Can the New Black Canary Fix Arrow’s Problems?

Originally posted at A Latina’s Media Musings

Firstly, as an almost disclaimer of sorts, I’ve never been a fan of Arrow. Even in the show’s heyday of seasons one and two when it was praised and lauded as a great show and comic book adaptation. Though it bares moderate similarities to Green Arrow: Year One overall, it just wasn’t for me. However, I can look back on the show’s beginning seasons and see a clear pattern of character arcs that were leading to a greater picture. A picture that would create an adapted vision of the classic Green Arrow comics mythology.

Needless to say, that from season three onward, Arrow did not only continuously strive away from that proposed picture, but did so almost gleefully. It often felt at times that the show was more interested in using the brand names of “Green Arrow” and the original materials (or should I say Batman’s original materials) for the sake of hollowed out Easter eggs, than truly adapting them in interesting and creative ways. One of the best examples of this is the show’s depiction — and mishandling — of the Black Canary, aka Dinah Laurel Lance.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Running on Sunshine

In the penultimate episode of the season, Barry can’t stop the feeling that he’s invincible since the Speed Force told him that it loved him and read him a Night-Night book about a dinosaur. He’s got that sunshine pocket. Got that good soul in his feet.

Even #Metapocalypse 2016 won’t throw off his game. The metahuman army that rallied together when Zoom outed the “disappearance” of the Flash on broadcast TV. Barry swoops in — a little too late, in my opinion — to bail out the Central City Police because EVERYTHING IS LITERALLY ON FIRE. And did I spy Earth-2 Hawkpeople?

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Falling Behind

Apologies if you’ve been coming here the last few weeks for our Arrow recaps. I’ve been supposed to be Connie’s back-up, but I haven’t been able to muster the strength to recap a show that, honestly, I’ve been out on all season. Sure, I’ve been watching it (on DVR delay) every week, but this season has been more than disappointing. And if rumors about the death being revealed on tonight’s episode is true, I might be out for good. But more on that later.

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DC’s Next Superhero Spin-Off Should be Birds of Prey

We all know that DC’s television universe is a force to be reckoned with. Hell, the Berlanti-verse alone is already four shows deep across two networks, with each showeven Supergirl — all but guaranteed to return next season. Now that the DC Universe is firmly entrenched on the small screen, I think they should continue the pattern of spinning off characters into their own series. In fact, DC should look to spinning off no less than three shows next year: the obvious ones being Martian Manhunter and Vixen, but I want to make the case for another team show: Birds of Prey featuring the female heroes from the Arrow-verse.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Demolition Team

On this week’s Arrow, Oliver gets justification for his lies and it still starts to blow up in his face: there’s a debate, an engagement party, and lots of buildings blow up. The episode is full of Darhk’s demolition team, but I actually use it to refer to all the people in this episode co-signing Oliver’s lies, which will clearly hurt him with Felicity, but also with William and who knows how it will play out with Samantha and Darhk’s larger plans. They’re laying down the explosives. It’s all gonna blow soon.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Sinking ‘Ships

Because this recap is a week late (sorry, got distracted writing on twitter about a different rich, blonde, white guy who learns the ways of the Orient and returns a superhero) and because I’m just filling in, my recap of the Arrow winter finale, titled “Dark Waters,” will follow a different format. Rather than just giving a play-by-play of what happened in the ep, I wanna spend extra time on two aspects of the show and its fandom that needs to be discussed. And of course we will talk about that ending.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: He Restoreth Her Soul

Full disclaimer: I didn’t watch Constantine on NBC. Sorry! But even without knowledge of the character or the show, I enjoyed this crossover (is it still a crossover when one of the crossed shows is cancelled?). John Constantine and Oliver had great bro-chemistry and the little bits of interaction he had with the rest of Team Arrow were great as well. 10/10, would enjoy again.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: The Room Where it Happens

This week’s episode of Arrow was really great — it’s probably the first time ever that I’ve enjoyed Arrow more than The Flash since 1.) Last season of Arrow was ROUGH, and 2.) This week’s episode of The Flash was also rough. Of course, the amazingness of “Beyond Redemption” was helmed by none other than Punisher: War Zone (and friend of the NOC — go check out Keith’s interview with her!) director Lexi Alexander.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Lazarus Flush

Going into the 2015-16 television season, there were questions about how Legends of Tomorrow was going to fit in to the timelines established by Flash and Arrow. Little did we know that the first few episodes of both shows were essentially being used as set up for the midseason series.

In the previous night’s Flash, we saw the lead in to two of Legends’ protagonists: Leaonard Snart’s redemption and Martin Stein’s Firestorm dependency. Similarly, most of last night’s Arrow was used to set up another Legends lead: the emergence of the White (not Asian) Canary and the return of Caity Lotz.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Green Means Go

UPDATED OCTOBER 9, 2015

This is definitely my favorite time of year. Autumn is in the air, and superheroes are back on my television. PS, you might be disappointed that the byline for this recap doesn’t say “Connie.” I’m going to fill in for her on the Season 4 premiere recap while she holds it down at New York Comic-Con.

So be gentle on me, Olicity shippers!

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Eight Reasons We Love Black Canary

Originally posted on Geeks Out

During a recent episode of The Flash that featured folks crossing over from Arrow, I was more than amused to watch Cisco geek out when he met Laurel, aka Black Canary. Because when it comes to the love of all things Black Canary, I can so relate.

And with good reason. At least eight reasons in fact.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Darth Oliver’s Inferno

I fell upon two possible choices for subtitle this week. The first was “The Portrait of Darth Oliver” (Darth Oliver was going to be used in some form or fashion). This came from the idea that Oliver sold his soul for immortal life. Well, he sold it for Thea, but he gains immortal life and the remnants of his soul: Thea, Felicity, and Diggle, are the “portraits” who age and suffer as Oliver continues to sin and live immorally.

The title I chose comes from the idea that Oliver is now in Hell. The Wiki description of the circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno says that each ring is a “contrapasso,” a “symbolic instance of poetic justice.” Oliver being charged with the destruction of a city he vowed to protect is the evil version of poetic justice.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Everyman? More Like Everyship

Pizza party!  Reason why I love Barry Allen #427: He uses his powers for good… like running to Coast City to get the best pizza pies on the west coast. In my head, he bumped into a young test-pilot Hal Jordan. Maybe they exchanged a few friendly words, unaware of what kind of best friendship they’d eventually form. I wonder what they ordered on their pizzas? I wonder if they have similar pizza topping tastes, so that they’d probably even split a pie every once in a while. Wait, no. Barry needs all of the food for his metabolism. Maybe Hal shakes his head at Barry’s appetite beca — sorry, I lost focus. Pizza party.

So far, everyone in Central City who knows Barry’s secret who isn’t a body snatching, anachronistic speedster  was invited to the West house to discuss Harrison Wells/Reverse Flash. The game plan is this: Joe and Cisco investigate the night of the Tess Morgan’s death in Starling City, Eddie covers for Joe at the precinct, Caitlin covers for Cisco at the lab, and Barry must refrain from punching Wells in the face.

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Could a Cape Be in Iris West’s Future?

The Flash has delivered so many thrills and twists, it’s hard to imagine what the showrunners have in store for the season finale. With so many surprises, it’s understandable that even the most astute viewer may have missed the hints of another superhero on the rise; a super heroine rather.

Barry and Joe aren’t the only crime-fighters in the West household. To date Iris West has played a key role in the defeat of Girder, the Clock King, and Peekaboo. Three prominent super villains in the DC Universe. Not to mention besting both Doctor Light and Killer Frost.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: The One Where Everybody Finds Out

Well, almost. But two of the biggest season reveals finally happened in this week’s Arrow: Thea found out Oliver is the Arrow and Captain Lance FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY found out about Sara. There are a few things each character is a bit, ahem, fuzzy on… (how long has Sara been dead? Who killed Sara?), but it will finally be nice to get past both of these distracting omissions. Now, besides the circumstances of Sara’s death, we just need Lance to know Oliver is the Arrow and most of our major secrets will be out in the open!

But first! Our fellow NOC Christelle, who provides those awesomely hilarious Flash recaps got tweeted by William Shatner!

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Weekend at Ollie’s

The subtitle for this recap is two-fold. With Oliver gone, Team Arrow is like kids whose parents went out of town so they have a big party, but everyone breaks things and they have to scramble to fix the house before the parents return. Only Oliver isn’t coming back (yet). On the other and more obvious side of the metaphor, Laurel’s absurd aversion to telling her father the truth gets frustratingly WEIRD.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: A Battle He Was Always Going to Lose

WHAT A (MID-SEASON) FINALE!!

There are definitely some parallels to previous mid-season finales: Malcolm Merlyn, a tense battle, a moment of death for Oliver are all running themes in these fall finale episodes. I can’t say it was my favorite though, for a few reasons: I think I knew too much going in. Everyone knows Oliver can’t take Ra’s Al Ghul! And I think Stephen teased at some point (I’ve watched a lot of Stephen Amell Q&As okay?) that the episode might end over a cliff. Also, the other two major focuses of this episode were Laurel and Ray and if you didn’t know my feelings on them before, you’ll find out now, so that also dulled by excitement. BUT overall I am happy with what this episode means for the journey the rest of the season will take.

I have a lot to say about the end and the journey it will lead to, so I’m going to try keep the actual recap portion as short as I can. This episode is merely transition and shirtless ab fights than anything anyway.

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Vigilante Soup

I want to go about recap this a little differently this week. We encountered a lot of vigilantes in tonight’s episode, so I’ll talk about them and their story this episode one by one.

But before I get there, BOXING GLOVE ARROW! Wow, they pulled it off! (I feel like Ted Grant’s character was added into the show just to justify Oliver being around boxing gloves…) I think they figured out how to incorporate that move in a great way that the fans really, really enjoyed and didn’t look overly stupid or forced. Kudos to the writers and production staff for that one!

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NOC Recaps Arrow: Training Day

I can admit when I’m wrong. At the end of last week’s episode of Arrow, when it was revealed that Thea has been training on the island of Corto Maltese1 with her biological father Malcolm Merlyn, I thought the follow-up episode would be a slog to get through.

Fortunately, episode three — titled, fittingly, “Corto Maltese” after the fictional island nation in the DC Universe — was a pretty great hour of television and moved a lot of plotlines forward for what is increasingly looking like an action-packed season of superheroing.

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