Ever since the end of the 10 season long Smallville, the CW has been working ever since to create a new show that can replicate its success while still being a great show in its own right.

 Arrow should not have worked on any level, it was on the CW (the channel that I used to dread because of the Vampire Diaries and the god awful Smallville) and it was a live action super hero TV series, and yet despite everything against it, based solely on the pilot, Arrow is one of the best shows on the air and one you should watch.

The pilot episode deals with the return of Oliver Queen, a billionaire playboy who was thought to be dead when his ship was destroyed in a storm, leaving him as the sole survivor of the catastrophe, 5 years later a Chinese fishing crew finds him on an abandoned island and he returns home, but not as egotistical Oliver Queen, but as a battle hardened man who seeks to free his city from the criminals and the corrupt.

Now I know next to nothing about Green Arrow besides what I saw of him in the JLU TV series, but from the premise a lot of people will say…. This sounds just like Batman Begins….. And in a way it is, this is a realistic universe without super powers, its just a guy in a green hood with a bow and arrow taking thugs out.

This series is basically if Nolan decided of doing what he did for Batman and translating it too Green Arrow, however this isn’t just a rip off despite bearing many similarities with the main character and his motives/back story, it perfectly combines what was done well in Batman Begins, combines it with its own style and creates a show that will please fans of the Nolan series, of Green Arrow and even Batman fans like myself.

I was also pleasantly surprised as to how the show looked, in the promotional material it had this weird filter thing that made everything look glossy and it really just put me off, however the series visually looks fantastic, everything from the city to the small details on the bow and arrows are handled with care.

Another thing the show surprised me on was that it had a great supporting cast and humor, as I stated previously the supporting characters like Speedy (who is Oliver’s sister in this universe), his mother, Merlyn, Dinah Lance and so on, were all written incredibly well and the casting choices were 100% perfect.

But I must say the stand out performance was Stephen Amell AKA Green Arrow, he has the hardest job because he has to play Green Arrow, playboy Ollie and regular Ollie and he does it all perfectly, when he’s a playboy he just goes wild and you believe that this guy is a irresponsible jerk.

No matter what he does though, you can see that this man is tortured, there’s just something in his eyes that I cant describe but even while he’s acting like a playboy, you can see that he hates this, this isn’t him anymore and I dare say he hates degrading himself to this level again even though he’s grown past this.

One of the biggest criticisms I’ve heard from people is that Green Arrow kills, and im perfectly fine with it, this isn’t a cartoon, pinning bad guys to walls wont stop them and I actually like to see a hero finally just cut loose and get his hands dirty, he’s by no means the Punisher, he’s more like a Jedi, if he can avoid killing you he will, if he cant… Well then you’re screwed.

 I also appreciated the fact that people pick up on coincidences and don’t just act like idiots for the sake of keeping his secret identity, just by the end of the pilot there are at least 5 people who think he’s Green Arrow, now let’s hope they do something good with this later on.

 Despite me overall loving this episode, there were some small nitpicky things that bothered me, Oliver did sleep with Dinah’s sister Sarah, but since no body was recovered… How do they know this? I mean it could be assumed that Oliver would cheat on her but I found it strange like they know it as fast when they really shouldn’t.

The show did cheat in one action scene, if you saw the promotional trailers you see Oliver firing arrows at paintballs, in the episode you just get a close up shot of him firing the arrows, the camera just turns to them and they’re already pinned to the wall, I would have liked to see him actually shoot and hit them in a single camera shot but none of the action scenes later have this so its only a very tiny gripe.

Watch this show, I cannot stress this enough, it has a storyline with 6 things going on all at once, fantastic performances, great characters and some of the best action scenes I’ve seen on a TV show in a long time, I want this show to last and not get canceled like the Cape for example, with Arrow, Walking Dead and the SHIELD series on ABC, we can finally enjoy live action super hero fun, just on a weekly basis.

FINAL VERDICT: A- 

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