Top Ten Episodes of Arrow

I have potential good news or bad news depending on how you look at things. This will be my last top ten on the show Arrow. I’ve run out of topics to include or otherwise have and this is nearing the end of the whole interest of stuff that I need to cover anyways. I’m going to mention what I feel the ten best episodes of Arrow are from all eight seasons. I could cover the worst ten, but don’t feel like it and am not even sure that I have enough for that list. Plus, I'm not sure that I can remember them at all. Also, I'd do that before the top ten, probably.

Note that while I’m doing as much as I can to make things equal by including at least one episode from all of this show’s seasons, note that there will be a lack of season 2 or 3 episodes since I haven’t seen any of them. Every other season, no matter how bad or good, will get at least one episode from each other season on the list.

#10 Pilot- I figure that I kind of the premiere of the show might be the best way of starting this list. Also, I had no idea what else was even remotely close from the first season to being on this list. In a way, it has to work as it ended up launching the franchise indirectly at some point. Thus, there really is no better episode in my mind (since I didn’t even see all of it) to make the top ten from the first season of this show. What better way to introduce Oliver Queen to the world?

#9 Schism- The fourth season finale, it was nice to see Oliver lead even while dealing with both sides of himself. I loved seeing the death of Damien Dark, even if Arrowverse made more use of him for a while on Legends of Tomorrow. It dealt with both sides of Oliver and was a good way of dealing with him as they set up the next season.

#8 Fadeout- While I did have some issues with the series finale, mainly the sappy return of some of those that they killed off throughout the series, I did like how they closed off the series outside of what we might see from other shows in the franchise. We saw Team Arrow’s last mission and the funeral of Oliver after his death in the crisis. I only hope that we see the continued adventures of his daughter and her allies in the future due to what happened in the episode before it.

#7 Taken- Another fourth season episode, we saw more of the fallout from Oliver having a kid in the past when the big bad of the season kidnapped this child and lead to an interesting episode. We saw what could have been the downfall of that villain as he wound up losing his powers for a while due to the events of this episode. I like all that happened in it, especially Damien's downfall, however temporary it was.

#6 Lost Canary- Focusing on Laurel (or was it Yanni?) after Emiko framed her for crimes, she struggled with her darkness and trying to be good when everyone thought otherwise. It was fun to see her team up with her sort of sister Sarah and others proving her innocence.

#5 Emerald Archer- This episode focused on a documentary on vigilantism, with many familiar faces from the past and other Arrowverse shows showing up. It tied in well with the events of the episode and helped move the show forward in a way it never would have before.

#4 Invasion- Part of a crossover event, we saw an epic landmark Arrow episode and part of one of the best crossovers thus far in all of Arrowverse. Full of faces from the past while moving the show forward, it was wonderful seeing all of the people deal with the simulation and move forward in their fight against the dominators.

#3 Lian Yu- The downfall of Adrian Chase, by his own hand, no less, was quite interesting as we saw the culmination of Oliver’s time on the island come to an end while explosions left the fate of many up in the air. It was the end of an arc in some way as the show continued forward in new ways.

#2 The Slabside Redemption- With Oliver in jail and ready to come out, there still had to be a story with it that was reminiscent of Die Hard in a way to me, despite it being named for a prison movie instead. I felt that it was a great episode and a great way of ending the prison storyline.

#1 Life Sentence- My favorite of all the episodes, we saw a dramatic twist towards the end with Oliver revealing his true identity to everyone and saving his teammates as a result. He saves his teammates in the end and we saw other great things in the episode too, such as Quinten’s sacrifice.

That’s it for this blog post. I will be doing another Arrowverse post during the offseason, but have a lot of other posts to write. I have started to switch the Thursday updates between this blog and my one on Madam Secretary so that is why this blog wasn’t updated last week at its usual time. I need to do the summer shows post in addition to the awards for the worst of television. Hopefully I can get more of the cancelled shows done to cover that as well and another notable post has been missing much longer than it should have been. I can only hope that they will all be done at some point soon.

Notes on the Upcoming CW Schedule: 2020 Version

With so much uncertainty going into this coming season, the CW’s unusual decision to put all of its main programming in January might actually pay off if they can’t start filming shows then yet. Of course, that is a highly unusual change that has never happened before. Will the CW actually get higher ratings if they are actually airing shows during the fall? Well, let’s start with the story of the year.

Let’s start with some changes from coronavirus. As stated before, there will be numerous differences in the schedule with the network airing some of their planned summer schedule in the fall and most, if not all, of their main schedule later with the last of Supernatural being the most notable exception. I’m not even sure if it makes sense as much to someone like me who is used to keeping track of all of the common and normal schedule changes that won’t even happen this time around. This could wind up being the weirdest TV season yet in history. More changes are coming soon.

Let’s first talk about the new fall shows. They are Swamp Thing, Tell Me a Story *, Devils, Coroner *, and World’s Funniest Animals. I have an asterisk next to two of these shows since they are airing new on this network for the first time. In fact, Swamp Thing might be among those as well. They aren’t actually new to some people as they have aired before.

Now there were some summer shows planned for earlier in 2020 that were delayed until the fall, them being Pandora, Two Sentence Horror Stories, and The Outpost. I guess that one could say what will air at the fall that often reruns during the regular season are on too. Those shows are Penn and Teller: Fool Us and Whose Line is it Anyways? Whether or not they will be airing new episodes is unknown by me at this time, but could be possible depending on what is already filmed.

As for the new shows on during the winter, there are two main ones set to air then. One is the show of Superman & Lois, part of Arrowverse. The other is Walker. Two other shows set to premiere at some point in the future are Kung Fu and The Republic of Sarah.

That’s about all I can about this upcoming season for now. Pretty much all of the shows that were on last season are returning for this new season, with the exceptions being Arrow, Katy Keene, and The 100. While they are over now or will be, there’s not much else to say about that in the future. There could be other changes in the future.

My Planned Viewing Habits: Fall of 2020

It may seem a bit early to do this post, but I figured that I might as well do it and hope that the schedule that was announced winds up being made in the end after all. If not, I guess I’ll just have to see what else might be different in the future. Remember that the plan may not end up happening after all due to various reasons that could change. I mean, I thought that I would be seeing more at first this last season, but couldn’t for a while due to work.

Speaking of work, I don’t know yet how it might end up affecting shows. I don’t have anything that would conflict with the usual primetime shows in terms of work now, but that could change. Just know that if nothing I care about is on at certain times on Mondays or Thursdays, I might skip the usual shows that I normally watch or check out at times if I had the whole night to myself.

Also note that there are some unusual schedule changes that are happening because of coronavirus that causes lots of differences and could mean that there might not even be something on at all like they think that they can do and are planning. The CW is the only one openly doing something unusual, but FOX is also withholding a lot of its notable shows for later as well.

Since a lot of what I do requires a TV tuner to record shows, note that spectrum reallocation has made that difficult for me. After losing my FOX affiliate due to this, I could get it back on most channels, but had issues getting it back on my TV tuner. Thus, I went without it at times I normally wouldn’t have in the past. Only having one network affected by this isn’t that big a problem, but now the same thing took away my preferred CW channel that actually comes in most of the time, unlike the other one I get which is often quite a problem. I can only hope that I can get the new versions of these channels in the future and not lose any other channels in the process. It can be annoying going without a channel.

Speaking of that, there were NBC problems like I never had before when it came to this previous TV season since I couldn’t see most, if any, of the shows that I cared about at the time. I haven’t yet given up on any of them for good yet, but probably don’t care about it as much as I could. I do want to see the shows on this network when and if I can, but might not in the end.

Now let’s get to the stuff I care about not on at fall. The FOX shows of 9-1-1, The Resident, 9-1-1: Lone Star, Lego Masters, and Prodigal Son are not on the schedule then. I don’t think that Lego Masters will be coming back, although maybe it will be. The CW will not be airing Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, The Flash, Black Lightning, Dynasty, Nancy Drew, Charmed, or Roswell, New Mexico for quite some time and might be giving a lot of them shorter seasons than usual. CBS isn’t planning to put S.W.A.T. on during the fall right now. Any other schedule changes, I’m not sure that I care about.

There might be potential wildcards with what I watch, or maybe not. Maybe I won’t be into something that I normally am or suddenly get into something that I wasn’t expecting to in the future. The most notable thing that I can think of would relate to if Survivor isn’t on. If it isn’t on when it is currently set to, then I would probably check on the FOX show of The Masked Singer and the CW show of Devils. I am set to watch Devils once online regardless of if I need to in the end or not.

Now let’s get to the returning shows I’m still into. I’ll be watching Pandora and The Outpost on The CW. I might check out their other shows like Penn and Teller: Fool Us, Masters of Illusion, and Whose Line is it Anyways? I don’t care about them as much so I might ignore them as a result. I’ll still watch the FOX shows of The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, and Family Guy, which I’m realizing is all of the shows that I care about that they will air during the fall.

I’ll still watch the CBS shows of NCIS: Los Angeles, Bull, All Rise, NCIS: New Orleans, FBI, NCIS, Survivor, FBI: Most Wanted, Young Sheldon, Evil, MacGyver, Blue Bloods, 60 Minutes, and Magnum P.I. I have gotten back into SEAL Team and may watch it some more since it seems like nothing else I care about is on at that time. I am still watching the ABC shows of The Rookie, The Good Doctor, Grey’s Anatomy, American Housewife, and Station 19. I plan to watch the NBC shows of New Amsterdam, SVU, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Manifest.

Now for all of the new shows that I’m going to check out, I realize that for the first time ever, I will be seeing every new show on all of the networks. I have it set up now that I watch all or nearly all of the new shows on FOX, CBS, and the CW. I also check out at least one new fall show on NBC and ABC. The last two are only airing one new show each. NBC will be airing Law and Order: Organized Crime. ABC will be airing Big Sky. I plan to check out both.

Meanwhile, the new or newly airing shows on the CW are Devils, Coroner, World’s Funniest Animals, Swamp Thing, and Tell Me a Story. The new CBS shows are The Equalizer and B Positive. The new FOX shows are Cosmos: Possible Worlds, Filthy Rich, Next, and LA’s Finest.

That’s pretty much all that I can think of mentioning for this post. We’ll see if any of these shows go back into production like they are planning in time to make all that they want to. Plans can be awesome. All you need to do is stick to them. I’m looking forward to these shows (maybe, I may not like a lot of them in the end) and hope that they all air normally in the future.

Coronavirus Changes: Version One

First, I did not watch an episode of Survivor today, but had to update this blog or I wouldn’t be able to update my Survivor blog for a while. Second, I don’t know if there will be a second version of this yet or not. I might do that in the future, but might not be able to or want to. I mean, I still haven’t done version two of the Weinstein affect and really should in the future, even if not much has changed since I did the last version of that. Now there have been a lot of changes on TV thus far due to covid19 and I thought that I would do a blog post on some of what has happened thus far.

I honestly don’t know as much as I could about this. I have no idea what all the different affects might be thus far. For one, I thought that all of the TV shows were allowed to finish filming whatever current episode they were on when the filming shutdowns started. But this does not appear to be the case for The Flash, which aired the episode before the current one they were filming as the last one of the whole season while keeping what was filmed of the next episode for the next season premiere.

I also know that Empire didn’t finish filming its second to last episode and might not have the series finale that they planned, even though they want to do it in the future. But I also am lead to believe that Prodigal Son did take this option of filming the rest of the current episode they were on and changing some of what they suddenly had to with other episodes. What I do know is that there have been some changes with the planned schedules that were going to happen at some point this season that won’t be here until the next season as a result. Let’s get to all of them that I can think of.

The ABC’s Bachelorette will now be on during the fall on Wednesday nights. Big Brother won’t be on this season on CBS. The $100,000 Pyramid won’t be on this season on ABC. The Amazing Race’s filmed season will be airing in the fall instead of the summer as originally planned for the future. Whether or not they will be able to do more of the season that they had started to film after all the shutdowns and travel restrictions are over is unknown. The future of that show could very well be in jeopardy.

The CW has delayed a lot of their summer programming from last year. Pandora, The Outpost, and Two Sentence Horror Stories will air during the fall, possibly having already filmed seasons before the shows had to stop filming or expected to have stuff done the rest of their shows do. The final season of Supernatural is set to return during the fall at some point, previously set to end this season. I do not understand the reason why they couldn’t go into post production of what was filmed as it seemed like most other shows were able to add special effects and whatnot like that from what I can tell.

A lot of shows had to abandon their seasons and could possibly see more of what was written or maybe even filmed in the future. Other shows ended up being cancelled entirely, not even filming what was to be the end of their seasons yet having a good ending (from what I’ve seen) regardless of this. There was at least one person who thought that existing shows would get renewed when they otherwise would not have been, only he wound up being wrong about this in the end. Most shows did not benefit and some had even worse outcomes than you would otherwise think. Only the animated shows on the FOX network got renewals that might not have otherwise happened if they were live action.

What is supposed to be CW’s normal schedule won’t be here until January. Also kind of missed is that The Masked Singer and MasterChef Junior will be the only regular FOX shows that aren’t animated that are planned to air when they normally would have or had at other times during the fall. They will be making use of otherwise new or previously aired elsewhere programs.

While shows being delayed until later isn’t actually that new of a thing, it has been happening a lot of times this season. Filthy Rich was at one point going to air back in January when Deputy wound up airing instead. It will finally air in September by the looks of things. It is probably already filmed. Big Sky on ABC was also like this at some point: set to premiere sooner or at least this season, but won’t air until it is later. This also creates something new that we haven’t seen as much before.

As one might expect, there are a lot less new shows than we typically have seen in the past. Both NBC and ABC are set to air only one new show each during the fall, possibly hoping that they can film some more new things in time for midseason. CBS will only air two new fall shows. FOX and the CW both seem to be unusual by airing a lot of new shows. Only one of FOX’s new shows already aired on National Geographic and a good chunk of CW’s new programming aired internationally or on some other network first before it is set to air here.

We still don’t know what the effects of this virus will be and it is unlikely that we will know for sure right away. They could get back to filming soon and all of the networks are banking on there being enough of their shows filmed in the future in order to do the schedule they have announced. If they can’t get to that in the future, you’ll be seeing lots of changes in the future. Survivor hasn’t started filming its next planned season yet, even though it is on the schedule for the future. At some point, they might not be able to do a fall season unless they can air some while they film it. This is what I know about thus far and feel like sharing right now. I might do more on this later.

Ownership on TV

What seems weird to me, even knowing what it is, regards the fact that when you see a show on any of the major networks, the network might not own that show. Doesn’t that seem weird? I’ve never quite understood it at all. Why does it happen?

One of the best examples I can think of regarding this is The Big Bang Theory. It was a WB show. But it aired on CBS. Why wouldn’t CBS air a sitcom it produces on its own network? Well, it does from time to time, but often airs shows produced by other production companies and thus doesn’t own its own product in the end. Like I said, this doesn’t make sense to me, yet happens all the time.

What can often benefit a show on a network is if the network does own it. This makes it more likely to last until the end of the episodes it made, even if the show winds up cancelled before the end. This does not always happen with shows, but often does now. It might not be until later, but the network will air the show at some point or at least put it online. This also puts shows that aren’t own by their own network at a disadvantage, especially if they are cancelled in their first season.

Of course, this can lead to an edge with another network should your current network no longer want you around. Last Man Standing would not have returned in the future were it not for the fact that FOX produced it and wanted more of that awful show for some dumb reason. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Nine-Nine was almost immediately picked up by NBC after FOX axed it.

What else is there to say? I’m hoping that someone who understands this phenomenon more than I do can comment on this post and explain it to me. I find it strange, but it probably makes more sense in the end than it otherwise could.

A Grievance over Spectrum Reallocation

I probably complain a lot in this and even over blogs. (If you don’t like my complaining here, then be glad that you haven’t read my Madam Secretary blog back when that show was still on.) If you want to skip this post as a result, go ahead. There’s no shame in it. I’m going to have to explain some of what this post is about as you may not have heard of spectrum reallocation and probably don’t care.

Indeed, many people probably weren’t affected by spectrum reallocation because they have satellite or cable TV. I’m one of those weirdoes who doesn’t have either, but still watches a shit ton of TV still. But there was an unprecedented problem for me once this happened.

I use a device called a TV tuner to record TV on my laptop and then watch it later. It was doing well, but has occasional glitches over time due to its age and other issues. As advanced as it seems, it was actually outdated technology by the time I had it and started using it. Indeed, the problems that I have now with TV shows over spectrum reallocation were largely due to the TV tuner and high definition TV.

Now I’ve done three paragraphs thus far without explaining what spectrum reallocation is. Basically, the FCC wanted certain frequencies cleared up for future use that TV networks were already using. They were then forced to change this over time and forced those with DTV to rescan channels in order to keep watching what they already got. The old channel would be gone forever, never to come in again while the new channel that has the same content would be somewhere else on a different frequency. You’d think that this wouldn’t be that annoying, but it was.

This whole process was a ten part one and actually ends tomorrow with the last possible rescan going on when it is July 3^rd 2020. No more rescans will ever happen again or be needed. Well, that’s what they are saying now and we can only hope that the FCC doesn’t change things and make things annoying like this in the future by causing troubles in other ways. I also don’t know how much of this was the fault of US Congress for passing the law that lead to this happening.

Still, it is hard not to get annoyed at the FCC for this since the TV tuner problems I’m having because of this rescan obviously wouldn’t have happened without the rescan. It also might not have affected me as much if it just didn’t happen to affect any of my local affiliates. But it did.

I forget when it was last year that I learned that my FOX affiliate was affected by this. I didn’t know what it was called at the time and only found out more about it by using Wikipedia. At first, I wasn’t sure that it even was affecting it, but then found out that it did. I rescanned the two standard definitions TV of mine without a problem as I was able to use the update instead of having to rescan and potentially lose any affiliates that I already have.

This affected the high definition TV more as rescanning channels was the only option and I lost other networks for a moment after it was over, but was able to get some of them back. Then, I learned that the rescan would happen again and I’d lose my main CW and one of my CBS affiliates. Thus, when I had to rescan channels again, I lost the ABC one on the high definition TV, but will hopefully get that back in the future when I try rescanning again. I’ve lost it before for other, dumb reasons, and hope to get it back again like I did then. I just have to wait until all I want to see is coming in normally.

What made it worse for me was how the TV tuner didn’t seem to work getting in the new FOX. I had done this rescan twice and was in danger of losing nearly everything, which thankfully didn’t happen in the end. The main issue going forward would be that there would be no way of putting FOX shows on my TV tuner possibly ever again if I didn’t keep trying to get it back. I wasn’t taking the risk yet since staying with everything but FOX wouldn’t be that big of an issue. As long as the other affiliates would work, I’d be able to manage with FOX not ever being on the TV tuner again.

Now since I know that there is an end time to this and I would need to get CW back on it now in addition to FOX, I will have to try again and hope that I can get all five of the major networks on my TV tuner again and not have to go without some shows at times like I have before. (I know that there are only four major networks as the poor CW doesn’t get the respect the rest of network TV does, so I put it with the other four and call it the fifth network that it deserves to be.) I can only hope that if I get just four of the five networks, things will be okay in the end. I want to keep watching what I want to, even though this shouldn’t really matter and affect me too much.

Ultimately, this is what the issue is and I wouldn’t be having issues at all were it not for the fact that the FCC forced this on people and my TV tuner couldn’t get the new affiliates that would actually air the new content now instead of a black screen. I wish that there would be more that I could do to fix this and am left to the limits of technology forced upon me by the FCC. I don’t know why this had to be done and wish that there was some other way to do this. I doubt that I’m the only one who is annoyed or affected by this. I don’t even know what affiliates I might have lost already that don’t come in that much anyways and thus never aired any warnings. FOX has now starting having reception problems for me that it never had before and I just don’t get why this was forced upon people.