TV Show Review: Arrow, Season Five Episodes One Through Three

Arrow returns to the CW for its fifth season and it already feels better than last season. Arrow, for lack a better description, is pretty much Batman with arrows. Sticking closer to the street level, crime fighting aspect of the show is largely why this episode feel so much better.

At the end of last season, they just defeated the magic using Damian Dark and saved the city. This season begins with the Arrow squad all but disbanded (except Felicity) and Oliver on his own again, balancing his time between fighting crime and being the mayor of Star City. New gangsters and criminals move in and Oliver must build a new team of crime fighting allies in order to oppose the new enemies in his city.

There are a lot of new faces this season and they each bring new life to the series. Some bring comic relief, some bring a little more drama. I won’t go into the new team members because there hasn’t been enough episodes to explore each one. However, you can be sure that each will get an episode for the purpose of character development.

What I didn’t like was the formulaic stuff. New mystery villain, shoots arrows. Maybe the big reveal will be something more rewarding and less cheesy than having someone die and then having another misleading red herring every episode that someone is going to die.

Score: 6.8/10 Good start to the season. Looking forward to seeing more team dynamics play out, maybe some scenes reminiscent of what Joss Whedon has done.