ARROW: First Thoughts on CW’s F*ck You to Fundamentalist Fanboys

Arrow (2012) – Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2 – “Pilot” and “Honor Thy Father” – Written by Andrew Kreisberg & Marc Guggenheim (both episodes); Directed by David Nutter and David Barrett – Starring Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, Colin Donnell, David Ramsey, Willa Holland, Susanna Thompson, Colin Salmon, Paul Blackthorne, Kelly Hu, and Jamey Sheridan.

ARROW is the latest example of the collective stupidity of fundamentalist fanboys who desperately wait for the smallest piece of information to go running to the internet to decry anything and everything as stupid. For months, seemingly every piece of information released about ARROW was met with scorn and derision.

You’re not using the dude from Smallville who played Green Arrow? This show is going to suck!

You’re calling it ARROW and not GREEN ARROW? This show is going to suck!

You keep showing that guy without his shirt on in all the ads! This show is going to suck!

You’re setting it in Starling City instead of Star City? This show is going to suck!

You’re going to keep jumping back and forth between the present and the island? This show is going to suck!

It doesn’t. Two episodes in, ARROW is a surprisingly good television program, a engaging mix of violence and justice, and private and public perception. I will say that there was not a lot of pre-launch materials released concerning ARROW that had me overly hopeful, but as we have learned (and then apparently forget) time and again, you never know how good a story is going to be until you actually see it.

The key line issued by Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) that unlocks what this series is about comes at the end of the second episode, HONOR THY FATHER, where he talks to his dad’s gravestone. “Sometimes,” he tells his dad after faking public intoxication, “to honor your wishes I have to dishonor your memory.”

Five years before the start of the PILOT, Oliver and his dad, Robert (Jamey Sheridan) were on a fancy yacht out in the deep Pacific. Something went wrong and the ship sank, claiming the life of the woman Oliver was sleeping with, who was also the sister of his girlfriend. She died, he ended up in a boat with his dad and another survivor, and then his dad ended up killing the other guy and blowing his own brains out in the hopes that Oliver would survive. He’d already come clean to his son that he wasn’t the great, upstanding man that everyone thought he was, and it’s clear that he sees Oliver as the key to his redemption. ARROW begins with Oliver being rescued and returning to Starling City five years after being declared dead.

That bit about Ollie sleeping with his girlfriend’s sister on a yacht cruise? Well, it turns out that in the five years he’s been gone, that girlfriend he was cheating on has had a semi-occasional sexual affair with Ollie’s best friend, Tommy (Colin Donnell). And the father of that girlfriend and her sister? He’s a prominent detective in the city. And his beloved little sister is every bit the party person that her brother was before he “died.” Also, his mother hired thugs to kidnap him in the first episode and revealed to a man in the shadows (of a limousine, not some dark alley) that she was complicit in having her husband’s yacht destroyed, meaning Ollie’s mom was willing to see her son die and now wants him kidnapped so they can find out whether his father told him anything about his illegal activities.

Which his father, in fact, did do. Oliver has a journal full of names and information, and this is “redemption journal” contains the people who his father ratted on while they were on the lifeboat.

All of that soap opera stuff is muted in the show. ARROW is not One Tree Hill with costumes, but rather a vigilante show with some soap sprinkled in, and it’s a genuinely good show.

The key to ARROW’s success is that it knows what it wants to be and never strays from that path. This is a dark show that’s plays for keeps, not simply to titillate you with its soap opera wickedness. Oliver has no problems running around and sinking arrows into people. His strategy, so far, is to drop in on a rich bad guy, shoot his flunkies full of arrows, and then threaten the boss to do what he wants, whether that’s to give people he’s ripped off some massive amounts of money or force a baddie to testify against himself at trial.

ARROW does play loose with reality when it comes to all of this, of course. In the second episode he gives Detective Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) a recording of a bad guy incriminating himself. There’s no way it’s a legal confession (the baddie gave under the duress of having a vigilante in a green hood shooting arrows at him) but it works well enough inside the narrative.

Stephen Amell is really good at playing the haunted vigilante who’s pretending to still be a semi-empty party boy. He’s willing to let the world think he hasn’t changed in five years, while in private he demonstrates that he’s a very different guy. This public vs. private battle for who Oliver Queen is cannot last, of course. Already, his mom-hired bodyguard, John Diggle (David Ramsey), knows he’s not the public version of himself, and his best friend Tommy asks the obvious question of how it’s odd that Oliver’s return and Arrow’s arrival (not that anyone calls him Arrow; they just call him the green-hooded vigilante) happen at the same time. The biggest breakdown between public and private comes with the two most important women in his life, his ex-girlfriend Dinah “Laurel” Lance (Katie Cassidy) and his sister, Thea (Willa Holland). Oliver waffles between being a projection of who he used to be and who he is with Laurel. One night he tells her to stay away from him, the next day he’s showing up at her door so they can make nice and eat ice cream, and the day after that he’s invited her to a dedication so she can see him make a fool of himself.

Even though Oliver – just so we’re clear – took Laurel’s sister with him on a yacht cruise so he could have sex with her, a cruise that ended up with said sister dying, Laurel just can’t stay mad at him. It’s clear that part of Oliver’s personal redemption will be consistently given or not given through Laurel, which is a bit of a shame since she’s the weakest link in the show, so far. It’s not that she’s a horrible character, as much as the show has conceived and cast this character by stretching everything a bit thin. She’s a lawyer, taking on the biggest criminals in the city in civil court, but she looks like she’s a junior at Stanford. Willa Holland is a solid actress when she keeps things under control, but when the show requires her to let off emotional fireworks, she struggles. She’s clearly her own woman given her job, but she’s also still part little girl, the way her dad steps in to protect her and the way she clearly still loves Oliver. The show even makes a big deal about the paparazzi constantly shoving cameras in Oliver’s face, but never sticks one in Laurel’s face, even though she was the cheated-on sister of the girl who died on the Queen yacht.

Most importantly to the show, however, when Laurel is with Oliver and Tommy, however, Holland delivers.

I hope all those ridiculous malcontents who’ve been shredding this show for months based on clips and advertisements can watch ARROW with open eyes and give it a chance. It’s a good show, even if it’s not a literal interpretation of, say, Mike Grell’s fabled Green Arrow run. It’s clearly a show aimed at the teen-to-early-twentysomething demographic (it is on the CW, after all), but it’s mix of violence and soap works for me. This really isn’t a superhero show, given that Oliver has no qualms about killing, but it does work as a contemporary western, with the masked man seeking revenge and redemption by righting not only his wrongs, but those of his father.

I like ARROW, and I’ll be tuning in each week until I don’t.

THE PHANTOM (2009): They Were Good People

The Phantom (2009) – Directed by Paolo Barzman – Starring Ryan Carnes, Cameron Goodman, Jean Marchand, Sandrine Holt, Cas Anvar, Ron Lea, and Isabella Rossellini.

I was prepared to hate the SyFy/Movie Network THE PHANTOM miniseries, but it’s actually a passable way to spend a few hours.

To be clear, this miniseries isn’t nearly as good as the Simon Wincer PHANTOM movie with Billy Zane, and it does verge dangerously close to being an angst-ridden piece of pretend-cool idiocy, at times, but the miniseries kept surprising me – every time I thought it was veering far enough off course that I was soon to hit the fast forward button, the story brought me back.

After the miniseries opens with a mom and her young kid being car chased through a city, the production enters full-flight, “let’s be hip” mode. Chris Moore (Ryan Carnes) is doing a parkour run through the city as people in a restaurant watch him on their laptop. It’s the kind of scene that makes me think of old people who are desperately trying to be hip to what the kids are doing but getting it very, very wrong. Chris’ friend, who follows along to videotape the proceedings, takes a bad fall and the EMTs arrive in the form of Renny Davidson (Cameron Goodman). Since Renny is young and beautiful and a redhead, you know she’s going to be the romantic interest.

There’s a whole trope of stunted adulthood here, as Chris and Renny look like teenagers but are actually young professionals (she’s an EMT and he’s in his final year of law school), but yet still live at home with their parents. It creates this weird, conflicted vibe in the program as we’re supposed to believe that Chris does parkour, is in the final year of law school, yet still has to call home to check in or his parents freak out like he’s a sixteen year old girl out for a night with a dude who drives a Firebird.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

An aside – Women should never date guys who drive Firebirds, post-1970 Mustangs, or Jeeps. Guys who drive Firebirds are in love with themselves, guys who drive Mustangs are in love with their cars, and guys who drive Jeeps are assholes.

This is a gross over-generalization.

This is true 99% of the time.

I really don’t know what the filmmakers were thinking with this conception of Chris because when a dude who’s about to graduate from law school is grounded by his parents … what the hell are we supposed to think of him? At least Renny’s relationship with her dad feels more adult-like, though I’m not sure why an EMT would feel the need to live at home with her detective father, and the film never bothers to explain it. At least we know Chris’ parents have put themselves into a precarious financial situation to fuel his legal training.

The narrative doesn’t spend any time worrying about this because after Chris and Renny have that typical first date where she makes him dinner and they never eat it because they’re too busy making out (I know I’ve had this first date countless times), he walks her home, and assassins sent by the Singh Brotherhood kill Chris’ parents. He finds them in the upstairs bathtub.

We’re a half hour into the miniseries at this point and I have no idea what the producers were thinking. It’s a mess where everything happens simply because the movie is trying to fast-track us through the set-up.

The good news is that once we get past this point and Chris realizes he’s really Kit Walker, and he’s ushered off to the Bpaa Thap team located on Bengalla Island, the narrative quickly improves. There’s way too much time spent getting everything in place – we have to sit through Kit learning about the history of the Phantom, his training exercises, the tension between the old way of doing things and the new high-tech means – but things aren’t horrible. THE PHANTOM is incredibly well-paced for storytelling of this kind and it’s always sending us forward at a quick pace, so even though we have to sit through predictable sequences, the program doesn’t dwell on them.

As Chris Moore, Ryan Carnes isn’t very good. He struggles with the personal relationship aspect of his character (you know, anything that involves actual emotions), but when he gets to Bengalla and he can just concentrate on being a TV action star, he’s not bad.

The Phantom’s costume is pretty darn ugly. THE PHANTOM is an attempt to modernize Lee Falk’s Phantom, and most of it works well enough, but this costume is doesn’t really work for me. It’s the mask that ruins it, really, but the rest of the costume is just sort of indistinct. It’s a good color combination with the purple and black, though. I wish Hawkeye’s Avengers costume had this kind of color interplay.

After all the training stuff is mostly done, Kit decides he’s got to get back home to stop the Singh Brotherhood from taking over the world through the hypnotic power of TV cable boxes. Yeah. Isabella Rossellini is the mad scientist and I don’t know why she’s here. You have to figure that Rossellini got paid more than scale, so why are the producers paying her for an average role instead of using that money for more effects? I don’t know.

Anyways, the Singh want her to use the cable box to hypnotize people so they can kill someone who has a plan to bring peace to the Middle East. Apparently, this is the one plan in eighty-five billion plans that will actually work because the Singh’s want this guy dead so they can make money.

Look, none of this is all that great, but I am surprised that this mini-series didn’t lead to a new ongoing show, because what’s here would work perfectly fine as a weekly show. You can see the formula at work here and there’s no reason to think it couldn’t have found a home on SyFy for a few seasons. While the whole production does come across as a bit amateurish, it’s heart is in the right place: there’s good action, fiendish villains, a beautiful, capable love interest, and as long as Carnes isn’t asked to carry too much of an emotional load, he’s effective enough.

I don’t know if I’ll ever watch this miniseries, again. When I’m jonesing for a Phantom fix, I’ll watch Wincer’s film 100 times out of a 100, but if you’re interested in seeing a decent modernization, you could do worse than spend a few hours with THE PHANTOM miniseries.

TERRA NOVA: First Thoughts on FOX’s Big Dino Gamble

Terra Nova (2011) – “Genesis, Part 1 and 2″ – Starring Jason O’Mara, Stephen Lang, Shelley Conn, Landon Liboiron, Naomi Scott, Alana Mansour, Christine Adams, Allison Miller, and Mido Hamada.

TERRA NOVA is not a disaster. In fact, the first episode of FOX’s new $150 million gamble is actually pretty darn good, even if it overdoes the family drama and even if it is unnecessarily busy in putting several balls into the air that don’t properly come down.

TERRA is an ongoing series, of course, so I’m not referring to issues like Commander Nathan Taylor’s (Stephen Lang) missing son who draws weird mathematical equations on rocks by a waterfall or who sent the Sixers (I’m guessing Taylor’s behind it because nothing helps him keep his city in line more than a dangerous outside world), but things like the whole opening sequence where Jim and Elisabeth Shannon (Jason O’Mara and Shelley Conn) are hiding their third child inside their crummy apartment. They get busted, Jim goes to jail, and then Elisabeth helps him bust out so they can run back in time to play Land of the Lost in Terra Nova.

It’s an exciting sequence but it’s a completely unnecessary one. What are we supposed to get from it? That’s the future sucks? We got that from the visuals of the crappy city and everyone having to wear masks. That Jim and Elisabeth love their kids? We get that from them smuggling their illegal third daughter (there are population controls in the future) into the past. Jim goes to prison for two years but then when they get to Terra Nova, Commander Taylor doesn’t give a crap, because all he cares about is whether you’re useful to Terra Nova or not.

I suppose that’s the point, that this really is a new beginning, but it falls a bit flat and comes off a bit lame that you can actually sneak a criminal and a baby through the most secure checkpoint the future has to offer without any consequence.

Once the Shannons get to Terra Nova, however, the show pretty much works. There’s lots going on and the script (written by four people: Craig Silverstein, Kelly Marcel, Brannon Braga, and David Fury) does a good job giving everyone something to do. Jim gets put to work as a gardener, but then proves himself as a cop and Taylor takes him on as the newest member of his security squad. Elisabeth is a doctor so she gets put to work, well, doctoring. The kids are supposed to go to orientation but the son plays bad boy and runs off with some local teens to go “OTG,” or “outside the gates.” The daughters go to orientation but we don’t see any of it, but the oldest daughter plays cutesy eyes with a soldier and the youngest daughter feeds a dinosaur.

The son’s adventure becomes the driving force of “Part 2″ as the kids hide in a Sixers’ vehicle as dinosaurs attack it from the outside.

Look, I wanted to write this whole review without bringing up Jurassic Park, but the show just doesn’t make that possible, and not because Stephen Spielberg is an Executive Producer. First, the fences that separate Terra Nova from the dinosaurs look like the JP fences and when Jim is on them, hacking off big vines, you’re expecting him to get blasted off. When the kids are hiding out in the vehicle, and the dinos are peaking in through the windows and smacking it around, it’s hard not to think of the T-Rex doing a number on the Ford Explorers.

Now, it’s nice to know that there’s a whole lot more going on here than the dinosaur angle, as the Sixers-Novans feud takes up lots of time, too. It creates a nice triangle of conflict: the Sixers and Novans are fighting each other, and they’re both fighting the dinosaurs.

There’s so many characters introduced that I was a bit worried that things would get crowded, and while they still might, the script does an excellent job of balancing things out. Yeah, the two daughters don’t get a ton of screen time, and the son’s a complete douchebag with daddy issues, but hopefully the resolution this episode offers will be the end of that subplot. I mean, if I was mad at my dad for protecting the family and going to jail because he hit a cop after he was scaring my little sister, I’d probably get over it after he rescued me from getting eaten by crazy, man-eating dinosaurs.

How good this show ends up being will probably come down to how well the family drama meshes with the action material. I can completely understand familial concern in the face of danger, but if I’m tuning in to watch TERRA NOVA each week, I’m going to get awfully sick of the family concern overwhelming the action. If every week ends up being Daddy and Mommy having to rescue the kids, or the kids having issues with their parents, then I’m going to check out. If I want an overdose of family drama I’ll watch … um … is Brothers and Sisters, still on? I don’t know. You know why? Because if I want an overdose of family drama I’ll watch … um … is 7th Heaven still on?

Stephen Lang is fantastic as Taylor, the hard-ass leader of Terra Nova who is the most complex character on the show. You expect him to be a no-nonsense, by the book (as long as it’s his book) military dictator, but he’s surprisingly compassionate. He’s also a man of action, personally leading the raids outside the gates and staring down a big, violent dinosaur to protect the city. He hates the Sixers but has some side deal worked out with them, and I’m guessing lots of the drama will come from guessing what angle he’s playing.

All things considered, I appreciate the bigness of TERRA NOVA. It’s a very ambitious launch and the acting (especially Lang and Conn) is more than solid. As a double-episode opener, the balance between the family drama and the action works but it will need to tilt more in the direction of the action if the show is going to keep me interested.