Reviews

As noted above, I haven't had the chance to see this yet. The scenario sounds intriguing, although the previews and trailers I have seen give me a feeling of "Land of the Lost," updated and upscaled for a more sophisticated, 2021 audience.

I often rely on the ratings and reviews on IMDB to determine if I should even bother watching a movie or TV show, but one thing I have noticed that is prominent here as elsewhere, and that is that the overall rating of the series (5.2 as I type this) is significantly lower than the rating of the individual episodes (6.4, 6.6, 6.8, and 7.5(!), respectively, for the first four).

I have yet to find an explanation for this occurrence, and wonder what IMDB is doing to get it. Don't you?

The description tells it all. This is a film for those who swallow everything Trump says and stands for. Trump won the 2020 election. God wants us to torture and kill people who's skin is darker than yours. Horse worm medicine protects you from Covid. The path to making America great again it to make all other countries less than. Lying, no matter how much or how outrageously, is all right as long as it advances whatever your agenda might be. So is throwing your followers and loyalists under the bus as long as it protects you. How anyone can be so sick and have such a sense of entitlement that they consider themselves this superior to the rest of humankind is beyond me, but they and the rest of the anti-vaxxers are all welcome to die a slow and painful death.

First of all, I have a question: Could someone tell me why this show has a rating of 5.8, while the individual episodes are rated from 6.8 to 8.1 (the season finale), with most over 7.2? I notice this a lot with series. Something is very wrong with IMDB's ratings. I suspect that the overall series is generated by the first or first couple of episodes (the pilot was 6.8, the lowest of any individual episode), with possible input later from those who bother to rate the series as a whole separately from the individual episodes, as I am doing here. Other than a fix, there is no explanation I can think of. If all the single shows are so good, the show as a whole should be rated higher; the whole can't really be less than the sum of its parts, can it?

Unfortunately, with close to 500 scripted shows on television at any moment for the past couple of years, this one is just about average at best. It's no "Without a Trace," or even "Unforgettable" (never saw "Glory Days" or "Relativity"). This is basically the old show "It Takes a Thief," with a female instead of male protagonist, and a lot less panache, combined with a few clichés: the hero(ine) protects a relative innocent, who is mostly unappreciative of any aid, persuades others to provide aid based on past trespasses or other type of indebtedness, etc.

I look forward to Ms. Montgomery's next venture and hope it is more deserving of her talents.

Don't read any review with a score over 6 that was written after the second year of this series if you want to get a true picture of it.

I think a lot of people were quick to judgment about this show based on a very good start, and have never bothered to revisit their original reviews with an updated opinion. It has gone downhill, with many bumps along the way, since its inception. One of the biggest problems, of course, is that those of us who read comics as adolescents can no longer suspend common sense just for initially good ideas or excellent artwork. What can be acceptable in one-shots (movies) just doesn't work for a series, where ideas have to be carried out to their inevitable conclusions, characters have to be consistent, and repeatedly seeing the same villain, same premise, same ending, same action, etc., 20-plus times a seasons, season after season, just doesn't cut it for adults.

I find it telling that the executive producer of "Arrow" is the same person helming "The Flash," "Supergirl," "Legends of Tomorrow," Black Lightning," and the non-Sci-Fi (but still comic book originated) "Riverdale." This is just to mention the non-animated shows presently on the air. All suffer from writing that glosses over logic in favor of moving the story in the desired direction, and all suffer as a result. I never even bothered with "Legends" after a few episodes; time travel is always a tricky subject that begs more questions than provides solutions, and the only TV series that I can think of that did it well was "Timeless," now sadly no longer on the air. Also, all have gone downhill the longer they have been on the air, as these lapses have hammered us into annoyance, then anger, and finally resignation. That resignation, in turn, has taken the form of either leaving the show, or just ignoring the many parts that don't make sense and harboring a sense of resentment and dismay.

"Arrow" has gone seven seasons, so of course it is in the worst shape, followed by "Flash" (five seasons, so second worst), then "Supergirl" (four seasons, third worst), and finally "Black Lightning" (two years, least worst). Do you see a sad trend here? "Black Lightning," the only show with a good basis in reality (Afro-Americans as second class citizens that are used, abused, and oppressed by the mostly white establishment) has already shown signs of going off the rails, while "Supergirl," aside from glaring lapses of its own, at least had a couple of good metaphorical storylines bolstering it this season, along with the best actor on any of the series. The luminescent Melissa Benoist projected invulnerability almost as much as her femininity and vulnerability, and always demands watching, qualities only her former costar, Grant Gustin, even comes close to.

Lots of excellent TV on these days, both comedies and dramas, both comic-based and otherwise. Too much for any person to see, even if he/she didn't have to cope with the rest of life (work, relatives, eating, friends, etc.). Streaming services make most of it available with little trouble, so don't let that fact that this show is on a broadcast network be an excuse for watching it. Go to any one of dozens of better alternatives.

Does anyone remember the first year of "Arrow?" If you're a late comer, or just nostalgic for actual, good writing, I'm sure that there are some places where the old shows can be still found. Sigh.

It would be difficult to tell when this show started to go off the rails. The first glaring stupidity I can remember was the end of Season 2, when Thea went off with Malcolm, whom she supposedly 'wanted nothing to do with,' to get to know him better. It was also around that time that the citizenry, rallied by a speech from Oliver, managed to defeat a heavily armed force by sheer gumption (Lou Grant: "I hate gumption.") I should not have been so generous and let those huge gaps in logic escape me. It would have saved me years of disappointment. These were followed by (and I am just covering the worst of many moments in the series) the time when the team disbanded because they resented Oliver surveilling all of them to find who the traitor was talking to the DA. Then Mad Dog almost kills Oliver. Then everyone overreacts to Oliver going to extremes to stay alive. Then later they all get back together and everything is hunky-dory again, with few recriminations, explanations, or apologies. And it goes on and on, culminating in Emiko's unfathomable, last minute conversion to Oliver's side at the twelfth hour.

It hasn't all been bad, of course, but the massive gaps in logic nullify all the rest of the efforts. Cause and effect just goes out the window at every convenience. You might as well go by the logic: "Oliver, why did you kill the Mayor?" "Because, the moon was blue, of course?" "Oh, OK"

It was only by exerting terrific self-control (and probably poor judgment), and thinking that this would be the last season, that I was able to hold on and see the last few episodes and finale, hoping against hope that there would be sufficient justification to stay with the show.

The last scene promised a possibly totally new direction for "Arrow," and that gives me some hope, but if I don't see that promise fulfilled by anything I see between now and September, I will not be back.

I could go into detail about how this series has declined so precipitously this season, but to be honest, it's gotten so bad, I don't even want to put in the effort. Instead, I will cut and paste selections from someone else's words, in hopes that the opinion of a more well-known reviewer will have enough weight to save others from investing (i.e., wasting) any more time on this series. I hope Chris King won't object. If interested, that person's full review can be found here: http://www.tvovermind.com/the-cw/arrow/arrow-season-6-finale-review-life-sentence

"The team can't take down Diaz and his men themselves, even though they've dealt with Slade's Mirakuru soldiers and the League of Assassins before.... The Arrow writers miss too many of the little and even big details to truly make this storyline fulfilling. I won't harp on Diaz for too much longer, but the fact that he's the villain who finally forces Oliver to out himself as the Green Arrow is insulting to the character of Oliver Queen. No matter what Black Siren or anyone else tries to tell me, Diaz has always been a drug-dealing, bullying thug, who is maybe worth one episode of Oliver's time, not an entire season. The fact that the creative team never showed us how dominating of a foe he was throughout Season 6 but had to consistently tell us is one of this season's most destructive flaws. Worse than Diaz, though, is what the writers did to characters we loved or were growing to love throughout Season 6. Rene, Dinah, and even Diggle suddenly behaved wildly out-of-character during this season strictly for the means of the plot. The writers had an idea in their minds, to make Oliver feel at his most lonely and vulnerable and desperate, so that he would be in a place where he felt he had to make this type of sacrifice at the end of the season. However, in order to push Oliver to that place, we had to have Rene choose to betray Oliver in order to save Zoe instead of working with his friend and leader to help protect her. We had to have Dinah hypocritically call Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle out for lying while she was hiding her relationship with Vince from them. We had to have Diggle want to be the Green Arrow for reasons he can't even fully articulate during this finale and question Oliver's leadership after five-plus years of standing by him. All of this conflict has been unearned and manufactured, and unfortunately, it's why so many of Oliver's conversations (I refuse to call them apologies cause Oliver has nothing to apologize for) with his teammates, even with Dig, fall flat for me throughout "Life Sentence." There's no real emotional foundation for these exchanges to stand on after the inconsistent character work of Season 6, and therefore, what are supposed to be these authentic moments between friends feel just as hastily assembled as the original problems that pushed them apart. Even parts of these scenes that do somewhat work for me, such as Diggle telling Oliver that having two Green Arrows would diminish the importance of what the GA stands for and Dinah saying that she respects him more than he could ever know, still ring false. In these moments, Diggle and Dinah feel like the versions of who their characters used to be before their dramatic personality shifts, and there hasn't been enough ownership of their own faults and self-reflection to explain how they could suddenly switch back to the people they used to be.... Black Siren has done a lot of reprehensible things throughout Season 6, but I don't think I'll ever forgive her for helping to let Diaz go, even if it was accidental. The fact that Diaz is still alive after this season has me furious, and I don't care how cool the Longbow Hunters sound."

One last point. Chris King ends his review with wishes for an improved Season 7. I don't believe they can do it.

An excellent episode! A caper entry worthy of the original Mission Impossible series. You really have to pay attention, with all the twists and turns, false moves within feints, deception within deception. Since there was no recap or any kind of explanation of what we would be seeing, I was so confused at the beginning that I thought I had missed an intermediate episode somewhere. My only objections is that a) I find it difficult to swallow that the "Mystery Woman," or Addison Link, as she is mostly called in this episode, was such a psycho when she was an adolescent, that she held a near-lethal grudge for twenty years; and b) that Jordan could keep the phone calls from Cameron completely secret from everyone for the entirety of events (after all, Cameron only told him not to tell anyone that he was calling, not to keep it a secret forever).

A couple of points I'd like to bring up, however, since IMDB eliminated the comment forum (now if only they would get rid of those stupid User Lists, like "250 Unknown Beautiful Actresses," etc.): 1. The French guy gets a call from a French-speaking woman warning him about the police Why does he believe her? Does he recognize the voice? Who is that supposed to be? Unless Addison infiltrated his organization sometime before, there are no answers for these questions. Not that it is impossible, but they owe us an explanation for this. 2. I think Addison has her own twin! You don't always see her with the singular identifying single brown colored right eye. In fact, at the very end, if you look carefully, you will notice that a) the younger version of her has two identically colored (blue) eyes; eye color does not change as one ages; b) The last shot of her, looking into the mirror, shows her with two blue eyes, AND ABOUT TO INSERT A CONTACT LENS into her right eye; and, finally, c) In the "flashback" part of the episode, the Lance Bauer character (co-creator of the game), tells Kay Daniels that he was "just talking" to Addison, yet we see that she has apparently only just arrived, having been with the kidnapped Cameron all day. Maybe she was part of her own show once, also a secret, like Jonathan?

Let me first state that I generally like this show, although I preferred the first year, when the "science fiction" aspect of what would happen if most of the entire top government staff (all of the Executive and Legislative branches) were to be suddenly eliminated, in this case, by homegrown terrorists (who, aside from 9/11, have committed most of the acts of terrorism in the U.S.).

However, I have to ask, did they really need to so glaringly point us toward the real source of the leaks and hacks (and I hope that no one else out there still thinks it might be Kim Raver's character, although she would have been the better choice, given her history with Keifer Sutherland in "24")? Couldn't they have been a tad more subtle about the real criminal?

Still, a good episode, with the usual government lackeys behaving like sharks circling a sinking ship full of orphans, Maggie Q's meltdown under extreme stress, and Michael J. Fox's unctuous prosecutor. Would have given it 8 stars if not for that elephant in the room clue they shoved in front of our faces.