NumberCruncher

I don't get that upset at TV shows anymore either, but even I have to admit that was a rather crappy way to end things. I knew something was up when DL disappeared for the last 4 or 5 episodes last season and then had spotty attendance this season so I wasn't the least bit surprised at Jack's demise, but I will say that my 74 year-old mom (who isn't the least bit TV savvy) was devastated. They really should have just written him off back in S4 rather than making the audience play the will-he-or-won't-he game each episode and taunting them with promos touting the happy union between Jack and Elizabeth during every commercial break. That built up a certain expectation with the audience that (rather cruelly) got ripped away only 2 episodes post-wedding. I get that this happens all the time in TV land (ala Game of Thrones), but not usually on a network like Hallmark where people flock to find the happy. I understand why some people are feeling manipulated. If the show ends up being cancelled, I can't cry in my soup about the crew. Most of them move from one show right to another in no time. Vancouver is a Hollywood-lite these days. There are new shows popping up there all the time. I'm pretty sure the entire CW network roster of shows film there. The crew members would be just fine.

Wow. Clearly you missed it when I said this: ...but sure, I was definitely saying what happened was okay. So sorry for trying to comment on historic plausibility.

Disney also released plenty of R-rated movies under the Hollywood Pictures banner during its heyday back in the 90s.

I thought the same thing! I would love it to be included in the soundtrack (which isn't usually the case with trailer music). All I know is that the story being a giant homage to all things 80s, this movie better have a kick-ass soundtrack.

A killer, yes. Not a murderer. In Teo's case, that was straight-up self defense as Letty feared for her own life. I think an strong argument can be made it was manslaughter for the security guy since she was clearly panicked and didn't intend to kill him. Murder would require premeditation, no?

Except that's not how Amazon rankings work. The rankings are based on individual seasons, not the show in general. I suspect that it has more to do with Arrow's audience skewing older than the other CW shows. Basically, older audience = more disposable income = higher sales.

The best part of Stephen's video is where he mentions how "asinine" the whole fanbase competition is and how that shouldn't detract from appreciating what these fans did. Raising $7K for charitable purposes should be celebrated, not mocked. You can go back to hating whatever else you want about the show but don't crap over people doing something good.

This is why I will never understand the arguments over ratings between the various Arrowverse shows as an indication of which couples/characters/shows are "most popular". Ratings vs. sales are dependent on a variety of factors. A show with lower real-time ratings can end up with higher DVD sales where the inverse may be true for another. All of the Arrowverse shows target their own specific niche and clearly viewers have different priorities when it comes to viewing habits, time constraints, disposable income, etc., so the infighting is useless. That said, while I do think the sales of Arrow are likely having an impact as to why it has lasted six seasons, I wish the network would consider ending it next season as the show has always had a huge problem of recycling/repeating old storylines. To me, that's a indication that your arc is played out and you need to plan an exit strategy. I strongly suspect that's why Arrow ratings have been declining faster than the norm as well. I know personally I've been fairly bored the past few seasons and only skim the episodes out of loyalty and love of specific characters. Guggenheim & Co. have always said they planned a 5-year show to coincide with Oliver's backstory arc, and even at that, it felt as though they sometimes had to stretch out the plot to fit that timeline at the sacrifice of quality. When it became clear that the network had no intention of canceling Arrow, I think the showrunners didn't really know where to go next so they hurriedly introduced a bunch of new characters that nobody really warmed to in an attempt to continue the gravy train. While I don't think most general viewers hate the newbies as much as many people here do, I do think they are a lot more disposable in terms of audience loyalty so focusing on them so much (especially last season when the ratings really started their slide) hasn't really done the show many favors in retaining viewers when the stories are weak.

This...especially the bolded. I enjoy Javier just as much as the next guy but on no planet are his and Letty's deeds comparable. He's a killer, regardless of whether his victims deserved it. To me, he gets a lot of credit for calling Letty out for being the train wreck she is, but at the end of the day, the only person she is likely to kill is herself. Yes, it's a fiction and JDB is hot, but we're not supposed to admire Javier's chosen profession. In fact, this episode was practically screaming to the audience just how monstrous his deeds had become. It wasn't just murder--he pretty much tortured that woman to death. Yuck.

Brief break from the crossover meltdown discussion to appreciate the beauty that was Diggle's arms in last night's episode. *le sigh*

You raise a very interesting point. The showrunners literally have zero control over how the network chooses to promote the show--Guggenheim is especially vocal about that. Clearly the network did the fans no favors here by focusing so much on something that wasn't really the main theme of the crossover. I tend to think that's usually because they didn't want to give too much plot away and be spoilery. This is why I never rely on promos to tell me what CW episodes are really about because 9 times out of 10 it's something different.

I didn't get the impression that this show was picking on the Mormons. I think it was more of a case of taking a tragedy involving some Mormon criminals and using it (rather stupidly...ahem) to mold the Big Bad they wanted. HA! I thought that as well. I'll admit to also being confused that they never expanded on whether Bill was in fact going blind or just had really, really awful eyesight. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but by the 1880s didn't people have relatively fair access to spectacles? He couldn't have been the only one in town with bad eyesight so as to conclude his world would go black.

Bringing over this post from @Delphi in the episode thread... That's the whole point of these crossovers though--characters from all the shows interact on all four shows. I would have thought that after four seasons of doing them people would have caught on to this concept but I guess not. The other thing that I don't really get is the anger over certain characters being highlighted in a given year's crossover versus other years. That's also been the case for four seasons now. I mean, didn't we all have to endure the boring-ass Hawkman/Hawkgirl drama that consumed the 2nd crossover when they weren't even regular characters in the Arrowverse yet? Re: the wedding drama this year, I can get the annoyance that thunder was somehow "stolen" (which is even questionable given the messy, haphazard timing of the thing being tacked onto A FRIGGIN' FUNERAL), but in my mind that's not much different than fans of Arrow being so frustrated that they had to share its 100th episode with the characters from all the other shows last year. That's just how the DCTV cookie crumbles when it comes to the almighty crossovers. I suspect that next year we'll be dealing with whole different set of pissed off fans because their characters/couple didn't get the spotlight.

*SQUEEEEE* (That is all)

Because it can't be said enough.

LMAO! Someone wrote an entire article about something that lasted 30 seconds in a 4-hour crossover. That's...pretty damn funny.

I think it's the law of diminishing returns as well. It was a novelty, but obviously now not so much. Also, considering how weak the last two crossover events were in terms of story and moving actual plot along on all the respective standalone shows, I imagine some people spared themselves watching irrelevant plot lines and characters they didn't know.

Yes, there were young children caught in the crosshairs and killed but the 17 children you refer to were the only survivors and were consciously spared due to their young ages. It's also true that they were initially taken in by local families but all 17 were eventually returned to their blood relatives by government officials. I've never seen anything to dispute that but if you find anything that credibly states otherwise then I'll happily change my opinion. Given the high profile nature of the crime at the time (i.e. reported in all the major national newspapers), I think it would have been extremely difficult for any of the perpetrators to hide random children without getting ratted out somehow--especially with U.S. Army troops encamped there under President Buchanan's orders to watch every move the Mormons made. Looking at the situation in context to what was happening politically at the time, it didn't make any sense. If it works for you, great. There are other problems too which challenged my ability to believe what the writers were trying to sell. I'll preface my next comments by saying I absolutely do not excuse Haight's behavior at all and condemn it without exception, but there's not much evidence IRL that he was the bloodthirsty monster Godless portrayed who naturally would have made Frank Griffin into the man he became. Haight, like the others involved in the murders, was caught up in a whirlwind of political and religious rhetoric set against the backdrop of 20+ years of persecution from outsiders which culminated in a horrific tragedy for which even he expressed regret in the immediate aftermath. Without getting into a long history lesson, I'll just say the events happening at that time (including unsubstantiated rumors of members of the wagon train being involved in the earlier murder of a prominent Mormon leader in Arkansas) created the perfect firebomb for what ultimately occurred at Mountain Meadows, so simply reducing it to a monster of a man molding an innocent child into carrying on his eeeeevil deeds was a bit eyeroll-inducing. I get it though--the writers needed to create the most shocking scenario to justify Frank's motivations. I just wish they would have been a tad bit more realistic, or at a minimum, bothered to get even basic facts right (e.g. the local Paiutes were indeed involved and Haight didn't have 14 wives). I'm sure the artistic license probably won't bother most people, but it took me out of the story. I still enjoyed this episode quite a bit regardless of the antagonist's tragic "backstory". As with anything Hollywood portrays, large grains of salt are needed. Moving on...

It's not just you. There was a lot of artistic liberty taken in this episode regarding the Mountain Meadows Massacre. As with everything, a historic tragedy been given the Hollywood treatment. While obviously a horrific event, it's widely documented that generally children under seven were spared and all surviving children were ultimately returned to the victims' families, basically rendering Frank's whole backstory impossible. There was also no rape involved, just downright murder (not that that's any better, of course) due to the Mormons' fear of outsiders during the Utah War. Having been exposed to all the different sides/accounts of the real event in Utah history classes growing up, it definitely took me out of the story as well, but I guess the series creators needed something extreme to give their villain a plausible backstory for why he is the way he is.

I don't believe Alice's abusers were the Paiutes but either warring tribes or white men disguised as tribe members. As to why Bill and his wife didn't take the women back to La Belle I imagine it wasn't as simple as that. Given how judgmental the women of that town were as well as how hard it was to raise their own families, I doubt many of then would have been willing to take in total strangers--especially ones that had been held captive by the natives. We're shown from the beginning that Bill had a relationship with the local Paiutes and probably knew that they would give them the best chance for survival/protection.

We have a winner. The trolls be a-plenty.

Not that I'm glad that the reviews are tepid at best but I did have to laugh at The Wrap's tagline: "There are some laughs and excitement, but this is another film that looks like Axe body spray smells" That really kind of sums up my relationship with Zack Snyder movies. Honestly, they needed to let Geoff Johns or Patty Jenkins take the DC/WB movie reins years ago.

The sad thing is that while I can't conclude that Guggenheim is guilty of a illegal actions just yet since one can be a raging woman hater and still not do anything illegal, I have no problem believing he's a Grade A asshat.

I love that David Ramsey continues not to give a shit about getting in trouble with TPTB. The man is epic.

Also, George Clooney - The Facts of Life (yeah, I remember him way back then pre-ER days) Melissa McCarthy - Gilmore Girls Leonardo DiCaprio - Growing Pains There are also a surprising number of actors who got their start in soap operas and went on to have successful film careers: Meg Ryan - As the World Turns Julianne Moore - As the World Turns Ryan Phillippe - One Life to Live Demi Moore - General Hospital