[Extra Hot Great]

Fun game time--I liked how the info/clues came at the answer from different angles.

Also, count me as happy to trade timecodes for ads and dollars! Yay!

[America's Test Kitchen - General Discussion]

I think it feels now like both shows are overscripted, but I can't tell if that's actually true or if it's just that previously Chris delivered most of the scripted dialogue, and Julia and Bridget are just not as good at delivering it so it feels like there's more of it.

[Past Seasons Discussion : Tales From The Crypt]

5 hours ago, AsYouWish said:

That was an unnecessarily long way way of saying that I love seeing how many other people here thought the first two or three seasons were truly good television - and that most of the remaining ones weren't. These days I can still love the beginning of the show without letting the knowledge of what's to come ruin it for me, but for a while I was in the camp who was just disillusioned with the entire series.

I agree with just about everything you posted, but this sums it up for me. I haven't gone back to rewatch since I became too embittered and sad about what had become of my once-favorite show. But Season 2 is Desert Island TV for me and I'd throw S1 and S3 in there too, if I could pack a really big bag. :) I'd defend those early seasons against all comers, and in this age of Peak TV, I think they hold up quite well in terms of plotting and sheer enjoyment per minute to just about anything that's aired since. In fact, I feel like some more-lauded cable and streaming series could take a lesson from TVD in those areas. And w/r/t Stelena, I did stop rooting for the pairing when I saw the writing on the wall (and really when I started hating Elena), but I will always root for Nina and Paul (and Daniel Gillies over on TO, among others) to find new roles that fully use their talents, because they are capable of so much and I hope more people get to see it.

[Extra Hot Great]

I got Humphrey Agnew and then my husband got Joan Humphrey, and, IMO we really need to get back to naming people Humphrey and other Hump-inclusive names.

[Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"]

I don't think the WGA strike threat was a bluff at all--they had like 97% support from their membership to strike, and very good, valid reason to do so, and I think the AMPTP knew it, which is why the WGA succeeded. I don't know as much about the SAG demands, but if they are for similar reasons, I'm guessing they will have similar support and the result will hopefully be the same.

[Target Practice: Poisoned Arrow (The Bitterness Thread)]

To start with the positive: I really enjoyed 516-523, with some reservations.

But then there's everything else. I was quite bitter about a number of off-screen/PR-related things this season. But to stick to the show itself: I think the writers botched just about every storyline they set up in the early going. Saint Laurel was nonsense. The noobs' introduction was very poorly considered and executed. Quentin's relapse arc was repetitive and had no payoff, except for the bonding with Thea, which I did like. I think Paul and Willa did the very best with what little they had, all season. Also, IMO the writers feel completely opposite of most viewers when it comes to Thea becoming more like Moira. I'm rooting for it, personally. I think Thea is kinda boring as a white-hat and would prefer her to be more grey and for Oliver to STFU about it.

Diggle's army/prison arc was worthless except for clearing the way for the noobs, and ultimately there was very little reaction to the Sara stuff. Felicity had a lot to do with the new team in 5A, and I appreciated her role there a lot, but they utterly blew it with Havenrock and Billy. I understand that Billy was only there to be killed by Oliver, but there were ways to handle it that would have accomplished the same goals without creating issues with characterization and continuity. Felicity's "dark turn" (not so dark, really) should have also been informed by Havenrock, her paralysis, Sara's murder, Laurel's murder, etc. They should have taken the opportunity to tell a deeper story by exploring how five years worth of trauma caused Felicity to start feeling "any means necessary" about things. Billy was a blip on the radar, and a flimsy motivation. (But it would also have been richer if they had their facts straight--she's been grey from the beginning and she definitely did not back Oliver every time she disapproved of his choices.)

Speaking of flimsy motivations...Adrian Chase. Good thing I love Josh Segarra so much, because otherwise Prometheus would have been maybe the worst Arrow Big Bad ever. As it was, his schtick got tiresome by the end, like Slade's did, but I always loved the performance.

And then there's Oliver. I guess I'm one of the people who didn't hate Oliver this season; I just stopped understanding him, which made it hard to feel much of anything for him. I don't think I really understood where he was coming from until 516, and even then it stayed pretty fuzzy for the rest of the season. I think the writers forgot about the "where's the Oliver in every story" thing, and instead they just came up with their stories and gave Oliver whatever motivation fit that day--which has happened throughout the series, but it was more pronounced this year--or they didn't even bother figuring out his motivations. Usually, my complaint is that only Oliver gets a POV and we're left to wonder about the other characters, but this season, it felt like even Oliver didn't always get one and when he did, it was often nonsensical. We were just presented with stuff, and left to fill in the blanks about the why of it all.

So when it comes to next season, I guess I just hope it's more like the last eight episodes and not the first 15, and that someone will give the EPs some media training (lol @ me) But my expectations are now as low as possible, so I'll just plan to tune out again when things aren't going my way next year.

[Extra Hot Great]

That sparked my memory--that was part of a whole series of Old Mil commercials, all centered around fishing (and other outdoorsy stuff like skiing, white water rafting, airboating, and log-rolling, sure why not) in great American locales, with almost the exact same script, ending with something like "Hey guys, it doesn't get any better than this."

 

A few others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omzIEHkHrc8 (Cape Hatteras, NC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOQb8qeQ_gA (Snake River, WY)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjKzkVqNN4o (Crow Wing, MN)

[PODCAST S01.E01: Pilot]

12 hours ago, Affogato said:

Well, maybe I'll go along with the rewatch and try to figure it out.,  Having homecoming in September seems odd to me, and having it with time for Duncan to freeze Veronica out and Lilly to have a relationship with several people, busy month, is all I'm saying. I think, for example, that there is a general assumption that the party is end of calendar year, but end of school year makes more sense and I've heard other people say this, too. Keith probably didn't lose his job instantaneously, there wasn't another election immediately, he didn't lose his wife and start a new business immediately, and Cliff indicates that Veronica has been doing PI work while Keith is out of town, and successfully, for a while, when the show starts things have had some time to mature. Your timeline might be correct but mine makes sense?

OK. You can look at the link I provided for the sources and details of all of this info. I agree that much of their timeline doesn't "make sense," because I don't think the writers nailed down all the dates in advance, and then certain things don't really track (and they occasionally contradict themselves). Keith lost his job a couple of months after Lilly's death, and soon after decided he wanted to stay in Neptune and become a PI and that's (apparently) what finally made Lianne leave. And yes, RT says that Homecoming, D/V and L/L breakups, and Lilly's murder all took place in a two week period in late September-early October. As far as Homecoming--in the US, Homecoming generally takes place in September-November, so that date makes sense. (Maybe you're thinking of Prom, which takes place in spring usually?). And until I rewatched, I always thought Shelly's party was end of schoolyear as well, especially because everyone's attire said "summer" to me, but they live in SoCal, so it's always summer. December is the canon date for the party.

[PODCAST S01.E01: Pilot]

4 hours ago, EricJ said:

Thank you for that pre-show timeline. I've never seen it laid out like that, and it's really helpful.

Couple corrections: The Homecoming dance they all went to was in the fall of their Sophomore year (Lilly's junior year), shortly before Lilly's murder, and Duncan froze Veronica out very shortly after. Shelly Pomroy's party was in December, not at the end of the school year, and Logan didn't sexually assault her at that party (or ever?), unless I really misunderstood something. There are pretty good timelines available here, but you'll see several duplications/inconsistencies because I don't think the show was that great at continuity w/r/t dates.

[Arrow Stars in Other Roles]

I think he might actually be a stripper dressed as a cop...but that's just because of the vibe of the movie.

[S05.E22: Missing]

I think she was confirming his ulterior motives but also challenging them. To make sure he was suggesting this course of action for the right reasons and not just to keep her where he thought she was safest. 

[S05.E22: Missing]

12 hours ago, thegirlsleuth said:

The three big cliffhangers/raise the stakes moments this season all involved characters that I don't care about.  First, Billy got arrowed.  Then Susan got kidnapped.  Then William's kidnapping pushed Oliver into crisis.  But for me, it held no stakes because I don't care about these characters.

Yes. All the DO IT FOR SAINT LAUREL stuff at the beginning of the season falls into the same category for me. I think this is the major failing of this season, which was full of failings: it disregarded its own history and instead expected the audience to care about things it took no time or effort to make us care about. So nothing resonated, and that's how the season is apparently going to go out, too--asking us to feel deeply about Oliver's Deep Feelings for his son, a character we don't know, a relationship we've never seen, which has barely been discussed this season. Of course, I'm sure Thea, Dig, Felicity and the others will be threatened, too. But, again, the show spent 2/3 of a season asking us to only care about new relationships and new characters (or dead ones), even though they didn't bother to ever show us why we should do that. And now in the last third of the season, they want us to go back to caring about Oliver's deepest relationships, except not too much, because they all pale in comparison to the most important, least-shown relationship of all. Bleh. *prayers up for Samantha and William's long lives outside of Star City*

12 hours ago, BkWurm1 said:

I didn't mind his vision of Laurel.  It's all Oliver's inner voice talking.  He'd want her to be understanding.  And it explains why he suddenly starts thinking of her as his reason to live while he was on the island.  It's conflated clearly but the guy's traumatized so I can forgive him, lol.

I'll admit I only watched the flashbacks via FF, but I actually found this hilarious? The show had to come up with an explanation for why for the last few years of flashbacks, FB!Oliver has barely considered Laurel, when we know that in S1 he claimed that she was the thing that kept him alive. So...now we know: at the last possible moment, he was drugged and hallucinated a version of her that told him what he needed to hear and that's how we get to S1. As usual, Oliver's idea of Laurel, and hers of him, has little basis in reality.

[Heartaches, Bromances, True Love and Team Arrow: the Relationships Thread]

I feel like I missed something, because I don't think I get the point of these?

[Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"]

508 is my least favorite episode of the season and in my bottom 5 of the series in general, so it makes perfect sense that it's Marc's favorite. Because he is the woooooooorrrrrrst.

The logic of the alien dream world needed SOME explanation, because the world presented erases not just going on the Queen's Gambit (as the producers kind of implied in their few attempts to set the scene (I think they knew none of this would hold up under any scrutiny)), but also the previous 5 years of Oliver's life (and everyone else's), or however many years it would take for his relationship with Laurel to never become the toxic, one-sided disaster it was, but ALSO make Malcolm (and Robert and Moira) not turn evil, since he was still the Queens' friend. And William wasn't around, so in order to believe that this world represented Oliver's greatest wish, you have to believe that he would be more concerned about Malcolm being in his life than William. In truth, the show as usual had several items on a checklist to include (bring back the dead loved ones and big bads!), and it did it in the worst and hackiest way possible, IMO. And especially for the 100th episode of a series to focus on characters and story arcs that have been dead since the pilot or S1/2 instead of showcasing the thing that actually defined the show (Team Arrow, sorry not sorry, haters) for all five seasons was a mistake and a bummer for those of us who stuck around not to sulk about not getting a comic book dutifully transferred to screen but because we actually loved this show. I thought that's what they wanted us to do, but it seems like no matter what, we're all always watching the show wrong.

[S05.E20: Underneath]

I've had a few days to stew over this episode, and it's still kind of hard to talk about. Because my emotions are wayyyyy up here, and my rational thoughts are way down here, and I can't make them reconcile. If the episode were completely devoid of context, or even if I just paid no attention to interviews or comments from the cast and EPs, I would probably feel more satisfied by it on the non-emotional level. But as it is, the episode had, say, five agenda items I expected it to accomplish, and here's how I would grade it on each:

1) Explain the, in Stephen's Amell's words, "very deliberate almost robotic feeling or temperature to their relationship this year." Grade: D

Their "robotic" behavior with each other and dating other people actually makes even less sense now. I would be very interested to hear what Stephen thinks the explanation was. Where they left off in the flashbacks, it seemed very much like they were just in a holding pattern until Felicity felt ready to talk, so her relationship with Billy (and its retconned importance) and Oliver's non-reaction to it don't follow, and their "regimented" attitudes with each other before and after that reveal don't either. The only glimmer of an explanation I can see is that they stayed far away from each other physically and emotionally because they can't control their feelings and they'd just end up screwing on all surfaces. Like...was that actually it, though???

2) Reveal more about the reasons for their breakup, on which MG basically admitted they dropped the ball in S4. Grade: C

I didn't feel like we really got much that was new about their breakup, except for Felicity apologizing for just walking away without talking. Which I didn't personally hate, but would have much preferred it be balanced by more insight and remorse on Oliver's side. Marc suggested in his response to a Tumblr ask that Oliver would address "his train of thought about the son situation or talk about the circumstances around it like the Barry telling him what happened in the other time line thing." That did not happen. The one other useful piece of information we got was when Felicity homed in on the trust thing, and said that Oliver couldn't trust anyone and she didn't understand why, but maybe if she did... 

3) Show Felicity and Oliver coming to understand something about each other, which would resolve certain things re: their breakup and Helix. Grade C-

So, presumably, Felicity's new understanding of Oliver is about why he can't trust people, then? And that's related to the way that he actually can't trust himself? And her understanding somehow has something to do with Billy's death? And Helix? And her being willing to do whatever it takes no matter what to get payback? I...yeah, I don't follow. But, more importantly, even if that connection was clear, trust really had nothing to do with why he didn't tell her about William. If the show wanted to complicate that now by having Oliver reveal that actually what Barry told him did make him of terrified of losing her, and that he feels like everyone who is really a part of his life gets hurt and he kind of subconsciously agreed with Samantha that keeping William separate from his life was a good idea, then okay, I would still think it was a retcon, but I would have accepted it. But they didn't bother doing that, they just sort of had Felicity say "I understand, I get it now" and neither the Thing She Got nor the Reason She Got It hang together under any scrutiny. Also, I'm left to guess at what new understanding Oliver reached about Felicity. 

4) Leave Oliver with some sort of question that relates to his relationship with Felicity but also drives his journey toward the finale. Grade: B+

I thought this was pretty good. The question that Oliver needs to answer for himself, and what he needs to do, was pretty clearly stated--figure out what kind of person you are. It's a little late in the season and it's repetitive as hell, but it's an action item for Oliver, w/r/t his relationship with Felicity and his fight against Chase and in general. He needs to believe once and for all that he's a good man who deserves good things, and that he can trust himself so that he will trust others too, and then Felicity will be willing to be in a relationship with him again. Which is great, because, see #5.

5) Remind the audience why we should bother to root for O/F by focusing on them in flashbacks and isolating them in present day, and letting the SA/EBR chemistry do its work. Grade: A+++++++++++++++++

The thing about #5 is...it makes everything else just seem sort of unimportant. Like, oh, are these writers still hacks who can't seem to follow their own narrative threads? Must be Wednesday. It just does not matter in the face of this:

What will it take to get more of that??? If the answer is to accept the vague motivations and nonsensical explanations for their behavior, then fine! I accept! Just end this nonsense and let these precious people interact again. I need those hearteyes in my life every week. (Also the dimples and the abs and the butts, pls.)

[Mind Your Surroundings: Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Other Superhero Universes]

My problem is the opposite--I saw Claire and Matt together first and they made it impossible for me to ship either of them with anyone else long-term. Same for Jessica and Luke. So while I liked Claire and Luke together on LC, I have the icks about them together on The Defenders because of their other ships.

Anyway, ships aside, I love those four characters so much and am really excited to see them together. Iron Fist can disappear forever as far as I'm concerned, but just making fun of him a lot is okay too.

[Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"]

I've hated Jean since the 90s animated series and that hate continued to the movies. To me, she's just a cipher. No personality, nothing to grab onto; just a collection of abilities, including the one to make everyone treat her as the most special of the special. (I've only ever read the Whedon Astonishing X-Men series, so I don't have other experience with her from comics.)

[Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"]

Yeah, Greg Berlanti was one of the showrunners who spoke with Mo Ryan for her piece on diversity in the director's chair, which spurred networks and producers to commit to improving their numbers of women in general and POC in directing their shows. I don't believe MG would have taken any action on his own, tbh, but GB seemed pretty committed. I do still generally like GB and would believe he's genuinely concerned about these issues and knows the buck stops with him. On the other hand, his shows need to do WAY better in their on-screen diversity and in how their female, LGBT, and non-white characters' stories are handled. And it doesn't seem like he's hands-on enough on any of his shows to really be a force for positive change, even if he did make it a mission.

[Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"]

I wouldn't have been surprised to see Marc have this conversation in response to some tweet of his, but the fact that Lexi tweeted a joke about institutional sexism, and he was so offended by what he perceived as a slight against men (poor male directors, only getting 83% of the jobs in TV!) that he felt the need to barge in and accuse her first of sexism and then hypocrisy is just.... I wasn't sure it was possible to have less respect for him, but here we are.

[Social Media and Behind the Scenes: AKA Everything Else Not "News and Media"]

Marc had a very embarrassing (for him) back-and-forth with one-time Arrow director Lexi Alexander on Twitter today (among others in her mentions). He is one of those guys who thinks men can be victims of sexism, which I think I knew based on other things he's said, but really didn't expect him to lay out so clearly. Especially when it's on a subject on which he should be a little embarrassed to speak, as someone whose set is allegedly not friendly to women directors, or at least did a piss-poor job of hiring them until GB made a stronger commitment to diversity before this last season. Anyway, he goes into more detail about what feminism and sexism really mean, if you follow the link. There's a screenshot of a dictionary definition and everything!

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I'm fine with the timing (I mean...I'm not, because the first 15 episodes of this season were pretty useless to me, but you know, relatively). I just feel like if 520 was the plan all along, and the writing staff did plan to have flashbacks to some significant Olicity hiatus moment, then they needed to drop in just a few tiny moments along the way (like in 505) that hinted that something had happened. They're now kind of talking about it like it was a mystery--why do they act like they do with each other--when they didn't write it that way. They just didn't write anything, and that ended up being confusing for the audience. Not the outcome any writer would want. So that tells me that they just didn't want to write anything for it--believe me, I have heard loud and clear from the EPs that they had a different story to tell--and now they want to act like that was a feature, not a bug.

[S05.E19: Dangerous Liaisons]

From the Spoiler thread, regarding this exchange:

Felicity: "I'm sorry. I am. I'm really hoping you're gonna understand after we get Chase."

Oliver: "Don't count on it."

3 hours ago, apinknightmare said:

I don't think it was shitty at all. When he got back to the bunker he basically said he didn't know what to say to her about stepping in front of a bullet in order to ultimately stop Chase - then he drank about it. He seemed pretty shaken up over it.

I felt like the emotions on both sides didn't really track from that scene with the laser wall to the final scene. Oliver seemed angry (or possibly just upset or shocked), and Felicity seemed genuinely remorseful, if not for her actions then for the impact they were having on Oliver at that moment. And then by the end, Oliver is resigned and sad and sympathetic toward her, and now she's angry at him. And in both cases, the not-angry reactions felt the most understandable and right to me. So I'm just going to explain the anger reactions as the immediate responses to something upsetting happening; in Felicity's case, it was being unceremoniously bounced from Helix due to her association with GA, who attempted to stop them instead of supporting them.

Anyway, that also ties into the conversation about the paternalistic overtones of this episode. I actually thought the show did a lot to try to combat those connotations, but they probably didn't go far enough and can't overcome the 4.5 seasons of history of that kind of thing. First, Oliver suggested that Felicity's plan might be the right call. Then he was told--by Lyla--that no, he was wrong, it was a very bad plan because it freed a very dangerous man, and they would need to find another way to stop Chase that didn't involve letting loose more danger. Oliver knows basically nothing about Helix--and no one, including Felicity, knew anything about Caden James. So Oliver deferred to Lyla's greater knowledge, which again should undercut the paternalistic overtones. Later, in their conversation at the loft, he phrases his words to Felicity as "asking" her not to do this, he tells her that he knows he shouldn't shelter her from making tough decisions, and then reiterates that she's willing to sell her soul or whatever in order to stop something HE created. This scene, though I really enjoyed it, needed more precise dialogue, because I think some points were lost here and I'm merely guessing what Oliver was trying to say. But I think what he was going for was that because this was his fault, he also felt responsible to try to stop her from solving it in a manner he thought would cause further damage, including damage to her.

I also thought that Lyla and Felicity were both shown as being pragmatic in their plans, not just defiant or blindly arrogant (cough), so to me neither of them was really painted as being clearly in the wrong while the wise men were tut-tutting at them. I think the show wanted people to feel that what they were doing was understandable, but that there was also some room to judge their actions as morally wrong. The show judges Oliver and Dig's similar actions as being wrong, so that's okay, I think?

I've actually never had much of a problem with Oliver or Dig (when applicable) trying to convince people not to follow in their footsteps. I kind of compare it to a recovering addict telling a friend not to take drugs, or a boxer with CTE telling a kid not to take up the sport. They had a bad experience, know the risks, and don't want someone they love to go through the things they've been through. Unfortunately, on this show, it's almost always a guy saying this to a woman (Felicity, Thea, Laurel, Evelyn, even Dinah this season). Dig often says this kind of thing to Oliver, but he was already pretty far gone when they met and the plot of the show relies on Oliver to only listen to advice about half the time. And other than trying to divert Roy from superhero-ing at all, I don't think there was a lot of talk about his soul or anything. Ditto for Rene and Curtis, though...I may have skipped those scenes.

So anyway, I think the episode had to overcome all that history, and the optics of two dudes in the lair and later on a rooftop being like, "women be crazy, right?!" and it was not quite able to do that. 

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I'm going to take my comment to the episode thread.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I am SO VERY tired of Wendy and Marc addressing O/F in terms that make it seem like they're embarrassed to be talking about it at all, or like it's only written for a niche audience, in this case "Olicity Twitter fans." Like...this isn't some fucking crackship? It's your central romantic relationship. I don't see AK acting apologetic and embarrassed for all the romantic drama on The Flash. They don't treat people who are interested in Westallen--in the story they're telling, in other words--as a niche audience of just Westallen Twitter fans. They assume that their general audience has engaged with the story they've been telling. I think that should be a pretty safe assumption. People who keep watching your show are presumably still engaged in it, and have hopes and opinions about it, even if they aren't expressing those online. Like, you all wrote Olicity in the hopes that people would engage with it and root for them to be together and to work out their problems. Why are you annoyed that it worked? And why would you believe or act like the only people who care about and root for that relationship are the Olicity Twitter fans?

ANYWAY, this doesn't affect my feelings about the upcoming episodes. It's just more to add to my collections of reasons I will never like these EPs. And because I can't let one of these interviews go by without saying it--Wendy, please:

[Heartaches, Bromances, True Love and Team Arrow: the Relationships Thread]

I got the feeling that Felicity was trying to like Ivy Town, and had probably only recently started to accept that she wasn't ever going to. To me, it seemed that she was staying quiet about it because she saw that being away was helping Oliver heal and that was more important to her at that point. When he was stressed about everything and said they never should have come back to SC, she did offer--sincerely, IMO--to go back to Ivy Town. I think she would have chosen to be with him and do the "work" of the team remotely if that's what he needed. But I agree that it wasn't sustainable forever and if Thea and Laurel hadn't shown up, she eventually would have had to break it to him that she wasn't satisfied with that life.