Source:
TV Guide [follow link for complete column]
TV GUIDE: New Season Reviews: Nashville, Arrow, Chicago Fire
Oct 10, 2012
by
Matt Roush
Though the TV season is already a few weeks old, tonight counts as one of the biggest rollouts of fall, with three high-profile premieres on three networks, including my favorite pilot of an admittedly anemic batch...
... The CW also knows its audience pretty well, enough so as to have made one of its top priorities a search through the DC Comics vaults for a new superhero franchise to fill the
Smallville void. In
Arrow (8/7c), the network's aim is true, adapting the
Green Arrow comics into a deluxe action melodrama with a rich Gothic-romantic mythology, about a hunky crusader (abs-tastic
Stephen Amell) who's part Hamlet, part
Robinson Crusoe, and in case the success of the
Dark Knight franchise escaped anyone, part
Batman.
Familiarity points deducted,
Arrow is still a very slick piece of work, as we're introduced to Oliver Queen (
Amell), first seen as a scraggly survivor of five years shipwrecked on a Mandarin island whose name means "purgatory," where "I had to forge myself into a weapon" to survive. (Flashbacks from this period are expected to be a regular
Arrow feature.) Before becoming an unnaturally buff human weapon and first-rate archer, Queen was a prince of mythical Starling City, a more debauched version of a Bruce Wayne-like billionaire brat-about-town. His conscience awakened during his time away, with family tragedy and intrigue further coloring his view, he now vows "to bring justice to those who have poisoned my city." By any means necessary, usually violently, mostly by wielding a super-charged bow-and-arrow while disguised in a simple green hood.
Oliver Queen's origin story may not be terribly original, but
Arrow aims high in its production values and its casting, including the regal
Susanna Thompson (
Once and Again) as his enigmatic mother, Broadway headliner
Colin Donnell as his spoiled pal Tommy and CW regular
Katie Cassidy (one of my favorite
Supernatural lasses ever) as his lost love Dinah "Laurel" Lance, whose unfriendly welcome back — "I'd hoped that you would rot in hell a whole lot longer than five years" — may have something to do with her sister having perished when Oliver's boat went down (she was in his bed at the time). Angst, action and hard-bodied heroics — if that's not a CW formula for success, what is? (Pairing it midweek with
Supernatural also feels right.)
I wouldn't say
Arrow blew me away — it's a bit too derivative — and I'd never pretend to be an expert in the comic-book world this character inhabits. But it's hooked me for now, and seeing that they're front-loading this first arc of episodes with characters like
Kelly Hu as China White and guest stars including
Torchwood's John Barrowman, how can I resist?
