kes0704

You only have to look at all of the scenes and lines that were originally for Olicity and transferred to Oliver and Laurel as a result of alien brainwashing in 508 for confirmation of this. When the scenes were for Olicity it was soap opera but once they were duplicated for Oliver and Laurel they were fine and evidence of their comic canon destiny.

I was browsing the Arrow FB page and there are so many comments from people who just want the Diaz story to be done already. The lack of audience love for him as a character and villain seems to be widespread.

The problem I have is that I don’t know if they’re deliberately writing the team as not seeming to be that concerned about Felicity almost being killed to drive the flash forwards or if it’s an accidental outcome of writing for the flash forwards. With this show it’s hard to tell because there have been so many times where they’ve been shocked that audience reaction hasn’t gone the way they anticipated. The one thing I know for sure is that I will be really annoyed if Diggle, Dinah and Curtis get any words of thanks from Oliver for assisting Felicity to capture Diaz or secure his release from prison.

I’m not at all thrilled that Malcolm Merlyn is back. The show had already squeezed every possible drop of story purpose out of him by the time he (offscreen) stepped on the landmine. My concern is which character is going to suffer the burden of being attached to him? Thea lost her independent story when she was saddled with being the secret daughter. Is it bad that I just do not care about Curtis or his lingering season 6 trauma?

Diggle, Dinah ,Rene and Curtis spent five months kicking back, moving on and apparently doing absolutely nothing to hunt Diaz while Felicity was out of sight, out of mind. She had to abandon her entire life and live in hiding with William while they got new jobs and promotions and the chance to live consequence free because of the Oliver’s immunity deal Oliver did everything he could to help Diggle when he was in jail and struggling with killing his brother, he helped Rene get his daughter back, he helped Dinah find a new way to channel her grief and in return he gets nothing and Felicity gets a lecture to accept that Oliver’s not coming back and to move on, conveniently forgetting that she actually can’t do that because Diaz is still roaming around free. Other than Rene, none of the people who are supposed to be Oliver and Felicity’s friends (overlooking the ridiculous civil war that they apparently want us to forget about) seem to be all that interested in helping her or overly concerned about Oliver.

A dark and gritty storyline I’m fine with but misery in the present timeline and misery in the future timeline is just a lot to deal with. I know this is well worn ground for Arrow but at least the misery was confined to the present and you had hope for a better future. In this incarnation, what exactly is the point of the heroes sacrificing to save the city if none of it will even matter in 20 years? They’re either fighting for a city that’s descended into chaos or (maybe) they’re dead. That’s not exactly feel good TV. And seriously, present Dinah and future Dinah in one episode is at least one Dinah too many. I would’ve much preferred never knowing exactly what happened to her.

Matt was blocking people on Twitter that replied to him with their own theories that he must’ve of thought were spoilers. Maybe the same thing was happening in the comments so they were turned off?

I’d appreciate it if Felicity could also take the time to remind Curtis about his hypocrisy in complaining about being GPS tracked after he secretly slipped tracking nanites into her pancakes.

I got this link to work on my iPad. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/arrow-clip-silencer-1157631

I actually liked this episode more than last weeks. So far, I love where they’re taking Felicity this season. She has purpose and is driven and it’s everything I want to see for her. Every formerly masked character is now unmasked so I feel like there’s no longer a reason for her to be held back. Oliver has his fighting and strategic thinking skills back and, surprisingly, I’m not bored yet with the prison arc. If it drags on for too long that might change but for now I’m good with it. I don’t know what they’re doing with Curtis and Dinah. They could’ve been completely absent from the episode and nothing would’ve changed with the plot (other than getting 1000% less Curtis babbling). I cannot understand what Kirk Acevedo is whispher mumbling most of the time and I’m not really that eager to rewind him to find out. I’m just going to trust that at some point one of the other characters will do a little onscreen exposition and fill me in on what’s going on there.

I think they have two problems with every version of Laurel presented so far. The first being that the writers never seem to put much thought into writing a coherent story for her. They made her a vigilante with the least effort possible and now she’s DA without explanation which continues that general trend. The second problem is I’m not sure how much attention Katie pays to the show or story being told. I think she’s sometimes more influenced by the backstory she’s created for herself than what might actually be written in the script. I’ll be interested to see if this is the season where they explore BS backstory and motivations. What would exploring her backstory on E2 add to the story and how would it mesh with the present timeline and the flash forward timeline?

If MG/WM were still the show runners I’d be much more worried about where they would go with a fracture. The one thing that’s always been missing from previous Olicity angst is having them talking though their issues and not just walk away or ignore everything. Oliver and Felicity are married this time around so I’m willing to give Beth the benefit of the doubt, but I know that I can’t sit through another S4B/S5A run of awful.

From TVLine https://tvline.com/2018/10/25/josh-radnor-greys-anatomy-season-15-john-not-returning/

I’m assuming from Beth’s answer that a Longbow Hunter will more than likely be paired up with a member of NTA. My question is, whoever gets Curtis should be able to take him down without breaking a sweat, right? If not, I’m going to seriously question how competent they actually are as far as their deadly assassin skills go. ?

If the flash forwards reveal all members of NTA present and accounted for I’m going to be deeply disappointed. Realistically, a part of me knows they probably aren’t going to let them go but it’s always nice to have that hope. ?

It’s all part of an ingenious plan - they know we won’t fast forward through their scenes if Felicity is with them. Poor Felicity always stuck trying to make the unlikeable, tolerable.

Post premiere and I’m cautiously optimistic. Oliver and Felicity’s reunion at the prison was emotional and everything I would have expected. Stephen and Emily rarely, if ever, disappoint in those types of scenes. It continues to surprise me how much I enjoy Felicity and William together because I never would’ve thought that at the beginning of S6. They’re trying to fix the wreckage left behind by Dinah, Rene and Curtis but unfortunately I just don’t care about them. Dinah is still hypocritical and Curtis, even in his brief scene, is still annoying and all of them continue to prosper. They’re taking a much softer approach with Rene but when I saw him with Zoe it just reminded me that he got his daughter back while Oliver lost contact with his son and couldn’t even be sure he was safe. It felt like every Dinah/Rene conversation was a variation of the same disagreement and I didn’t really need to see it on repeat. I would have preferred some of that time being spent on setting up Diggle in ARGUS or Diggle/Felicity scenes. Future William / Future Roy could be interesting and I’m happy to see where they go with it. The prison scenes were good but I’m a little worried it will become tedious if they drag on for too long. Overall, a pretty good start to the season.

Sweeping it under the rug is definitely going to annoy me more. Especially if I’m sitting through Felicity and William being isolated and under attack and multiple episodes of Oliver being beaten down in prison while NTA get promotions and live without consequence. Simply putting Rene with Felicity isn’t going to do anything towards redeeming him if there is no recognition on his part that he is responsible for their current situation. Dinah getting another (unearned) promotion only doubles down on the easy ride she’s had as a character since she was first introduced on the show.

I’m mildly curious to see how Beth is going to handle the issues the show has with NTA and the apparent audience dislike for them. They can’t exactly give them nothing to do because they seem to be committed to keeping them around so they’ll have to have a story, but giving them a lot to do in an attempt to course correct and “fix” the characters will likely annoy fans even more and potentially make the problem worse.

The part that’s so annoying is that instead of blaming poor writing, story choices or acting choices for the reaction to the characters, they’re pointing to a subset of fans as the reason for their lack of popularity. It’s not my fault they wrote Dragon so woefully or presented Rene as a betrayer who attacked Oliver with an axe. Olicity fan or not, I’m just responding to the story they gave me.

I really think they’re going to try and fix him. In the TV Line article Beth talked about making Dragon more like the comics version and how exciting it would be. But at this point, I honestly can’t think of anything that would make me overly excited about more Diaz.

I thought Dragon was underwhelming from start to finish, partly because they took too many story shortcuts with him. I sometimes can’t believe that out of all the villains they’ve had, he’s the one they chose to carry over for another year. But then I remember it’s Arrow, where doubling down on the least appealing characters is just part and parcel of the show’s DNA.

The low number of replies to that tweet say a lot about how little interest people have in anything related to Diaz. I just want to know when I might be able to celebrate his departure so I can have all my party drinks and snacks ready :)

Half the fun of getting teases or episode titles is in speculating about what they might mean and reading everyone’s theories. I don’t need to know the whole script - just a little something to keep my level of interest up after a long hiatus. All the secrecy might also have the side affect of setting expectations for the episodes too high and people will end up disappointed if those expectations aren’t met.

I appreciate the fact that they want to give weight to the prison story but I really, really, really hope it doesn’t play out for seven episodes or run on into the mid-season finale. Watching Oliver engage in multiple prisons fights and be separated into his own plot and away from Felicity and everyone else for a third of the season isn’t high on my list of “things I hope to see on Arrow”.