Carrie Ann

I counted Sara in my tally (so, 15 with Felicity, 5 with Sara), but not McKenna because I didn't feel like they'd moved to "relationship" status before she left town (despite Oliver's bizarro offer to move to Coast City with her) (oh, S1 Oliver, you sure were an unformed ball of Play-Doh). I also didn't count Helena for the same reasons, but even if you count both of those, we're up to maybe 25 episodes out of 85? I think Mr. No-Love-For-Serious-Superheroes up there should be satisfied with that figure.

"all the time" / 20 total episodes out of four seasons, same diff.

The show just couldn't fix itself on the narrative/motivation through-lines they wanted from this William story (because it wasn't really a story but a shipbreaker), but yeah, Oliver was lying to Samantha too, from the beginning, and then continued to withhold relevant information from her that could have protected William. It's not like I think he should have told her right off the bat that he was the GA, but as we saw in this episode, it's certainly a factor when it comes to William's well-being, and ultimately she would deserve to know, IMO, if they were going to tell William that Oliver was his father and allow them to have a relationship. But instead of having her play it like she was freaked out that her son was now connected to this vigilante situation, as soon as she learned the truth, she just seemed impressed, pleased with Oliver's growth over the last decade, and ultimately, like, proud of Oliver being the GA. (Ewwww, I hated those scenes so much.) Anyway, that would have been an interesting parallel situation to Oliver lying to Felicity--the thing where he thinks he needs to just take care of everything by himself, so he won't call Samantha to warn her that threats to William's identity and safety have arisen--but they didn't treat it like that. Anyway! This episode was poorly written and thought-out, and I will hope that the next batch of episodes get more deeply into Felicity's feelings and Oliver's realization of his failings.

There are so many ways that scene could have been the same length, even with the same bad dialogue, just blocked and directed differently and it would have been so much more effective. I think her saying the thing about needing space, or at least taking off the ring, should have been saved for last. It wasn't a shocking move anyway, so it's not like it amped up the emotion of the scene to do it at the outset--in fact, it did the opposite. Having Oliver stand when she did, preferably reaching out as if to spot her in case she stumbled, and having her then walk away would have been better. (Better still would have been to save her actually walking for the montage, and just show her realizing she could move her legs or even stand in this scene.) And SA is very capable of producing a teary face--we've seen it so many times this season directed at Felicity--and I needed to see that. I get that he was emotionally exhausted but I don't care. Resignation may have been logical in this case, but it wasn't compelling or interesting. He can still seem resigned but devastated about it. Ugh, these people seriously do not know how to write to produce emotions. I don't think anyone really feels like it was Barry or Thea's place to tell Felicity. But at the same time, they both gave Oliver advice that amounted to, "It's okay not to tell her." Felicity doesn't know that yet, of course, but I think it's pretty human to still feel hurt that people she considered friends were keeping something from her, and what they're "deserving of" really doesn't matter. If Felicity didn't trust them or see them the same way as she used to, I think that would be a reasonable response. But I doubt we're going to see her freezing Thea out for long, not that we would notice the difference since they barely ever speak to each other anyway. But in this same episode, we had Dig giving Oliver that muddy message of support, and it really did just feel like everyone on the show dismissing the impact this had/would have on Felicity. Speaking of which: Prior to the episode, I couldn't really get on board with this, but now I can. I wouldn't relish it as a viewer because I don't really want to see a bunch of episodes where Felicity is not with the team very much, but it would make sense to me on a character/story level. She's CEO of a company that just came up with two revolutionary pieces of technology that could help a ton of people, and I understand her saying, "I need to look at my goals and re-prioritize how I spend my time." I would prefer to also see Dig, at least, give her some support in the next episode so we know that she still has support there, but I won't expect anything.

Depends on what you want! It's not an infuriating episode, IMO, just a disappointing, unsatisfying mess. There are some really good things that came out of it--primarily, the end (for now) of the William storyline, Thea renouncing Malcolm, DD being depowered, and I really liked Vixen. But none of the emotional stuff landed and it was just a rushed, anticlimactic mess. Definitely one you can put off until closer to 416 if you don't feel like watching right now.

That's Vixen, not Samantha.

Yeah, to be honest, I kind of appreciated having the additional insult of Oliver continuing to exclude Felicity from the William stuff, even after she learned, because I think that's a deeper and more interesting thing for her to be upset about than just the initial lie. And it did feel in-character to me. Oliver was walking around on eggshells with her the whole episode after she learned, and while I didn't like it or find it affecting from an emotional standpoint, the fact that he knew she was upset and just immediately withdrew is very Oliver to me. And that breakup scene was TERRIBLE and terribly underwhelming, but at least the reasoning behind the breakup is very solid, to me. In repeating the (bad) dialogue earlier in the episode, they left out the line about how telling her should have been a relief, not a burden, but that's the one piece of that conversation I felt rang true. And that's basically what she was saying in the end. He lied to her about William, lied some more, and then kept her at arms-length from a hugely important thing he was struggling with even after the truth had been revealed. That is cause for concern. Wish the writing, direction, and performances had sold the emotion and import of that better, but alas.

Didn't quote all your points, but they were all my high points as well! There were a lot of them. But they still couldn't overwhelm the truly awful stuff, and more importantly, the lackluster tone and anticlimactic resolution to all this garbage, for me.

This is the biggest bummer to me. If we had to put up with the Lie of Plot Contrivance, I desperately wanted a great breakup and lots of angst. This was...not that at all. They just sucked all the drama out before Felicity was allowed to respond, and when she did, it just felt rushed and unemotional, and not in a "trying to restrain myself" way. In a very anticlimactic way--not a knock on EBR, because SA gave nothing the whole episode outside of that video, so he wasn't helping either. I think it was just lackluster writing, plus plotting that kind of left everything feeling inevitable and not interesting. And then she got up on her superlegs and that was just kind of the capper on the ridiculous shit sandwich that was this episode.

The fact that the monologue was the "letter" to William that I wanted--complete with him and his mother going far, far away--should really redeem everything about this episode, and yet, it didn't. I can't complete thoughts right now, but this was, in AV Club terms, an episode that gets the A/F Grade. A few highs--mostly for extra-textual reasons--but man, the lowest of lows. And unfortunately, a lot of those lows were just in lackluster performance, storytelling, action scenes, and utter failure in producing an emotional response. Yikes, Arrow, bad show.

From the Relationships Thread: It sort of feels like two things are being argued here: 1) that Stephen cares more about the fatherhood storyline--in its entirety--than Oliver/Felicity or anything else on the show, and that therefore, 2) he has not/will not play Oliver as though he feels guilty, because Stephen does not feel that Oliver should feel that way about it. Is that right? To point one, I don't think SA saying that it's his "favorite" story means that he cares about it at the expense of the rest of the four seasons of work he's put in on the show and the relationships on it. He always likes the most recent thing the best, for one thing. For a second thing, as @apinknightmare said, what he likes/liked is the idea of playing a father because that's important to him as a person. What Stephen did not like about this story, to our knowledge, was the way the writers (MARC, let's be real) made Oliver lie to Felicity. He said he fought against that, to the point of asking for it to be a lie of omission instead, and he lost that battle. That tells me that SA does think there is something wrong with what Oliver did. So to the second point--while I do disagree with the premise to a degree, the writers effectively dropped the story between 409 and 414 entirely, and I don't think it would have made sense for Stephen to throw in random guilty faces during episodes they didn't belong. He was guilty last week, until Thea illogically absolved him. But more importantly, going forward, I don't see why Stephen would play out the rest of this storyline as though Oliver has no reason to feel regret/remorse, when we know SA realized in advance of filming 408 that lying to Felicity was a bad move. After tonight, the part that he was excited about is over for the time being. It's no longer about Oliver being a father (not that it ever was, I'd argue, but SA's not here to defend himself on that point), but about the fallout between Oliver and Felicity, and I see no reason to believe SA won't convincingly portray Oliver's guilt and regret simply because he was also excited to play a father this season.

Responding in the Oliver thread because I don't think we're really talking about relationships anymore.

Well, I mean, these are interviews meant to publicize this episode of the show in particular, so SA saying--in advance--that the main storyline was a failure was never going to happen. Frankly the fact that he acknowledged fans' "angst" about the "regression" at all was more than I expected from him, and his stubbornness around this storyline is no surprise to me. He hates being wrong, and digs his heels in when there is any suggestion that he might be, so I will never expect him to say anything negative about the Kid story, other than hints that he wishes The Lie wasn't a part of it.

DD is my favorite Arrow big bad ever. NM has surpassed my high expectations. I cannot handle the "mommy's friend" thing. I just can't. Poor, soft-headed William.

K, so what's left? Cupid forcing them to go through with the wedding for some reason? They decide to pretend to get married for some other reason?

What you're describing is basically a procedural--shows with mostly static or glacially paced character/relationship development--and that's fine! There are hundreds of them on TV, if that's what you're looking for. In fact, The Flash is a lot more procedural than Arrow. But that's not what I'm looking for from this show. I was wary in the early going about how hard they were going to push this "Oliver's not the leader of this team" thing, but frankly...they've kind of dropped that. He may not get as much screentime in the fight scenes as he used to and it is silly to have four costumes out in the field for every little mission, but Oliver is calling the shots for the most part and I've been fine with the dynamic of TA in the lair (which is honestly where I care more about it). And I disagree that only Oliver should evolve as a character, but I do feel like the writers feel that way a lot of the time, and other characters often evolve only through the magical gifting of costumes or companies. We've sometimes not had enough of others' POVs, and their weaknesses are rarely called out or addressed with growth arcs. So we're left with Oliver as the only character whose full emotional state is available to us, and for that reason alone, many viewers are probably more sympathetic to him than to the others. But it also means that often, he is the only one allowed to make mistakes and pay for those mistakes--which is why they rely on him to be dumb so often. I mean, by Season 4, I feel like my expectations for what I'm going to get from this show are fairly realistic, so I don't really expect this to change, but I would be so pleasantly surprised if they let him achieve real growth this season, and then moved on to let other characters do the same next season.

It sort of felt like this episode of The Flash would have come more logically in between 415 and 416, when Arrow will also likely have a time jump. Not sure Dig and Lyla would have had time to find out and deal with this King Shark thing in between 414 and 415. So yeah, I was kind of guessing that Felicity wasn't answering Barry's calls because she was a little pissed that he knew about William, maybe? Would make sense given Barry's guilt complex in the episode.

I would love to see Lyla turn around ARGUS, because I had speculated about that happening at the end of last season, and did not get my wish. Honestly, it would be great for so many reasons. And if Felicity was helping to set that up, all the better. Because EBR kept mentioning Felicity walking or getting use of her legs back in conjunction with the goal, my mind just immediately went to her putting a priority on getting that technology to market. I just don't see how/why that would really change anything for her at PT/TA because it just seems like a re-prioritizing at PT. We'll see, I guess, but I would not really understand her leaving the team for an extended period. Maybe she would suggest a lighter schedule with Curtis helping out when she's needed at PT, and vice versa? I will also put myself down as unimpressed with the dress and the decor of Oliver's hallucination wedding, but you know, that's why he's not in charge of these things.

We all deserve that gif, tbh.

I knew that "breakup" dialogue in 408 was too abrupt. MG wrote something specifically to bring it back here, so everyone get pumped for "you don't trust me, you don't love me" because it's comin' back!

Oh good point.

I agree, except I still don't get why she wouldn't have shredded it at some point in the five years Oliver was presumed dead. Just one other thing about this storyline that the writers didn't bother thinking about--they needed the check, therefore she kept the check.

I don't watch TWD because I can't handle all the grimness of it, but I have been rooting for Richonne from the sidelines, "watching" them via Tumblr gifs, and I am so happy for that fandom! Especially after last season, with the random white shipblock character--I really worried that it would never happen. Yay for TWD and for the fandom!

When we learned from MG that one of the characters would be understanding of/make an argument for Oliver's decision to keep William a secret, I immediately thought it would have to be Dig (or less likely, Quentin or even Donna). The reason was that I thought if the writers were trying to make the audience understand Oliver's position, then that position would need to be articulated by someone who can speak from a place of authority. Dig fit the bill as both a father and husband, and even more as Oliver's de facto mentor and the moral center of the team/show (IMO). Yes, I think anyone can have opinions and feelings about what is proper behavior as a parent or spouse, but it's not like Thea can say, "I would do anything it takes to be a part of Sara's life, even lie to Lyla." (In fact, Thea can't even say, "I wish my real father had been allowed to be a part of my life as soon as he knew because all children deserve to have all their parents around regardless of any circumstances!!!" because that is some crazy nonsense that the writers haven't quite parsed.) Thea can't speak to Oliver's "side" with that kind of implicit authority, and frankly, there were times when she was judgmental of her loved ones for keeping things from her when it felt to me like she was being immature, because she'd never been put in those positions and had no idea how she would have reacted. (In fact, when she was put in a tough moral spot, she told lies and ran away.) So yeah, she said the words MG wanted us to hear, and yeah, they want us to believe this is a very difficult position Oliver is in, but Thea is not Dig, and I don't think those words carry the narrative weight they would have coming from someone with more relevant experience. So in a way, I'm relieved that they chose Thea for this dubious task, because it means I can hold out hope that they aren't really trying to sell that Oliver did the right thing, just a thing that's not quite as inherently stupidly wrong as many of us believe it to be regardless.

I would have hated the Thea/Oliver scene no matter what because it was such an obvious MG Sockpuppet situation, but it would have worked slightly better for me if Thea had actually made reference to her past intolerance for secrets/lies and how she's come to understand why people keep secrets to protect others, herself included. That still wouldn't actually apply to the Oliver/Felicity situation, but it at least wouldn't have made WM and OB seem so completely ignorant of Thea's entire history and characterization.