Arrow

[DanaC]

You can never walk away

[DanaC]

I fell off the fifth season about two thirds of the way in, because Doctor Who

I've been catching up and I really, really love this season's main villain. Chase is way scarier than Damien Dahrk, and the season is much better balanced than either seasons 3 or 4.

This is what the show has been needing - a well-focused, personalised conflict between Arrow and a nemesis figure, that also impacts at a wider level - it's been needing something like this since Season 1 and Slade Wilson. Dahrk could have been great and there were moments when he was, but for the most part he was badly written and made stupid decisions with the thinnest of motives - bit too pantomime at times for my taste. And Ra's al Ghul, despite being well acted and well written was so fleeting a presence as to get lost amid the week to week threats.

Malcolm Merlin was good - always like a bit of Barrowman - but they kind of declawed him and then kept him around and it sort spoiled the character a bit for me.

If the antagonist is weakly written it drags down the protagonist (See: Vikings for an abject lesson in how to write an antagonist so badly it robs the protagonist of all credibility as hero - which is sad because the same show also shows how to write a brilliant antagonist).

Watching Team Arrow get their arses handed to them by an overpowered villain with no redeeming features and a shoddy collection of Dark Lord tropes just made them look like the world's worst scooby gang.

But watching Arrow and his team working against Prometheus and his cat and mouse psychological game really raised the stakes.

[Happy Monkey]

Agreed.

Though I would have liked a little bit of justification on how Chase got so much better than everyone at everything.

[DanaC]

Yeah - the follow Oliver's journey step for step thing didn't entirely make sense - focused one to one training with Ra's al Ghul's daughter probably helped - but are we supposed to believe he also hooked up with the Bratva?

Other than that though - he's well written for the most part and the actor is really good.

I just have the finale to watch now - coming up on full circle in the flashbacks.

One thing I really liked about this season was that it is a really good counterpoint to season 1. In season 1, the present day Oliver was like an unstoppable killing machine, a one man army, whilst Island Oliver was lost and ill-equipped for what he was up against. This season we've seen Oliver lose his shit more comprehensively than ever in the present day, whilst the flashback Oliver is lethal.