An Arrow in the Back

Oliver washing up on the island with his father.

           Curse you cliffhangers, with your sudden but inevitable betrayal.  Tuning in for the second episode of Arrow, the CW's superhero attempt, I found myself flipping back and forth between it and The Middle.  The lead actor who plays Oliver Queen/Arrow possesses a great deal of charisma as he plays the billionaire with a giant chip (er, island) on his shoulder when he returns after being marooned on an island for five years.  It's just that I don't think the show has is groove yet.  It still doesn't have its identity yet and contains some rather annoying characters (I'm looking at you Oliver's bratty,poor rich girl sister).

         That being said, anytime the episode entitled Honor Thy Father flashed back to Oliver's experience getting shipwrecked I was riveted.  In the first episode, we learned that Oliver's father shot a fellow survivor and himself to give Oliver a better chance out in the open water.  In the second episode, Oliver washes up to an island and desperately grieves for the father he lost.  Maybe I just have an affinity for island narratives (Lost), but I suddenly stopped flipping away from Arrow.  By the end of the episode, I couldn't.  The end gave a taste of how Oliver became Arrow, the hero with a love of all things archery.  As Oliver buries his father on the presumably deserted island, he is shot in the back by a mysterious archer, collapsing to the ground in the final seconds of the show.  Curse you cliffhanger.  Curse you.  Just when I thought I wasn't going to watch Arrow, I was drawn back in by the promise of a unique origin story.  I'll be back for the next episode, which will probably draw me in in the last few moments.  I just hope that the rest of the episode isn't just filler for a good ending.  That would be true betrayal, and will lose viewers faster than Oliver's trigger finger.