statsgirl

I took the "if that's what you do to women you love, I don't want to be a woman you love" as saying 'get your head out of your ass'. It was an attempt to show him how stupid he's being. Since Oliver's done nothing in the meantime, not even talk to Felicity about how she feels and that she's been hurt, that pretty much says that he's not going to budge from where he's standing right now. Felicity's abandonment issues don't even play into it for me at this point. Even a completely healthy person should run from who Oliver is this season because he's like a flashing sign "Doomed Relationship Material". Why does it have to be May sweeps? Given all the Laurel/BC stuff, I think the February sweeps could have used a little perking up.

Nice things to say about all three of them. I particularly like the tag to SA's picture "Why can't we have this guy?"

I was referring to SA's post about brunch with his wife and daughter, which really shouldn't have been public. I don't think he can commute, he works 16 hour days as it is. The movie will probably be filmed in the hiatus, and if it's the Susan Sarandon one, good for him.

He can't fight for her but he can tell her he loves her and then when he comes back push her away again. Talk about passive-aggressive. I disagree that Felicity isn't fighting for Oliver. She is. She keeps sticking around even though he constantly pushes her away, keeps dangling maybes after she asked him not to. She keeps coming in to work in the lair, being there for Oliver, there in case he ever changes his mind. Could she argue with him? Sure, she could make one stand. And then when Oliver shuts her down, because you know he will, his mind is like a shut steel trap, what is she supposed to do then? Stop being on the team, or keep coming in, humiliated at the rejection and coming back for more? apinknightmare, I want to marry this post. At this point, what Oliver is doing has moved beyond love and into cruelty.

And the men go down with agency, unlike the women.

Sure, Felicity could try to throw Oliver on the bed and have her way with him but he's just going to quietly take her by the arms, put her aside and tell her yet again that he can't be with her for reasons. And she'll have lost not only Oliver but whatever dignity she had left. Trust me, there's no way to fight for a man who honestly believes being with you is off the table. But Diggle refused to work with Malcolm Merlyn because while Deadshot is a hired killer, MM is a mass murderer who has no scruples at all. Diggle can work out a relationship with Deadshot because he has a code and standards but there is not way MM can be trusted. As Diggle said, to work with him is the first step to becoming him. Or what apinknightmare said.

I disagree that she rejected Oliver for MM. When Oliver came back, she rushed into his arms. And then after a brief hug and more time spent talking to Diggle and Roy than to her, he announced that he was working with MM. For Felicity, that said that the person who she thought was Oliver Queen was an illusion. He was about to tell her yet again that he couldn't be with her for the same stupid reasons. I see that as him dumping her because if he had wanted to be with her, he would have first greeted her as she deserved to be greeted, and then slowly and carefully explained his reasons. There was no way Oliver was going to say "Felicity, now that I'm back I want to be with you." She said the words but he dumped her first. What Oliver appears to have for Felicity is the medieval courtly love, when you're supposed to be in love with your lord's lady but it's an entirely pure, chaste love. You carry her scarf into battle with you but you never touch her. It isn't so much a matter of Felicity dumping Oliver as it is that she never had him at all, except maybe during the 2.5 summer which if you don't read the comics, isn't canon. He's said it; he's never shown it. He's never kissed her except to say good-bye, he's never held her, he's never done any of the things you expect for someone who says he's in love with you. At this point, if she needed a date for her high school reunion, Roy or Cisco is a better option than Oliver. It may be one-sided but what I see is that it's on Felicity's side, not Oliver's.

The Yes/No sides are about equal right now at 20% each. What's interesting is that 60% of viewers didn't read the comics and still don't. So overall, only 20% of respondents came from reading the comics, and 80% just watched the show. The EPs need to realize that most of the audience doesn't watch to see which comics character will be on the show next, they watch for well written stories.

From the Heartaches thread: The clock's running down on that though. We've got spoilers through 3x18 and he's still not doing it. 3x19 looks like a backdoor pilot for The Atom, so Oliver may do it then but it's doubtful. Even something huge happens in 3x20 to make him change his mind, that doesn't give Felicity much time to decide.

If he were really the Arrow, he would have encouraged Thea to kill Slade. Maybe he would have shot Laurel in the knee too to keep her from going out in the field. The only part I can see that he's not being Oliver Queen is with respect to Felicity. And also that Oliver Queen seems to be the part with the intelligence because since he decided to meet Malcolm in the middle of Starling City and team up with him, he's lost at least 60 IQ points. Maybe more, since he thinks the only way to defeat Ra's is to learn sword-fighting from MM, except he's not really doing that either.

This private/public stuff ... I don't get it. Robbie Amell replied to that post with "Great week". Why not just phone him up? It seems like game-playing to me, and then someone forgets facebook isn't really private and all hell breaks loose.

But the specific man is the guy that keeps shutting her out, as you pointed out. It's only a real choice if it's between two men, not Ray or nothing. Right now, it's Ray (rebound on both their parts) or waiting forever for Oliver to decide it's okay to be with her. That's not a choice.

From the The Return episode thread: I find the idea that it's okay that Moira died passively with her hands tied behind her back, literally and figuratively, instead of out there fighting for them because she was protecting her children to be sexist. This is the Moira who found out about Ra's al Ghul and contacted him in order to keep Malcolm Merlyn away from Thea. She shouldn't have died at all. But if she had to die, it should have been fighting and clawing with her last breath.

I don't think MG is kidding about the bouquet. It's the sort of thing he'd think would send Olicity shippers squealing while he continues Oliver's manpain like the flashback in The Return. As Robert Dougherty said in his review: At this point, the idea that everyone tells Oliver about his feelings for Felicity and he still does nothing has become a running joke.

I don't even understand why she would move on right away. She's loved Oliver for more than a year and she's had quiet dreams of them being together. Even if she's disillusioned now to realize that Oliver isn't the person she thought he was, the natural thing for her to do would be to retreat for a while and get herself together, as she presumably did for 5 years after Cooper's death, not immediately head for Oliver-lite.

Diggle's said lots, Roy has indicated he knows, Laurel hinted at it to Oliver, Slade just menaced it and still Oliver does nothing. Now we have to wait for Thea at the wedding to say something too, probably as Felicity catches the bouquet? Is this show being written by 12 year old girls?

Few people choose to die, but the men were given the option to fight back. The women weren't. Since MG brought the Star Trek reference to this episode (topic!), I'll quote the Klingon battle cry "It's a good day to die." Why? Because they could die fighting, a hero's death. I disagree. It's why characters die on this show, only female characters in the last two seasons. Other shows can motivate character growth without killing the women, even SHIELD is doing it these days. The only reason Sara had to die was because she was a better Canary than Laurel will ever be. Laurel's line about always heading towards the mask is pure retcon in terms of who they wrote the character to be for the first two seasons. Even in the flashback here, she only stayed in Starling City because her father guilted her into it, not because she wanted to help those who needed help. Taking the comments on Moira to her thread.

I rewatched the episode last night and I was struck by Violet's putdowns of Mary. (Win, win for me.) When When everyone is worrying about Edith and Mary is all "why would you bother about her?", Violet tells her that this dismissal of genuine upset is as tacky as crying in public. Later, when Mary visits Violet for tea and talks about her not liking Isobel's engagement because Isobel will now be the great lady, Violet tells her what is really bothering her. Mary dismisses it as ridiculous to which Violet replies "I regret telling you my real feelings. Have some cake" and Mary took cake because it's always all about her (as Blake told Gillingham earlier). Maggie Smith just nailed those lines. I think it's ironic that of the upstairs gang, Violet has grown the most as a person after Tom. I never would have thought it. Speaking of the Merton sons, I hope Isobel realizes they're never going to change because Lord Merton will never act like their father and discipline them. Even at the dinner table, it took Tom to tell them how rude they are and Robert to throw Larry out. At the end, when the other son comes in to get his father, saying that Larry has been waiting in the carriage since he left the dining table, Lord Merton says he'll be right there instead of what he should have said, which is that naughty boys get punished. I can't imagine why any of them would care. It's just personal gossip since neither Gregson nor Edith are enough of a celebrity for it to make real gossip for the middle class and certainly not worth risking their jobs over. Given how hard the receptionist (?) was trying to hide from Cora and Rosamund that Edith was there at the paper working, it seems like there is some affection for her from the staff. Because it's Mary, who he has always spoiled rotten. In this episode, said since it was going to be neither Gillingham nor Blake, could he tell her what he thought, and she replied, no, I don't care. I'd say he would never take that from Edith except he wouldn't have bothered himself enough about Edith to want to talk to her. Ever since Edith decided not to have an abortion, she has tried everything she could to keep Marigold with her, and been twarted either by society or her family or by Mrs. Drewe. Yes, she had a glass of champagne while she was looking after her child. This was the age when porter (a brown beer) was advised by doctors to nursing mothers. She probably did drive to the station with Marigold on her lap because since there were neither car seats nor seat belts at the time, it would have been the safest way to take Marigold. Overall, in terms of Marigold's well-being, being with Edith would be best. There would be money and an education and opportunities which she wouldn't get with the Drewe's, she would be deeply loved by her mother and raised with her cousins of the same age, have a variety of adult role models and a stability centuries deep that few children get. Edith made the mistake of making love with a man she loved and wanted to marry and got pregnant. I can see why some would condemn her for it in 1924, I have a harder time understanding it in 2015.

I was referring to Katie Cassidy. Both Tommy and Sara died to further Laurel's journey, IMO two better characters than Laurel. No one has died to further Felicity's journey, or indeed got short-changed for her character unless you could Laurel no longer being Oliver's love interest but that was going to happen anyway, whether there was a Felicity on the show or not. May if not too soon to know if they are going to need a character for an extended use. The EPs said that they start planning the next season as soon as shooting for the last one ends. And since he got less than five minutes of screentime in The Return, I wouldn't be surprised if Manu Bennett said no to any more returns. My point was that all the male characters, from Robert to Malcolm to Tommy to Slade to Oliver himself, were given a chance to fight back. Robert chose not to, the others all did. Moira's hands were tied literally and figuratively and neither Shado nor Sara had the chance to fight back. It's the difference between black and white.

Tommy was killed and Colin Donnell keeps coming back. The show seems to treat its actors with a lack of respect, except for some who shall go nameless. Manu Bennett complained at one of the cons in May that they hadn't offered him anything so he didn't know if he was coming back because he has to put his career first. Caity Lotz was going to do more episodes, at one point MG said five, but they booked her for three and apparently after Canaries she said "nope, no more". If Susanna Thompson has been treated the same way by the EPs, I can see why she would say no to a few seconds in a flashback episode. She doesn't need the money and she's got her self-respect. Tommy died a hero's death, saving the woman he loved. It was his choice. It was also a plot arc to help Oliver become a hero. Shado, Moira and Sara were all helpless in their deaths with no choice. (Moira's choice being either she dies or one of her children die is not a choice. If Slade had let her fight back and she had a chance, that would have been different.) They didn't die for something important, Shado and Moira died solely to give Oliver yet more angst, and Sara's death was completely wasted because she didn't need to die, being kidnapped could have spurred Laurel too, and once Sara had died, it was a completely wasted plot line to prop Malcolm and Ra's.

Since they need medical expertise, maybe Diggle could take a med tech course over the summer hiatus. He can start with on-line courses now (there's a good one in medical anatomy from Duke) and spent the summer getting practical experience. It's not as if they're using him in the field now that they have Laurel and Roy. *rme* sigh. Laurel really could help the team more as a lawyer than as a vigilante. It's the curse of that name.

They took KC to the TCA, and there was a whole lot of "Where's EBR?" cries. Could they really want to repeat that mistake again? At least there was a (poor) excuse for having KC there instead. Stephen Amell does enough press for the show that I could see why they would let him off. But KC and MN there and not EBR? Could they be that clueless?

I think you can have one or the other, expand the team but keep the relationships, or break up the relationships but don't expand the team. I think there could be some good storytelling having Oliver at odds with Diggle and/or Felicity as there was when Diggle quit in s1, but not for the whole season, which is what this feels like. Except for the cross-over episodes with The Flash, it feels like they've been at loggerheads since Oliver benched Diggle and dropped Felicity in The Calm. Meanwhile, Oliver is going out with Laurel and Roy, and leaving Diggle back with Felicity. Not nearly as enjoyable to watch. (Although expanding the team is problematic too. Roy fits in easily because he doesn't have much of a presence. When it was both Sara and Roy, Diggle and Felicity got pushed to the back. Felicity had a whole 2 lines in The Promise, one of which was cringe-worhty, and Diggle didn't have much more. Thea might be okay added in, although a Team of Five means less Oliver time with Diggle and Felicity. I worry about Laurel being added though, both because of her comic destiny and because of who Laurel is, someone who will never consent to being in the second tier.)

It says, we value one show, and it ain't Arrow.

I want to bang my head against my desk when I read MG saying that the original Team was good but not set in amber. Creatively, I understand why the EPs wanted to go beyond the Team of Three because if you tread water, you lose creatively. (Except for NCIS, that show hasn't moved in 9 years and it's still on top.) The problem is that nothing nothing that they brought on worked as well, not Ray and his suit, Laurel into the basement, Felicity fighting with Oliver. If they want us to accept something new, at the same time they have to give us something we enjoy to keep us coming back for more. Ask any psychotherapist. Or dog trainer.