I'm glad Arrow is ending.

I've enjoyed Arrow, but the last few seasons have not been as good or as fresh as the storylines it used to tell. Oliver Queen got a kid, and there was a lot of drama about that. They switched to fast forwards instead of looking back on the island (which was a running theme for so many years of the show). But the old switcheroo was kind of jarring for me, and it still is. I guess there are no more good stories to tell in Oliver Queen's past. And Felicity Smoak's character has evolved in ways that I didn't really like, as did Diggle's. And then all the secondary characters just kind of took over somewhere in all that mess. I mean, there was an entire show a few weeks ago that didn't even feature any of the main characters. I was like, "Who are these people and why should I care about them?"

Good shows need to end. When they don't, it's kind of like they sacrifice all dignity for the sake of a money grab, and everything seems so drawn out and not fun. Supernatural became this for me around season 8 (so I stopped watching). The Walking Dead reached this point with me early in this season when they abandoned Rick as a main character and he wandered off to the discard pile.

So yeah, I'm glad Arrow is ending. I'm not so glad that Emily Bett Rickards (she plays Felicity) posted that she won't be back for the last season of the show. It feels very much like what happened with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when the actress who played Jadzia Dax decided not to renew her contract, and the showrunner decided to kill her character off and replace her with Ezri Dax. That change (for the last season) forever left a sour taste in my mouth regarding Deep Space Nine, even though I do enjoy watching reruns of it on H&I here in Utah. I mean...the wedding episode of Jadzia Dax and Worf was so spectacular, and that barely happened when they abandoned the character. What a waste.

So yeah, I'm glad Arrow is ending. I just hope it doesn't spell doom for the other CW shows. I rather like Legends of Tomorrow and The Flash. And we are getting a Batwoman series, which I think will be rather interesting. I wonder if the League of Shadows will make an appearance in Gotham City. Personally, I think the League of Shadows was the most interesting aspect of Arrow, and they kinda went downhill once they abandoned the Ra's al Ghul storyline. It takes a good villain to drive a good story, and the League of Shadows does that in spades. I guess only time will tell.

Is Arrow about to use Andy to kill off John Diggle? Is that who's in the grave?

By far the biggest tease of this season's Arrow has been the cut scene where we see Oliver Queen standing over a fresh grave and then Barry, a.k.a, the Flash shows up to chat with him a bit. Oliver looks angry, and I was pretty sure that it might have been Felicity in that hole. But recent events are making me think that it might be Diggle, as in John and not Andy.

For one, John's younger brother was brainwashed by Damien Darhk, who has powerful magic on his side (the kind that makes even Constantine wary to tango with him). For many of the episodes this season, Andy has been imprisoned in the Arrow cave being not only a very petulant little brat, but a complete supporter of all that is evil. His older brother, John, eventually seemed to win him over bit by bit, but I think this is all an act. And last night's episode ended with the heroes basically winning (with the exception of a major character death in the leader of ARGUS), and Andy was pretty instrumental in that so now everything's forgiven, and it's all "high fives" and "fist bumps" on the way back to the Arrow cave. Only that's not how any of this works.

My Spidey sense is tingling (I know, wrong universe). I guess George R.R. Martin said it best when he told writers to "kill your darlings," and I'm thinking that's what the show is about to give us. I mean, John Diggle doesn't really serve a purpose anymore and having his own brother kill him is like another season of storylines. John used to be the "voice of reason" for the show, but that's more or less been co-opted by Felicity who was the star of Wednesday night's episode where she had to deal with all the fear and depression she incurred by not being able to walk again. In a way, Felicity and Arrow proved why they are perfect for each other and there really isn't room for John's character in the show anymore. To be honest, the cutaways to anything that have to do with John's storyline are kind of boring when compared to the greater storyline of Damien Dahrk and what's going on with Malcolm Merlyn and his army of assassins.

Of course, it could also be Felicity's mom that's in the grave, or Laurel's dad, but John Diggle being in that grave makes the most sense to me. I don't think Arrow would ever be the same after that death, kind of like the Batman was when Jason Todd (a.k.a. Robin) got killed by the Joker in the comic book four part series "A Death in the Family." That was the breaking point for the Batman, and he became "the Dark Knight" for so many years after that. And believe me, I was consuming them all because the stories were SOO dark.

So who do you think is in the grave? Are you with me or against me?

Thank the gods of television because Green Arrow a.k.a. Oliver Queen no longer has that awful wig in its flashbacks

We are now two episodes deep in the fourth season of Arrow, and I am pleased to report that in the latest flashbacks to "Lian Yu Oliver," the wig is now gone. Yes, I never liked the wig. Did you like the wig? It looked bad on Stephen Amell. It really really did.

It seemed like every season had a different wig too.

This was the Hong Kong wig. 

This was the Lian Yu "Island" wig.

Yay! The wig is dead! The wig is dead! Long live natural hair on Arrow's characters. And in case you didn't know, this message has been brought to you by all the things that are important in life.

Have a great weekend.

The season finale of Arrow left me with a lot of questions but I am excited for the Legends of Tomorrow spinoff

In the season finale of Arrow, the Flash saves everyone. As he should.

The season finale of Arrow this week was action packed, and I've been digging through the events that transpired for clues as to what may happen in The Legends of Tomorrow spinoff. First we have Brandon Routh's character, Ray Palmer, getting into an accident with miniaturization at the end. This (obviously) explains how he becomes "The Atom" and can transform into a super miniaturized version of himself. It's the same kind of treatment that Barry got in a two-part introduction on the Arrow that occurred last season. Good thing Ray transferred all ownership of the company to Felicity, and good thing that the Atom and Felicity broke off their romance so that the Atom could head to his own show in its own time slot. Does anyone else notice that most superheroes seem to be getting their powers through explosions?

Next, Malcolm Merlyn is now the new Ra's al Ghul or "demon's head" in Nanda Parbat. This means that it's going to be through him how Sara gets resurrected in the life-giving waters of the Lazarus Pits. Everyone blames Malcolm Merlyn for Sara's death, and as world's greatest assassin, naturally he's going to make moves that will improve his relationship with his daughter (as he basically had Thea kill Sara in the season opener). I'd heard they'd cast the actress who played Sara as "The Black Canary" in The Legends of Tomorrow spinoff and wondered how she was going to come back. But what's going to happen with Laurel Lance's identity once Sara makes returns from the dead? Hmm. I have too many questions.

And now onto the big question: is Oliver really going to retire and live happily ever after with Felicity? This came out of nowhere, and I'm not really sure it works. I'd love to see Felicity and Oliver in a great relationship, but what about the main star of the show? Is Diggle going to be the new Arrow? I'm kind of thinking on the lines of what Patrick Dilloway said to me months ago: Barry needs to go back in time and change the past so that this whole mess of a season can be redone. Honestly, I kind of suspect that something like this may just happen because the Arrow season finale and the Flash season finale are one week apart. Why not have them take place in the same week? Well if Barry goes back in time to save his mom, everything has a potential to change in this joined universe, which may be a reason as to why the CW is keeping the finale's off kilter to each other.

I love the Flash and Grant Gustin who plays Barry, but have I ever mentioned how broken his powers are? When I was watching the season finale of Arrow, I wondered how Felicity and crew were going to break out of the dungeon of Nanda Parbat when suddenly the Flash showed up. Of course. The Flash single-handedly tied everyone alive up in the citadel and then just used his vibration powers to destroy the dungeon. At any one time, he could have grabbed Ra's al Ghul and just put him in the prison on Lian Yu or in a deep dark hole somewhere and then just ran out before Ra's could even blink.

The Flash's powers don't seem that "broken" in his own show but once he starts hanging with Oliver and company, you can just see that none of those other people are even on the same level as Barry despite the fact the writers like to close the distance between the "power gap" with creative toys like nanites that take away speedster powers.

Anyway, I'm glad that the Ra's al Ghul storyline is over. It was starting to drag on and on and on. I'm excited for the Arrow's return next season and hope that we get a new story arc with some villains that perhaps have some super powers. That'd be fun.

Why does Ra's al Ghul want Oliver Queen for the demon's head? Aren't there other more readily available options?

I remember a few weeks back, Patrick Dilloway said that Oliver Queen needs to have Barry travel back in time for him and fix a few things. The trainwreck that is Arrow took another casualty last night: Oliver Queen himself. It seems pretty permanent but then again so did Oliver's death in the mid-season finale. I mean, Ra's al Ghul actually drove a sword through Oliver and kicked him off the mountain. The way he came back was obviously magic, but they really like to downplay it in this show, almost as if they are afraid to show it because if they do it'll make everything less gritty and real.

Oliver (in order to save his sister's life) had to travel to Nanda Parbat, which is the stronghold for the League of Assassins. Of course Ra's al Ghul was waiting for him along with the entire league: all of them kneeling  because he's the next in line to take over from Ra's himself. The goal was to dip Thea into the possibly personality changing resurrection waters of the Lazarus Pits, because no matter how much she changed (even if she started chewing on the carpet) Oliver couldn't live without her. Even Thea's dad Malcolm Merlin, who regularly takes shots of asshole with "I'm a selfish prick" chasers, didn't want Thea to come back. That was a pretty strong thing to say about his only daughter, and I think it doesn't bode well for season 4 when even more tragedy can befall our heroes because of Thea Queen.

Oh yeah...and Felicity got nailed by Oliver. That was awesome, and I've been waiting for it for three and a half seasons. Finally! But it wasn't really meant to be. I mean...heroes can't be happy right?

I love how the CW is exploring different options for unresolved love stories in Arrow. I really got tired of the love triangle that was Lana, Clark Kent, and whoever Lana was interested in at the time in Smallville. It dragged on season after season, and I think maybe the two of them had happiness for two or three days during all of that.

With Arrow, it's different. They actually let their characters express love with one another and let all the raw feelings come pouring out. They just keep them from being together by injecting the League of Assassins, introducing a cock-blocking flying superhero that buys Oliver Queen's company, or they just flat out kill characters off. Goodbye Sarah...goodbye Roy...goodbye Maseo's son... It makes me think that George R. R. Martin's (and perhaps the Walking Dead's) influence on television has been immeasurable. Regular characters die all the time now, and I actually like the gritty realistic dimension this adds to the shows I watch.

The only thing I can't figure out is why Oliver Queen? Why does Ra's al Ghul think that the Arrow would make the perfect head for the Demon? Maybe the whole thing is a plot contrivance to make the show even darker than it already is. I'm sure Oliver (once he escapes from the League at some point) is going to pretty much be a cold-blooded killer. Sigh. I just hope he doesn't kill Felicity. Man, that episode would be hard to take.

After watching Arrow I want to know if a League of Assassins under the leadership of Oliver Queen would be such a bad thing.

If it's one thing that I've grown to appreciate about the television show Arrow, it's that the tale manages to weave the plausibility that assassins armed with knives and arrows could triumph repeatedly over those who possess guns. This show pays no lip service to the saying, "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight" and we in the audience don't lose any sleep over this.

In this week's episode called "The Offer," our favorite bow slinging warrior of Starling City has been offered to head the League of Shadows and take Ra's al Ghul's legacy as the deadliest man alive...not deadly like Chris Kyle deadly...but deadly because he's a mean bastard with a sword. Suspend your disbelief. Swords and arrows rule the day and not guns. That's just the way it is.

It's an offer that John Barrowman in the role of Malcolm Merlyn insists is "not a choice," implying that should Ollie turn his back on this offer that there will be some horrible price to pay. Well, and there's this pesky prophecy that foretells if anyone survives a fight with Ra's al Ghul, he would take Ra's place in the League of Assassins. I would say, "Don't take stock in prophecies..." only this is a show that is clearly grounded in a universe where magical and wondrous things happen. So yeah, prophecies have weight.

So let's think about this "offer" for a moment and ponder the question "What does a League of Assassins actually do?" And then the subsequent question: "what would a League of Assassins look like under Ollie?"

Ra's al Ghul created the League of Assassins to hunt down and kill people he deemed a danger to society. All of its members go through a harsh and bitter training. Those that survive become incredible warriors. Think Nietzsche who coined the phrase, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." The League is very old-fashioned, has a medieval Japanese sense of honor (out of all the cultures on Earth, the Japanese took honor to ridiculous levels), and each member has a signature weapon. But most important, Ra's al Ghul's word is law. Whoever is in charge would change the chemistry of the entire group to make it a reflection of the one up top.

Interesting, right?

So what would it look like under Ollie? I'd like to think that (if he were to accept Ra's offer), then the League's incredible resources could be made to do some good in the world that (from a viewer's standpoint) appears awash in evil. I'm not really sure why Oliver Queen is turning his back on the offer from "Evil, Incorporated" other than he enjoys his personal crusade and doesn't really want help on that kind of a scale to accomplish his goals. Or maybe he just doesn't trust himself, and perhaps is cautious of the lure such power would bring and worries it could possibly corrupt him. Let's face it, Ollie isn't exactly a nice guy, having killed numerous people, tortured others, cheated on his girlfriends, and done any number of other horrible things. He's the quintessential anti-hero, and I suppose the offer from Ra's al Ghul really shines a spotlight on this whole hot mess of a guy and asks the question, can anti-heroes be entrusted with incredible power and responsibility?

What do you guys think? Perhaps the answer is clearly "no."

Of course shows made from comics comprised my four favorite among a huge lineup that aired in fall 2014

I figure that my post today will mostly be a reflection post (with spoilers) in regards to my four favorite selections from fall tv. Now, when it comes to entertaining television I watch a lot but rarely do I think "Wow this is so good that you must watch it!" In other words, I have high standards and try not to recommend crap to my friends because I know they probably value their time more than I value mine. So what follows in the next paragraph is a rundown of my disappointments.

The "I'm SO DISSAPOINTED!" Pile

"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." overall has been very meh, and I hope they pick up the pace and start providing answers or I may just tune out. It seems obvious to me that we're only going to get satisfaction from the Marvel movies, and I think that's just too bad. "Supernatural" should get canceled, because the only thing making it even remotely interesting anymore is Crowley. Big Bang Theory has stopped being funny for the most part, and the cast is way too big now for 20 minutes. Elementary just seems like another detective show. Gotham is starting to gel, but only when they start featuring more of the Bruce Wayne storyline. Fish Mooney is a way better villain than Penguin, and it's too bad they don't go in that direction more. And Constantine is absolutely terrible. I hate this show, find it boringly derivative of other shows like Grimm and Supernatural, and think that it should just get canceled. The best thing about American Horror Story: Freak Show has been the opening credits. The storyline on the other hand, is just not all that good and the characters are barely holding my interest this year. It's too bad that this is Jessica Lang's last season, but honestly, the cast is so huge now that they don't need her. The 100 fails to get me to care about any of the characters. I just don't think any of them are very well-developed. Dr. Who was remarkably terrible for the ENTIRE season. I've decided I don't like Peter Capaldi because he's a know-it-all jerkface that's all caught up in his own greatness, and then the show decided to be absolutely cruel to Clara and destroy any happy ending she could possibly have, which just sealed the deal for me on hating Peter Capaldi's doctor. Finally, The Newsroom had its last remaining episodes aired on HBO. I loved the majority of them and really fell in love with Olivia Munn's character Sloan Sabbith. It's too bad this show has been canceled and that's why I'm putting it in the "I'm so disappointed" pile.

But there were some bright spots in fall television, and here they are:

The Flash -- (spoiler warning) This did end up being my favorite new series as I had predicted somewhere around mid-summer. I think that the casting of Grant Gustin as Barry Allen was perfect. I love how the show is creating the Rogues gallery for Flash by putting together Captain Cold, Reverse Flash (part of the greater storyline), Heat Wave, and Gorilla Grodd (we haven't seen him yet, but he's coming). I also like the secondary characters: Cisco, Catelyn Snow, and Iris. But the show's greatest strength just might be the multiple crossovers with Arrow. These are like mining gold every single time, because they have a greater universe appeal kinda like a micro-sized Avengers custom-fit for your t.v.

Arrow -- (spoiler warning) I have to admit that when I first started watching this show three years ago, I had really low expectations. I thought it was going to travel down the same path that Smallville did, forever setting up love triangles and going "freak of the week" or something like that. Boy was I ever wrong. Instead we got introduced to a whole cast of characters and the CW proceeded to kill them off one by one. It's hard to have a love triangle when the points of the triangle perish horribly. 2014 marked the third season of Arrow and it started off with a bang by killing off Sara, one of my favorite characters from season two. I was like, "Are you f*cking serious?!" But yeah...Sara died (horribly) and the rest of the season pretty much went like a chess game played by Malcolm Merlyn who skillfully used Sara's death to checkmate Ollie into a battle to the death versus Ra's al Ghul, a fight Oliver couldn't win. So in the fall finale, the CW killed off Oliver Queen. What the hell?! I NEED ANSWERS CW!!! He can't be dead!!! *bawls loudly*

Negan talking to Rick and crew (who are on their knees).

The Walking Dead -- (spoiler warning for the comic books) With the Terminus storyline resolved and Beth dead, this show is heading toward the Negan storyline that literally had me up late many nights as I read comic after comic. Negan is perhaps the worst villain I have ever seen. This guy makes the Governor and the Terminus cannibals look like nothing. Things I am looking forward to from this show are the first gay couple (who are actually great guys with many redeeming qualities) that lead Rick and his rag-tag group of survivors to a town that has electricity, a big wall around it, and houses for people to live in. They even have kids that play in the streets. So for a while, things will be great, but The Walking Dead does not allow its characters to stay happy for very long. Negan's the storm on the horizon. He has an army see, that roams the countryside to find survivors of the apocalypse and force them to pay tribute (half of everything they possess). What they get in return (these "communes" of survivors) is half-assed protection from zombie hordes. But if they don't pay the tribute or haven't gathered enough to keep Negan happy, then Negan gets angry and people die. I am very curious how they will handle Negan, because his brutality in the comic books is such that I don't think they can show it on television. That, and he drops the "F-bomb" all the time.

Sleepy Hollow -- The fall finale ended with a conclusion to a major storyline involving the return of Moloch and an impending Armageddon straight out of the Book of Revelation. This series continuously surprises me with its ability to go to historical fact and spin the supernatural from American history. With its return this week, I got a few answers and the show appears to be heading in a fresh direction with a new villain and the possible redemption of an old one. If you aren't watching Sleepy Hollow, I suggest you give it a try, because it's consistently one of the best on t.v. And you know what, the cinematography and cast are everything that Supernatural once was (thinking season five).

So that pretty much rounds out what I thought of fall television. With the new year, let's all hope that there's plenty of entertainment and fun things to watch on the horizon, because who doesn't love a good story?

It's inconceivable to suggest that the CW could have picked a more adorable Barry Allen.

Actor Grant Gustin nailed it. Seriously. I'm so excited for the new Flash series that it's entirely possible I'm anticipating it more than Pacific Rim and Prometheus combined. The Barry Allen they showed us in last week's Arrow episode was in my friend Sarah Falen's words "Pure adorbs" and I MUST AGREE.

If you are not watching Arrow, you are missing out on this:

If you didn't see last week's episode, watch the below embedded video right now. The exchange between Barry and Felicity is filled with geeky science, intelligent problem-solving, and just a drop of sexual tension. It'll make you want to go out and smell the sunshine. And if you're a stranger to DC Comics, you just need to know these four words (repeat after me): The Flash is AWESOME.