Let's talk about the BEU.

And by that I mean the Berlanti Extended Universe, which is the name I have given to the DC comics shows currently airing on The CW, named for their creator and Executive Producer Greg Berlanti. Specifically, let's talk about it's aging flagship show Arrow, which uses the hero Green Arrow as its central protagonist.

To sum up the show for the uninitiated, millionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns home after being stranded on a hellish remote island for five years with a personal mission to cleanse his city of all crime and evil.  To do that he assumes the identity of vigilante Green Arrow.  Along the way (read: the five years the show has aired), he puts together a mish-mosh team of people from all walks of life to aide him.

The show has kind of gone off the rails of late.  I continue to watch because I'm a dedicated viewer and because it is a shared world with the other shows on the network (The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and the newly-acquired from the CBS trashpile Supergirl).  Arrow has become your faltering grandpa: you love him and listen to him out of respect for his age and experience, but he's just not all with it anymore.  It has been difficult to watch the show this season because Oliver has lost much of his original core team, who were characters you cared about, and they have been replaced by a ragtag group of other Green Arrow-inspired vigilantes who really don't work so well together and there isn't much for which to cheer.  Usually in a serial show like this, there is a story arc that carries it through a season.  This year, the arc is pretty weak and there doesn't feel like any resolution is coming.  Suffice to say, I've been disappointed this season.

That said, why is no one talking about last week's episode??!  It has a little tie-in to the show, but if the writers were to have taken that out, it would have worked very well as a stand-alone episode about our current national climate.  It is titled "Spectre of the Gun" and, while its main thrust is the old debate between Second Amendment purists and those of us who believe in sensible safety laws, it touches on the idea that if we are to get out of the divided quagmire we're currently in, we must stop and listen to each other.  It feels a touch preachy, but not in an After School Special kind of way, and you still respect it afterwards.  I encourage you to watch it; forget that it's a superhero show and just watch for what it's trying to say.  None of us is all right or all wrong, no matter how much we may try to will it into being.  Peace and love.