CW's Arrow

It's been a trend of mine to binge-watch tv series when I'm home on break. This winter break, I've been digging into CW's representation of DC Comic's Green Arrow. As a close reader of the Green Arrow's storyline according to DC Comics, I was naturally drawn to what CW had to say about the comics I enjoyed so much.

Pros

Parallel Storylines

The backstory to Green Arrow's history on the island before returning to Star City has substantially more depth than the comics do. Tied in with the current and main storyline, the island backstory provides a foil of complexity that expands on the characters that Arrow follows. Rather than the

Groundedness

Up to Season 2, the show is remarkably devoid of any true "superpowers," and it's refreshing to see a show about superheros without superhumans. Good old hand-to-hand combat with some bow and arrows really increases the quality of the choreography in my opinion.

Cons:

Discontinuous character development

A particular peeve of mine throughout the series was an on/off development of characters throughout the series. The appearance and dissapearance of characters were a bit offputting

Zombie characters

Several characters in the series sort of got brought back to life inexplicably. References to the League of Assassins was far from being clear, and the random introduction to Barry Allen's (Flash) character offerred a tenuous and unsatisfying connection between characters in the same universe.

Random:

Microsoft everwhere

Product placement in all of the electronics throughout this series is huge. Anytime there's a computer to be used in the series, the camera jumps not to the relevant windows, but the iconic Metro Windows theme that the Windows 8 OS uses. Not a single Apple product can be found from phone, to computer, to the monitors in the show (that seems to go to HP).