Arrow: The Complete First Season

The CW fills in the space vacated by Smallville with this new take on another DC comic book superhero: Green Arrow. While maintaining the basics—a rich guy becomes a vigilante, fighting urban crime with bow and arrow—this series sets up an origin story (part Robinson Crusoe and part Hunger Games that plays out in flashbacks over the course of the season) that finds once-spoiled rich kid Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) becoming seasoned by ordeal into a warrior. Arrow is kind of a junior Batman, working in a city that is just as corrupt as Gotham City, playing the playboy for his family, friends, and the media in order to hide his true mission to right his father's wrongs, which include a conspiracy of millionaires aiming to clean up their city on their own unforgiving terms. Queen even opens a nightclub as a cover for his identity and his secret lair (hidden beneath, Batcave-style). In keeping with the network's young adult demographic, Arrow is dominated by attractive twentysomethings in cool costumes and sleek fashions engaged in plenty of romantic tangles, but it's also a lot darker than Smallville; Arrow kills his enemies in the early episodes and dishes out much collateral damage during his crime-fighting escapades. Presenting all 23 episodes from the 2012-13 debut season, extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes, a cast and crew Q&A, deleted scenes, and a gag reel. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)