Carrie Ann

Wow, that seems like a really weird choice for the Oscars. I don't know anything about the other two writers, but I don't really think "funny" when I think of Berlanti and Kreisberg. Maybe they'll just write the earnest stuff...

Aww, he'd probably find that romantic.

Right, and when Damon tried to kill Matt, it was because Elena hadn't had any human blood, so he thought she wasn't going to turn. He was mad because he thought Elena was going to die, and blamed Matt for being alive instead. That's when Elena came flying out of that barn and stopped him from killing Matt. On the actual show, he never expressed any sense of upset that she was a vampire, and why should he? It's what he wanted to happen. Any statements to the contrary ring false to me. But I appreciate the growth he's showing now, even as transparent a ploy as it is on the writers' behalf to make Elena fall in love with him all over again because he's so selfless now, etc. I don't really care, because he was on a growth trajectory for awhile there, and then they just called it to a halt in order to keep him "fun" and "evil." Instead of making him grow, they made Elena get worse. The bummer about this episode from an Elena perspective is that it seems like instead of making her continue the changes she's made in the first few episodes, they're just going to revert to S4/5 Elena, who is the actual WORST. It means that once again, all she is is Damon's Most Favorite Dolly. She only exists as a reward for him. Don't do this, show. Just make her shrug and move on with trying to have a real life, and be a good person, and when she gets her memories back, she can reevaluate.

I watched Buffy live, from the beginning, and never got into Angel while it was airing. I think the BtVS S4/AtS S1 crossovers are kind of important, but after that, it doesn't matter much. I'd watch Buffy all at once first, maybe watching those first season crossover episodes of Angel in their proper place in S4 of Buffy, just because it doesn't really spoil much about that season of Angel, in my opinion. Then I'd watch AtS all at once. The crossovers or parallels or mentions between shows aren't that important to the general understanding of either show--the amulet, as you mention, is never going to make sense. Seeing that when you get to it on Angel will just be like an Easter Egg. Anyway, that's how I'd approach it, if I were you!

I may have already watched Season 2, twice, in the two weeks since it appeared on Netflix, but would be down for a watch-along thing too.

After saying he couldn't be Oliver and the Arrow, all he's done this season is deepen his relationships: with Thea, Roy, Diggle, even Laurel in some respects, despite their conflicts. Felicity is the one person who remains cut off from him, but even so, I thought their relationship progressed in some ways in Ep 5. You're all making good points about why this is happening. I think (hope?) that in some ways, "I thought I could be Oliver and the Arrow, but I can't," and "One of these days, it's going to be me," were sort of the last gasp of that kind of thinking. Starting with the end of Sara, all we've seen from Oliver is the opposite of that. "I just need Thea to call me back." "I don't want to die down here." "I need you." "If we're not together, we're not really living." "And you know how I feel about her." "Don't abandon me./Never." "I'm always going to look out for you, because I care about you." He's actually shown a lot of emotional growth this season. It just happens to be growth away from his big thesis statement from the premiere.

Like I said in both of my posts above: the perspective I laid out, which belongs to the EPs and not to me, is an oversimplification. It's a convenient thing they could point to and say, "Well, see, the problem was that we were so limited in what we could do with her until she knew the truth and could be more integrated into the story." And yeah, now she's in on the secret, but not integrated properly, and the old problems remain and new ones have been created. My hope is that we're heading toward something more interesting than InstaCanary, as @rue721 suggested. And if we're not, well, at least I don't believe that Team Arrow would become her team too. If she does this thing, and becomes some sort of hero through magic/three months of boxing lessons, then she'll be flying solo at least for the time being. If I'm wrong about that...

Well, Elena basically reverted immediately to her Season 5 self, memories or no, so I don't understand what the point of any of this is. What a boring reset. Now we have to waste more time on them than we would if they were just back together already. Ugh. On the other hand, at least Damon will be off finding Bonnie for a minute. So I can hold onto this show for another few episodes at least. I'm so...sad and disappointed at how they just botched this Steroline thing though. I'm glad Caroline's continuing to shut him out, but wow, that reveal and those scenes should have had a way stronger emotional impact. And I love Stefan, but I really don't get why the writers are taking this approach right now. Asking Caroline why she had a thing for him? Are you serious? That's your response? And you're supposed to be truly sorry for the way you treated her? Are you sorry for the way you're currently treating her, or...? Man, his groveling sentence just got way longer.

I agree with you--like I said, this POV is way over-simplifying the situation. I think the EPs saw the problems spinning out from this "not knowing" but that's just one aspect of it. And honestly, the way her relationship to Team Arrow remains strained and awkward seems intentional to me, and I like it. I'm glad they didn't make everyone just love Laurel right away. In fact, I don't think they're going to get to that point this season at all.

I like the coded message idea, but if Oliver is off wherever, I hope they don't really believe he's dead. Because I can't take another (however many) episodes of the team in mourning. I think they'll all be sad/tense enough with him gone, whether it's voluntary or involuntary. I hope we don't have a presumed death as well.

I think the EPs might see "not being in on Oliver's secret" as perhaps a bigger problem than her not being the BC from the jump. I think they feel it limited the things she could do, the characters she could interact with, and the way she interacted with them. So many things that make her distasteful to the audience (in S1, at least) were at least related to the fact that she didn't know what happened to Oliver, and didn't know what he was doing as the vigilante. She was set up to be angry with Oliver when he returned, and she made all these cruelly ironic comments about how he wasn't hero material, etc. I think the EPs overestimated how much viewers would sympathize with her position vs. Oliver's. Plus, he came home a man who hated himself more than Laurel ever could, so her continuing to tear him down just felt like piling on. It was a terrible dynamic to set up. She also couldn't interact with the two most popular characters--Diggle and Felicity--in any meaningful way. So she needed to stay over in her corner with her father and Tommy (also popular, but that relationship didn't reflect well on either of them), and occasionally Thea who was also problematic in S1. I won't go into Season 2, because you can apply a lot of the same logic there, only in that case it was worse because there was no one in the Laurel corner of the world except her dad and guest stars, until Sara showed up and then...ugh. So what the writers are trying to argue is that you can trace so many things people dislike about her character back to her not knowing about Oliver, and about being on this sloooooooooooowwww journey to becoming the BC. And I can see their point. But it's oversimplifying the situation like whoa. And the bigger problem is that you can't resolve those issues as easily as just reversing those conditions. You can't just say, "Well, she knows now," and erase two seasons of Laurel being off-putting and frustrating. You can't just put her in a leather suit and mask and think that will make her a compelling character. They needed to put this work in at the beginning of Season 2 at least, and instead, they took her in an even worse direction. My greatest hope for the character at this point is that she goes a grey/dark route and is an antagonist of Team Arrow for a few seasons, before being redeemed toward the end of the series. I think we've got her for the long haul, but I don't believe in or root for her as a hero right now.

I just find it hard to believe that somewhere between the Clock Tower getting blown up and the Mirakuru'd soldiers attacking (or any other time in that crazy night), they took a detour down an alley and found Cupid with some guy strung up? And then they took the guy with them? Something that would be cute is if Carrie Cutter saw them that night, and has developed this daydream where she's their teammate, so what we're seeing is her delusion.

Unless this image is also a part of the flashback, I think we're looking at something happening in the present day. ETA: Jinx!

Oh right, so the guy would be the courier from Star Labs? ETA: Actually, I take it back--there is another shot of them out of the van in an alley, so this does appear to be current. They just happen to all be dressed the same.

My best case scenario is that he asks her to go with him to this work function while they're at the office; she says she's swamped and can't get home to get an appropriate dress; he says to give her measurements to his assistant or her own, so they can call a store and get something sent over. Nothing will make the necklace okay though.

Yeah, there's someone passed out behind Dig. Didn't notice that.

Okay, well we didn't see that on the show and I'm not sure how it went down, but there's a difference between "I need you to get a super fancy dress for this thing, so here's my credit card, go nuts," and "Here's a dress I bought for you to wear should the occasion ever arise; I took your measurements with my creeping eyeballs. Here, try it on for me, my precious."

For real? He has a salmon ladder in his office? And yeah, the dress thing is not great, but I will try so hard not to be mad about it in advance (but why do they keep making him do the creepy things why why why) because I'm trying to like him.

I think we could skip ahead six months from Ep 9 to 10. If they combine the usual 5/6 weeks they skip ahead during the winter break AND the 5 months they would usually skip over the summer. Then we wouldn't have a time jump between seasons, if they pick up in S4 immediately after S3 ends. The other issue is The Flash. So if they also skip time over the hiatus, or if we don't have another crossover this season, then it would still work.

Yeah, it's comic book Clark Kent magic glasses stuff, but it is ridiculous to believe that Iris wouldn't recognize Barry despite the blur and the voice. I could recognize my family and best friends in costume, full snowgear, masks, etc., just based on how they stand and move. It's something we used to joke about in college--how we would spot each other from across the quad in a crowd, just by our movement. My bigger problem at this point is that Joe's argument for keeping it from her was just rendered completely moot, but they didn't address that. Iris has made herself a target by putting her name to the blog, and she has refused to stop looking into this. Letting her know Barry is The Flash is the only chance they really have to convince her to stop, to remove herself (and Barry) from further danger. There is literally no reason not to tell her now, and every reason to do it. The fact that they didn't acknowledge that is a concern, but I have high hopes that these EPs learned something from Arrow, and that they won't keep her in the dark for much longer.

Well, what would truly make the most sense and be best for Laurel is for Quentin to get all the information: Sara is dead, Oliver is the Arrow (I think he knows, but let's get it out there), and Laurel is on a self-destructive mission of vengeance. She's sublimating her addiction, and the treatment should be the same. Her loved ones should stop enabling her. No cleaning up her messes; no swooping in to save her when she gets in over her head. It's hard, but parents have to leave their addict children out on the streets every day, and just pray they don't die or end up in prison. I don't think Quentin deserves to live that way, or to lose his only other child, but Laurel doesn't deserve to have this safety net all the time either. She's not facing the reality of what she's doing, or the potential consequences, because she doesn't have to. Oliver saying he'll always try to protect her because he cares about her so much is not helping. He needs to stop.

One positive note on this episode (there weren't many): I appreciate that it doesn't feel awful when Oliver and Felicity are on-screen together anymore. Episodes 2-4 were tough to take, because while I knew there would be angst this season, it wasn't enjoyable to have them being so cold to each other (well, mostly Oliver, but you know). The team dynamics of this episode could have been lifted from any part of last season, basically, and that's all I can ask at this point I suppose. I know we're in for more and worse, but at least we've had two episodes where I could see their old bond firmly in place.

So Season 3 will only be eight episodes? I mean, eight is better than none, but I want mooooooooooooore.

Those post-hiatus episodes without Oliver in the present day may be the first ones I actually skip. How do they think this is a good idea?

A lot of Oliver's characterization this episode makes more sense if you still believe that there is any sort of romantic tension between Laurel and him, which I don't. His attitude toward Ted, the crack about his "lair" being bigger (ew stop), the shot of him carrying her out of the car. All of it just made me confused, and then I was like, "ohhhhh, do these writers still think something is going to happen there?" I mean, I'd like to believe they don't, but I don't really understand the point of any of that otherwise. There probably is none, and the writers are just lazy and fall back on the same familiar emotional beats they always use with Laurel and Oliver, but it felt off anyway because I don't see their relationship that way at all anymore. It would be nice if the writers/EPs could get on the same page about these characters.