Still trying to power through Arrow. I watched to just before "The Odyssey" before I gave up; at this point, I actually struggled to name redeeming features on the show. The dialogue was extremely crappy (I think every single character on the show has gotten angry about how morally indefensible vigilantism is; that and the fact that the girl who "died" when the boat went down was so heavily implied to not be dead when they refused to say there was a body), the characters were far too unbelievable (yeah, I get it's a comic book show) in the worst possible ways, a lot of the acting was wooden to hammer in how bad the writing was, fight scenes were pretty cool, but there's almost 0 suspense because Oliver is too good to get beat by anyone except the Black Arrow. The villains had been fairly uninteresting (Crossbow woman, stupid fireman, etc.), and my main gripe with almost all the characters is that the whole tone was in this "uncanny valley" where they weren't silly and light hearted enough to make the show a non-serious bit of fun, but they were dumb and boring enough that I can't take it seriously.

I honestly thought that up to this point there was very little reason to keep watching; initially, Oliver's list gives the implication that there is some sort of conspiracy like The Company in Heroes, or The XX in XIII, but there is very, very little elaboration on what this conspiracy is. Their ominously named "Undertaking" is not that interesting. The reveal of Black Arrow's identity in the mid season finale was sort of interesting I guess, but the fact that you knew well beforehand that the character was probably going to be a villain ruined it a little.

I gave it another shot and to be honest, most of my issues with it are still there; the acting is still terrible, I don't care about detective Lance, Oliver's mum, the "Aussie" on the island, Laurel or Thea. Tommy was interesting at first since he was trying to clean up his act, be less of a useless boring dick but his having the whole "omg oliver vigilates are evil!" reaction killed my vibe for him. In the start, I liked Walter and Tommy more than any of the other characters, they both seemed like pretty nice people who want the best for others since most of the other characters feel like caricatures. I will watch to the end of the season at least, since I have heard the last few episodes are legitimately good TV.

What bothers me is how much people rave about this show. I think I may have had way too high expectations because of how much people online hype it up, but whenever I see actual discussions about the quality, people seem to say it's great and always throw in the caveat that it's "great for a CW show" or when there are complaints about the shitty writing and minutes at a time dedicated to Oliver's shirtless exercise sessions (seems like he's held up by wires during half of his climbing routines) oh that's all fine because "what do you expect, it's a CW show." Being better than utter crap is not grounds for high praise. Maybe it legitimately does get better at the end of S1 and into S2, but I really don't understand that a show that was so god damn awful for this long managed to even make it there. I'm honestly surprised this show wasn't cancelled the same way Firefly or Freaks and Geeks were.

Sorry for the rant, I just really wanted to get off my chest how bizarre I find the love for this show. I can understand the concept of "finding its feet" or "growing its beard." Season 1 of Breaking Bad paled in comparison to the rest of the show, the reboot of Doctor Who was a little naff until "Dalek," Stargate SG-1 had quite a lot of flatness in the early first season and I love those shows, but honestly, Arrow is taking such a ridiculous amount of time to get going, and in the meanwhile it doesn't have much humour, the characters are largely uninteresting, the dialogue is bad. It doesn't even have the advantages of being flashy like Stargate or Star Trek, or Terminator.