Carrie Ann

This really nails it for me. Of course the team will defeat the bad guys. That's not why I watch the show. I only care about the plots insofar as they service the characters, their growth, and their relationships. Right now, I'm at a loss as to the emotional/growth arcs of any of the "core characters." The only development I see is in Quentin and Thea, which is why I'm enjoying those scenes. Otherwise, DR's comments So, I'm supposed to be invested in his pointless fugitive status, his brand new son whose existence I resent, and his burgeoning relationship with my least favorite boob. No thanks. Oliver is back to believing he doesn't know how to be Oliver Queen and needs to learn how to do that! How wonderful. When they started talking about him being a shit mayor over the hiatus, I hoped it was overblown, but in fact his regression extended to every area of his life--including as the GA where he's back to killing and domineering. At this point, I don't even find it frustrating anymore that they refuse to allow him to retain any personal growth; I just find it tedious. I just can't engage with his learning how to be a real boy story anymore. He was a completely different person in S4 and his reversion makes no sense. They would have needed to pin it to Flashpoint for it to be believable. I appreciate the way they've handled Felicity's role in the lair and with the new team, but I don't care enough about the new team for that to make much impact. Her Havenrock "story" is over. She has no job. She has a boyfriend I can't possibly be expected to GAF about, let alone invest in their relationship beyond counting the minutes until it's over. And I viewed 505 as a way for the writers to stop telling ANY kind of story between O/F for the foreseeable future. They want to have other LIs without any O/F ~drama~ so they cleared the air in order to not have to spend any time on that going forward. And I mean, the only way I could tolerate watching stories with other LIs is if I see how it affects the other person in the relationship I actually care about and spent four seasons investing in. This isn't just ship-stalling, it's story-stalling. I like the idea of Oliver (and D/F to a lesser extent) mentoring and managing new vigilantes, and I appreciate that the boobs have mostly been backgrounded, but it feels like the show will now expect them to carry some emotional weight--whether on their own or in concert with the "core characters"--and they can't. Wild Dog and Evelyn are total busts for me. I appreciate Curtis in small doses, and in his very occasional role as Person Felicity Talks To, but am not invested in his transformation to Mr. Terrific. Rory is the only one I actually like. It feels like the writers put all of their eggs in the newbie basket, and that was a risk that has not paid off. I don't care about their individual development. I don't care about their relationships with OTA, I don't care about their relationships with each other. What's left? That's basically my feeling about the show in general right now. What's left?

Moving to the Bitterness thread.

Yeah, I kind of feel like the decision of whether or not to tell Mayo about Team Arrow will tie into whether or not she believes this relationship is "real." I wonder whether they're going to have Mayo find out on his own before she can decide, and then he'll be the one to realize that it's not real, and he breaks it off? Just like Famous Original Shipstall Ray. It would follow their pattern when it comes to Felicity having any kind of realizations about her own feelings. She doesn't--men just do it for her.

I really hate to defend any part or player in this mess right now, but when I watched the video of the interview (it's at about 15:45 minutes in the video posted in the Spoilers Only thread--I know you posted the vid @lemotomato, but just in case others haven't watched), I saw SA's "playboy" statement as joking, or more likely, defensive of Oliver in advance as NOT being a playboy, because of what he knows is coming. I think he knows people aren't going to like it or that they will jump back on the "Oliver is a womanizer" train, and he's saying that Oliver has been with one woman since S2 and being with another won't make him a playboy. I don't like the statement or the likely impetus behind it, but I really don't think (yet) that he wants Oliver to be the Ollie of the comics w/r/t women. If the EPs want it, then I'm sure he will be fully supportive.

I mean, Chris Carter is legendarily horrible about Mulder/Scully, to this day. The 100 guy, whew. He spreads it around to everyone, and almost all his writers follow suit. Point is, MG is in great company! But it never makes sense to do this, and it's never necessary. If you make the story decisions you want to make, then great, but it's not difficult to predict how those choices might go over with certain viewers. The adult thing to do is just be quiet about it and let people react the way they want to. Putting the blame on viewers for caring too much about the wrong things is NAGL. Just...don't talk about any set of viewers like that at all.

Yeah, I think this has happened in basically every fandom I've ever participated in or just observed from the outside. Even before social media, they would take their swipes in interviews or at cons. There's a tipping point where fans start to feel ownership of the thing they love and showrunners realize that their enthusiasm is a double-edged sword, and...most of them respond like sensitive babies.

Yeah, they're also kinda careless with dialogue sometimes, and they had to give Laurel a reason for wanting him to find another Canary. The one she gave was terrible, but maybe they just didn't want her to sound so self-obsessed about making sure her legacy would live forever?

This has been what I thought was the most likely "new" BC story since we learned KC would be in 510--that BS would show up in SC and get halfway convinced to turn good or whatever, and then somehow she's going to go off with Sara, since KC is supposed to be on LoT for some episodes, and then she will either return to E2 or some other Earth or time period to be the BC there (off-screen, mostly). It's also my preferred option, so... The only thing is that it doesn't account for LL's creepy wish to be out in the field with Oliver, FOREVER.

To the bolded part first: I know that she talked about things related to her dad and Curtis drew some parallels for her, but we never actually heard these things from Felicity because of her much-maligned lack of POV, so to me this is making inferences into her feelings and state of mind based on available evidence. Which is what I'm doing when I assume that, yeah, it bothered Oliver to lose Felicity, and William, and his home, and his mayoral campaign after his lie. I don't think either of them let down their poker faces very often after 416, so it would be as easy to say that Felicity wasn't bothered anymore as to say Oliver wasn't. It just...seems like a pretty big leap, given the story we were told up to that point. Even after that, we had LL talking about Felicity being the love of his life, him talking about how she said he couldn't change (and her reversing that), and a lot of smaller moments that I read as both of them struggling with their sadness. (As for where he was living, we saw that he was living in the lair at the end of last season. (Sorry if I misunderstood--seemed like you weren't convinced.)) As far as what either or both of them are feeling now in Season 5? I don't know, because as you say, they have barely addressed it this season. As far as I can tell, based on evidence at hand, one could deduce anything. That they are both over it or neither is, or one is but not the other. She's dating someone else; he's sort of shrugging about it to Dig. She's telling Curtis she doesn't talk to Oliver about things because they don't have that kind of relationship anymore, but she apparently hasn't told anyone about her new boyfriend. At any rate, my feeling is that Oliver has had the kind of tangible consequences that most other characters in this universe do not experience for their screw-ups. Where the writers failed (only in this one specific area--this post could go on for even longer if I got started) was in giving him TOO much support from all the other characters. They needed to pull at least one of those supportive people and have them instead verbally support Felicity's position and oppose Oliver's idiocy, and not absolve him because of his ~tough choice~, and then to have him acknowledge that there was a third option that he didn't take (which was to tell her anyway, Samantha be damned). I think that's what made it feel like he got away with it. Because the show didn't stand in judgment of Oliver to the degree it needed to, and because Felicity was left sort of in the cold for several episodes.

I enjoy superhero/sci-fi/fantasy stuff because while the circumstances and events are heightened, the emotions feel grounded in reality. This show screws that up sometimes by making people react in ways that are not...normal for humans, IMO, but I would not continue to find a character sympathetic if they were violent with a partner and I wouldn't believe it of anyone on the show. Anyhoo, I think SA said that thing about O/F being "reconciled" or "on the same page" or whatever it was because they are never going to have that fight that people want them to have. I don't think Felicity is harboring feelings of rage--if she ever felt rage, which I didn't get from her at all--this long past the breakup. I think her "lingering feelings" about it are probably distrust and a hurt that she is handling by keeping her walls up when it comes to Oliver. Whether we'll ever see any conversation between them related to those things, I don't know.

It is kinda funny. But at the same time, this is the only father/daughter type relationship I would have ever cared to see on this show (aside from one with Walter, sob), and I'd prefer to watch a Q/T relationship develop than to see either of them focused mainly on LIs (sorry, Donna). Also, I feel like Thea is actually being developed here, where her "relationship" with MM mostly served to highlight him and victimize her. I enjoy found family stories way more than blood family stories, so this pleases me. This seems logical for their characters. It seems healthy and positive, and not laden with the angst or drama of their relationships with their bio parents/kids. They seem to be handling it with a light touch so far, and it sounds like PB thinks it continues to go that way, which is lovely. Their scenes have been some of my favorites so far this season, and I couldn't have said that about either of them in any other season, I don't think.

Shorts are also used by the writers/directors to add to their reels/portfolios to sell themselves to studios for full-length projects.

The BI doesn't actually say "lead," it just says "starring." Which, in typical inflated Blind Item speak, could mean anything from recurring on up to lead, haha. But at any rate, I wouldn't rule out people you might not consider the "lead," like Routh, etc.

Oh, I don't know. After this weekend, I'm kind of glad for a break from Arrow social media posts. ;)

I know Ryan McGee did (though he doesn't really review The Flash), but I don't think Sepinwall did? I'm not sure.

Alan Sepinwall was very critical of Barry in the premiere, and of the premiere in general, and if he's even still watching, I can't imagine he's seen anything that would have changed his feelings.

And then someone tells him that what he did was okay because of reasons, or that he can't keep feeling guilty, he just has to move forward. Like, no, just...go ahead and feel really guilty for awhile? Maybe forever? Cisco's brother is now dead and that's your fault. You should definitely feel bad about that forever, and Cisco should not forgive you if he doesn't want to. Basically, I want Barry's consequences to fall on Barry more than any other person, including people who die because of him. ("Fridging" exists as a criticism because fiction tends to treat the loss of a woman as somehow worse for the dude who survived than the woman whose life was cut short.) I want him to have interpersonal, career, other life consequences. For comparison, those are the kinds of consequences Oliver has faced for his many fuck-ups, and even things that weren't actually his fault. Maybe the citizens of Central City/The World could stop seeing The Flash as such a perfect hero when he's actually put all of their lives second to his own, repeatedly. (Compare to: the police manhunt for the Arrow, and the Hood/Arrow/GA reputation struggle in general.) Maybe Barry could lose his job for neglecting his duties. (Like Oliver losing his family's company and their money.) Maybe more than one of his friends/family could hold him accountable instead of relieving him of his guilt--be allowed to get and stay mad at him for more than part of an episode (like when Dig wouldn't talk to Oliver for six months), break off their personal relationship (Dig again, and add Laurel, Felicity, Thea, Quentin, etc. to the list). I hope some of those things are coming on The Flash, but I doubt it based on the previous two seasons and three episodes of the series, and if any of them do happen, I firmly believe the show will paint Barry as the victim. It'll probably be mean ol' Draco poisoning people against him!

I just cannot. Like, congrats for delegating decorating duties? What happened to everything else you should have done?

I think that was the general argument--kind of a Roy Redux situation--but it felt more like a handwave to me. The only person we really saw Oliver actively trying to stop was Wild Dog. He didn't offer them alternative means of helping out to keep them out of danger, as he did with Roy (asking him to keep an ear out on the streets to provide intel). And particularly in Evelyn's case, since she's supposed to be super smart--probably smarter than she is skilled at fighting--it's just kinda transparent to me. (But they seem to be retconning her setup quite a bit, so, eh, maybe she's not so smart anymore!) They (DC, probably) want these characters out there for various reasons, and they're just taking shortcuts to get them there. It's not like a dealbreaker for me; it just sticks in my craw a bit when it comes to Evelyn specifically.

I'm not impressed by Evelyn (or MMcL), and my hope is that maybe she'll have a close call in the field and then decide not to throw her life away at age 16, and go to school and college and be normal for awhile. I certainly don't want her to die. I still think it's kinda bad and OOC for Oliver and Felicity to not be at least conflicted about sending a kid out to her possible death on a regular basis. But they've treated it as a non-issue.

My problem with MG's comments was not about how it would play on screen--though I do still have some concerns about that--but about his legitimizing that line of criticism on some "gotta see both sides" bullshit. The "anti-Felicity" position on this issue is exactly that, IMO. It's people who are anti-Felicity finding something else to blame her for. Otherwise, really not sure how you can look at a scenario that says "Madman's Bomb Kills Millions VS Madman's Bomb Kills Thousands" and think she is to blame for thousands of lives lost when in fact she is responsible for millions of lives saved. At the same time, of course I expected Rory to have some bad feelings about her and her choice (and she should too). That is normal. I don't think he should be expected to logic his way out of being devastated and tying that to her, obviously. But everyone else around Felicity should be able to do that, and apparently they all need to do it, explicitly and repeatedly, in order to get that point across to the viewers who didn't get it the first time around.

Good Lord, I cannot stand him. Why weren't you taken aback "in a bad way?" Why don't you point out the obvious--that that "outrage" is ridiculous, given that the character chose the only possible harm-reduction option available? I mean, go ahead and take the blame for not presenting that explicitly enough--apparently, for some people--but don't act like that's a reasonable interpretation of the text. JFC. ETA: Just read his full comments in the spoiler thread, and he actually made it worse.

I think she also cried in the hospital in 410 (how dare she), probably in 411 (can't recall), there were tears in her eyes during the breakups in both 415 and 416, there might have been something in the later episodes related to her dad or the bombs? I don't remember. The teary stuff was definitely more of an issue in S3, but since that happened, [Edited by mod: fan talk.]

I think anytime something moves beyond mere speculation to having something to back it up, I think that's news for the thread. Again, whether you take this "something" seriously in this case, with so much anonymity involved...who knows, but it's out there and worth talking about, I think.

I think people also found the paralysis story to be grim, and they tacked that onto Olicity too, in their minds.