A day before Arrow returned to the CW, there was an interview in the LA Times with one of the producers of the show.  Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg confirmed to me, in his answer to the first question posed to him, my concerns with most producers who create TV shows from comic book properties. When asked why Green Arrow isn’t called Green Arrow in the show, this was his answer:

Obviously this doesn’t take place in the real world, but we tried to ground it in as much reality as we could. If everyone was running around calling him the Green Arrow, we thought it would cheapen it and make it feel cartoonish and a little silly. We tell our police officers that they’re in an episode of “Law & Order.” And if there’s some crazy person running around with a bow and arrow, you’re not going to give him a nickname and put a giant light on top of the police department to call for help. Whatever he’s doing, he’s a crazy lunatic and you’d be trying to stop him. So the whole notion, him not having a superhero name and everyone calling him the vigilante or the Hood or whatever, helps us keep it grounded in reality.

As I read the rest of the article, I saw the pitfall producers fall into when working with comic book properties on TV. Despite the familiarity the general public has of some comic book characters, most people when asked about TV comic book characters are going to mention Adam West Batman or Linda Carter Wonder Woman. Probably a few more will mention Smallville but the concept of a comic book show is either going to be camp (a la Batman) or young adult fiction styled programming (like Smallville). The genre still has the stigma of fluff and when producers get the property, their first instinct is to move as far away from a comic book style as possible.

So a show about Superboy becomes Smallville. A TV show about Green Arrow becomes Arrow. The immediate thinking by the production team is they don’t want to do a comic book show, but their subject matter is from a comic book. When I read the part were the producer says he tells the actors portraying police officers to tell them to think like they’re in an episode of “Law and Order,” I wonder what do they tell other actors in different roles in the show? Are the actors who portray anyone in the Queen family supposed to think they’re in “Dallas” or “90210?”

I ask the question because when I take Green Arrow out of the equation, what is the show about? Does Arrow hold interest as a ‘regular’ drama? By drama I mean the big hitting dramas. Does Arrow feel like Law and Order? Does it hit the level of Person of Interest or Elementary? Right now the answer is no because they aren’t putting out a good drama. Arrow isn’t interesting without Arrow because the characters haven’t been fleshed out beyond a comic book, or more fitting a CW style of character.

To me, an aspect of the comic book Green Arrow which was an interesting part of his character was his willingness to be liberal to the point of being radical. He cares about the 99%, but little of that is in this TV character. No, this guy has a mysterious list he uses to pick off the power brokers who have done wrong by the city. Odd to me, but it would seem a guy who was cut off from civilization might have an epiphany and decide to fight for the wrongs that have happened, rather than having motivation from a list given by his rich father. There is a claim of wanting to be realistic but then elements that could be valuable from the comic are cut out and regular tropes are put in which actually make it less believable than a guy in a green hood.

There isn’t an argument that Arrow has been a ratings hit for the CW, but it isn’t a transitional hit. What I mean by that it in the circle of the CW, it’s doing well but if you compared the ratings to other TV shows, it doesn’t do as well. If the show were on NBC or even ABC, the low ratings may have killed the show.

When I hear producers talk about how they don’t want their comic book project show to be seen as a comic book, I wonder if they have looked at a lot of the ‘normal’ shows on air. If you take shows like Elementary, The Mentalist, even a show like Criminal Minds, you have the framework of a comic book. In the case of Elementary and The Mentalist, the protagonist has extraordinary perceptions that help them solve crimes. There is a tragedy that motivates them to become ‘cimefighters’ and the big nod to comic books in both shows has to do with the one villain they are out to catch. When Kreisberg says it would be silly to call the character Green Arrow because shows like Law and Order don’t use such monikers, The Mentalist has a big villain called Red John, Elementary has Moriarty, of course, and Criminal Minds have criminals who have catchy names given by the police and the press. Person of Interest has a secret police organization called HR, a criminal mastermind that is running business from jail, people from the shadowy government past and a hacker called Root. Oh, and let’s not forget the computer that gives them the person to save, who it is being hinted as having some AI abilities. Folks, that’s the makings of a comic book, yet it is happening in ‘the real world.’ Did I mention the police and the Federal government call him ‘the man in the suit?’

The shows in which Kreisberg and other producers like him try to aspire to have built in elements of comic books, yet when doing something based on comic books, their first instinct is to run away from comic books. When you take a property like Green Arrow, putting that character into the real world is easy, specifically because you don’t have anyone with superpowers. He’s a guy with a bow and arrow. In the case of a show like Smallville, budgets and the nature of his gallery of villains might make bringing them to the small screen difficult. While I watch the show, I’m frustrated that another comic property is not brought to full light because a production team can’t get over the ‘stigma’ they are working on a comic book character. To me the irony is more and more ‘real life’ shows like Elementary, Person of Interest and Criminal Minds are using elements from comic books.