Arrow Season 1 Episode 2: “Honor Thy Father”

Arrow fights China White

The series Arrow starts picking up steam in the second episode. In “Honor Thy Father”, they really get across how much Oliver is sacrificing in his own personal life to avenge his father’s legacy, as well as how intertwined everything in his world really is.

The episode starts with the Queen family going to a very public court hearing to have Oliver’s death certificate revoked, as he was assumed to be dead for the past five years. On the other side of the courthouse, his former girlfriend-turned-prosecutor Laurel is in court trying to get a business man convicted of murder. This gets Ollie’s attention; the man is on the hit list.

Things get even more complicated, as the business man not only puts out a hit on Laurel but gets in contact with her father, Detective Lance, about being harassed by Starling City’s archer vigilante. It’s up to Oliver to save her, get the businessman behind bars and keep Father Lance out of his hair.

The Queen family subplot is pretty interesting, as everyone—his mother, stepfather and sister—is having a hard time reconnecting with Oliver, as he’s been extremely distant since his return. You get the feeling he wants to be more involved in their lives, and even the family business, but he can’t due to his obligations he promised his father. He figures out how to completely lose all signs of competency, showing up drunk to a press event for the Queen Foundation and embarrassing himself in the process.

If there was any must see segment in this episode, it would be the last five minutes. Oliver’s mother is taking a phone call in private, where the conversation pretty much says that she was part of a conspiracy that sunk the Queen family yacht and that there is no way that Oliver is aware of the list. This scene is followed up with a flashback of Oliver’s time on the island, and him being captured by an archer.

That last part is why I like this series so much. I’m enjoying how each episode is interconnected, and especially how they seem to be building towards something in a slow burn fashion. I don’t seem to be the only one happy with Arrow; apparently it’s the hightest rated new show on the CW.

Arrow – “The Pilot”

I finally got around to seeing the first episode of the new Arrow series on the CW. This is the Green Arrow’s first solo television series, starting with a late 20s/early 30s Oliver Queen returning to his home of Starling City after being shipwrecked for the last five years.

Oliver was on the family yacht which sunk in a typhoon, possibly with some foul play hinted at.

The Oliver that everyone remembers has now been replaced by a darker brooding one, who has returned home to save a city that has become increasingly more corrupt. He has sworn to his father–who killed himself to allow his son to survive–that he will do everything in his power to fix the city. The older Queen told his son about all of the corrupt business men and government officials that he had the displeasure of dealing with.

But just as Ollie is found to be different, he finds his circle of family and friends to have changed as well. His mother Moira (played by Susanna Thompson, an actress who looks and sounds eerily like Jan from the Office) has remarried one of his father’s business partners, as well as plotting to abduct her son to find out what his father told him. His younger sister is a coke head party girl.

The pilot has Oliver going out on his first mission as a vigilante, targeting a Bernie Madoff-type white-collar criminal who has bilked millions of dollars out of the common folk of Starling City. To complicate things, Oliver is being chased by a police detective who happens to not only be the father of his ex-girlfriend Laurel (who seems to be a stand-in for Dinah Lance, better known as Black Canary) but of his other daughter who died during the yacht accident. To make that clear, Oliver was cheating on his longtime girlfriend with her sister (who died on his yacht) and is now being chased by their father when he goes out as a bow-and-arrow toting vigilante.

The resulting show is a lot of fun, with all the characters intertwined on multiple levels. The only problem is that they haven’t made Oliver all that likable yet and why he has undertaken such a public crusade still isn’t clear. It’s also not really explained how he has become such a bad ass archer and street fighter as well.

On the whole, it’s a pretty interesting concept and I can only assume my questions will be answered as the series progresses. Stephen Amell is believable in this role, which is more inline with the New 52 version of the character or even Connor Hawke than the traditional Green Arrow. The show works on the whole and is worth checking out future episodes. I’m already much more interested in it than I was with Smallville.

 

Green Arrow TV Show Is A Go!

CW’s new Green Arrow is a go! CW’s new prime time drama Arrow is about rich guy Oliver Queen turned vigilante after being stuck on a deserted island and learning to fend for himself. This preview is fairly grim and tone, but did you notice the cameo appearance towards the end?

There was a shot of the mask of Deathstroke the Terminator with an arrow through it. I guess that means we will be seeing him in Arrow at some point this season. The show airs on Wednesdays starting this fall.

Green Arrow Show Coming To CW

Huffington Post had this picture of the Green Arrow costume for the upcoming television show on the CW network. Dropping the color from the title, the pilot for the series “Arrow” chronicles how Oliver Quinn changes rich guy to arrow shooting vigilante, and feuds with his best friend turned arch-enemy, the wizard archer Merlyn.

As a long time Green Arrow fan, I’m really curious to see how this works out. They want to take it in a darker direction. I wonder if that means it will be a super hero procedural show, kind of like NCIS or Cold Case, except with a super hero. Should be interesting.

This isn’t the first time DC Comics has tried a television commercial, you know…

With DC’s major relaunch getting closer every day, more news about their plans to support this initiative are being revealed. One of the strategies is to use television commercials to promote the line.

This isn’t the first time that comics turned to television commercials to promote comic books. Marvel regularly had commercials for their GI Joe comic book during the 1980s.

I would assume that these were produced by Marvel Productions/Sunbow Productions. Basically, this looks like Marvel and Hasbro were taking advantage of the synergy between Marvel’s publishing and animation divisions.

Anyway, this is not the first time DC produced a television commercial. Thanks to YouTube, I found this gem from 1993:

What is most interesting about this commercial is that the lesser characters get a lot of screen time. Darkstars, Deathstroke the Terminator, Mongul and the yellow ring wielding Guy Gardner all make their television debut. You can really tell this commercial is from the 1990s by the “hottest babes” sequence.

Also, did you notice that Lobo was featured the longest, as well as the only animated and speaking character in the commercial? Granted it was 1993. Death of Superman and Batman’s Knightfall were in full force,  but was Lobo the best choice to be the public face of DC?

There are a few variations of this commercial on YouTube, with different stores being advertised at the end. I would assume DC allowed retailers to customize the commercial for their markets.

Any way, lets hope that DC’s new commercials help get the message that comics are awesome out to the masses.