Carrie Ann

Yeah, I suppose. I realized that I think part of my confusion is just stemming from the fact that I barely see OQ=Arrow as a secret anymore. So I see Felicity telling Oliver about Ray, and that's good, but then I see her not telling Ray when it would just simplify things, and I don't get it. But yeah, if I still felt like The Secret was a big deal, it would probably make more sense to keep it as long as possible.

Yeah, but it would be as easy as Felicity saying, "Okay, about these Arrow murders...uh, that's not actually Oliver Queen, that's a group that's out to ruin his life?" I mean, I'm assuming this is all coming out by the end of the episode, but I don't get why they'd assume Ray would not believe Felicity if she explained the situation to him. Except, plot stupid, obviously.

So she tells Oliver and Roy, but then they all decide to continue to keep TA a secret from Ray?

I don't remember seeing this on here, though it might have been and I just missed it, but MG confirmed that Atom/Arrow will actually fight this week. So...I'm not really sure how that will fit into the timeline of the conflicts @apinknightmare so eloquently laid out. :) Because we see Ray tell Felicity that OQ is the Arrow, then we see her saying, "What are you going to do?" but we don't know if that's the same moment. At any rate, unless things are happening very quickly, I don't understand why Felicity wouldn't tell at least one of them about the other at that point. As soon as Ray indicates he's coming for the Arrow, I'd think that's game over. But if they actually fight, then she can't have told them, right? Or...I guess she could have told Oliver, but he can't convince Ray that he's a good dude, because Ray is always right, as established.

I just cannot. Maybe he's just talking about them having nice moments in 321 that shippers would like, but not that it's ever really going to happen--but I don't know that he'd have that nuanced of an idea of how shipping works. So, yeah, I'm a little worried.

It's funny because I almost guarantee that the wardrobe department does do that intentionally. Of course they do. Ray is almost always in blue; Felicity is often in blue in episodes that are important for their relationship. This season, she has often been in dark pinks and reds in pivotal Olicity moments. It may be nothing more than an aesthetic choice, I guess. But that would be kind of a surprise to me, because it's a very well-known and commonly-used technique for wardrobe/prod design/directors, to use color in wardrobe to signal things. Often couples will be dressed in shades of the same color when they are in sync and begin to wear opposing colors when they are in conflict. (I mean, it's definitely easy to overstate this too--not that every outfit a character wears has deeper meaning, of course.) In 316, the first scene Felicity wears the blue dress, Ray is also in blue, and PT has a lot of blue in the set design/lighting. So when she is still in the blue dress in the lair, it still connects her to Ray, it's a reminder that she has ties elsewhere. MG may be unaware that his wardrobe department is making decisions that way, but I highly doubt that they put no thought into it at all.

Yeah, I find myself only semi-engaged with the show. I find myself most emotionally engaged in scenes with Barry and his various father figures, and even though I like the other characters, I can't get myself to care about any of their relationships very much.

I don't know how you're defining "dick" here, but I think the humanity-switch thing makes sense, insofar as anything really does on this show. Basically, the vampire thing on TVD, as I understand it, means that all of your emotions are ~heightened~ and your impulses are stronger, almost impossible to resist.They've shown that it takes quite a bit of self-control to stop from feeding on humans, and when vampires experience any negative emotion, they tend to...overreact. Your "humanity" is the only thing that would keep you from giving into your every impulse, and as a vampire, many of those impulses are bad. Your Ego/Superego is turned off. So if you're just referring to the personality changes--well, maybe that's a grey area? But what makes you "you," if not your humanity and your Ego? If all you are is a pleasure-seeking, selfish creature, it's hard to imagine how you could manage to do that without being a dick. Because the minute someone tried to get in your way, or bothered you, you would not react nicely to that.

I doubt it's anything currently filming unless they scheduled around him and can wait to film his scenes for another month until Arrow wraps. And I don't think they'd be willing to plot out their filming schedule just for him when he'd obviously not be the lead (at least not in the things we're talking about here). It also doesn't sound like he's actually been cast? Or the movie hasn't been greenlit? So it's possible that he's just trying to nail some sort of tone that he feels Movie X has that is comparable to the Marvel movies. I hope whatever it is works out for him (and fits right into the summer hiatus, because I don't want more Oliver-lite or Oliver-free episodes of Arrow).

If that's true, and if they had decided this was happening earlier than that, then I don't blame her at all for declining invitations to return. Common decency would be to tell the actor as soon as possible so they can get to work finding their next project and not miss any opportunities. But...maybe they weren't entirely sure until then? I mean, I'm just trying to think of a reason they wouldn't tell her sooner because I just don't see the point.

I think they tell the actor as soon as they decide the character will be killed off, and I would imagine if the person was a regular, yes, they would probably do that in person. As for the actors meeting with the writers, I think it could be for any number of reasons. I think the writers do respect the actors' opinions on their characters, and might appreciate their input on some things. And maybe since the time EBR said that (possibly when she wasn't a regular yet?), the EPs have made it more of a standard practice to have check-ins to help guide the actors on where things are going, and get feedback on other stuff. Who knows? Could also just be for team-building/morale purposes, because if I were writing for Arrow, a visit from Stephen Amell would probably do wonders for my mood. :)

Here's the story on Talibah. I forgot that Sara and Nyssa saved her. Have to believe she'd be pretty loyal to Nyssa if it came down to it. (But also, I could imagine her having no real role on the show; just being an Easter Egg for people who read the 2.5 comics.)

So is that the character from the 2.5 comics? I totally forgot about her.

Twitter will likely do nothing about this. While I may disagree that FB handles things much better, Stephen's certainly not wrong that Twitter is absolutely abhorrent about handling abuse, spam, etc. They know they're terrible about it, and have taken no steps to improve the situation. But, maybe since this guy's targeting a verified user, they will suspend this one account. Then he'll start a new one because that's what trolls do. (Weirdly, his complaint today seemed to be more about follower inflation because of spam accounts, which...who cares???)

For a few years, it seemed like Stay and Radioactive were a contractual requirement for every CW show.

This is the reason I'm open to the Nyssa training piece (though I have concerns). I don't think Oliver should train her, and there's really no other current Starling resident who can/should either. Even Ted Grant isn't the right thing, because why did they even have her go to a boxing instructor in the first place??? She's not using those moves at all. (I don't understand why they couldn't just make TG a mixed-martial arts guy anyway; it's more contemporary and would have been more appropriate for BC.) So I'm glad it's Nyssa, and I hope they do it justice.

Oh my God, Giles in that last screencap...he has never been hotter, and that is saying something. (The other time I find him this hot is when he kills Ben, because I might have problems.) That moment where he takes all the air out of the ridiculous Season 6 melodrama of bad life choices is delightful. But too little too late. Look, if you could see by Ep 22 that this stuff was over the top, you should have fixed it earlier. And yeah, Seeing Red. That is an attempted rape. But Sarah makes a really good point about why it was so confusing for people. Because, like their entire sexual relationship, it doesn't jibe well with what we have seen before. For all of Season 5 and the first half-dozen eps of Season 6, Spike "loves" Buffy and wants to help her, to be with her on whatever terms she can accept. What we don't see a lot of is him wanting to make her life WORSE. But then you get to Wrecked, and it's like a record scratch. Suddenly he wants her to come into the darkness with him. He wants her to abandon the things she loves and hate herself and blah blah blah. It just...I'm not a huge late-season Spike fan, but even I can admit that it kinda comes out of nowhere. So to me, Seeing Red is just kind of another example of that. It's sort of like someone in the writers room came up with this attempted rape-->redemption endgame, and they began writing toward that, instead of writing Spike & the S/B development organically. At any rate, they'd already ruined that character for me before SR, but that sealed the deal. I would never feel particularly invested in him again, except insofar as he affected Buffy herself.

I felt like they were clicking even before this, but the first moment that is emotional/flirty is instigated by Felicity, and not after an emotionally open moment on Oliver's part. It's her questioning whether he's really okay at PT, and grabbing for him with BOTH HANDS, all warm and loving. He leaves. The next moment is them talking about the offer--which he didn't tell her about--and she gets ALL up in his space, and once again he has to step away. Then the glory of the scrunchy face, etc. But my point is that actually Felicity initiated the intimacy. She initiated those conversations; she pulled closer to him. Yes, he came to PT, but ostensibly to get info on Murmur. He then purposely kept her out of the cave, because she was "preoccupied." She brought herself back in. I feel like she sort of led the charge here, and if anything, Oliver just arrived at the same point a little later, but it's possible he only let himself open up because she did it first.

I felt like she was emotionally intimate and flirty the entire episode, and if they hadn't included the "Ray and I are a...something" line, it might have felt a little off for me. In some ways, that line more than saved it for me--it explained it. She clearly doesn't feel committed to Ray yet, but somehow getting into "something" with him has freed her up to be a little more emotionally honest in general. For the first time since 308, I felt like she was willing to accept her feelings for Oliver. But she's also being pragmatic enough to realize that he is still making himself unavailable, and she's going to do whatever until that's not the case.

I've seen a lot of people who felt Laurel was really improved in this episode, but to me, this just seemed like more of the same. Like that scene with Quentin. How did it actually go down? Laurel came in with takeout, trying to give a peace offering or just bring things back to normal, and then she basically told him that there's a pattern for this dynamic with them (where she sucks, he gets upset, has a delayed reaction, and then they make up), and that she's impatient for him to just get on with it already. She demanded that he act the way she wanted him to. To his credit, he didn't. But I'm not going to feel sorry for her that she was an awful human being for five months and now her father isn't handling it the way she wants him to, on her particular timeline. Do the writers think I will? That's where I'm confused. It really feels like they want us to take Laurel's side, or at least feel sympathetic to both sides, and I just don't. And yes, the continued delusion and defensiveness about being skilled. It would go such a long way if the show would let Laurel be humble--truly humble, doubtful, deferential. But it's like they want her to have the BC attitude with no skills to back it up, and that just does nothing good for LL as a character. But I don't think they don't care about her character. They care about her name and her costume. So I will say that I sort of liked the feeling of the scene with LL/Nyssa, but I still find it hard to root for it, because it does just feel like one more thing she gets to have that Sara doesn't. It's a reminder that Sara was sacrificed for Laurel, and now she gets to pick up all the pieces Sara left behind, without the trauma or years of training. Win-win! Anyway, I will hope against hope, and against all previous evidence, that they let Nyssa's training truly humble Laurel. That they will let it progress at a believable rate, in a plausible way. That Nyssa will not just be on propping duty. And that for the love of all that is holy, they will never ever explore a Laurel/Nyssa relationship.

I died. I'm reporting from beyond the grave. Who wrote this??? Where were they for the rest of the season? Where did this come from after 14 episodes without a sign of it? MORE IMPORTANTLY WHY WERE THEY SO CUTE HERE, CONSTANTLY, AND WHY CAN'T WE HAVE THIS ALL THE TIME. Seriously, is this like this week's Flash, and we're going to get all of this taken away, because it feels like a trick. What are they doing with him, seriously?

I love her. Let's keep Katrina forever.

I truly hate zombies--I'm tired of them as a cultural phenomenon AND I find them repulsive on a visceral level (which I know, you're supposed to, but it's not an enjoyable feeling when consuming culture). So Rob Thomas is just about the only thing that could make me watch something with zombie anything, and I did. I liked it, but wow, yeah, that was Zombie Veronica Mars. There were differences, of course, but enough similarities to feel a little eerie. I assume it will stop feeling like that after awhile. And from the critics who've seen more episodes, it sounds like David Anders is actually the thing they like best, so that's promising too.

I really agree with this. I wouldn't go as far as saying that Ray is something I'm excited about on the spinoff yet, because I have conditions in order for that to be true. But assuming they do drop the Gary Stu thing, and introduce more flaws (I mean flaws that the text acknowledges, not just the ones the viewers see), I would believe that Ray could be an interesting, fun character when removed from Arrow. It hasn't been hard for me to separate BR's performance from my problems with Ray, which isn't always the case when a character drives me nuts. Yeah, he had the crazy eyes in the beginning, and he may have been a little OTT, but it takes a little time to settle into a role, and I think he's done that really well. I know he has detractors, but I personally don't think BR is the problem with the character, and I think if the writing improved, he would make the most of it. I find BR himself really charming, and he's been allowed a few moments of depth on Arrow that make me believe he can handle that stuff too. Also, they should let him work that stubbly look on the spinoff, because...yes.

Man, I was trying to figure out LoA name options last night for that title, and never thought about looking up Arrow for some reason.