House of Lies Review: Can you find truth in the House of Lies?

Big business is a boogeyman in today's world. When the subject of corporations and wealth come up, things often turn to talking about lies, greed an grabbing power. So it's no surprise that these ideas are front and center in House of Lies. But where a lot of shows would explore the consequences of a life built on lies and deception, this show attempts to see the benefits. In a world of full of liars, the best liar is the one who succeeds. Enter Marty Kahn, played by the great Don Cheadle, a management consultant who is second to none at the game they play. He can sell anything to anyone on a bad day. On a good day he can talk them out of house and home and make them think it was their idea.

It's often said that with any new business or industry that there are bound to be spinoff industries looking to take advantage of the relatively uncertainty that comes along with establishing it. With the multi-million or billion dollar conglomerate it seems, management consultancy is that spinoff. A business built upon coming in and telling a massive organization how to be more efficient at high costs. And there in lies the fun of the show. Marty Kahn and his team of consultants are masters of manipulating businesses.

You might say that it is one of the best examples of shows which fight back for the anger and resentment towards corporate greed and power. In the same way that Arrow and other shows in recent years have been like rallying calls reflecting society's perspective, House of Lies shows that even within the system itself there are people who look for ways to screw the big boys out of their money.

Adding to this modern story is the phenominal talent of the previously mentioned Don Cheadle, the fantastic Kristen Bell as Jeannie Van Der Hooven, the incredible Dawn Olivieri as Marty's psychotic ex wife Monica Talbot ultimately rounded out by what can only be described as the comedy duo of Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson as Clyde Oberholt and Doug Guggenheim. They are today's unsung heroes, the wish-fulfillment of the audience in a world where things just don't tend to go their way. And it's a joy to watch them work. Set from the personal perspective of Marty Kahn as he struggles to balance work, home and his relationships we still never lose sight of the lives of the people around him and their own struggles.

Can you find truth in the House of Lies? Absolutely, especially when a lot of those lies also happen to be the truth. If you haven't seen this show, then you're lying to yourself if you say you don't need to.

Arrow Review: How good is Arrow's aim now?

When I gave my review of Arrow's pilot back in August after seeing a special preview, I was very much encouraged by the show's potential. Now the show has had time to breath and flesh itself out with nine full episodes having aired. The show has also been picked up through to the end of this season at the least and that generally boads well for a series as a lot of them don't manage to get that far before being taken out, much like the Aquaman pilot or the much publized Wonder Woman show which appears to be getting a revival after a whole new team gets a crack at it.

So with the show's return coming on January 16th, I thought I would check in and see if my opinion has changed much since my initial assement. There were a lot of good things about that pilot, snappy dialogue, a well thought out premise, a willingness not to bank on the previous success of the Green Arrow character on Smallville. All of which is far from forgotten as you get into the proceeding episodes. What concerns me however is that the episodes don't seem to gel as easily as they did in the beginning.

Now I am well aware, that the pilot is not the show. Much in the same way that you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't guarantee the success of a show based on the strength of its pilot. However as any good TV executive will tell you the pilot is supposed to give you a sense of what the show is about. A well formed pilot then should be reflected in future episodes then. Unfortunately, it seems that the writers have stumbled on following up with a lot of those elements.

Most shows live or die on their ability to go one of two ways when it comes to storytelling. Either they have good strong episodic stories in which only the characters journies carries over from episode to episode as a subplot, or they have a strong character drama driven story as the main plot which makes the individual episodes' only purpose to drive the characters' journies forward as the subplot. Arrow seemed at first to have found something of a middle ground when it came to those two ways of telling stories. There was the strong episodic elements which was the list of names Oliver had to bring justice to, and the family drama which could inform the hero's journey.

It seems however that those in charge of the show were too concerned with being pigeon holed that they've tried to branch out way too early and haven't properly established the main story. They want the ability to go anywhere but they haven't quite figured out what their first desination is yet. In a world where corporate greed and the power of the 1% is of great concern to the public, a show about a vigilante fighting back for the little guy is perfect for the times. This article about the changing face of television springs to mind as the perfect reason why they should have stuck with that as the focus of the show, however instead they have taken to expanding the universe through guest star after guest star after guest star.

But The CW is known for its teenage drama driven stories and that really hasn't been properly explored in Arrow. What came off initially as a genuine divide in the Queen family's ability to connect with each other is now getting somewhat repetative subplot. Characters keep referring to the island Oliver was trapped on but that started to become somewhat tired after episode 2. If you want to go with your strengths and push the drama angle, why is Oliver not going after the drug dealer who supplied Thea with cocaine in episode 1? That serves both to clean up the city, allows for drama, and moves the hero's journey forward.

How good is Arrow's aim now? It's a little shaky but they're still focused enough to hit somewhere near the target. Despite what I see as issues with the show's basic structure I think that it still has some pretty solid elements that are worth sticking around for. They may not be as cohesive as they need to be in order to go long term, but they're a lot closer then many other shows have been at this stage in their series.

Does Arrow hit its mark?

The final pilot that I managed to see in the recent 4 day weekend of fandamonium that is FanExpo was Arrow, the newest show based on a DC Comics superhero character after the end of Smallville which chronicled the story of a young Clark Kent as he grows up to become Superman. Many attempts to get something else off the ground in television have been tried since the success of that show and so naturally they are often compared to Smallville and I am sure that many will be in the years to come. Attempts were made to do a Smallville spinoff of the Supergirl character which appeared on the show, as well as an unconnected Robin story which follows the same formula of a young Dick Grayson before he came to be trained by Batman. All of which seem to have fallen by the wayside. So the fact that Arrow managed to make it as far as it did is something of a feat in and of itself.

What I think contributed to Arrow getting itself off the ground is that it didn’t try to trade off the success of Smallville in the same way that previous superhero origin story attempts have. Despite the fact that the character of Green Arrow appeared in Smallville and would eventually become a main character in its final years, Arrow doesn’t seem to take the easy way out. It cast new actors in the roles of Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance when it could have easily brought them over and pleased the fans of both Smallville and many comic book fans as well, but it didn’t. The show attempted to stand on its own and tell its own story in its own way. For that, people should be grateful.

This is not to say that I am not a fan of the idea of a shared universe or that I don’t want to see what I like about characters I have followed for a long time represented on screen. I do. But as a writer I understand that this isn’t always the best way to go. Part of developing a TV show or a movie which has a built in audience is making sure you don’t alienate any potential new fans you can create by telling a story not steeped in too much history. That’s one of the fundamental lessons of a show like Smallville. The story of Superman is not a new story, people know the origin and they have seen it represented in so many different ways. Smallville took what that history and gave it a different tone, a different viewpoint, and weren’t afraid to have a sense of humor about it.

In watching the pilot of Arrow, I think that seems to be a lesson which the creators seem to have learned well from and taken to heart. They seem to have great respect for the character’s history in comics, as well as his importance on Smallville, but it’s by no means an ode to the fans who love him already. Fans of the character and of DC Comics characters in general will definitely appreciate the show and the respect the character is given, but there are all kinds of aspects which even a casual fan or someone who isn’t a fan at all can enjoy. You have the hero with the cause worth fighting for, an unrequited love story, the importance of family and the question of how that is defined, and most of all you have humor.

All of these elements are portrayed quite well by Stephen Amell, and yet the other characters are no less interesting or well thought out. Each of the characters have their own problems and their own struggles to face that don’t rely on Oliver Queen to be told, but ultimately I think what will make the show work is how his alter ego the Green Arrow will interject himself into those problems and help them solve them to come out better for it, much like the show seems to have done.

So does Arrow hit its mark? With pin point accuracy.