Carrie Ann

I think it was maybe a surprising answer to is she a Queen or a Merlyn, and...just saying that kind of kills the surprise, right? I feel like maybe her time Under the Dome is going to turn her toward the dark side?

I used to think the same thing! But I think that they're mostly training for general strength, and sometimes that can include times when you're "bulking" which means eating a lot more to put on more muscle, etc., but initially you're not going to be looking all that "cut" at that time (and just in general, they probably don't want to maintain that super low body fat/water weight look 100% of the time). So I think basically Stephen wants a trainer so he can say, okay, shirtless scene in three weeks, adjust the program to gear toward that rather than just trying to guess at how to do it himself or stay super lean all the time. I don't blame him, and I definitely think the show should pay for his training.

TV Tropes calls it Poor Communication Kills.

And there are a lot of actors who are a great fit for one role, or several roles, who just aren't the right fit for others. That's what happened with KC on Arrow, IMO. She might have been a good fit for Ruby, for as long as she played her, but something about her performance as Laurel just never clicked. (That doesn't absolve the showrunners or writers--the conception of the character was flawed from the get-go, and the writing for her never improved.)

If the pattern holds, it probably won't show up on Netflix until Fall. Sorry! It usually shows up around the time it's released on DVD.

I love Victor Garber more than any other actor in the Flarrowverse, but I wouldn't be sad to see Stein gone either. It's a bummer, because I wish they'd given him more of a paternal/mentor role to play with anyone other than Jax. (I'm behind a few eps, though.) I think he's having a lot of fun on the show, but the role is just...inessential. Maybe in the "hard reboot" they're discussing, they'll give him more to do, but if not...then yeah, I hope they'll just cut their losses.

The ally thing makes me wonder about WM saying the fight in the finale is "going national." She also said, "He's going to really have to dig deep to find a way not just to find the strength within himself, but actually inspire a bunch of other people to find that same strength and push back and fight back." So...that doesn't help. The first makes me think that they might finally get some federal assistance with this mess, and the second (along with the spoilers about the crowd scene) make me think Oliver's leading citizens in a big Care Bear Stare or whatever.

There are probably several reasons for that. Those are all two-lead shows, where the partners are at the center, so it's a different setup than V/W, where Wallace was one of several crime-solving partners for Veronica. Another thing is that much of what is readily available these days was written post-series, so people already knew about the main canon ship. On AO3, for example, about 80% of the works were published post-series finale, and over half of all the VM works are tagged Veronica/Logan. So I think a lot of people just don't bother shipping a non-canon ship at that point, and if you're marathoning the show, you get to V/L pretty quickly. (I do wonder if there was stuff posted on Livejournal while the series was airing that never made it onto the newer platforms.) Also, other than a few questionable moments, I don't personally think V/W had many hints toward romance. But another factor is likely racial--it is just frustratingly true that even canon ships with non-white characters will often get less love than non-canon white/white ships. It's gross.

Hmmm, you're right. I think maybe HE doesn't know what he wants either, haha. Like I said, I do agree that they need to show Oliver's finding the light if they want to tell that story, but I guess he found the Hub City stuff too campy to match with the Dig/Andy stuff. And he thinks that if Oliver is going to embrace the light then the whole show will have to do that? I disagree, and I thought the Casino stuff was the right amount of cool/fun while remaining serious about the mission. These shows often have trouble controlling tone consistency--pls see all Ray/Felicity scenes in S3--but I didn't think that last night. And I don't want the show to turn into The Flash. I think it's very possible to have a self-actualized, positive Oliver in a dark world. I just want to see more of that process because I'm greedy for more happy Oliver and also if it involves smooches that would be okay.

I honestly can't tell what he might have meant or what he is suggesting the show should do, aside from maybe a better balance. I think what he was saying is that if what we're working toward here is Oliver embracing the light and the good things in his life and becoming a more positive character, then we need to keep seeing that change happen in-show. I mean, we skipped over it in the summer hiatus; he just came back to SC this smiley, high-voiced, emotive guy. And then he/the show came back down, especially post-midseason finale. So in this episode, we had Oliver suggest that maybe he doesn't really have a soul anymore, that he has no light in him and was ruined by the island; we saw the flashes of Oliver's Bad Times in his lesson with the shaman, but then didn't see the flashes of Oliver's Good Times in his showdown with Darkh. We didn't see the moment of change, we just saw the glowy eyes and heard about the key moment after the fact. So it ends up feeling like the show is talking about a balance and character growth but doesn't really want to show that yet. I suspect that...uh, yeah, they don't really want to show that yet. :) A couple of other reviews alluded to what they expect to see in the final showdown with DD, and I think that maybe they're just saving up the squishy good feels for that moment. And also, they're saving the full-blown changed man for S5, which I think was the EPs' intent from the conception of the show.

I actually rewatched this episode the other day and he didn't say Baby Sara--he said, "give that baby girl a kiss for me."

Well, we'll have a year to wait--a year in which I hope the producers get some external feedback--and I will hope to hear something that indicates Sidney/Amanda isn't really going to happen, or at least that it won't last through S3. But if I don't hear that, then I won't be back. I really like Sidney, Leonard, and Mrs. M, and I used to like Geordie, but there wasn't enough to like this season to make another season worth my time, especially not with Sidney/Amanda at the center.

The reason I don't have any concern that LL would return in an ongoing capacity is that the EPs and network had to have already performed a cost/benefit analysis and judged in favor of the axe. The benefits of getting rid of the character had to outweigh her value--from a purely financial standpoint certainly, but probably also from storytelling and possibly BTS/production standpoints as well. Even the brand cache of the BC, the sunk narrative and budget costs, and any perceived risk of losing viewers, weren't enough to merit her continued role on the show. So bringing any form of LL back in an ongoing capacity, especially without the BC mantle attached? No. What value she had, from a business and narrative standpoint, was as the BC, and critics/viewers could barely be bothered to care about that "journey" the first go-round.

My first thought was Faye Dunaway. so I wasn't surprised to see her name listed at the end of that Page Six piece. I think she's pretty notoriously awful. She too appeared in three episodes, but yeah, I don't think you would bother recasting or cutting such a short-term role even if the person had been terrible from Day 1, just because it'd be over soon enough.

Those make me feel feelings. Someone needs to sign KL as a regular (not Arrow, obviously).

I'm so, so relieved that I finally thought to read through this forum and find that you all* hate Amanda too. My people! (*obviously not all, but you know, enough that I feel understood.) I have found her incredibly off-putting from the get-go, with her manipulative, passive-aggressive behavior, and she has only gotten worse as time has gone by. In addition to all of that, I also see no chemistry between her and Sidney, so the great love story they're trying to sell just does not work for me and I find myself annoyed with every minute wasted on it. So this season, I feel sort of...manipulated by the way the writers have made her situation SO horrible. What if Guy were just a rich bore? Amanda would still be playing these games with Sidney, I have no doubt, and I would still be wishing she would just leave him alone and go sleep in the bed she made for herself. But instead, Guy is controlling and possibly abusive, and now Amanda is pregnant. Clearly I don't want to see a character stuck in that awful position. But on the other hand...I just don't want to see her, period. At all. So now, my only hope is that she will leave Guy and flee to America or something, and next time they hire an actress to be Sidney's love interest, they could do some chemistry testing first? And take a minute to consider how audiences will react to the character's behavior? How they could think anyone would really root for or enjoy a woman so openly jealous of other women, so possessive of someone she has no claim to, so snotty and bratty--I have no idea.

Oh duh, I conflated two things--you're right, only one ep!

I don't think this is accurate. We don't see multi-character flashbacks all the time simply because the writers choose not to do that, not because they need the flashbacks to feel like some remembrance Oliver is experiencing at the present moment. For the most part, the flashbacks function as they were originally designed: to show us what happened to Oliver in his five years away and hopefully offer some parallels to present day. The flashbacks usually show Oliver's POV because that's what the writers want to show, versus the POV of some tertiary character he meets in the FBs. I don't think the flashbacks are intended to come from a one-character limited POV, or if they are, the writers are willing to fudge that when they feel like it. I remember a flashback scene from S2 where we see Slade watching Oliver and Shado, for example, and they don't notice him until he begins talking. (And just for the record, Dig also had a flashback episode, as did Deadshot. I may be forgetting others?) ETA: whoopsie, Felicity has only had one FB episode.

About eight different times, I thought, "Okay, THAT's the best one, for sure," and then I'd be wrong like a minute later. The Wanking Dead, I mean...great stuff, RH, as always. Great GoT discussion too, all. Joe, Real Housewives of Vaes Dothrak made me hit the emergency stop on the treadmill so I wouldn't fall off.

I saw something in the Bugs or Questions forums this morning that said they're changing the "reputation" wording back to Likes sometime soonish when other stuff is fixed.

Pretty bad episode. The only redeeming things for me were the D/F scene, and the first O/F scene. But everything else was a mess. If I knew for sure that Baby Canary was a one-off (or maybe two- or three-off) character, I would find her inoffensive and even kinda interesting as a tie-up for a couple of narrative loose threads. But the fear I feel that they might add a Scrappy Doo down the line put a damper on that. Also the actress reminded me of Chloe Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass, and that's a big No for me. What is left to be said about the flashbacks, but Good Lord, why. WHY. Y. When combined with the awful, no-good, very bad decision to have Laurel proclaim her endless love for Oliver on her deathbed, they made the last two episodes about her basically unrequited love for Oliver, while they've spent the last two, almost three, seasons running as far away from that as possible. Why? Why re-write your own canon in order to make them both seem so much worse, and their relationship even more toxic and pathetic than it already did? What purpose does any of this serve? We already know that Oliver has grown past the guy who couldn't sit with his own guilt/grief, who would abandon ship when he got discouraged. Juxtaposing Tommy's retconned funeral and aftermath with Laurel's tells me nothing new about Oliver except that he was an even shittier friend than I already thought. It tells me all sorts of new things about Laurel though, and their gross-ass relationship, and none of them are good. (Also, never leave me again, PTV. *hugs Arrow forum tight*)

I think a lot of these questions/issues are being raised in the Questions and Bugs threads, and I'm sure there will be a lot of tweaks in the coming weeks, but if you have big issues, I'd go over there and see if they're being discussed yet. Personally, I hate change, and yet I'm pretty comfortable with this. I just want the personalized homepage to get ironed out because I rely on the Shows I Follow feature.

Berlanti doesn't make advertising decisions for The CW. (Just want to be sure we put the blame where it belongs: on the shitty CW Marketing/PR team.)

This only includes one of the three things you suggested, but then you said non-Dave-first-names don't work, and I thought of this and it made me laugh: Dave Wreckening.

I think it did once, in a scene with Iris and Linda--one of the actors may have even pointed it out on Twitter at the time? None of the Flarrowverse shows are great on this front.