Arrow, Season 3

The general theme, which I have mentioned elsewhere, of comic-book-based TV-series heroes departing from their best selves after their first season, gets more play in Season 3. What really made Oliver Queen/Arrow who or what he essentially is, he was in Season 1 of this series. Remember, back when he had spent the previous five years stranded on the "purgatory" island of Lian Yu in the North China Sea, forced to think only of surviving and one day making it home? Gradually, even during Season 1, that original concept of Oliver struggling to survive alone in conditions he would, later in life, refuse to discuss even with those closest to him, gradually gave way to a picture involving a harsh environment where China exiled its most dangerous political prisoners, and where mercenaries are up to no good, and where Oliver had to learn to endure torture, to fight, to kill, to live with betrayal, and generally to sneak around trying to foil dastardly plans. During Season 2, we see flashbacks of a segment of his Lian Yu ordeal in which he was joined by even more companions and enemies, participated in an adventure involving a super-power serum, and witnessed the resurrection of somebody who supposedly died in the shipwreck that started it all. By Season 3, if you're not fully aware that the writers had no idea where the "what Oliver endured during his five-year exile" subplot was going, you can't help but notice that not only did he not, after all, spend the whole five years on Lian Yu, but he was recruited by a cloak-and-dagger organization, cut his teeth as an assassin and interrogator (read: torturer) in Hong Kong, foiled a bio-terror plot, and even came within shouting distance of people he knew back home. In fact, he actually visits Starling City, briefly, during that interlude. Yes, nerds (a term which here means "fans who care about series continuity"), this show, though based on a well-established series of graphic novels, is pretty much being improvised.

A side-effect of that improvisation is that the roles and relationships of all the established characters continue to fluctuate, so that you can't watch an episode out of production order without spending at least part of it struggling to re-orient yourself to who is doing what to whom. For example, Quentin Lance starts the series as a police detective who hates Oliver Queen and is out to get the Arrow. After he gradually warms to the former and acknowledges the usefulness of working with the latter, he gets demoted to a uniform officer and sometimes, during the height of his alliance with the Arrow, risks being thrown off the force altogether. By Season 3 he's a captain, and by and by he becomes the Arrow's enemy again. Meantime, attorney Laurel Lance has evolved from a legal-aid lawyer (Season 1) to an assistant district attorney (Season 2), from being a fan of the Arrow to an antagonist of him, to finally becoming part of Team Arrow and risking her relationship with dad. All this is part and parcel with Quentin's daughter and Laurel's sister Sara Lance, who drowned when the Queen's Gambit went down, re-emerging in Season 2 as an international assassin nicknamed the Canary, and all the melodrama that surrounds that. Right away in this season, the Canary takes it on the chin and family and personal crises ensue that just keep building all the way through the season. Meantime Malcolm Merlyn has spent a year dead, more or less for tax purposes, but has now come back and revealed himself to Thea Queen as her real father and takes her under his wing. Who is or isn't aligned with Malcolm shifts from episode to episode. Whether Thea or Oliver are on speaking terms does likewise. What's up with Roy Harper/Arsenal ditto. Eventually, the focus of the serialized plot narrows down to whether or not Oliver will become the head of the League of Assassins, who or what he won't betray along the way, and whether or not he'll cross some unforgivable line.

There's a lot more going in in there, of course. It's a stupidly complicated serialized plot. Yet the second half of the season somehow seems to flip-flop back and forth between a couple of possibilities with regard to the Merlyn question, the Ra's al Ghul question, Thea, Roy, etc. until it starts to seem downright repetitive. Like, you hear yourself thinking, "How many times has the Arrow quit Team Arrow now? When are the other members going to stop believing that he actually means it?" Or, "If he's gone forever (again), why isn't this the last one they ever made?" Or, "Will Oliver and Felicity make up their minds already, and either break up for good or kiss?" Or, "Will Oliver and Dig make up their minds already, and either break up for good or kiss?" (Slow, icky wink.) Seriously, you know the show is starting to warp your brain when you actually start rooting for Laurel Lance and Nyssa al Ghul to have a girl-on-girl kiss. And I haven't even mentioned Ray Palmer/Atom yet. I hope I'm not spoiling anything for you, but really?! Did they actually kill him off like that? (OK, I guess not. Thanks, Wiki.)

Also, it needs to be said: Please, be safe. Don't ever, ever run for alderman or mayor of Starling City. It isn't worth your life. How many mayors, aldermen or city attorneys have bitten the dust now? They need to address job security. Also, how many disasters can a city take, head-on, year after year after year, before people take the hint and move away? I'm not talking about you, New Orleans. Calm down. Really, though, Starling City, what the heck? First it's an earth quake, then it's an invasion of human weapons, now it's a bio-attack, and every time Oliver Queen/Arrow falls behind on his villain-nabbing quota, a disaster-level crime wave comes up that the occasional interlude of "Iron Heights Prison is running out of cells" can never make up for - especially when those cells keep breaking open and popping previous villains back out on the street. The city's law enforcement institutions have a systemic tendency to expend more effort covering their own behinds than stopping crime, and going after vigilantes like the Arrow is intermittently a higher priority as well. At times I sympathize with the villains who keep trying to nuke it right off the map. Starling City would really be better off dead.

I've already noted (regarding The Flash Season 1) that former "Superman" Brandon Routh plays Palmer. I think this season overlaps with the actual beginning of The Flash, though in typical crossover style, I don't find Barry Allen to be like himself, much less at his best, when he shows up in this series. Additional guest stars include Marc Singer, who starred in the original V miniseries and series in the 1980s and as the title character in the original Beastmaster feature film; here he plays an evil general who ends up getting tortured and executed by Oliver & Friends (flashback era). Playing a club DJ/assassin who sexes up Thea, then tries to kill her before suiciding himself, is Austin Butler, star of the down-under TV series The Shannara Chronicles. Charlotte Ross, late of NYPD Blue, appears a couple of times as Felicity's mother, a bimbo with a heart of gold. Peter Stormare takes a couple flamboyant terms as the new Vertigo, a drug-pushing villain. Nolan Funk of Glee makes his first appearance as Felicity Smoak's college boyfriend, who becomes a computer-hacking villain. Stephen Culp, who had a recurring Star Trek: Enterprise role and also once, I think memorably, played RFK opposite Bruce Greenwood as JFK, appears as a villainous senator with presidential ambitions.

So, before I forget or just get too tired and quit, here are the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Oliver's mountaintop duel with Ra's al Ghul, which packs a tremendous dramatic punch and leads to what may be one of the Arrowverse's best cliffhangers ever. (2) The heroic exit of previous villain Floyd Lawton/Deadshot in a Suicide Squad exploit that tops them all so far. (3) How the identical twin of the late Shado recognizes Oliver as someone who ought to have information about the fate of her sister. I suppose you could say that's a highlight just because it raises an opportunity to see Stephen Amell with his shirt off to a legitimate plot point. But Season 3 doesn't, as a rule, stint on its opportunities to appreciate the aesthetic merits of its leading man. What would improve my opinion of it, however, would be more opportunities - like, for example, when he was on his no-murdering-people diet in Season 2 - to appreciate his character's moral development. The overall arc of at least the second half of this season shows Oliver Queen growing in a direction that gives me concern. If he loses his soul, what is his body worth?