This show needs a pretty massive overhaul in the Show-Runner department at this point. The writing on the storylines and dialogue level was horrendous this season. They need a Director that can bring the best out of these actors, because right now it's pretty bad and I don't think it's entirely because of the actor's lack of talent. I don't think any of the actor's are particularly good but I think the people running the show are making them seem even more mediocre than they already are inherently.
What I mean by that, is that they seem to instruct these actors in ways that make them look ridiculous, like the overemphasis on one-liners and speeches. And not just that there are SO many one liners or speeches, but the delivery of their dialogue during these one-liners and speeches. I honestly think they encourage them to be over the top which leads to many moments of really cheesy deliveries of really terribly written dialogue. Most of the conversations, one-liners and speeches are so overdone and unnatural. It seems that no conversation is ever realistic or well developed. So many conversations end in abrupt, random ways without accomplishing much of anything concerning the topic at hand. People just don't talk like these characters talk half of the time and the constant repetitive beating of deadhorse dialogue is becoming intolerable. If I hear "You failed this City", "I started this crusade", "I/you had to become someone else, something else", "Save Starling" or any of the other beaten to death dialogue points again I might throw my TV out of the window.
The plot for this season was so illogical that I just couldn't really care less what happened. Oliver's decision making during this season made absolutely no sense what so ever, particularly when it came to decisions about Merlyn. Not a single decision he made with regards to Merlyn made even the tiniest bit of sense. Ra's decision making wasn't far behind, his entire storyline was just illogical and underwhelming.
Felicity and Diggle were never characters I cared for to begin with, but man, they have become incredibly annoying this season. Neither of them do anything other than whine and complain about Oliver, while Oliver's decision making was completely ridiculous and deserving of questioning the constant lecturing and whining they do is extremely tiresome. Honestly I wish this show had never introduced them to begin with and focused on Oliver, Dinah, Roy, Thea and Lance. Felicity and Diggle get far too much screen time and it leaves very little screen time for the rest, particularly Dinah and Roy who should be the #2 and #3 characters on the show and are much more interesting characters than Felicity and Diggle ever could be if they were actually written properly. And I won't even bother going into how the Oliver/Felicity romance has damaged the show, that's just a complete and utter disaster on every level.
The directors have really written themselves into another corner as well with the Arrow identity and the only way to fix it is to add another illogical plot for how he'll be able to work in Star City again as the Arrow.
Whoever at Warner Brothers is in charge of overseeing this show really needs to get off his ass. This show needs a completely new writing team in my opinion. The amount of illogical contrivances and poorly written dialogue is making me consider giving up on this show. Which really sucks because Green Arrow is one of my favorite DC characters and it doesn't appear he'll be showing up in the movies anytime soon. I really want to like this show, but this season was just flat out bad.
(and yes, I still refuse to use the terms Laurel or Starling, incredibly horrible, unnecessary changes)
Yes please.
