Carrie Ann

Yeah, the writers seem to feel like paying lip-service/lampshading their bad choices is enough, that they don't actually have to fix the problems they create, so I don't actually expect the show to punish Laurel for this.

I was so afraid to guess that this was the hidden message for fear of being wrong/being a jinx! So excited! (Back in 2 hours to comment on the actual podcast, heh.)

I mean, if we're still considering SA's original comments, he said that it would sort of be the person's job--whatever they were doing as floater. So I kind of think that rules out DD too, and in fact, I just sort of think they're not doing this anymore. Or if they are, then it won't really happen until closer to the end of the season.

You mean the scruff?? I know!!! It's a travesty! Oh, the head smooch is pretty cute too.

"Laurel/Ollie/Thea scenes, just like old times <3"

Right, there are always things to point at and say, "Well, Laurel paid for this bad choice in this way!" But the truth is that someone else always pays MORE. In S1, it was Tommy, every time, including his own death. In S2 everyone tried to clean up after her for awhile, and then after she heaped on enough abuse, they stopped bothering for all of a minute. And not being coddled caused her to actually snap out of it. Oh, she also lost her job for a few weeks, but then got it back via blackmail, for which she faced no consequences. In S3, Quentin, Oliver, and Roy were the ones who paid for every one of her stupid decisions (not to mention Felicity and Dig, on a meta level). Sure, Quentin was mad at Laurel when he learned she'd lied, but he was way madder at Oliver. Oliver was the one he targeted for arrest, who had to go into hiding, who lost his secret identity. Roy is the one who, as a result, had to leave town for good and give up his own identity. Laurel? Well, her dad scowls at her sometimes.

It would have been even better (for me), if we picked up the scene where we did--the grave has been dug out, and Thea asks, "Are you sure about this?" or whatever, and then Laurel breaks down and says no. That this was a mistake and she can't bring Sara back. And then Thea and Laurel could have held each other and cried a bit, and it would have actually felt emotional and cathartic. And then that's when Thea notices, over Laurel's shoulder, that the casket is partially open already, like the seam is splintered or something, and they check it and find Sara missing. Then they find something that leads them back to the LOA, etc. So many better paths to the same result and I could have continued to just roll my eyes at Laurel instead of actively hating her!

Ha--I'll fanwank this to say that he buzzed them to be let into the building and they unlocked the door for him. Having continued to think about it, I'm actually surprised at how vehement my reaction to Laurel digging up Sara was. I knew Laurel would be the one to do it, after all, and of course I understand wanting to do it. Although, I did try to put myself in that place (which is ridiculous), and I wouldn't do it for my siblings. Or my parents. Or even probably my husband. I'd have a real hard time not doing it for my kid though. And maybe that's another reason I found it easier to believe and understand Oliver trying to save Thea this way--she's always been presented as his "baby" sister. She's so much younger than him that she functions as his stand-in child. But Laurel and Sara have NEVER been shown to have that dynamic. They grew up as pretty typical sisters who are close in age--rivals in some aspects, close in others--and if anything, Laurel was under-protective of her younger sister. So I just don't see "because I WANT to" as a good reason to do this. But beyond that, it's just that that reasoning is so...weak on a storytelling level--I knew it would be Laurel, but I thought there would be a triggering event--some reason that they needed Sara back, specifically. Or even if they had shown weeks of Laurel's obsessing over it. Something. But instead, we get nothing more than, "I want to do that too!" and I need Thea to get MM to do this for me, so she's coming too whether she likes it or not, and we're not telling anyone else. It's just everything terrible about Laurel's character, and confirms for me that the writers see none of these flaws and will never rehab her for me. I don't hate Laurel now because this is so over-the-top; I hate her because this is exactly who she is, all the time. Absolutely thoughtless and unwilling to listen.

Oh, I definitely think Moira would have thrown Laurel to the wolves if it came down to it. But Moira was painted as a grey character. Quentin is painted as morally correct, even though he opposes Oliver. I mean, if that's really what it comes down to and there's truly no other option, I wouldn't blame Quentin for turning Oliver over, but I would hate him even more than I currently do. That's how character sympathy works! :) Wish the writers would catch up on that concept.

I think @nksarmi is talking about when Roy was Mirakuru'd. But neither Laurel or Thea were around for that, so it's not like they would have had that to compare it to and say, "Oh, well, it can't be THAT bad." I mean, Laurel didn't even give it time. Not even a day, to talk to Oliver or ANYONE about this. To consider it, for more than a second. Just go ahead, use Thea as an excuse to get you into NP. Sounds great. ETA: Speaking of time, there hadn't really been enough time for Oliver to bench Thea anyway, but even if he wanted to, guess what, he's not in charge! Thea even said it this episode. So what is he supposed to do? Sorry, but this feels like twisting in knots to excuse Laurel for not noticing her roommate/teammate has been slowly going nutso for the last five months, and then denying what she saw and what Thea's own brother was saying, and then immediately using it to her advantage once she was convinced. How convenient for her.

Uh, yeah, that's it, I'm 100% done with Laurel. This is the point of no return. Especially because I feel very confident that Laurel will pay very little for this. It's always big talk about "oh, there will be consequences," but somehow, Laurel never seems to be the one who pays. Last season, it was Oliver. This season? Probably still Oliver, but I have suspicions about a few others who are going to feel the pain. At worst, Laurel will end up with a reanimated sister who isn't very happy to be back, and she will attempt to make sad faces about it and I...I will just need to stock up on more booze for Wednesday nights.

I kind of disagree that they wanted a consultant. They knew Dig wouldn't want to work with him, so if they DID really see John as the leader, they wouldn't have brought Oliver in. I think they wanted Oliver, specifically, for his tactical, leadership, and fighting abilities. That (apparently) doesn't mean that they wanted him back in his old role as head of his own team. But I do think that barking orders/incredulous stares scene was poorly thought-out. It does appear that they are bristling at Oliver coming in and doing the exact thing they begged him to do for them. If all they were reacting to was his tone, or his immediate assumption of leadership, it would have been better to play the scene as is (except maybe some of the snottiness could be left out of L & T's reaction shots), but then have Laurel and Thea laugh a little after he apologizes, and affirm that his immediate plan is good (which it apparently is, given that they turn around and enact it). That makes everyone seem better--Oliver's already apologized for any possible stepping on toes, and they've acknowledged that they needed him for exactly this, and everyone is friendlier and not so shitty to OQ.

Yuck. Bonnie deserves better than that badly degraded Xerox of Damon.

It's a really badly written line and doesn't scan grammatically. Sometimes when I hear lines like that on the show, I give the writers the benefit of the doubt and think maybe the actor just muffed the wording a bit...I'll just go ahead and give the actors the benefit of the doubt going forward.

No, in The Flash premiere, Barry is shown cleaning and fixing it up one night (then Iris says that people have been talking about how all these businesses/buildings are getting fixed overnight, so Barry's been doing that as penance WHICH HE SHOULD). Presumably they have more than one location though, hence the eight months they've been serving the drink?

Having watched it twice now (and rewatched the other seasons), I honestly didn't feel much difference in the quality level of Season 3, or in Phryne's demeanor or her ability to take a lover. I thought it was fairly apparent she'd gotten with the Italian guy and her Air Force former flame, at least. And there were other possibilities along the way that just didn't pan out. But yeah, I guess I don't see it as a problem that Phryne would develop as a character and not stay static. So if her interest in other men has waned while her feelings for Jack have grown, that doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't take away from her strength as a character, in fact it deepens her for me. But to each their own. I think my only complaints about the season were the Baron (ugh), the lack of Jane--I don't need her around all the time, but I do like her and her dynamic with Phryne--and I guess I felt like Dot's leap to really wanting to take an active part in investigating was kind of abrupt. I knew she wanted to stay with Phryne and that she liked helping her, but it was more backgrounded in the past, less explicitly about the detective work.

Again, I don't think it matters whether we think Oliver would cry about a person. It's really not relevant if the writers don't know who's dead yet, and it still isn't even if they do. Oliver could just be crying because he's been emotionally battered, he's scared and exhausted, and this is the last straw. (Though I do think he would shed a few tears over Walter.) On a similar note: I don't think we can really put much stock in what MG/WM think the audience will feel strongly about, because they are so often wrong. Like, I found the Akio/Maseo death scenes moving because Rilo Fukushima is a great actress, not because I cared much about those characters either way. But before those episodes, the writers were promising big snotty tears. So no matter what they say, I don't think we can take "the audience will care" as a reason to rule any (non-villain) characters out. They could just mean that we care insofar as it causes pain to other characters we DO care about.

Haha, incredible. She looks like a Wig Mannequin.

I agree with others that not much emphasis should be placed on how sad Oliver seemed, but also, I think people may be putting too much emphasis on Oliver breaking the no-kill thing. DD has already proven that he's probably too far gone to be redeemed or to ever stop killing innocent people. (Oliver killed Ra's when he demonstrated the same thing. I believe he would have killed him at that point regardless of whether Ras had attempted to kill Thea or not.) Who knows how much worse things will have become in six months? So Oliver may be reacting to six months of the city and his friends/family being terrorized, rather than just reacting to that one death. It could just be him saying it out loud for the first time, taking that on as his responsibility.

I actually found her response to that point unsatisfying. He says that he's upset that while he was 100% with her while they were away, part of her was still back here, and she says that she loves every moment she's with him no matter where they are. Okay, but that's not the question at hand. Maybe the show sees that as wrapped up, but it didn't really feel answered to me. If I were Oliver, that would rattle me. We'll see if that continues to be a theme, but if not, then the line they wrote for Felicity was just rushed and not very well-considered.

I would say that the answer to that is: whenever any individual viewer decides that he has. You know? No one can decide for anyone else what constitutes character ruination. I felt the same way about Felicity last season--not because of the tears but because of the actions I saw as OOC. They piled up to a point that I said, maybe I just don't know her or like her anymore? But then it took like one episode of her being IN character for me to decide I did still like her and was willing to hold out for all her dumb storylines to end. They did and I rejoiced, and what I heard in the post-season hiatus led me to feel like the EPs/writers were made aware of certain missteps they'd made, and that made me feel less wary about deciding to just write off the stuff I didn't like from S3. I'm willing to give everyone a fresh start here, and hope for the best. So while that one line was bad for Dig, it's not enough for me to reach for my prayer beads yet.

Yeah, I noticed this too. Normally I'm very w/e about the fight scenes anyway, but last night, there were so many instances of things that just didn't make sense from a choreography standpoint, or a natural flow of action standpoint. That initial truck heist scene--4 or 5 dudes are just machine gunning everywhere in sight, but when this tiny red suit flies into the truck, they stop using their guns? They just wait for her to fight them hand-to-hand? That makes no sense and the scene wasn't fast enough to ignore it. Seriously, they all stand there dumbfounded while she fights them. And then the scene ends with the ONE guy left standing holding his gun on her for like 10 seconds without shooting. Why? Just so that they could wait for BC to throw her bombs AT THE TRUCK FULL OF AMMO. What in the... I agree that the writers fail at writing emotional nuance a lot of the time, but IMO if that's true then reacting to Dig's overreaction (heh) is every bit as justified as reacting to Felicity's teariness or Oliver's myopia last season. Because the writers aren't great at modulating emotional reactions--for them, it's zero or 100 and nothing in between. But it's not on the viewers to be like, "Oh well, they just don't know how to do this, so I won't react to it." Some people may choose that route, and I applaud it, but many people probably won't and shouldn't be expected to do that. Sorry if what I just said is the same thing you're trying to say--it just feels like there's an air of "people unhappy about Dig are doing something wrong" in your comments, and that's what I think people are responding to. Personally, I'm in the PodDiggle camp on that "you don't love" line and am therefore dismissing it. Dig isn't stupid and he's far-enough removed from the abduction that he shouldn't be making rash statements. I bought every other bit of his reaction to Oliver, and was fine with it for the most part (although it's super selfish to be like, "the whole city's falling apart but NO WAY are we calling him for help," I still buy it from him because he can be stubborn), but he knows that Oliver loves people. It was a stupid line, and I am dismissing it the same way I did the stupid scene where he tried to make Oliver Felicity's problem in 307, and jumping to believing in Roy's guilt and arguing that they should take him out. Nah, not Dig. That BtVS scene that @arjumand mentioned above is one of my very least favorites ever on that show. It made me hate everyone but Buffy. And this is something the showrunners need to understand, and fast--the majority of your viewers probably sympathize with your lead character unless you're doing something wrong, so when you pit ANYONE else against them, especially for an extended period of time, that person will start to feel less sympathetic. Hello, Quentin Lance! RIP Quentin Lance!

I'm positive that that was never under consideration. JP is co-running three shows at The CW currently, IIRC. I'm sure she was not in the market for another.

My irritation about the kid has settled down, and now I would say that I still feel excited about 4A; less excited about 4B, if that's how it starts. On the plus side for 4B, though, is that we should be done with setting up LoT by that point? I hope? So maybe I'll end up liking 4B better in the end.

The CW has certainly proven that they're willing to try to soldier on after a lead leaves, but I think in most cases where that could work, the lead is not a particularly popular character. Where on Arrow, while Dig and Felicity are probably as widely-loved as Oliver, I don't think they could anchor the show on their own and I do think most people who watch are there for Oliver's story, at least in part (I know some people aren't, but from my observation, I think that's a smaller percentage than with other shows that follow this format). And I just don't think any of the other characters have as many fans as OTA. They've said (MG, GB, etc.) that the show lasts as long as Stephen wants to do it--that tells me they're not thinking ahead to transitioning it away from him. TBH at this point, I think if SA wanted out after S6 (for example), the CW might be happy to just take that budget back. Maybe use it to expand LoT to full season orders if they haven't already. They could also absorb some of the Arrow characters into the other shows, possibly.