statsgirl

It would be shocking. But if Thea already knows Ra's, why even get Oliver involved in it? More tweets coming in. Off to try to see if there is anything.

Thea turned on Malcolm when she saw he was keeping secrets from her, she told her she'd be his soldier but never again his daughter, and it looks like she's turned him in to the LoA for killing Sara. How is this a fight for her soul, because it looks like the Light has already beat the dark? And why would she join the LoA after already rejecting Malcolm?

But of course Oliver was going to challenge Ra's if that was the only way to save Thea. Once MM set up that Thea killed Sara, Oliver would do anything to protect her. So if the bargain was MM was absolved of his crimes for getting rid of Sara, why even bring Thea into it at all? It's only going to mess things up because Oliver will try to save her. My head hurts

If Ra's wanted an heir, he'd do better with Maseo's DNA than Oliver's. Surely there must be someone in the LoA who has the genes and would be willing. The Asia promo has MM saying to Ra's 'let me prove my loyalty to you' or something like that. And Nyssa has her men drag MM away, saying to Laurel, your sister is avenged. And then Nyssa tells Ra's that Oliver should be punished for not kneeling down to him, and Oliver is behind bars. Why punish Oliver if MM was doing Ra's bidding?

Why would Ra's want Thea? He doesn't even know if she can fight and since he didn't like it that Sara wasn't committed to the League, why force Thea into joining them? For that matter, why would he want Oliver? Why would Waller want Oliver, a barely trained resentful slave? Why? Why? Why?

I'd love to see Felicity stand up to Waller but the present day cast roster is already too crowded. It's just the sort of thing MG would do, but what would be the point? If Malcolm wants Thea since he's lost Tommy, teaming up with Ra's to get her to murder Sara is not going to help him.

If Felicity turns out to be Ra's daughter, I might just get interested in the season again. Diggle is with Oliver at last, but Felicity is stuck babysitting Ray Palmer so he doesn't hurt him. Really, how much am I going to like this? They already did that in The Climb, when Oliver volunteered to fight Ra's to save Thea. Two weeks ago when the promo for The Return came out and Oliver shouted "Thea, you're not a killer", I tweeted the EPs and said that I really wanted to see this season is Malcolm (kill!) vs Felicity (don't kill) in a fight for Oliver's soul. Nice wording AK. It's too bad I don't care about Thea as much as I do about O/D/F..

I'm sure the character named Dinah Laurel Lance was destined to be the Black Canary. Until season 1 aired and both the character and the actress ended up being hugely problematic. And then they compounded the problem by creating Sara as the perfect Black Canary in all but name. And having created a mess, instead of trying to fix it slowly and logically, they doubled down, creating some happy viewers and a whole bunch of really unhappy ones. Connecting Ra's to Oliver through Sara would have made much more sense and better storytelling, but then Sara would have been around to show up Laurel's inadequacies.

Is that pizza people are holding? LOL, they know that a higher blood sugar means more favorable impressions.

I think the only thing fishy about the Bates thing is all the energy they're putting into finding the killer of a man they knew raped a number of women. Was rape considered of so little importance back then? I was poking around and discovered that Baroness Orczy (who wrote the Scarlet Pimpernel) published Lady Molly of Scotland Yard in 1910, a series of short stories about Lady Molly who helps Scotland Yard solve crimes by bringing in her knowledge of domestic affairs, a precursor of Miss Marple. That's who Anna needs right now. Personally I never want to see Strallan again after his behaviour but I imagine he must have made peace with Edith and the other Crawleys since they would be traveling in the same social circles. Rose's remark about leaving the child-raising to nannies was typical of her class and the time. Tom seems to spend a lot of time with Sybbie, which makes sense since he's working class, but Mary only sees her son for the hour that the nannies bring the children down before dinner. When I was in school in the 1970s, a couple of girls got pregnant and both had to give up their babies for adoption and we were only boring middle class. One of the girls even married her boyfriend later and they had a couple more kids but it was still considered unacceptable for her to have kept her baby. It will never be not wrong for Mary to constantly cut Edith down, she does it without thinking, like breathing or shielding her eyes from the sun, (when even Violet thinks it's wrong, you know it is), but I'm glad to see that now that Edith has Marigold and is happier, she can deal with it better.

I dunno, I think they might be creative enough if forced to, but the problem is that they thought they didn't need to. They thought if they broke up the original Team Arrow, put Oliver and Felicity at odds, and started throwing characters from the comic books at the wall, viewers would be happy. Because that's what the audience wanted, more comic book characters living up to their comic destinies. Going by the spoilerTV poll, less than 20% of respondents came from the comic books, and of those who didn't, 3/4s aren't buying the comic books even now. Big mistake.

I think eps 318, 118 and 319 are the backdoor Atom pilots. I don't think there were any teases about Donna talking to Felicity about her feelings for Oliver, it was just us being desperate for something at last.

I can see Lyla and Diggle getting a message during the reception to get to work for ARGUS, and Lyla tosses it over her shoulder as she runs to change clothes.

I never thought Moseley was faking it to get out of the war. He was so miserable when he didn't have a purpose, it doesn't feel organic that he was a slacker like that.

Ep 19 is written by the team who wrote The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak. Here's hoping it's as good. Maybe it's Ray in the hospital after his suit blows up and Mama Smoak is in town visiting Felicity? It's rather a wasted of Charlotte Ross though. Is Nyssa developing multiple personality syndrome too? In The Climb, she told Oliver she knew he wasn't the one who killed Sara. Why is she acting all huffy now? And since Ra's is many, many years old, he must have lost a lot of loves in the past. Why is he against Sara because he thought she would leave Nyssa? If Nyssa is his Heir and she's going to use the Lazarus Pit too, she's going to have lovers die on her too. It's too soon, the suit doesn't work properly yet. That's why they have to go to The Flash later to get Cisco to help with it. I think he's serious. It's just the sort of crumb he'd think would be good for Olicity. He posted that before the dislike for the light scene in Canaries happened, when he still thought the flashback in The Return would break the internet.

Sibby and Donk are playing a game, Sibby is losing so Mary tells Donk to cheat so she can win. Insight into how Mary got to be the way she is. I knew Carson was going to tell Mary she can do better than Gillingham because he's one of the people who made Mary the way she is. Gillingham is boring but he's also honourable and deserves better than that. Mary needs someone who won't let her get away with her cruelties and her self-delusion (Blake would have worked) before she's ruined beyond repair. Blake "I'm posted to Poland". Mary "Some people have all the fun." later Violet to Mary: "Don't ever apply to be a diplomat." Violet is always the best. I liked Thomas mentoring Andy. I hope it's platonically though because Thomas needs a friend. I can't figure out why Violet is still holding on the Denker. I know she doesn't like change but this woman is making trouble in her household, both households actually. Maybe now that she's keeping Isobel, Violet can get rid of Denker. I loved the amount of luggage Violet needed for a few days in London though.

I think 'Broken Arrow' is more metaphoric -- Oliver in jail, Lance after the gang. If it were Oliver injured, Mama Smoak wouldn't be at the hospital. If it's a rip-off of the Batman movies, that could well be it. And maybe somehow it fails and that's when the bad things in 319 happen. Since killing is a tool for Ra's, maybe he wants it in the same way God wanted to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah.

Here's one -- Ra's realizes how totally behind the times they are in Nanda Parbat and offers to let Oliver and Thea off the hook in exchange for Felicity setting up a modern network for them. (This actually sense, it's never going to happen.) True that Oliver didn't train with the League and doesn't know their training methods and since he's opposed to them he's really the last person who should be recruiting/training for the LoA but since Laurel took only 4 months of boxing lessons and a box of new nail polish to become the Black Canary, yeah, I could totally see it.

I'm bitter because there are so many good storylines lines suggested here, much better than what's been playing out on screen. Oliver's identity crisis is as ridiculous as Laurel's BC costume.

But..... but.... but... there's only one woman for him this season! It will have to be a paper cup and turkey baster.

LOL, I was just about to complain about that, but on the bitterness thread. He's all Arrow except for Thea and even then he's Arrow because he's working with MM. There's no conflict at all except for the occasional longing look at Felicity which he never, ever does anything to further. He isn't even really friends-friends with Diggle any more.

In a loving family, it shouldn't matter though. As soon as Edith said she was very upset about Gregson's death, they should have respected that. Mary acted like it was a deliberate imposition on her picnic to have Edith sad. I know, he's completely delusional. A man who was looking to marry a fortune might marry a sharp-tongued harpy but Mary had no fortune, and why would a man want to tie himself to that all his life? She didn't create the circumstance that Mary was spoiled by the family and treated Edith like the red-haired stepdaughter (not Cora but Cora didn't protect her from Robert or Mary either); she didn't create the circumstance that Strallan left her at the altar (Robert and Violet did that) and she didn't kill Gregson. She doesn't even need to do anything for Robert and Mary to be frustrated with her, Mary especially seems to do that just by having Edith exist. Mary complained that Tom and Rose are her allies, (as if she needed allies) but if she showed any kindness to Edith when Edith asks (e.g. after Sybil died), Edith might be one too. I think Edith is going to miss Tom far more than Mary is because Tom is one of the very few people who is kind to her, but it's Mary who is always whining about Tom leaving. It's too bad Edith returned to Downton because she could have built a good life for herself managing Gregson's publishing concerns without have to beg for crumbs from Robert and Mary.

Dickie, Lady Sinderby and Thomas for the win! It wasn't a prank, the impression from the pictures was that Atticus was spending time with a prostitute on the eve of his wedding. I know of few women who would handwave that. I was expecting to see a flash go off in the hallway . How was there enough light there to get such good pictures? It's one of the interesting things that at 18 months of age, a child most resembles it's father. Anthropologists think that its so that he doesn't kill the child in case another male was the father. After that, they grow to develop their own looks. Mary to Tom: Rose is leaving, you're leaving and I'm left alone with [that drip] Edith. If you read that I've murdered her, it's your fault. Cora: Do you think you'll like your new grandchild? Robert: To my surprise, I think I will. Why, Robert? Did you think you wouldn't like a child of Edith's? What utterly foul people Mary and Robert are. Imagine Edith growing up with hearing that every day as a young child and a self-conscious teenager. She must have strength that she's not a psychopath or in a mental asylum rocking, rocking, rocking.

I think MG wanted to have it both ways, to be about their relationship but also about Oliver's moral views. He loves Thea in a brotherly way and he said he would do anything to protect her but he's not doing that at all by letting her believe the lies about MM and working with him. It's possible it pushes them further apart but if 3x19 is going to be a backdoor pilot for The Atom, Ray's got to be a good guy in it.

Giving her baby to the Drewes was a Hail Mary pass because she couldn't bear to leave Marigold in Switzerland. It's 1924, not 2015. If she told everyone that Marigold was her baby and she was keeping her, the society backlash would be on all her family members.for as long as Marigold was alive, especially on Marigold herself. I remember the 1970s and it was still a stain to be illegitimate and nice girls gave up their babies to be adopted. For a family of social standing like the Crawleys, It would have made Mary's night with Pamuk a walk in the park.