March Makeovers: Can ‘Arrow’ season 4 return to its season 2 glory?

We remember a couple of years ago pontificating something that we don’t do very often: Whether or not a show currently on the air was at the peak of its entire genre. We tend to steer clear of knee-jerk reactions, so whenever we start to feel the way about a show as we did with “Arrow” season 2, it’s important. This is a show that had a lot of great things working for it, from a captivating lead to an exciting will-they-or-won’t-they love story to a fantastic villain in Slade Wilson / Deathstroke that was to be feared. It wasn’t perfect, but it was that show we looked forward to catching every week just for the sake of grade-A entertainment.

Unfortunately, something happened along the way that caused some of that enjoyment to dissipate, and it’s a hard thing to really pin down as being the cause of one singular action. “Arrow” is by no means now a bad show, but it has fallen below its sibling series “The Flash” and other fare like “Daredevil” as of late. Is there a way to turn that around? That’s what we are especially interested in seeing in this latest edition of our March Makeovers series.

What’s gone wrong? – Let’s start with what to us is the most obvious: The flashbacks. During the first two seasons, there were more tangible connections between them and the present-day action. Take, for example, seeing Slade Wilson and knowing that he probably would eventually rear his head in the present world. Or, having Sara Lance be a significant part of that story. We just don’t really care about what is happening with Baron Reiter, and other than magic there are few real connections between this world and the present. We just have a tendency to tune these scenes out.

Tonally, there’s also been a big shift where romance is suddenly much more in the forefront than it used to be. What made season 2 work was that the relationships were a little more in the background; they were there and you rooted for them, but it was more about the heroes, villains, the mythology, and the action. For whatever reason, “Arrow” has struggled with bringing the fun back to Oliver and Felicity’s relationship ever since the midway point of season 3. We’d rather just see the two together and happy than surrounded by drama, that way they feel a little more like a natural part of the show rather than overwhelming it. We root for the two, but we miss the breezy tone of when their feelings were starting to become clear.

There are some things that “Arrow” is doing better now, such as the Laurel Lance story; however, she’s not really getting the consistent narrative we’d need for her to truly shine.

How to fix them – The biggest thing that “Arrow” should consider is either scrapping the flashbacks, or at least establishing a connection between past and present earlier so that there is not so much sitting around and waiting to see how they matter. This frees up more screen time for Laurel, Thea, and others if they just get rid of them. Meanwhile, get Felicity and Oliver together and married, that way their relationship can just be and they can take on problems as a unified front.

One other thing we’d love to see? A little more of Walter, or at least someone connected more to Oliver’s past. You can’t bring back Moira, but we’d like to see some more connections to his past beyond just people his own age and Malcolm Merlyn. (We are happy that he’s going towards full-evil again.)

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