Team GATV Midseason Roundtable: Arrow Season 5 So Far

What has been the least successful?

MATT: Oliver grappling with the murder question yet again. The show seems to regress far too often to try to drum up some drama. We can’t keep going through the same story points year after year.

STEPHANIE: There’s too much vigilante-ism going on. Between the ever-expanding Team Arrow, the Vigilante, and Prometheus, it’s just a whole lot of the same. Also, it’s hard to believe that the ever-expanding Team Arrow can’t take down Vigilante or Prometheus. Sure, they’re both skilled and scary, but Deathstroke, Ra’s al Ghul, and Damien Darhk had whole armies that Team Arrow defeated, and these are just one guy each.

CRAIG: In “returning to the roots” there are a few sci-fi angles that might not work so much. As much as I like Rory and the actor who plays him, a guy with flying rags doesn’t really scream “grounded.” I also think it may have been a disservice to the viewers who only watch Arrow that Flashpoint – a story beat in The Flash – fundamentally changed the lives of some Arrow characters, especially in regards to Diggle’s daughter Sara now being his son.

And if we’re being honest here, I wish the costume design for Prometheus didn’t look so much like Ragman, and I didn’t like that the whole “tension about Havenrock” thing seemed to come and go quickly. That was great story material right there that could have and should have been explored more.

MELISSA: The incorporation of the new characters into the show has been rocky at best and the decision to currently “write away from Olicity” was a mistake. They didn’t have to get back together, but avoiding writing for them even in a platonic manner guts a lot of the enjoyment for me from the season. The result has been a show overwhelmed by new faces and an original cast that feels scattered and emotionally distant from each other.

Thea started the season (and there she remains) isolated in the Mayor’s office, Quentin has been marginalized (and then sent away) Diggle was physically gone and when he returned, he’s mostly been wrapped up in his own issues (while not dealing with them at all) or used to showcase Wild Dog. Then there is Oliver and Felicity.

I wouldn’t have expected them to be together, but for too much of the season, the show ignores that they have any history between them, making many of their scenes feel hugely unnatural. Like the camera not panning to Felicity when the rest of the team was teasing Oliver about going on a date. She didn’t have to be upset, but after their history, we should have seen her reaction even if it was to be fine with him going out.

Early in the season, Felicity explains that they “don’t have that kind of a relationship”, meaning they didn’t even confide in each other or turn to each other as friends and that leaves them as distant and awkward co-workers, only made worse when it feels like the show is pretending they never were just weeks away from being married. But the emotional disconnect goes well beyond how Oliver and Felicity act toward each other.

Felicity still has Curtis as a sounding board and she had a couple nice episodes with Rory, but Billy the boyfriend was supposed to be her big relationship, her emotional connection. The problem was everything about him was written as expendable and temporary, so there was no real investment in him or in Felicity’s attachment to him. He was as bland as a cup of mayonnaise, just as unappetizing and his early expiration date reinforced he was just a plot device. So now Felicity has a dead boyfriend and I’m having a hard time caring even though Felicity remains my favorite character.

Oliver has fared the worst, often coming off robotic and detached. In order to connect to Oliver, I need to care about his relationships with other people. By himself, he’s too closed off. His contact and connections with people like his mom, Thea, Diggle, Felicity and Tommy were what allowed me to connect and sympathize with him, but now he’s lost almost all those connections and subsequently, a lot of what humanized him.

He and Felicity barely qualify as friends, Dig is kept mostly away, Thea is off in City Hall, and Oliver is fairly aloof with the newbies. They yell at him and/or he yells at them, followed by Oliver learning his lesson and giving a speech which makes it feel more like a special public service announcement than him really bonding with the new team.

His only emotional connection has been with Susan, but given she seems like the worst choice he could pick to confide in, nothing between them feels genuine. He isn’t humanized by that relationship, he’s lobotomized.