Donald Trump is still trying to figure out how he wants to structure his concentration camps, since that’ll be an important detail once history books start covering this horrifically dark and shameful period in American history, but at least we can always count on TV writers to take care of people in their times of…
On the whole, this isn’t a great season of Arrow. There are too many detours, too many balls dropped, more than the usual number of plot holes and some insanely short memories. Some episodes mostly worked—particularly when Michael Emerson first turned up—and there were a handful of excellent action sequences (remember…
At a recent convention in Nashville, Arrow star Stephen Amell teased that he’d be making a “really fun announcement” at The CW’s upfront presentation today, and now we know what that announcement is: Batwoman is coming to the next Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, and Legends Of Tomorrow crossover event, and the heroes will be…
An Arrow villain has had it, well and truly had it. He is done. He loathes Oliver Queen and wants to scorch the earth on which he stands. He wants to inflict maximum suffering. So he does something that’s extremely dark and heavy and climactic. He targets the people he loves.
Let us say this of “Docket No. 11-19-41-73”: the people in it behave like people, the story has an arc, and I mostly understood what was happening and why. Those items alone make this one of the more soundly constructed episodes in Arrow’s frustrating sixth season.
Early in “Shifting Allegiances,” there’s a sequence that works. It feels self-assured, carefully planned, and like the culmination of a story to which Arrow has been building all season. That makes it a rarity ‘round these parts, and unfortunately, it highlights how little of that feeling can be found in the rest of…
The 20th episode of Arrow’s fifth season, “Underneath,” did something a little unusual. Adrian Chase detonated an EMP, trapping Felicity and Oliver in the bunker; the EMP also deactivated the implant in Felicity’s spine, taking away her ability to walk. There was a storyline going on outside the bunker, too, as we…
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, April 19. All times are Eastern.
There’s no shortage of things to appreciate about “Fundamentals.” Like last week’s Diggle/Queen showdown, this is an Arrow episode which mercifully slows down and focuses on the characters—here a single character, to be precise—rather than ricocheting through plot developments of varying degrees of effectiveness, as…
The “why does everyone around you die” trope, which sometimes takes the form of “why does everyone I love die,” is pretty musty. “Brothers in Arms” isn’t the first time Arrow has dipped into that well, and it won’t be the last. But what this episode has in spades is something other recent episodes have lacked, give or…
The CW is a network that gives fans exactly what they want, which is why The Flash and Supergirl had a musical crossover and why Riverdale is actually somehow really good, so in that spirit it has now decided to renew pretty much every one of its shows with a dedicated following—even if those shows don’t have a huge…
Let’s begin with some caveats.
On a show with a life this long you’re sometimes going to lose track of things. Who’s mad at who now, and why, and what’s the history there? With characters like Malcolm Merlyn or even Anatoly, wading through the many shifts and reversals of seasons past can add some lag time to one’s comprehension. You see a familiar…
Why does Dinah crush the bug that Rene planted on Oliver? Those are reusable. It’s not like she plucked it off of herself or one of her teammates, and was destroying it to stick it to the old team. That’s Curtis’s, and I’m guessing their vigilante budget isn’t limitless. Was it just because it might look cool? If so,…
When Michael Emerson says “Mr. Queen,” it sounds nefarious. When he says “your son,” it’s terrifying. When he says “speaking of which,” leaning really hard on that wh- sound, it’s delicious. And then he gets to trot out something like “Just as Alexander rained destruction on Persepolis, so do I now on Averwood…
This week, Arrow would like to remind you that it’s the dark one. In that, mission accomplished. This is an hour that begins with bodies bobbing like corks just off shore, ends with a woman turning back to a life defined by violent vengeance, and spends its B-story with a father trying to convince his dead daughter’s…
The longer a show runs, the less likely it is to well and truly surprise you. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, and it certainly doesn’t mean that such a show can’t be entertaining. One of the biggest issues with this season of Arrow has been how often it has returned to certain wells, sometimes in ways that don’t…
“You guys don’t look like a Chechnyan death squad!”
Here’s the short and vaguely irritated version of the review that follows below: Oh great, Oliver’s trust and emotional issues get in the way of his decision-making, and the results are disastrous — again. Listen, Arrow has passed the 100-episode mark, and at a certain point, repetition becomes inevitable. That’s not…
The women of the DC and Marvel universes have gotten short shrift on the big screen. Yes, Wonder Woman was better than we could have hoped for, and Gal Gadot continued to kick all kinds of ass in Justice League. But Wonder Woman is the only female character in that team-up movie who’s not a love interest or a mother,…
