Arrow - early impressions

Finally watching Arrow, enjoying it. I'm up to episode 8.

I find that I'm picking at it more and more though... So many things annoy me in the show, but I want to keep watching because of the overall story arc is intriguing - the twists and deepening mysteries always keep me hooked in shows like this.

Things that annoy me:
* He has been practicing survival skills and been training with various weapons and fighting styles for five years... and this lets him dodge machine gun bullets?

Just one set of 10,000 bullets dodged in this episode alone.

* He can talk in a husky voice and his ex-girlfriend doesn't recognise him. She can see his face from the nose down and in one episode his eyes when he wore a balaclava and still doesn't recognise him.

No one will recognise my trademark freshly unshaven look!

* You'd think even at the beginning of the first moment when Oliver was attacked DI Lance's superior would know the history and put someone else on the case... but instead he's in every case that involves Oliver and The Hood.

Actually I'm starting to understand what my daughters see in you...

* The makeup - he can apply green eyeshadow to his face in an emergency... ok I'll let that go - but he can also get back into his suit straight afterwards and (ep 2 I believe) his face is perfectly clean and he can talk to the detective and friends without any issues. He's rich and has access to amazing technology, yes... maybe there is a wondermakeup that doesn't rub off when you're fighting bad guys or sweating but comes off beautifully with a patented wonderwipe... but where does he keep the kit - he'd need hundreds of tubes of this stuff, plus a cleanser, applicators, wipes, and of course a mirror. Also somewhere to dispose of it all.

seconds before almost being caught by the police and ziplining from one building to the next after a fierce shootout...

It would take the police 5, maybe 10 minutes to rush from one building to the next?
Plenty of time to get changed and clean up!

* No interesting characters. Oliver is maybe interesting but only because of the whole "what happened on the island" arc. I partly expect all Superhero / Masked Vigalante stories to have colourful characters everywhere. But I like a show to have at least one character in every odd episode that has some quirk... This has none so far.

Hi it's me! Spoiled Rich Guy #2!

I think I'm putting it down to a situation where the writing team are great at the mystery / intrigue aspects, but have no character writing skills. Or at least not for this type of show. In 7 episodes we've seen lovers break up and get back together again multiple times. It would make a mediocre soap opera (which is a pretty high ranking for soap opera).
It reminds me of my feelings of Once Upon A Time by season 2 - but the difference there was all of the main characters were horribly dull but the side characters were fun and interesting. I gave up on that during season 3 after much endurance - even though the Pan storyline was possibly one of the best, I could no longer tolerate the likes of Charming and Snow.

Lastly two actors I like have been in the show so far:
John Barrowman of course - Love him in Doctor Who and Torchwood. Got excited when I learned he was a bad guy in this. Always love the villains... and he's the most vanilla villain ever. Even after the new information in episode 7 (no spoilers) it wasn't that much of a big insight into his character... John Barrowman is great, for this most of all I blame the writers.
Tahmoh Penikett - yeah I had to look his name up - Helo from Battlestar Galactica. Was never one of my favourite characters in BSG but I thought he played his character well there... maybe he's imprinted as too much of a goody goody - of all the characters in BSG he was the most moral, so to have him as a ruthless bad guy in Arrow was fairly unbelievable.
I'll also add an extra mention to Colin Salmon who plays Walter - of all characters I think I might like him the best... but again there's not much to him. But I also recognised him immediately from Doctor Who as Dr Moon... just really hope he gets to say something about forgetting...

But after all this rant I'm looking forward to the next episode... I can't explain it. Part of the mystery of the show maybe...