could top themselves after this, but anything is possible. I now trust the creative team behind Arrow to screw things up beyond all possible belief.
Someone please end my suffering.
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