Is it Time for Arrow to Hang-up the Bow?

I always find the calls to shorten season interesting, usually the excuse is it will cut out the "filler", "boring" or whatever unkind word folks want to use for episodes they don't like. Truth is every episode has folks that like it and folk that don't. :) All it does for me is just as the series is hitting its stride, bang, it's done, see you in nine months and we'll try again.

As for saving the actors and crew from exhaustion, not sure that would happen either. I look at he shooting schedule for something like Doctor Who and wonder how in the world they take so long and wear down the production so much in producing half as many episodes, so not sure a short season would really do much to help with a US production in that regard.

Shows have tried to mitigate this somewhat with split seasons. Run the first half September to November and then the back half March to May/June. Have to say I hate split seasons myself. I've completely lost track of four or five different shows because of the long break in between and not remembering when it was supposed to restart.

Large ensemble casts, like Arrow, also can help. Not all of the actors are in every episode so it gives them a break.

For me it is time to end Arrow, it is not going anywhere anymore, all has been said and told, hopefully the next will be the last season.

The sooner the better.

There are 2 points against your reasoning.

The first is that fewer episodes do not necessarily mean better quality. It just removes one possible factor, but you can still have 13 bad and/or boring episodes. And I don’t think it would do much for the cast: it’d be hard for the “core” members (Stephen or Emily, in this case) to do much else, while the others already have some spare time, not everyone is in every single episode.

The second is more practical: networks are not in the business of doing good tv show from a quality, story-telling point of view, they’re in the business of doing money, and unfortunately you can make money from bad tv, too (and I guess we can say, it’s more often the latter). If the model of 22/24 episodes per season makes more money, they’ll keep doing 22/24 episodes. Plus, older shows tend to have a steady following, while new shows are always a risk. If you have too many new shows that fail all at the same time without the “guaranteed” base from older shows, it’s bad, bad news.

Shows with only 8, or 10, or 13 episodes have filler stuff too. See Defenders, or the complaints about the more recent Marvel Netflix stuff. Or Black Lightning these days.

I suspect they'll keep Arrow going for no other reason than to keep the Arrowverse/Berlantiverse/CWVerse going. Green Arrow is typically a key part of the yearly crossovers. That and once they concede one of their Arrowverse shows can't hack it, the entire thing collapses. The impression of inevitability is part of what keeps it going and expanding.

*still waiting for the Black Lightning world to be revealed as Earth-33 or somesuch.*

I also think Arrow can find more to say. Heck, they've been saying the same about Supernatural and every year it finds something new to say. I'm not sure Berlanti & Co. are as good at doing so. And they're stretched awfully thin, not just with the Arrowverse shows but stuff like Deception.

Arrow have some of the most toxic fans I've seen out there with two polarizing shipping camps that there's no pleasing no matter what happens on the show and both being very vocal in their complaints. So if Arrow gets cancelled those "fans" certainly didn't help.

Aidan wrote:
Arrow have some of the most toxic fans I've seen out there with two polarizing shipping camps that there's no pleasing no matter what happens on the show and both being very vocal in their complaints. So if Arrow gets cancelled those "fans" certainly didn't help.

If the production has any sense at all they ignore the online fandom groups.

All of the Arrow-verse shows slipped a bit this spring, last year and the beginning of this season, Arrow, Legends, and Supergirl regularly rated a 0.5 (Flash averaged a 0.7) Ratings usually do drop in the spring and Arrow and Legends now average a 0.4; Flash is still in the 0.7 range when they bother to show a new episode and Supergirl has been off the air for a couple of months. So as far as the network is concerned, there's nothing wrong with the show or the episode count, it's doing exactly what they expect it to do.

I am two seasons behind now in watching so I have no idea what the story-telling has looked like the last couple of years to really say anything about the quality of those episodes.

LadyShelley wrote:
If the production has any sense at all they ignore the online fandom groups.

Judging from the fan complaints, they apparently do. ;)

The problem with Arrow is they introduce the B(rat) Team this season and then all they do is bicker between the teams. I liked enough Dinah originally, but now her, Curtis, and Rene should just be written off and refocus on the core group (Oliver, Felicity, Diggle). I don't see a way they can legitimately bring them back into Team Arrow after the past few episodes anyway. Then we have Oliver going to let Diggle take over but now he doesn't want to give it up and Diggle's just being whiney about wanting to be the Green Arrow. Nobody wants to see OQ NOT be the Green Arrow. The writers just need to get over that. I'm just hoping they either get out of this slump and back up to the quality of storylines they had in previous years, or just find a way to end the show without dragging it out so much it ruins it's reputation.

I do think the Arrowverse shows should be about 20 episodes each though, Supergirl s1 only had 20 and it did perfectly fine. They will still have filler, sure, but let's say 25% of the season is filler, 4 episodes of filler is still better than having 5-6 episodes of filler. It would also alleviate some of the stress CW puts on their schedule every season by having more hours produced than they have hours to broadcast.