Grab Bag Week Returns: Arrow

Hello and how do my readers.  Day 3 of Grab Bag Week starts us off with a current CW program and stop frowning everyone.   I am not reviewing the Vampire Diaries, mostly due to no requests for it but also I am not an adolesent girl that thinks moody, pasty boys are the end all.  No, instead we will shed a bit of light on a complicated character for DC Comics created by Silver Age writer Mort Weisinger (comic book editor for Superman and co-creator of Aquaman, Green Arrow and Johnny Quick) and was also main story editor for the Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves.  Created in More Fun Comics #73 November 1941 our hero was devised from Robin Hood and the movie serial The Green Archer based on the Edgar Wallace novel of same title.  Retooled and given the vigilante theme by comic artist George Papp (Legion of Super-Heroes,Showcase Presents: Green Arrow, Superboy, Superman vs. Lex Luthor and The Seven Soldiers of Victory) our hero was born.    But what if his origin story of saving a total stranger whilst trapped on a deserted island wasn't grabbing enough for you?   What if this spoiled silver spoon was trapped in wave after wave of insanity and the fight to survive would mean even taking another's life?   This is Arrow.

Beats taking up golf, I guess.

Oliver Queen: My name is Oliver Queen.  For five years I was stranded on an island with only one goal. - survive,  Now I will fulfill my father's dying spoiler-  to use the list of names he left me and bring down those who are poisoning my city.  To do this, I must become someone else. I must become something else.

As the second foray into live action for Green Arrow after added to the roster of Smallville and portrayed by actor Justin Hartley (Passions, Aquaman, Red Canyon, MegaFault, Smallville and Revenge), writers Greg Berlanti (Everwood, Jack & Bobby and No Ordinary Family), comic book writer/colorist Marc Guggenheim (Aquaman, Wolverine, The Punisher and Blade) as well as TV writer Andrew Kreisberg (Justice League, The Simpsons, Hope & Faith, Boston Legal and Warehouse 13) decided Ollie needed a makeover with a new face and a darker premise.  Our young Oliver (Stephen Amell of Beautiful People, Closing the Ring, NCIS: Los Angeles, Private Practice and Injustice: Gods Among Us) is sailing on his father's yahyt when a freak typhoon crashes the boot whisking Ollie's girlfriend's sister Sarah away (Caity Lotz of Mad Men, Death Valley, The Pact and The Machine) and crashing his rescue boat where he is marooned on a desert island for 5 years of his life.

This just in: Billionaire Bruce Wayne says COPYCAT!!!

Rescued by a ship and brought back to his hometown his mother and sister meet a different man than the one they knew before.  A quiet, methodical and driven man that seems almost at ill ease seeing these loved ones again.    In his possession is a strength compound bow, a hood, rare herbs and a book that tells him a list- a list of men and women doing harm to his Starling City and getting fat off of the misery they have caused others.  No more will this be allowed.

Okay, let's get down to the nit and grit of the show now.  From the pyrotechnics, wire work, body doubles, rigging and car scenes, this show has to be as action packed as a superhero movie and makes the grade all the way across.  With a complex story arc taking us back and forth with flashbacks from the island and how they relate to each episode, our impressive dialogue and clever signatures on each character; this show can feel a bit too much like a soap opera.   Often you will find with the dying and resurrecting characters making their way to and fro from either medium, there really is little difference.    What this show does is take all that over the top comic book standing and slow it down to a television pace, providing heroes, villains and the people in the middle and elevates what most viewers deem a lesser DC Comics character to a new light.

Well, at least Ryan Reynolds isn't my partner.