ohjoy

Amusing line about Clara's Christmas turkey -- Clara: "What's wrong?" You don't think it's done yet?" Eleven: "I think a decent vet would give it an even chance." And one from Rory, summing up what happens to me whenever I try to process a new story: Rory: "Nope, too fast, I'm not getting it."

Favorites -- Nine: The Doctor Dances The Parting of the Ways Ten: The Girl in the Fireplace Blink Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead Eleven (My first Doctor, and still my favorite after watching Nine & Ten, though I'm really looking forward to Twelve): The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang The Impossible Astronaut A Good Man Goes to War The Name of the Doctor Ten & Eleven: The Day of the DoctorLeast Favorites -- Nine: Aliens of London / World War Three (slitheen are gross)Ten: The Satan Pit Fear Her Doomsday (sacrilege, I know, but beautiful acting doesn't make up for completely disappointing story/character developments) Journey's End (see above comment) Eleven: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood The Curse of the Black Spot The Rebel Flesh Hide(it's not a ghost story, but it's not a love story either) Journey to the Center of the TARDIS (I need more than two tolerable scenes to keep an episode from being completely irrelevant) ETA -- Favorite AND Least Favorite The Time of the Doctor -- It's a favorite because it's the first episode I ever saw, and it's a least favorite because, well, after watching the rest of NuWho, I realized that the whole episode could have been as awesome and heartbreaking as the regeneration scene, but it... wasn't. I watch it, but more out of nostalgia and appreciation for Matt's and Jenna's performances than out of love for many of the different elements.

She took that jacket from her sister. That's pretty much the only thing I remember.

I've been really enjoying your take on the "Matt Smith era" of Doctor Who. I have very few friends who watch the show, and all of them started before I did (for some strange reason I decided that my first time tuning in would be for the Christmas special last year, and then I had to spend the next seven months jumping backward a lot (and out of order) to get caught up), so it's been fun reading along with someone else who was coming in fairly new to "NuWho." As for all those questions -- is Thomas Thomas (or anything like him) gone for good, what's the deal with Clara, where the heck is River Song -- I can't wait to read your entry next week. :-)

You and me both. I think that was the scene when I fell in love with Team Arrow as a unit. Every reaction was perfection -- especially Diggle just walking away. I laughed so hard, and then hit the rewind button. Again.

This is the scene that I was constantly drawn back to, even as I assured myself that (1) I was not really all that invested because I absolutely knew that (2) TPTB were just baiting those of us who we're not fans of Laurel until they decided to force Lauriver on the audience once again. Then, given the producers glowing recommendation of KC/Laurel in the back half of S2, I began preparing myself for the worst. Then Oliver tried to leave Felicity at the Queen mansion. In the middle of half-gasping, half-screaming at my TV when the ILY slipped out, I suddenly became acutely aware that I was WAY more invested in Olicity than I'd been willing to admit. I was definitely in the camp of "I didn't know how bad I wanted it until one brief shining moment when I thought I had it" (which honestly was immediately followed by "Oh no! It's too soon!"). I was relieved it was a ruse, but now I am REALLY looking forward to the moment when it's not.

I'm gonna go for "Bushwacked" and "Heart of Gold".

Ten thousand points of light, this episode is. (Quiet please, I'm ignoring the legal shenanigans.) Seth Gabel, Olicity, Team Arrow, Roy helping his girlfriend deal with her anger issues the only way he knows how... there's just a lot to love here, and it just keeps getting better on rewatch. I could watch the whole scene with the Count at QC on repeat (and let's not pretend I haven't), but there are two moments that just stick with me -- and both are focused on Oliver's face. First, when Oliver gets the call from the Count, and he's listening to him say he's got Felicity -- Oliver's clearly tense, but he's still waiting to figure out exactly what the Count knows/wants. But the moment that sentence ends with "Arrow", Oliver's face explodes into angry determination. His expression in that moment reminds a lot of Season 1 when Felicity intentionally got caught counting cards in the casino; Oliver's listening patiently to the conversation Felicity is having, but the moment the casino owner crushes her earpiece, it's game over for him. It's just a "Felicity's in danger? This ends NOW" kind of thing. (Sorry, I'm a fan.) Then, when Oliver actually shoots the Count: the first time around I was totally pulled in by how instinctual it was -- he literally did not think about it (he didn't have time to). But on rewatch, I really caught on to his face after the Count when out the window. It was like his brain had been trying to form the sentence "you're going to kill him," but his reflexes were so fast that he didn't get the message until after the Count had fallen. It was like he blinked and suddenly came back to himself and what he'd just done. I think that's what sold that for me as "there was no choice to make" -- from [my overanalyzing of] Oliver's expression, he literally did not make a grim decision to kill the Count to save Felicity. His body instinctively recognized and dealt with the threat while his mind was still trying to process the consequences. This may be all on me obsessively staring at Oliver's facial expressions (what? don't judge), but I'm gonna give SA all the credit for the nuances he provides for weirdos like me to pick up on. Fantastic stuff.

I think that's the assumption Walt and others are making about Branch -- that the trauma of being shot, dosed with peyote, and nearly bleeding out messed with his memory quite a bit. But I agree with you; Branch seems to clearly remember everything else that happened before he got shot. I'm sure later this season David Ridges will turn up alive somehow to prove that Walt should have trusted Branch all along.

Did this have anything at all to do with the '60s TV Batman starring Adam West? Because beyond the extreme cheese factor of that show (which my mother loved), I have no idea how they came to that conclusion.

In addition to Felicity's awesome smackdown 'tude all episode (even when she finally felt bad for Oliver & brought him coffee she still said that was the only time that was going to happen), I loved how Diggle had the best lines in this episode. Between "my secret identity is his black driver" and "it weirds me out to no end the way you refer to yourself in the third person," he was really bringing the humor in those truth bombs.

I love Katee Sackhoff, and I appreciate that she is really selling her character, but Vic is starting to bug me. I want the character to go somewhere different than the direction the books took, and I keep hoping they won't drag her down that path on the show. But the way she looks at Walt... no, just stop. Ugh.

I like Branch when he's not being particularly antagonistic toward Walt. The approximately three episodes during/after the election gave me so much hope for their relationship.

I would hope that it's simply SA's acting choices and not him picking up on continued uncomfortableness from KC. I get KC being uncomfortable jumping on and wrapping her legs around an actor she knows is married; I think she should have been prepared for that eventuality, but I get it. However, this is not a "take your pants of NOW" kind of hug; it's a "your life matters, don't end it all" kind of hug. If the energy she's giving off is still "EW this is so skeevy" in that scenario, then there are serious issues that need to be addressed. That said, I think, since the shot is one where the camera is on his face only (which would have been a different take from the one in which you could see her face), this is probably SA portraying Oliver's natural reaction in the situation, given their history.

SOLD.

Why?!! Why would you put that image in my head??? *cries over Supernatural's interminable renewals* Oh, uh, topic: I really liked the pilot, although, as others have mentioned, not so much extreme-douche!Tommy or suddenly-forgiving!Laurel. Or the voiceovers. (Gah, the voiceovers -- I had blocked those out of my memory.) I liked that it was much darker tonally from Smallville (it did help kill the comparisons between the two GA characters -- I loved JH too). I do remember thinking, when I watched Robert Queen murder a guy right in front of his up-til-then completely lackadaisical son, saddle that son with all this guilt and responsibility for his father's sins, and then blow his own brains out (again, right in front of him), "Oh, this poor boy's psyche just got screwed all to pieces. No wonder he acts like he does in the present." He really needed the sanity that Diggle, and later Felicity, brought into his life, because he had none left to speak of.

It sorta reminds me of the earlier seasons of Supernatural, when Sam would say Dean's name all the time to the point I wondered if it was an in-joke or a drinking game among the writers. No one says their sibling's name that much in normal conversation. Maybe I noticed it more because there aren't any variants or nicknames you can use for "Dean". At least Sam had "Sammy" sometimes.Which reminds me (OT), there's one time (I think the scene is when Felicity is afraid to tell Oliver about his mother) when Oliver says Felicity's name like it's four different words: "Fe. Li. Ci. Ty." normally I'm just amused when he says her name, but I remember that one sounded so weird that I think I had to rewind and watch her response again because I was distracted wondering why he would say it like that. (So apparently I get distracted literally by name-calling. it's a thing with me.)

Zalyn beat me to the punch, but yeah, I think it's a distinct possibility that everyone in the writing room somehow sucks at writing Laurel. That wasn't the first time they'd written her has being self-assured that she knows Oliver better than anybody. And really, the character as written has been a mess from Day 1. You don't create a character whose boyfriend cheated on her with her sister and subsequently got them both killed, and then when said boyfriend turns up alive have that character entertain even the faintest idea of hooking up with him again. At all. Ever. And then have that same character react to finding her sister alive by telling her to get out of her house. That is the worst "blame the other woman, but not the man" reaction, and to have against your own flesh and blood -- it leads me to believe that the writers have no concept of Laurel apart from with Oliver, so there's no way the character can exist or relate to anyone else apart from her relationship with Oliver either.

So would I. Which is fine, because I'm pretty sure the that entire western hemisphere would implode, taking most of the internet with it. Good times.

You demostrate a very good point, catrox14 -- especially about the "wooden" acting comments. (I never saw it as anything but PTSD/coping issues from the last five years, but I had friends who wrote the show off in the beginnning because they thought SA couldn't act. Boy were they wrong.) And the idea that these are SA's deliberate acting choices really makes sense to me, even as I still think that KC is not factoring any of that into her acting at all. That would explain the very apparent disconnect.

If that's the case, I can't give SA a pass when I just ranted about KC doing it. If actors feed off the energy of the people they're acting against, no wonder this seems to get worse with every scene they're in together. I've honestly wondered before, while watching their scenes, what may have happened offscreen that these two can't pretend to like each other onscreen. If the producers are insistent on giving KC a chance to be BC, then these two are just going to be miserable if neither one of them can figure out how to inject some positive energy into their work together. I was scrolling through a few of my old posts at TWoP (reputation points, I hardly knew ye), and I had to laugh when I realized how much Oliver/Laurel has been bothering me since the show started. Apparently Laurel's first scenes with The Hood about did me in for the show completely. The focus on them simply has not worked.

Thanks!

#12 is pretty much all the reason I need to ship Oliver and Felicity. Now I just need a compilation video of every time Oliver says her name. :-)

THIS. Seems to hit the nail on the head. I have no idea how the part was pitched to her or what's in her contract, but from the way she talks, she took this part because she wanted to be Black Canary, and for no other reason. I'm sure she recognizes the pay grade and status that comes with being the top billed female on the show, and that's why she's so resolute about Laurel not losing that spot by Oliver's side. But considering Stephen Amell got married about three months after this show started airing, she could not have been unaware that the guy was in a very committed relationship not the free-wheeling bachelor that would have made it easy for her to fake jumping all over. So either she never expected the "star-crossed lovers" to actually make out at some point (which, she was on Melrose Place, so she can't possibly be that clueless), or she simply ignored the aspects of this role that did not appeal to her and focused solely on the ones that did. And honestly, I don't think that has changed at all in the last two years: her interest in this role or her focus. Which is a huge problem, because such an insular focus means that we got a gleeful actor that jacket scene instead of the character that was supposed to be portrayed. Acting means going into that scene and remembering that, while you as an actor know what you think receiving this jacket symbolizes for the future of your time on the show, you as the character have no idea that you are receiving anything other than literally the clothes off your sister's back as she disappears out of your life for the second time in her history, and your acting should be tempered to your character's interactions accordingly. What I'm trying to get at is this: characters are not characters unless they are interacting with other characters. Viewers see, understand, and define characters based on their interactions with other characters. So it is very bad for an actor to ignore, dismiss, or otherwise be unaware of how his/her character is and should be interacting with the characters around her, regardless of the actor interacts with the other actors around them. If that is not happening, then the person in the role is not acting. And if that is not something the actor is willing/able to do, then they should not be in that role. I'm not talking about ability; I'm talking about effort. I understand that KC probably feels like a bait and switch happened and she didn't get the part she signed on for, but if she's is not interested in playing the role she's currently in -- which is that of Laurel Lance, sister, daughter, ex-girlfriend, and supposedly former-alcoholic -- then she should not be on the show. She needs to be dressing for the weight she currently is, not for the weight she hopes or think she deserves to be. And to take this analogy further, if she wants to be a different weight (or a different character), she needs to do it organically, through diet and exercise, rather than using pills or surgery to bring about a sudden transformation. One shows the growth of the character, the other requires a lot of extraneous effort (and would still need the diet and exercise to provide/maintain plausibility).

I think finding Roy's arrows just hit home for her that she didn't truly trust Roy, as much as she wanted to ignore everything and just run away with him. Every other time Roy has said, "It's you and me babe; I just gotta take care of this one thing," that one thing has been trying to be like the Arrow and putting his life in danger against her wishes. She had come to the realization that Oliver had known she was in danger and was keeping from her knowledge she needed to have; I think she saw those arrows, remembered him saying just a few minutes before that he didn't "know anything about the Arrow," and realized that she loved Roy, but she didn't trust him not to keep the truth from her as her other loved ones had.