Carrie Ann

Here's the way I view this, and all other instances of Character A getting cozy with Character B who has done Bad Things to A's friends/family: The friends and family have NO responsibility to forgive B, and they have no responsibility to continue ANY relationship with A, if they find it intolerable to be friendly with someone who is friendly with B. At the same time, Character A should not have any expectation of a continued relationship with their offended friend/family member, and if they do have one, it should be on that person's terms w/r/t Character B. So, for example, Elena shouldn't expect Caroline to forgive Damon for raping her (for one example), and if they continue to have a friendship, Elena should accept that Caroline will never approve of Damon. If Elena can't accept that, she can choose to end one or the other relationship. It's not on Caroline to make it OK for Elena. By the same token, it's not on Tyler to make it OK for Caroline. But the issue in this instance is whether Tyler does want any kind of relationship with Caroline anymore. I think he does. And I think Caroline would like to be friends with him too. But in her case, she doesn't plan to have any ongoing thing with Klaus, and she does seem to have some level of regret about sleeping with him (even if it's only regret that she hurt others). So I understood her telling Tyler that she was done apologizing. Because what's done is done, and the ball is in his court to let it go or not, but there's nothing more Caroline can really do.

A topic for articles, reviews, interviews, social media stuff, etc. To start us off, Scott Porter just posted a pretty adorable photo of the cast read for Episode 5. They're all too attractive, really.

This is Capital-R Relevant to my Capital-I Interests right now. I marathoned both of these shows this year--guess I have a thing for blonde FBI ladies and the hotties who love them, too. I think you came out on the right side of this one at every step.

The actor who plays the father/dog owner is one of the worst they ever use, in my opinion. The whole time he's dealing with the dog-man, he looks like he's trying not to laugh. Which I understand, but not from a professional actor. It's not my favorite Trouble story anyway, but he doesn't do anything to help. And then, yeah, Audrey decides to start pushing Nathan away, which is just not fun for anyone.

Diggle leaving at the end of the episode just guts me. It feels like a breakup scene and it hurts like one. Meanwhile, the other breakup scene does nothing for me. But I had forgotten how much Oliver was pushing the envelope with Laurel at this point in the season, prior to her breakup with Tommy. Oliver--this episode is not a good look for you, on several fronts. Stop being a douche, damn.

I started shipping it when I saw a reference to Olicity on Twitter around S1E21, I think? Honestly, before then I didn't let myself really consider it because Lauriver seemed like the path, and I tend to avoid non-canon ships because they only make me sad (show canon, not comics canon, to be clear). But suddenly, I saw more media people referring to it and talking about it, and it seemed possible for the first time. During the hiatus, I became more hopeful and S2E6 is when I realized the show was actually going to go there, and I was all in.

Seriously. Look, I thought GV and AZ had chemistry when this storyline began 84 years ago, but now GV is playing Eric like a 9 year old boy who's mean to a girl because she makes him feel funny in his tum-tum. He's like terrified of Nicole, and his rage at her seems to be less about the betrayal at this point and more about the fact that he's still (apparently?) full of lust for her. Which just makes me hate him. Also, even if the writers/producers love Abby, wardrobe clearly hates her because she has been in two offensively hideous outfits in a row.

Instead of shorter scenes, just move things along faster? Like, have storylines proceed at a reasonable pace. I actually think GH does a somewhat better job of this than other soaps (Passions being the all-time worst, with a single day lasting months), but if you were going to make changes to the format in order to get/keep younger viewers, more action and faster movement would be the way to go.

I think the DVDs are all the complete episodes. The issue is about PBS needing to squeeze in their sponsor messages to bookend the episodes, but as I've said repeatedly about this and Sherlock--make the timeslots a half-hour longer and put 30 minutes of sponsor crap in there. Honestly. No one would care, and probably some people would accidentally watch it.

Wait, they're dragging this out until October?

PBS cuts like 7 minutes out of each episode when they air here for some stupid reason, so yeah, the UK version is definitely the one you want to watch.

Huh. I thought by "home," Claire meant Australia, not LA. But if she's happy in LA, then I'm happy for her. I do miss her on the show though, a lot.

YES, that stunt is so freaking cool. I forgot it was in this episode. For that, it gets bumped up at least half a grade.

I actually can kind of understand how the married-with-kids thing could come about. I haven't seen the specific interviews or panels where Katie went into this, but I will admit to feeling uncomfortable sometimes at the kinds of questions actors get regarding their love scenes. Like, it borders on Real Person Shipping land, even from journalists sometimes. And when one or both of them are in relationships, that feels awkward, and I can imagine it's easy to kind of go overboard defensively to indicate that you certainly DO NOT enjoy making out with someone else's husband. Double that if you aren't that close with your costar. But it's easy to just deflect it to talk about the characters' relationship instead of how YOU personally feel about it. It's enough to say something like, "I love working with Stephen. I think Laurel and Oliver blah blah blah..." Same goes for the Black Canary questions, etc. Talk to the producers about what they want you to reveal, and come up with your stock answers, run them by your PR people if you feel it's necessary. Then put those answers to work.

This is one of my least favorite episodes of the season, and I honestly think that as this series ages, people will view it with less enthusiasm than it received on first airing. It is a 45-minute stroll around the Queen mansion, featuring an extended Slade/Oliver glare-off, plus flashbacks. Everyone speaks as slowly as possible, with ridiculously long pauses between every sentence. I like the scene where Roy and Sara show up in the foyer, but even that one is too slow and awkward and it's so obvious that something weird is going on! Honestly, Moira and Thea should have been like, "So...did we stumble onto some freaky sex club here, or...?" "Please save Oliver." Shudder. Never again, writers. Never again.

I thought Joss was really interested in the human trafficking angle, basically, which, yeah, is about prostitution. I would have found that pretty boring, and GROSS, since we really know one male doll, and the rest are women. But the network was like, "No, we want FUN sexy times, not ones with icky human rights overtones." But, um, instead they got both, I guess.

I'll be the weirdo to say that I like Dollhouse better than Firefly. I HATED the first 5-6 episodes, but from that point on, I was all in. And I don't really love the flash-forward episodes either, but it was interesting to see how the characters and relationships had developed. I think they did them because they were throwing everything out there to try to get renewed--at least that was the case for the one at the end of S1. There are a couple of other things that I wasn't thrilled about, but in general, I love that show. And yeah, ED was the weakest link by far for me (Tahmoh Penikett was second-weakest), but everyone else in the cast was outstanding.

Yeah, they all need new dayjobs, but they didn't get additional paychecks as Team Arrow. Aside from the $1M Oliver gave them post-S1, in the comics.

Yeah, I wondered the same thing awhile back about a dream situation--specifically because of the "literally sees a vision." If this is the ep with Vertigo, it's definitely possible that he'd get dosed and see some crazy stuff. Like, I'm starting to believe that Felicity bloody on the table is not real. So maybe there is an explosion, and he gets dosed, and his vision is of the fallout? Like Felicity dies, Oliver goes nuts and kills a bunch of people, Diggle ends up hurt/dead somehow too. What I don't get is why he'd come out of that daze and think, "Well, that seems awfully accurate--better go push Dig and Felicity away to protect them!"

I'm getting the sinking feeling that this SL is going to end with Abby/Will/Hortons/Self-Righteous A-holes the world over emerging victorious, and running Sami out of town. Do the writers truly think their audience primarily sees Sami and Kate as the bad guys in this scenario? Do they think most viewers are hoping to see Sami destroyed?

"Have a fuckin' seat, Bowlingshirts McGlasshouse." YES. I'm glad someone else isn't crazy about Band Candy. It's OK, but I really only like seeing a different side of Giles, and Buffy's irritation at having to be the adult, and her growing desperation to get them all back to normal. Otherwise, I find it kinda cheesy. I still think S3 is the best season, but it gets better as it goes. All the seasons have rough spots (for some, the spot is more like the Exxon Valdez spill), but I think S3 represents the highest overall quality and the lowest percentage of stuff that's unwatchable.

I'm worried she'll die, but not convinced. I think one reason she's not a regular is that they went through part of her journey last season, and this season is about Laurel's journey instead. So they don't need her there full-time, and in fact she might just be in the way of that story if we had to spend too much time on her.

I didn't see it as reproachful; I saw it as confused. But asking it was insensitive. As he was the entire episode, in which every person noticed how insecure Felicity was feeling, except for him. I think if it had happened in another episode, where everyone was cool with each other, Felicity would have just had a little snappy comeback and it would have been a cute moment.

Absolutely. Dig is the secret MVP of this show, and has taken a backseat on the Team and on the show in service of developing Roy and Sara (and Felicity, to an extent, but their friendship with each other develops them both so that actually works in his favor). I hate when Oliver and Dig are at odds, but it's rather delicious at the same time. In the long SA interview below, at about 6:00 there is a question about what's coming for Oliver and Diggle, and he says, "Finger-pointing, bro-hugs, yelling, smiling, fist bumps. Diggle/Ollie stuff." So hopefully the conflict isn't extended too long.

You're right, it was Kreisberg, at about :50, here: