Carrie Ann

I'll be honest and say that I find myself more annoyed with the supporting characters' flaws and mistakes because Oliver's are almost always called out in the text, and he almost always pays for those mistakes. (Thea in S1 and Laurel in S2 also spent a lot of time making mistakes and paying for them.) The supporting cast--including Felicity--do have flaws like the ones @wonderwall lists above, but they are often flaws that only the viewer points out, not the show itself, if that makes sense. The only time this season I thought the show stood in judgment of Felicity was in 305 when she hurt her mother's feelings (similarly, for the brief moment in 302 when she hurt Oliver's). Anyone have other examples of Felicity acting badly when the show acknowledged it? I mean, there was the scene where she had to apologize to Ray but she wasn't in the wrong there so UGHHHHH I hate that episode so much. Anyway, if I want the show to acknowledge that Laurel can be cold, demanding, entitled, etc., instead of pretending she's a bastion of selflessness and compassion, then I also want the show to acknowledge that cruel streak Felicity possesses, that she isn't as much of a greater-good person as she might appear, that she acts rashly sometimes and can be a little ruthless, that her unwillingness to examine her feelings isn't ideal. And when I say acknowledge, I don't just mean "present." I mean, show how those things hurt other people, how they can be dangerous, how they hinder her personal growth. I like these things about her. They make her interesting, complex, more fleshed-out. But I do find it annoying when they aren't called out in the show, because it makes me question whether the writers see them at all. I'm not sure the writers care about the depth of her character, and I think they way overestimated how invulnerable she was to backlash, so they put her in all sorts of difficult positions without even giving it a second thought.

Exactly. Any way you try to explain the disappearance of TCD Carrie's friends and family--not to mention her self-esteem and self-awareness--in order to make it fit with SATC Carrie, it just turns the TCD story into a tragedy. The rest of her family members have to die. She has to become estranged from Mouse, Walt, Maggie, Larissa, Sebastian, even Donna--everyone but Samantha. She has to become so destroyed by the process of living through her 20s that she loses all sense of self and becomes the waffly, self-centered, impressionable Carrie of SATC. No, I will not accept that. This Carrie goes on to live a much fuller, happier life, and that's that!

I don't think it's a competition either, but they are both love interests for Matt, so it's natural for people to compare them as they relate to him. It was jarring as a viewer to feel like they wanted me to feel something between Matt and Karen when the connection between Matt and Claire was so much stronger. And especially because Claire disappears in Ep 11, and that's when Karen pops up with the balloon and all the talk about this apparently deep bond they share, and from that point on, it feels like the show pushing the beginnings of a M/K romantic storyline out of nowhere. And it's not a matter of the number of episodes or amount of time that passed. The difference for me is that we saw Claire and Matt actually talk to each other, have real conversations about serious things. I saw their connection develop. I saw them becoming attracted to each other. I saw them become attached to each other. They didn't need to use dialogue to get that across. Whereas, we really saw very little relationship development between Karen and Matt for the bulk of the season, and then in Ep 11, suddenly we're supposed to believe they've formed a very special friendship, because that's what Karen's dialogue said. It's like they forgot to write a few scenes that actually showed that happening between M & K, or F/M/K as a team (haha just realized their initials spell that out--and spell them out in the actual order I would put them as well). We basically went from Matt and Foggy saving Karen and giving her a job--->Karen and Foggy spending a lot of time together and talking--->the show acting like Karen had those moments with Matt instead. It was bizarre. I just didn't see enough to believe in it or become invested in it. On the contrary, I DID become invested in Karen's relationships with Ben and with Foggy, so I was sad that the latter was dropped toward the end of the season.

The TCA panel took place before BC went into the field, and before Ray's suit was even completed on the show. And the Nyssa question was raised at the time--she fought alongside Team Arrow in the S2 finale, and has at other times been a villain. She has a costume and a mask. Why wasn't KLaw invited? They made clear choices about who they consider the important heroes and villains on their shows, and they paid for it in social media (and in coverage of the panel in the actual media). I mean, in reality, you can see that this was an Arrow/Flash/LOT panel, and that's why they invited who they did. But the makeup of the panel is still telling about a number of ongoing issues with these shows.

Maybe you weren't looking in the right place? I saw plenty of complaining from them, and believe it or not, there is a lot of overlap between Felicity and Iris fans. But really, the only reason anyone was on the panel was if they had a mask or an alter ego (in the case of Firestorm). Diggle was the only exception. The fact that these shows are inherently male-driven was only highlighted by that panel, and the fact is that for ~some reason~ it's much harder for women and POC to "earn" their hero status on these shows.

I remember being furious with Oliver after 301 for being "careless" with Felicity's feelings, but only because I don't think he would have asked her out at all until he was 100% sure he could handle being in a relationship with her alongside everything else. And given how easily he reversed his position, I don't think he was even close to that figure. I frankly think it was out of character for him to do that and it started the whole season off on the wrong note for me. Oliver dated women in Seasons 1 and 2. Those relationships were about exploring something for himself, and I applaud that. Oliver needs people and he deserves to be happy. But by 301, this dude has spent almost a year knowing he has feelings or is in love with Felicity (based on SA's identification of 206 as the beginning of Oliver's awareness), and he has held back. Why? He tells Diggle "it's not the right time." He felt that way because he didn't believe he could be in a relationship with her and be the Arrow, but the actual reason, in my view, was about protecting Felicity (emotionally, not physically, to be super clear). He wouldn't have taken that chance with Felicity without knowing he was on solid ground about it first. But then he did. So I had to swallow that OOC and plot-contrived moment, and moving forward, I really wasn't mad at him about this stuff for the rest of the season. I think he tried to do the best he could, while still figuring his shit out. He screwed up--that "you know how I feel about her" thing was unnecessary and he knew it immediately--but his biggest errors in the season came down to not trusting the right people, and that's not limited to Felicity. By the same token, I had moments this season where I felt Felicity was careless with Oliver's feelings and I was unhappy about those too. Her joy at seeing QC rebranded to PT will forever stick in my craw. And I found 317 especially aggravating as she accused Oliver of wanting her relationship with Ray to fail (when he'd only shown the opposite), and then she turned around and kissed his cheek at the end of the episode. At that point, she was the one stringing him along, and I did not love it. Characters took a backseat to plot this season, and any given character might act OOC at any moment in order to serve another's arc, and many of the moments I hated can be directly pinned to that. In 307 and 317, Ray was living the life Oliver wanted, and someone had to come right out and say it because apparently we're all very dumb, and it had to be as hurtful to Oliver as possible. Oh...hey, Felicity! That's your job this season!

I'm not sure why so many showrunners and writers can't get onboard with a few simple PR-friendly statements about these kinds of things. "Of course we pay attention to feedback but it doesn't direct our story or our decisions for the show." I don't care if you have to say it a thousand times and it gets tedious. You just keep saying it. Rather than making fun of your fans, you could say, "It's critical to us that our fans love this show and these characters; it was so hard to see people's anguish over Sara when we knew we wanted to bring her back, but couldn't say anything about it." Berlanti is typically great at this stuff. He stays 100% positive in his actual social media presence, and when he's interviewed, same thing. He is prepared to answer questions he knows he's going to get, and he never displays contempt for his own audience. Even though I still wasn't satisfied with his answer for the TCA eff-up, he did take full responsibility and promise to do better. Before he leaves these shows behind for good, he should give MG and AK a quick lesson in fan engagement and PR.

I had the same feelings and ultimately I decided to just treat it like a comic book character. Like, this is a different Carrie Bradshaw story. It's not really the origin story of the SATC Carrie, because that would be too depressing. Not just the personality changes, but the fact that all these sweet people apparently just completely disappeared from her life. So in this version of the story, Carrie has a chance to find and hold onto happiness in a relationship, as well as her relationships with her family members and friends from all parts of her life. Hurray!

First, thank you for the All-Derek edition of Best Shirtless Moments. Second, I'm so pleased you like Malia and Stiles/Malia, because that's not a very popular opinion (at least with the vocal part of the TW fandom), and they were honestly one of the only things I liked about S4. If I thought there was a chance they would go the distance, I might even tune in for S5.

I think in S1, Dig kind of shared primary support duties with Tommy, when Oliver was still getting used to being alive again, as he was slowly letting people in. I certainly responded best to his relationship with Dig, but he was by no means the only person Oliver opened up to emotionally that season. In S2, I do think the show gave us more of Felicity lending emotional support, so Dig didn't have to shoulder the whole load. Felicity also brings a different viewpoint usually, so it's not just like you can sub one of them out for the other. (Except this season when the writers seemed to just spin a wheel and attach a motivation to whichever character they landed on.) But I did feel by the end of S2 that the show needed to spend more time on O/D again, and lo and behold, I got all I could ever want in S3. If Diggle wasn't Oliver's primary support person in S3, then who was? The only moments I can remember Felicity being allowed to emotionally support Oliver came in 301, 308, maybe 309, 316, 319, 320, and 323. That's a whopping six/seven out of 23 episodes. Otherwise, their interactions were all business with the emotional stuff underneath. Dig was Oliver's go-to person, and there are several instances where their scenes are the only good part of otherwise shitty episodes, IMO. So it doesn't sound to me like this rift between Oliver and Dig is going to last all that long, but after a season of John being really the only person Oliver would open up to, yeah, I think the pendulum is going to swing back for a time. Hey, if I have to put up with the "evolution" of the show expanding Team Arrow to include every mask in the greater Starling area, I can deal with Oliver's circle of trust expanding too.

You don't have to actually start a company simply to be a consultant though, so none of that process would be necessary. You're just self-employed; you get your insurance through the ACA, pay your taxes quarterly, and that's that. It makes no sense that Felicity wouldn't have pursued this, and in fact, she did, because according to the comics, her "job" with Kord Industries was a contract position. I understand why she wouldn't seek out a permanent position at Kord or wherever, because she was holding out hope for QC, but with her capabilities, she could certainly have freelanced indefinitely. That whole Tech Village thing was ridiculous, and I'm convinced the writers did it because they envisioned a "started from the bottom, now we here" arc for her with the PT ownership thing at the end of the season.

I'd like it if VDO could appear in five eps and Rosario Dawson could appear in 11 in S2. Just reverse the ratio of their appearances, spread the money out that way. I know I'm not going to get that, but my interest in Fisk is pretty much worn out at this point, and I certainly don't need another season where he's the main villain.

I'm starting a petition for David Ramsey to keep the facial hair in Season 4.

That is super interesting, DeathQuaker. Thanks for taking the time to write all of that up! The breakdown was really down to the conception of Laurel as a character vs. what actually happened onscreen vs. what would have been helpful for her eventually becoming the Black Canary. The writers forgot to actually show Laurel exhibiting any of the traits they felt defined her. It would have been better to just lean in to some of her less appealing moments, and then bring her back in as you describe, by being incredibly protective of others, maybe even against her better judgment. An example of this type of complicated heroine is Sarah Manning from Orphan Black, if any of you watch that. She can be domineering and short-sighted sometimes, and started out pretty self-focused, but she can't stop herself from helping other people.

I still think AO3 needs to implement a tag-searching option where you can easily eliminate a tag from your search. But they don't have that yet, and someone here gave me advice on how to do it manually once (thanks, friends!). So (for example) you would click on the "Sara Lance" tag to bring up all results with that tag, and then in the sidebar, under "Search within results," you would type exactly this: -"Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak" That doesn't mean those works won't include or focus on other relationships, but you can continue to narrow from there by using commas to separate terms, as the little "?" bubble describes on the site. Unfortunately, the tag system is never going to be perfect. Because for every person who only wants a character or pairing tagged if they are the focus, other people want them tagged if they're present at all because they don't like them and want to avoid at all costs. I don't think either of those positions is more or less valid than the other. Personally, I scan the tags to gauge the scope of the story, so I appreciate additional, possibly non-focal characters being tagged. I do think it would be cool if there were a tag system that incorporated focal/primary versus secondary, which would then be helpful if tag search were made more robust (so you could search for "Sara Lance" only in the primary tag, for example).

Well, also, it would have been pretty easy for the show to drum up some sort of really important thing she needed to do in Europe or whatever that would have taken precedence over staying behind to help her friends. Since to fight the greater battle. Honestly, the show could have come up with something, and whether CR ever wanted to come back or not, it is a bummer that Jackson got to leave town of their own free will but Allison had to die.

Also, and this is a question I'd love to see MG really answer: okay, Ra's made Nyssa marry Oliver because he's eeeeeeeeevil. But they stayed married through the finale (and possibly into S4), after Ra's died, for no reason--who's to blame for that? Can we blame MG/the writers yet, or are they still hiding behind the characters they write for? Can we blame them for using it as a joke twice in that episode, but otherwise not addressing it at all? Just wondering when MG will accept that he's actually the person making these writing choices.

The bag thing: Stephen was definitely saying that his friend was going to walk around with his...bits out, to make the pictures unusable. I've seen other people joke about doing that w/r/t paparazzi, and bag is slang for sack. *The more you knooooooowwww.*

Yeah, he and Liv were both dying, but Liv knew there was no chance for her because her whole coven was dying. So Tyler would heal if he triggered his werewolf curse, so he essentially sped her death up a bit. It was a pretty depressing callback to the (great) scene earlier in the season (that harvest festival massacre episode) where Liv did the same thing when Tyler accidentally hit a guy with his car (I think?). He was dying, and Liv suffocated him so that she caused his death, in order to prevent Tyler's curse from triggering.

She is hot as hell. But I remember someone posting an interview here where she said that she works out for like three hours every day, so it's not all genetics!

I suppose it wouldn't be odd for a ship docked in Vancouver to be Russian, so maybe they always intended to change that in post-production. But...yeah, I really need this to be the Bratva season.

Yeah, it was super-quick. She's in a passageway with Laurel and indicates it's time for everyone to leave and Laurel says something like, "Aren't you coming too?" And Tatsu says that she left her life of solitude because Oliver asked her to, but now it's time for her to return to it. I also hope we see her again. I really liked Rila in this role and would like to see more of her character. Plus, it's just too depressing to think of her having lost her son, killed her husband, and then living alone forever.

I agree with your whole post, and I think your suggestions are great. I said this during the winter hiatus I think, but I basically think Oliver's emotional arc of "The Calm" should have stretched out over the first nine episodes. Flirting with Felicity and circling closer to the idea that he could really try to be with her, and in the meantime, Ray is also making some moves, and maybe Oliver sees that kiss in 307, and it spurs him to action, and 309 begins with O/F on a date. And then the LOA swoop in to the restaurant instead of the Vertigo bomb. And he has to go to NP, and his realization that he can only be the Arrow comes in 312 before he returns to Starling. So his quick deal with Malcolm makes more sense, because he's in this rather cold mentality, and it's a double-blow to Felicity, making that emotional beat more effective. Like you said, there was so much waffling around the "Identity" theme that I could never predict where exactly Oliver's head/heart was at any given moment. And as much as I liked the scene in the finale where he told Felicity about his dream, the thing where she told him that his heart was different now because as much as he tried not to, he'd let himself feel something? That just didn't ring true to me. Let himself want something? Yes. But the whole season, he really never tried not to feel anything, aside maybe from "Sara." Otherwise, he was a love machine all season long. With Thea, with Roy, with Dig, even with Felicity when he couldn't stop himself. Just hugging and loving and telling people how much they meant to him, all the time.

Like someone pointed out on my Tumblr last night, The 100 is an example of a show like that. (I know you watch that too, Sakura, so you can appreciate this.) Tons of women, who come from very different societies, and so far? No rape, no threat of rape. Women in power all over the place, none of them had to be raped first (or after). It's a miracle! And the GOT "era appropriate" thing will never wash with me because it's a fantasy novel. There are dragons. There are allllllll sorts of "historically" "accurate" common practices from the Middle Ages that GRRM and D&D choose to ignore (male rape being one, actually), but they never let a chance slip for a woman to be raped or threatened with sexual violence.

Well, the great news is that Arrow isn't a romance novel. So the show doesn't need to build a plot that exists mostly as window-dressing to a romance, throwing in tons of romantic obstacles, and then ending before there is time to get "boring." Now that the EPs have exhausted the Nolan Batman trilogy, I'm hoping they will look to the Iron Man movies for inspiration. We've mentioned this before, but I mean, Pepper and Tony (especially in IM3, but also in their brief moments in the first Avengers movie) are really the ideal for how a romantic relationship and partnership can feel real, solid, and still compelling even after the will-they-won't-they has been settled.