Seasons Continue: Arrow Season 2

Welcome back to Day 3 of Seasons Continue. Hope everyone got stuffed full of bird and are billious for it. Yeah I didn't feel like writing on Thanksgiving. Grumble at your leisure. With that in mind I thought we would catch up with DC comics favorite archer and see where we left off. After narrowly escaping a duel to the death with Malcolm Merlin (John Barrowman of Doctor Who, Desperate Housewives, Torchwood, Arrow and The Flash), thrashing the sesmic quake devices, the Glades via Starling City have collapsed, homes and lives destroyed and Queen's mother sent to prison. Can the city be saved?  This is Arrow Season 2.

This hood doesn't make me look silly, right?

Ollie (Stephen Amell of Hung, Private Practice, Heartland, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Arrow and The Flash) has sought refuge back on the island for 5 months as Starling City starts to lick clean its wounds. Diggle (David Ramsey of Con Air, The Good News, All of Us, Dexter, Outlaw and Blue Bloods) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards of Soldiers of the Apocalypse, Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story, Arrow, Arrow: Blood Rush, Normal Doors, Vixen and The Flash) make their way to the island to warn Ollie that his company needs him as much as the city does and that what he did last year mattered to so many. His best friend Tommy died thinking he was a murderer and he cannot go back to that path.

He no longer has the list to operate on and must expand on his crime fighting status other than just attacking one percenters. Felicity upgrades the Archer's Den (My name, they went with Arrow Cave because that's original) with the latest tech,decryption devices and hacking software while Arrow is leaving wounded, alive men versus corpses. Laurel (Katie Cassidy of 7^th Heaven, Black Christmas, Spin, Supernatural, Harper's Island, Melrose Place, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Arrow The Wolves at the Door) lost Tommy and blames the vigilante for not being able to save him and thus organizes a task force to capture "The Hood" at all costs.

Tommy, can I have your suits when you die?

Meanwhile, gun toting designer impostors are using The Hood as a cover to lash out at the city officials that failed to protect them, FEMA medicine trucks are being hijacked and there seems to be a man or woman behind the shadows of the fate of Starling City. Little sister Thea (Willa Holland of The O.C., A Summer in Genoa, Legion, Straw Dogs, Tiger Eyes, Gossip Girl and Arrow) is managing Ollie's nightclub pretty damn well while her bartender/boyfriend Roy Harper (Colton Haynes of The Gates, Look, Teen Wolf, Arrow, Arrow: Blood Rush and Triumph) is throwing himself into danger, trying to do all the things his hero archer can without any of the training.

Ghosts of the past come to haunt the city of the present as Team Arrow has to unite and stop the oncoming dangers that lie ahead. Are they up for it? Can they give 110%? Will they fail the city?

This season we get some DC villain favorites like the Bronze Tiger (a terrifying bad ass martial artist that can go toe to toe with Batman) Deathstroke the Terminator, Ras Al Ghul and his League of Assassins and the creation of The Suicide Squad so it definitely did not lose the stride it built up for Season 1 but this crazy train just picked up a little more steam.

The cue card says stare off with knowing..WTF does that even mean??!!

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.