Midori Ya

It's interesting to read Jeff's perspective, and makes me even more convinced the show failed tonight. Unwanted touching and accusing someone of unwanted touching are two serious things. If the show wanted to address this, and if the show's goal was to show how confusing such situations can be, then they needed to do a much better job pulling together all the various strands that were going on and making sure the audience was aware of them. Jeff points out many instances in which people didn't know what other people were saying. Well, as a viewer, it's not always clear to me how much or how little information is being shared, as it's more than obvious to anyone who watches the show that there's far more communication going on behind the scenes than is ever shown on camera. So I don't think the audience can be expected to know the limits of the various players' knowledge about what was being said. And it certainly wasn't clear to me that at some point the producers felt Dan was being shown in an unfair light. If we were intended to use this as an opportunity to examine ourselves and these types of the situations, then the show needed to be much clearer on exactly what was going on, and who knew what, and who was saying what and why. Now, I understand that in doing so, it likely wouldn't have worked well as a typical Survivor episode, but again, if they wanted to deal with this in a serious way - as they seemed to lead us to believe was their intent - then they should have edited it appropriately. Instead, we got this half-assed half-serious, half-handwaving it away as just game play approach. Yes, after reading Jeff's statement, I'm more than ever convinced that this was a big fat FAIL for Survivor tonight.

The big fail tonight at TC IMO was that Jeff failed to call out Missy & Liz and force them to discuss their role and their motivation in the situation with Dan and Janet. Jeff told Dan he was never going to let this go, but he totally let Missy & Liz off the hook. Without acknowledging and discussing what role those two played in the situation, it felt like the producers of Survivor were gas lighting us. Were we supposed to think Dan's transgressions were serious, or at the end were we supposed to just chalk all this up to game play? Was Survivor saying "yeah Dan did all this and we took him aside and gave him a stern talking to and warning b/c this is serious" or was Survivor just handwaving it all away as a bunch of the women lied about Dan to Janet in order to manipulate her and that's all just part of playing the game, no biggie? Survivor seemed to want to have it both ways, and I don't think that works at all. Also, if Dan was pulled aside and given a warning presumably early on (b/c that's when they showed the producers notes) why was he so surprised that some of the women were complaining about his behavior? Why was he so surprised that Janet would have been reacting from that viewpoint; why did he accuse Janet of cynically trying to make up the whole situation? This failed on every level. Above all the show failed Janet, the one person who was really acting with integrity. Normally, I'd say the show didn't "owe" anything to Janet, except Jeff & the producers made a big deal about how serious the whole Dan-situation was; so since that's the way they wanted to approach it, then yes, they owed more to Janet than just leaving her hanging out there. Sorry to see Jamal go.

So glad to see Eugene! Hadn't seen him in a while and was getting worried something had happened to him or maybe he was no longer a contributor.

Mika is a woman who knows the value of being affiliated with prominent and influential men. First her father, now Joe. She is where she is because of her last name. And it shows. She's a woman desperately in search of something to call her own. Before she flipped over to KYV, she was spending her time preaching about how she was no longer obsessed with weight loss and fitness, having freed herself from her obsession with, and black-and-white thinking about, food. Ironically, and with her typical lack of self-awareness, she then "demonstrated" her freedom from body shame and dieting by taking it upon herself to criticize and police what everyone else on the show ate, thus drawing more attention than ever to the concept of making people think about food in black-and-white terms and shaming people about what they eat. God forbid, someone ate a donut on-set! So much for her mission to normalize attitudes about food. Now, with all her KYV crap, I find myself nostalgic for the days when she was focused on her mission as the show's resident food-police and lecturer on the immorality of sugar. Sigh.

Even before all the Mark Halperin revelations. I never liked him on the show. Hope they don't bring him back. Always came across to me like he was busy trying to demonstrate how he was superior when he was on the show, and it made for boring and stifling discussions.

Has Eugene been around lately? Granted, I don't see every hour of MJ every day, but feel like I haven't seen him in a while. I've missed seeing him.

Jon Meacham sure looked depressed when he first came on.

Eh, agree to disagree. It's precisely because he did have options other than Sara to cheat with - such as Samantha, and all those other girls he slept with that Laurel and Sara discussed once - that it was especially cruel. Sara offered but he didn't have to take her up on it. So yeah, I think that shows he had a real cruel streak.

Congratulations to KC. She seemed to enjoy playing Black Siren.

I always did think Oliver's choice to cheat on Laurel with her own sister showed that an especially cruel streak was present in him even before all the trauma from the island.

The person who wrote the summary may not have included every single detail. But overall if it's: convoluted, has major plotholes, refers to important events that had to happen offscreenville (or better yet, doesn't even refer to them so the viewer has to make inferences or create headcanon in order to connect crucial dots), and has characters doing things that miss major emotional beats - then that does sound like something MG would come up with.

Yes, I agree w/ you that that specific instance of a tease -- showing what seems to be LL at the cliffhanger -- is problematic. Again speaking only of what I have seen from some social media fans, I think there are at least 2 reactions to that tease among fans who want the LL BC back. One group does think this is a way, albeit probably very convoluted, of somehow giving them back the E-1 LL BC version. In other words, they have faith that LL is going to be brought back and so yes, pursuing "teases" like this is likely just going to enrage & alienate them even more. Then there are also some who would like the E-1 LL BC back, but they are very cynical and assume that this is exactly what it seems to be (at least to me): a tease. In other words, they don't really think they're ever going to get LL BC back, at least on Arrow. But this latter group also seems to have an overall cynical perspective on pretty much everything Arrow-related, so they don't seem to necessarily feel singled out for ill treatment. In other words, yes, they think they're just being toyed w/ and Arrow producers are trying to manipulate them, but they also think Arrow writers seem to do this generally about many Arrow-related things overall. I guess they seem to have the attitude of "yeah, I'm going to keep watching but I see what you're doing there and it doesn't fool me one bit"

Generally I agree w/ what you're saying here, but I am aware, from visiting various discussion forums, that there are some portion of fans who would like to see Black Canary back on the show and are open to it not being LL. I've seen such comments when the talk was centered around Tina possibly being brought in to become the next BC. For instance, I know of specifically 2 "comic fans" that want BC back, were outraged at the idea of BC being killed, but never liked the LL version of BC and are open to the possibility of Tina taking over the role. So I think there are some fans who have an allegiance to the idea of BC and her place in GA canon, but never liked the Arrow LL version. Their outrage at the death of BC would seem to be more abstract and focused on the "principle" of killing BC, rather than personal attachment to the LL Arrow version. And then of course it's always hard to know how the portion of the broader audience who may have enjoyed the BC character and were dismayed at her death but do not participate in social media would react.

Don't know anything abt these polls and awards. But if TCA is rigged as mentioned above, then I can see how actors might have philosophical issues abt promotion. Problem is - and maybe I'm missing context - was seemed to me his tweet answer abt not promoting TCA "b/c I'm 35" could be dismissive of teens. As if he's more mature than to concern him w/ things young naive teens are concerned abt. Sure he didn't mean it that way. but framing it as b/c he's 35 opens the possibility. If I were teen viewer, I think I'd feel offended. Anyway, my personal headcanon abt Steve's various social media missteps: he's irritable from dieting and working out! Yes, he's bulking up & probably putting on weight, but he also looked kinda like he had ripped abs in one photo there. You can't be ripped if you don't keep your body fat down. I know from past experience if I've been dieting & really working out, after a while I'm starving, short-tempered and irritable. Steve - stay off social media until you go eat some pasta, some ice cream and take a gym rest day!

Good points. But tho' he might have been annoyed abt the question during TMNT tour, this was at con where Arrow-related questions were the point, so it was appropriate question and IMO not appropriate for him to translate irritation abt inappropriate questions in a TMNT promo setting to a venue where it was appropriate (or was this not at the con? Was this another TMNT-related gig? maybe I'm missing that context). Also, agree he has nothing to do w/ Flash. But he's smart enough, at least I hope so, to know that the shows are part of a connected universe. They have cross-overs obviously. He wasn't being asked abt how Flashpoint would affect Flash, but how it would affect his show. He may be tired of answering that question, but hey, what does he expect? Just like he can expect multiple questions about Olicity, the upcoming 4-show crossovers and other related topics over and over again. That's part of the job. And agree, the site probably just ran w/ his response to stir up drama, but again, he should be smart enough to know that when you're a public figure these things are going to happen, so all the more reason to be careful abt how you answer things in public, including your social media content. Sarcasm can easily be missed and the sarcasm accomplished nothing, it's kind of childish and indulgent.