Viewing Habits

In episode 16 of Season 11 of the Simpsons, Moe, afraid he and his new face are about to be fired from a soap opera, enlist Homer's help to steal the script story bible and divulge six months of storylines and plot secrets. Each item Homer reads sounds just like a soap opera hack plot line, and each ends "...with sexy results."

It's a funny nod to the soap opera genre, but at home Marge is taking notes. Lisa complains, but Marge responds, "Who cares? He's dishing out the dirt." The camera then shows her notepad:

This still cracks me up, and I think it's a reality that men FAR too often don't get this. The "sexy results" is the one reason many shows remain on the air.

Corrie has been watching the former CW show "Arrow." I've been listening from afar, catching enough of enough episodes to know who the main players are, and filling in what I know about Green Arrow the DC comic character when I think it may help.

Do you know that part in an action movie that's just past the halfway point? It's in the middle of the second act, and traditionally either at the exact halfway point in the film, or pretty soon after the exact middle. It's the total nadir, the lowest point for our hero, where we the audience think all is lost. BUT WAIT, something happens to create a little hope, some positive traction is gained, and the upswing of the third act comes into view. We haven't had our third act climax yet, but you can sense it should deliver (or hope it will, at least).

That's every single episode of Arrow. It's the action film nadir and up-swing into the third act. They never quite finish off the full bad-guy threat, but there's a bit of cathartic success.

There's also Stephen Amill, the young man playing Oliver Queen/the Vigilante (he's my brother Dan's age) who has scruffy facial hair and works out without a shirt all the time in the first two or three seasons. He also reluctantly takes many trips to bone-town, AKA: has many women coming for his genitals in a non-threatening manner.

For all the sexy time in the show's first few seasons, Oliver is rarely the instigator and is told things like: "So, hey, thanks for saving my life...and for the sex...I mean, I needed that." Or another time, while trying to get to a rendezvous for a jailbreak and away from the clutches of his female partner, he says, "Uh, I really have to go," he's told, "Don't worry, I'll be quick," and then later, as he's leaving, trying to make sure she's cool, she says, "Do I look like I need to cuddle?"

I asked Corrie, during one of the video conference calls with my brother and dad, if the Arrow show was good, since she'd been watching it. She answered, "Well, yeah, if you're a hetero lady."

It doesn't take too long for there to be at least two bare-chested dudes working out regularly, plenty of sexy time, and, frankly, a shit load of action. The first season is, like, a 20 hour action movie.

And it's good. Well, not bad at least. If you're knowledgeable of the comics, there's WAY more characters than I would have guessed by all the positive press I'd heard over the years.

Using Green Arrow as the basis for a television show that's this dark and risky makes sense: nobody cared about Green Arrow. If the show was a hit, Greg Berlanti could make his Flash show and his Supergirl show and the other projects that have become the so-called "Arrowverse."

Arrow skips the tween-drama that Smallville laced in the show.

But while this character makes for an interesting low-stakes risk, it's success highlights some the renaissance of comic book shows, and high-falutin' ones at that. 

And I'm not talking about Greatest American Hero from the '80s, or Flash and Lois and Clark from the '90s, or the animated Maxx and Spawn. One of the biggest comic book shows is one of the few that predate Arrow:

And while it may have finished up (I'm not sure, I've never seen any episodes...), the prestigious era for comic-book-properties-as-shows is fully upon us.

I mean, just take a look:

And those are shows that friends and family won't stop gushing over, and with which I am unfamiliar. Which is unfortunate. I mean, I read Preacher back in the day, and I like Darick Robertson, the artist of The Boys, and Joe Hill, the author of Locke and Key, and I like Gerard Way's work with the Doom Patrol, so at least I'm familiar with some of the creators.

Look at this next one, the morphing of Archie:

My wards love the show, a cross between, I've been told, 90210 and Twin Peaks.

HBO Max has been either funding or producing the first show on this list I actually watch:

And, oddly enough, like Arrow, they add a whole bunch of elements from the comic, a property I am also familiar with...like Danny the Street and the Beard Hunter. Not to mention Mr. Nobody and the Painting that Eats Cities.

Anything that contains something this weird, has to be cool:

AND THESE ARE THE PRESTIGIOS SHOWS.

Corrie's little sexy-guy show spawned an entire collection of shows. And it makes a very specific kind of sense.

On the Animatrix DVD is a documentary called "From Scrolls to the Screen," a cute little program about how the Japanese used the American innovation of sequential art and applied their own scrolling scroll stories to the form, creating what they call Manga. In it, there's an interview with Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn and one of the founding members of Image Comics. 

To paraphrase his sentiment, he says: People in America scorn you, like, "You're reading a comic?" while at the same time they love to go see action movies. Action movies are just comics.

In an era that seems starved for original movie ideas, or too risk-averse to fund independent movies, the small-screen still allows somewhat more freedom.

But here too, comic books still rule the day. It also makes sense: it's just action movies, it's mostly storyboarded already, and there are literally years of stories: Green Arrow first appeared in 1941(!!), oddly enough in the same comic where Aquaman made his first appearance (I couldn't make that up if I tried).

I haven't even mentioned any of the Power Man and Iron Fist/Daredevil/Jessica Jones Netflix shows or the Agents of Shield and Peggy Carter network shows, all Marvel properties.

And then there's the reason I like the show Arrow: