Carrie Ann

The other problem with Overwatch is that it was presented with no explanation and has no significance to the show/characters as a word. (I mean, I know someone said it once--in reference to Dig, right?) So Felicity's overjoyed reaction was a little confusing, because as far as we know, that word is no more "perfect" for her than any other. I preferred Hotwheels, myself, tbh. ;)

Honestly the time travel seems so disconnected from Arrow that I don't really consider it when I think of what's going on this season, so it was a good piece of character work to have Oliver say that he was feeling guilty/scared that this was how the timeline was righting itself. (Might have made more sense to include that last week, though, when his actions were way more baffling.) But at the same time, I was like, "Uh, Oliver, should you really be telling people about that???" So I don't know how they could get around it, because he'd basically have to call Barry to have that conversation without the iffy-ness. But maybe they could have just...made a really strong reference to it but had Oliver talk around it when actually talking to Laurel. Like, show it in the Previouslies and then have him start to say something about it, but then just generalize about cheating death or something. I don't know. I had no problem with that conversation being with Laurel though. (Except, yeah, she totally would blackmail Barry into doing that for her if the need arose in the future. J/K except not.)

I don't know, I sort of feel like if Oliver DID bring up what happened to Felicity as a reason he didn't tell her (because he realized that he definitely wasn't going to be in that kid's life), she'd probably point out that telling her would have actually helped keep the kid safe, so I don't know that adding that would deepen Oliver's case. But basically: I don't expect this breakup to feel entirely...right, because the lie that started the process didn't feel right. So the foundation is shaky and I'm just assuming the breakup is going to feel flimsy. To me, the fact that, other than the missteps in 408 and 410, they are nailing Olicity in every other way means that the reconciliation won't feel flimsy, and that's all I really care about. I just want to believe that they would get back together, and at this point, she could have all the reason in the world to get mad at him, and it would still make complete sense to me that she would get over it and get back together with him because they're just...really great together. /onashipperhigh

With every codename option, I picture someone under stress saying it over the comms in an action scene, and about 90% of the options fail the test for me. Just...imagine Oliver being choked out or something and being like, "HACKTIVIST...need...the...code!!!" Firewall and the ruled-out Oracle and Proxy are the only ones I've seen (that I recall) that I don't think sound that clunky, so I'm rooting for Firewall for now. (The clunkiness is a problem for me with most superhero names in general.)

Hmmmm, it's a bummer if you didn't like 4 all that much because 5 & 6 are Chris Carter-penned, and my hopes are pretty low for those given his track record and that mess of a first episode. Which basically leaves Ep 3 as the sole good ep. I mean, I thought last night's was fine by later seasons X Files standards, but if of the six episodes, we get three in the C-/D+ range, two B-/C+, and one B+, that's not great. Although...maybe that's representative of the series, so I shouldn't have hoped for more.

Yep, and I think the show wrapped filming for the season yesterday, so they didn't have time to adjust based on feedback at all. Could have been some internal feedback that helps right that storyline, but I'm nervous about it.

Yeah, the reason I'm fairly certain it's Bellamy (and Pike is the new guy), is that in Ryan's review, he said that there are sort of three stories: one he likes a lot, which is very Lord of the Rings--seemingly Clarke meeting the Ice People; two feels borrowed from a specific Star Trek film, that he is unsure about for now (Murphy and ALIE, I think), and the third that is just bad. If Mo feels like Bellamy might be ruined permanently (and Octavia tells him he's dead to her) then I really shudder to think what he might have done.

Since this is the spoiler thread, I have to ask if anyone knows what it is that is happening the in fourth ep of the season that has critics who have seen the first four so unhappy. (The three critics I follow on Twitter who got me into the show in the first place have all made very ominous noises about it--you can hear two of them discuss without details here.) I'm normally not that into being spoiled about this show, but just the sound of it has seriously killed my buzz for the season and I'd like to prepare myself / decide whether I want to bother watching until whatever it is is resolved.

But it's not about her strength--it's about what Felicity wants to do, what she likes to do, what she feels called to do. Your posts feel like you still view Team Arrow's activities as being Oliver's mission and the show has done its best since S2 at least to show that that isn't the case. And nothing sold it more on Felicity's side than when she couldn't stop herself from helping the team even while traveling the world with Oliver. She's the one who convinced him to move back to SC; she's the one who told him in 409 that they could have both, etc. etc. So her staying on the team after she breaks up with Oliver isn't a matter of strength vs. weakness. It's a matter of what's in her nature and what isn't. I don't buy that she would quit HER mission because she feels sad when she sees Oliver.

I don't think Felicity should have to move out either, but she can't get up those stairs by herself, and I don't buy that any of those women can carry her on a regular basis (arguments re: Laurel carrying Sara to the lair will not be considered as that was BS). She could move everything to the main level of the loft, but to me that would indicate that she knows this isn't a permanent breakup, because the layout of that apartment isn't conducive to making your bedroom on the main level. I know that's a lot of logical thought that the writers may not employ in their decision-making, but they're not going to build a new set for Oliver's single life, and if they're only going to show one of their living spaces, it's probably going to be his. If I had to guess, I'd say she'll move into an apartment that is accessible and looks remarkably like Ray's "apartment" from last season, maybe with Donna in tow.

I watched Nikita so fast, I'm not sure I would have been able to spot rough patches, but I feel like if there are any, they must move by pretty quickly? I found that show incredibly fun to watch and very satisfying overall. Hope you like it too!

100% agree, and even though they were dead-set on making Oliver an asshole this episode, they didn't actually need to remove him from all of those hospital moments to accomplish that goal, let alone removing those moments altogether. They could have done a montage of moments from the immediate arrival at the hospital through learning Felicity would live, and even have Oliver there to hear about various surgeries/doctors, and then have him NOT being there for the surgery or when she learned she wouldn't walk (basically the amount of time we are sure he wasn't there based on the ep as it stands), and he would STILL look like an asshole. We could have seen him begin to pull away, to turn his attention to defeating DD, right when he knew Felicity would live, when the shock wore off and he began to feel the guilt settle in and the need to eliminate the threat take over his better nature. They just...blew it, again, as usual. And look, I love Oliver and I totally understand his actions even though they were awful, but I don't totally buy them from S4 Oliver. But part of the reason I don't is because of the above; we were missing all the context and causation and emotion. And if you're going to make him an asshole, at least pull some emotion out of it, damn. Because right now I'm just left wondering what the point of that was, in a larger sense.

The 100, but they took care of that problem. I don't dispute your point--I think there is a lot of misogyny that comes into play in the hatred of female characters, but look what happens when female characters are prioritized: the thinly-written male character gets the most hate. I think the issue is more complex than to simply put it on the fans to love/root for/defend every female character on every show, because often structural sexism is working against us at the creator-level.

I don't think anything happened between Peggy and Daniel between seasons. What it seems like happened is: they were into each other at the end of last season, and he asked her out. She was clearly interested but put him off for the moment, because of the Steve Rogers thing. And then he was relocated to be Chief of the LA office, and stopped replying to her messages (probably because he'd started seeing Violet despite his feelings for Peggy), and now they are awkward around each other because the feelings are still there but now there's this (CLEARLY EVIL) nurse in the way. And yeah, I have no clue what accent they're aiming for with Ana Jarvis.

Ohhhh gotcha. I totally missed that. Well, then that just seems like a dumb mistake (one way or the other), but doesn't affect my opinion of the timing of this ep or the death.

Until we get something explicit from the show, I'm basing my timeline off of TV Magic when it comes to medical stuff. So yes, everything that happened would have taken much more time, but I think we're supposed to believe it was a matter of about two days. If Oliver had been MIA from the hospital for weeks or even one week, I don't think the team, let alone Felicity or Donna, would have handled it so lightly. So that puts 410 in mid-late December, which still puts us in roughly April for the grave scene. I think there will be a jump of an unspecified amount of time between 410 and 11, because of DD's promise of a reprieve of a few weeks, and because we see Felicity home from the hospital and talking about still not being ready to do Arrow stuff. Plus, I think that's about how it went last season? The jump was in 311 or 12, right? Not 310? (And then there seemed to be another between 12 and 13.)

I don't anti-ship Barry/Iris, but I haven't seen anything to make me interested in that pairing in a very long time, and they hurt their cause everytime they draw a family connection between them. As far as LoT, I am rooting for its success because a) yay, new show, but more importantly, b) it keeps MG from focusing too much of his energies on Arrow. I think the show has greatly benefited from moving out from under his full control, and I don't want that to change in any way. 408 felt like S3 again, and ain't nobody got time for that.

Really top-notch work by Liv this week. Glad you all mentioned that she turned into a teenager between seasons, because I was shocked and delighted by all her sass and Valley Girl-isms. Also really loved her confidence about using this as a good "opportunity" for research for when she's ultimately on the show someday.

I hear you. There are viewers who are just always going to reflexively "side" with Oliver (or Felicity, or whoever) against anyone who opposes/hurts him, but as long as the show doesn't, I'm less concerned about it. (This is where things got muddy last year, when working with Malcolm ended up being a good call, for example.) And, rather than Felicity standing in opposition to Oliver on multiple fronts last season, this is just one issue, and it doesn't extend to mission stuff (yet). Things could definitely go haywire though! It's just that I don't see this one fact--that someone will sympathize with Oliver's position--as cause for concern.

What I'd like best is logical, character-based storytelling, and I don't think we got that in 408, so we're starting this storyline on a bad foot. MG didn't sell "Oliver's side" effectively AT ALL in 408, and now the rest of the season is going to have to play as though he did, so my only hope is that they handle it better going forward. Since we already know that MG is very sympathetic to Oliver's position and Samantha's demands, we know the show will not 100% condemn Oliver's actions. So I'm not opposed to someone seeing Oliver's side of things, but I basically need that person to be someone with moral standing and some authority to speak from (i.e., a parent), because it's the only way to salvage the storyline from the damage done by MG failing to understand human emotion and behavior. But if they're going to ground that sympathy in a statement made by Malcolm? Then it won't hold together and the whole storyline will be an even bigger failure than it already is. So I can't root for that option at all. And also because I don't see Felicity being painted as the bad guy here just because someone on the show thinks Oliver's actions were understandable. I like this show because the characters have always differed on their moral lines and their ideas for the best approach in any situation. I don't think one character supporting Oliver's position will negate Felicity's (presumed) position. But we'll see. At this point, the lie is the least of my concerns about the Kid story.

It's not my favorite show or anything, but Leverage is an example of a team coming together composed of a lot of Alphas, or at least lone wolf types, and it worked out for that show. (Nate might have been sort of set up as the lead, but they didn't need him to be, and the show was at its weakest when focused on him, IMO.) I really think the problem here might just be the sheer number of characters. Unless it's a soap or family drama, a "true ensemble," as MG might say, works with about that number of people--five--and beyond that, you need a hierarchy of some sort, IMO. I do suspect S1 will feel scattered and uneven, but hopefully they can streamline for S2, assuming they get one.

They weren't done for Vanity Fair, this set was just published first on the VF web site, but still good publicity for Em and Colton (and maybe even better for Tyler and his book). ETA: A lot of tweets crediting VF now, so maybe they were done for VF?

Not sure I'd call two tweets a hissyfit? I mean, I'm not sure why SA chose to respond to that specific tweet, out of what were probably hundreds that @-ed him regarding that photoshoot, but I don't see the tweet about Colton as being hypocritical either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So I think I'm veering to the other side of the street from most on this issue: namely that I don't think his ignoring trolls or RL shippers does anything to make them stop (science is also torn on this concept), and I don't think he overreacts by merely reacting once in a blue moon. I can think of less than five instances of him addressing this problem, and that's if I include the "so there," which I don't. (Just my interpretation, but I read it as a smooshy tribute to his wife on their anniversary when he'd probably had too many drinks, and then ended it with "so there" as a silly way of cutting through the emotion.) In fact, the first time I personally saw him say anything about this was sometime in the summer, I think, when he said that of course he sees tweets that include his name or handle, and that some people have a hard time separating real life from TV. From what I understand, several people stopped using his name after that, so...that's a success, from his perspective, in that he doesn't see it as much. Do I think reacting will stop them? No. Will it get worse for a day or two as people proudly proclaim that he's overcompensating? Probably! Obviously I think it would be best if he could just get over this stuff or ignore it altogether, but if he's not there yet and if it relieves him to occasionally take a swipe back, I don't blame him.

I agree that Oliver and Felicity will not break up permanently, and I don't think Oliver will be punished for his lie by DD hurting Samantha or William (nor do I want that, because that's OTHER people truly paying, not actually Oliver, except with the guilt). And just like when Oliver made choices last year that some viewers found unforgivable, characters on this show will forgive him. Because a) people (and characters) are different, and have different breaking points, and most importantly, b) it's a TV show and the central character is not going to be ostracized forever. Oliver and Felicity are the central romance and it's not going to be over for good because of this one lie. So, if a breakup that lasts for a half dozen episodes (my guess) isn't enough, then maybe it's time to jump ship, because this show prizes drama over emotional realism--or realism of any kind, in fact. It always has and always will.

I love that they went with lesser-known actors for TFA, and I am hoping against hope they will do the same thing for the Han movie. (I don't even WANT a Han movie, but if they're set on making one, then I want it to not suck.) I hope that whoever they cast will be a surprise, and someone who's the best choice for the role, not just a random white dude whose career has heat right now (Ansel Elgort, blech).