Carrie Ann

"This is a work event!" We rewound that one a few times.

Well, I still think the women are strong, but the showrunners always make them pay for it, in specific ways the men never do. And yep, these dudes just did the one thing that would ruin the show for me. I just have no time for showrunners who won't do some basic reading to educate themselves on harmful storytelling and how to handle problematic storylines. (Glaring at MG here too.) ESPECIALLY when you've made the same mistake four other times already (by my count). I'm out for the rest of the season at the very least. And then I'll have a year to decide whether it's worth letting them do the same thing to me again in S6. Probably Arya's turn then, right? For a contrast: anyone here see Mad Max: Fury Road this weekend? There's a story about a completely effed-up, violent, patriarchal world where the focus is centered on the women and no dude experiences growth because of their pain. Plus, I mean, there are fire-spewing electric guitars! It's a total delight.

I don't know why someone would want to hear that, but Stephen did play a werewolf on a couple episodes of The Vampire Diaries, so I'm guessing that was the reason.

Awesome, do they think Elena is a real person, separate from Nina Dobrev?

I loved that Game Time! I'm terrible at paying attention to stuff like that, so I knew maybe a half dozen total, but Liv! So great. I particularly liked that the way she described things, if you didn't know what you were listening to, it sounded kind of like a 6-year-old Nostradamus. "I see a blue sky, a foggy blue sky, and water and a man, walking across it, with words, one black, one white..."

Exactly. He does get a lot of questions about missing (or "missing") Laurel scenes, and he usually responds to those questions in that way, talking about story necessity. So why do this? At the very least, if he was feeling triumphant when he realized there were an equal number of Felicity and Laurel deleted scenes, then just wait until someone asks you about it again and drop that little fact on them. Or count the number of deleted scenes for Dig or another character and prove the same point. I know some Laurel fans still blame Felicity/Olicity for all their woes, but he doesn't need to play into that.

Someone put a muzzle on this guy. Like, what is the point of this? To snap back at Laurel fans? To snap back at Felicity fans? To once again pit these characters and their fans against each other? I can't stand him.

I honestly can't keep track of all the witchy mythology on this show, but I do know that it's not always been true that a witch's spells end when that witch dies. I mean, Katherine was supposed to be trapped in that tomb for 150 years or whatever, and that was the result of a spell Emily Bennett performed. Ummm...I think? Just a quick correction that Matt didn't leave town. Elena was encouraging him to continue protecting humans like him, and in the flash-forward, he's a part of the sheriff's department. (Maybe you meant Jeremy, though? In which case, yeah, Jer's gone.) But yeah, we're down to Bonnie, Caroline, Matt, Stefan, Damon, Alaric, and for some terrible reason, Enzo. And then Lily and her witchpires, blech. I think it's both to protect the cure for Damon, but probably more importantly to protect Elena herself, as a vampire who doesn't know or care about her may just go ahead and kill her while trying to get the cure. Ugh, I forgot about this and it bums me out that she obviously will not prolong her life. She's never talked about that, and on the show, I think that witch in Chicago (?) is the only one we've seen who has done spells to keep herself young. But yeah, that definitely won't be an option for her anymore. But maybe she wouldn't want that anyway, if she ends up with a nice, normal human dude and kids and stuff, she might not want to live into her 100s.

I'm not gonna hate on Elena tonight, but when she was advising Ric about how to handle grief, I was like, "...Elena, literally every woman he's ever loved has died in some horrible way. He's been through this shit." The scene with the girls was what broke me, but I liked all of the goodbyes.

I bolded the parts of your first post that made me think you were still confused about the spell--no offense intended; it just seemed like maybe you had it reversed.

This is a pretty thorough interview with JP (eta: same as the link above). (Not spoilery unless you count a few hints about what might come in S7.) But this part irked me, and I don't even need to explain why:

I think maybe you got the spell details reversed in your mind. Elena didn't die. She's basically in a Sleeping Beauty suspended animation state UNTIL Bonnie dies. Then Elena will wake up and apparently be able to live her life from that point. So everyone is assuming Bonnie will live a normal-length life, and the humans won't see Elena again, but the vampires will (assuming no one kills them). Just not for 60-70 years.

But that doesn't mean that Sara can't come back to life on Arrow before LOT begins. [spoilered just in case] I was joking about them waiting to tell Oliver, but I stand by my wish that he's not the first to learn she's alive.

I'd like it if Oliver weren't the first one to find out this time. Maybe it could be Nyssa, who could tell Laurel and Quentin, who could then choose to tell Oliver whenever it suited them. :)

They apparently said something about it going the distance like Supernatural? 11 seasons??? Are you kidding me.

I knew it was going to be the combo of Sara and Victor Garber that sucked me in! But all it took was them standing next to each other, looking better than everyone on that team, and now I need them to develop a father/daughter type rapport.

Don't know where this was originally posted, but here's the featurette on the show!

Here's the review MG was awkwardly begging Alan Sepinwall for a few weeks back. He may wish he'd never asked.

Ugh, Lily's going to live through the finale? Boooooo. I don't find her compelling at all.

Wow, she looks gorgeous.

I wasn't actually hoping for Sara to show up in the finale--I gave up hope of that a few weeks ago when MG said we wouldn't see CL anymore this season. But as it is, she's just another female character who was mistreated with zero justice. Which brings me to this point: I actually don't want Nyssa to be Ra's, because I love her and want the best for her. And awhile back, I said that if the EPs were dead-set on keeping JB around, then the best option IMO would be for Malcolm to become Ra's. Because it keeps two major DC villains in the picture, and Malcolm and the LOA (like Nyssa last season) can be helpful at times, but never completely trusted. It's good for story mining. So I'm okay with that side of it--the Malcolm becomes Ra's side--but everything else that was frustrating around it is so easily fixable, and would be so much better with just a few tiny tweaks that would take no time at all. First--it should have been a condition to handing over the Claw to the Kingdom that the marriage be invalidated, and that Nyssa could choose to do whatever she wanted afterward. The scene in NP should have gone like this: "As Ra's al Ghul, out of respect to my predecessor, I declare your marriage to Oliver Queen immediately dissolved. And now, you have a choice. Kneel before me and pledge your service to Ra's al Ghul, or leave this place and never return." And then Nyssa could have spit in his stupid face, vowed vengeance for Sara, and returned to Starling to continue training Laurel and helping the other heroes. This would have solved a million problems at once. The marriage thing, allowing Nyssa to have agency, the Laurel issue, and the question of Starling really being safe without Oliver. Dig, Thea, and Laurel are great, but none of them are equal to Oliver. Only Nyssa is. And if you tell me that Nyssa is training Laurel for the next five months, it will be easier to swallow when Laurel is magically an expert martial artist next fall (which she absolutely will be). And that Thea/Malcolm conversation could have been SO much better if instead of basically thanking him for making her strong, which he DIDN'T, she had been more menacing and scary. She could have said, "You promised to make me strong, and now I am. Someday, you will regret that." Which also would have hinted that there is still the issue of the darkness in her soul after her LP resurrection.

I found that line annoying too, actually, and I think it was first and foremost a failure of writing because honestly these dudes have been inconsistent at best with Felicity this season--that wedding comment is exactly in line with them using her in ways I don't think are ideal. But in this case, I also think it was kind of a bad line delivery or a direction issue. Felicity's initial reaction/priority being Oliver is not a problem for me, but after Ray says the thing about how thousands of people will die, she says intently, "What? No, Ray--Oliver!" If she had said that in more of a stream-of-consciousness, wheels-churning kind of way, it would have been fine. The outcome is the right one--Ray stays and does the thing only he can do, and since her critical work is done in the lab, she (magically) is able to use his suit and save Oliver herself. But the line is not great, as written or delivered, and I'd like the writers to be more careful and thoughtful with how they write her next season.

Actually, of all the hilarious Sisterhood of the Traveling Supersuit antics on this show, Thea fitting into Roy's suit makes the most sense. It has laces like a corset on the bodice and legs, so she could cinch it to her own proportions. How Dig and Roy fit in the Arrow suit, or most hilarious of all, Felicity fit in the Atom suit, we will never know. I guess there is magic on Arrow! I'm still kind of conflicted about this episode. I think about 3/4 of it was really strong. The plane scene was great--the fight choreography felt on par with some of the best the show has ever done (starting with Oliver tossing Nyssa that sword and her immediately wielding it). I also loved the hotel scene when they were after Damien Darhk, especially Diggle's quick takedown of those two guards. He is SO badass and I hate that that was squandered this season. I also felt the best O/F scene was the one where he told her about his dream and she told him to fight to live. Second best was the Atom suit bit and Oliver's little puppy face. God they are so cute. Go be happy, you precious little babies. But the ending wrap-up stuff left a bad taste in my mouth, and I ended up feeling a little dissatisfied. I'm really unhappy with the resolution of Ra's and Malcolm, because for all the gross treatment of the female characters this season, none of them got to enact any kind of justice. Sara is still dead, Thea had to smile at the man who drugged and exploited her, and tell him that he kept his promise to her. Nyssa was not allowed to kill Ra's, is still married to Oliver, and had to effing KNEEL before Malcolm. And yes, Ra's died. Boohoo, that's what he wanted. He wanted Oliver to become Ra's, so in a twisted way, he got all his wishes. And MALCOLM GD MERLYN definitely got his heart's desire. All the power, no consequences.

I'll miss it until then, but if it means we get the whole season in one shot, rather than split by a hiatus, I'm okay with this. I think/hope a lot more networks and shows will start going that route--staggering seasons of shows so that there are minimal breaks, rather than stretching them across the standard Oct-May span.

Soulfire linked to it in the Spoiler thread--it's here.