statsgirl

If Diggle, Roy, Felicity, Laurel, ARGUS, Ray and the whole Starling Police Department can't get rid of Brick, not to mention calling Barry for help, what good are they? Oooh, nicely put. But she has to be removed from the main narrative so 1. Laurel can take her place as the Good Woman on the Team and 2. Ray can get his super suit built and become a costumed superhero which appears to be what really counts on this show. (Otherwise why would Arsenal and Insta Canary have any influence on Diggle?). At least they're giving her a reason to recuse herself from the Cave instead of just making her too busy helping Ray and have Diggle and Roy mad at her for shirking her primary responsibilities and letting Oliver down.

Hey, I love Smoaking Billionaires too. But I can see O/L/T in the past as they experiment. It might also have given Laurel a distaste for Tommy if she thought he was a sub there. I'm not MG's biggest fan but I agree with him there -- there is no way that scene could have been written without getting into the reasons for Oliver bidding Laurel good-bye, and that would have changed the episode entirely, if for no other reason than Laurel would have been justified in demanding Oliver do something about Thea and Merlyn instead of sacrificing himself to Ra's.. I think if she hadn't jellied, they would have kept looking for another IT specialist. But I also think EBR jellied a bit too much with SA. If I were the EP and really wanted the Oliver/Laurel OTP to stay, I would have kept her on the sidelines working from QC rather than brought her into the lair itself, especially since Laurel wasn't going to be there herself for another season. I would have been afraid of another Clark/Chloe fandom division, and I can't see the show wanting that, the current shippers wars are bad enough. The fact that her name 'Felicity Smoak' was supposed to be just an Easter egg argues that they didn't mean for her to become as important to the team as she did.

One of the two Time of Death writers. But it's also co-written by one of the guys who wrote The Secret Origins of Felicity Smoak. I don't see how Oliver could not side with Felicity after what Malcolm's done, unless Laurel is proved right by the time he gets back. Maybe that's why he accepts her on the Team.

The only thing that makes sense is Malcolm wanting to join. He looks good for Thea and he gets an 'in' to Team Arrow so he can do his underhanded stuff there while there is no Oliver. I wonder what the point is of pitting Laurel vs Felicity, it seems like a no-win situation. If Felicity is right, Laurel looks even worse for wanting to add Malcolm; if Laurel is right, there are going to be a bunch of angry fans for what seems to be throwing Felicity under the Laurel-bus too. They may already know about them. The episode description for the previous episode says "Meanwhile, Ray steps in to help Lance and the police force fight Brick, showing Felicity a new side of her boss."

That's going to be the great Felicity/Laurel scene, where Felicity admits that Laurel was right and knows better than she does?

I hope so too but I think since Ra's is going to rain fire upon the city, teaming with Malcolm will be something that saves them in the end.

Because Brick is more than they can handle on their own, and they need to honor Oliver's memory? (There seems to be a bit too much memory honoring on this show.) Because they need Laurel to be more a part of Team Arrow than Felicity is so we'll love her? Felicity is shutting down the Arrow cave and working with Ray while Laurel is cheerleading the Team.

Laurel & Roy: Brick is just such a bad, bad person. We need all the help we can get to defeat him. Felicity, We'll I've got this guy who is working on this suit.... Diggle: Sorry, Felicity, can't wait. I don't want to agree with Roy (and I really don't want to agree with Laurel) but we have to handle this thing now. Felicity: But what about the police? Laurel: Oh no, you can't tell the police. I couldn't stand to lose my father. And they're still using her to get people to like other characters. Maybe that's why we have to wait for Felicity/Thea scenes, people already like Thea.

If Oliver gets all upset at Felicity getting hurt, how much do you want to bet he's going to push her away to protect her? Just what I've always wanted, Roy and Laurel to team up against Felicity. And you just know that Diggle is going to side with them. Malcolm refused to take his wife's phone calls repeatedly as she lay dying, and then immediately abandoned Tommy. How is that a "kind-hearted father and husband"? I smell retcon. Written by Beth Schwartz, who co-wrote ToD, and Brian Ford Sullivan, who co-wrote The Secret Origins. I wonder which writer will have the stronger stamp.

Just after the player changes to Felicity at around 12, it flashes Moon Base.... All The Rage .... Power of Love. Ah, the beauty of being canon.

I wish I could believe the scene was Felicity saying "See this scar? I took a bullet for Sara. But listen, Laurel, unless you start treating me better ...." I wonder if Donna gets caught in the crossfire when Ra's goes after Oliver? Team Arrow? MG said that "I think the shit that Ra’s has planned is gonna make Oliver long for the days of Slade Wilson". I still have no idea why Ra's would have such a vendetta against Oliver though unless he's a coocoo as Slade was. Merlyn lost his wife, Slade was mirakuru'd, are they going to say that the Lazarus Pit makes Ra's crazy too?

Isn't his show one of the shorter season ones? He could still be Laurel's love interest, appearing recurring like Lyla or getting mentioned in passing such as Laurel worried about him getting hurt, or training a new fighter. The show is about Oliver Queen so anyone else's love interest doesn't need to be on fulltime, and the last thing this show needs is yet another superhero vigilante, we've already got the Arrow, Arsenal, Black Canary ATOM, and the Dark Archer, and soon to be Speedy I assume. It's getting far too crowded in there. She could still have been on the show in a recurring role in small doses like she was before the joined the Team but if Laurel was going to remain Oliver's love interest, they would want to keep Felicity and her chemistry far away from him.

People who are self-absorbed are rarely good in bed because it's about their own satisfaction, not their partners. On the other hand, I can believe that Laurel did something that other girls wouldn't do in order to keep Oliver going out with her. (And now I'm thinking about threesomes with Tommy, or maybe another girl since she wasn't surprised Oliver was cheating.) His definition and mine of "brilliantly acted" differ, but it's interesting that they feel they had to make everyone else in the episode OOC to get a good performance from KC. I don't think Laurel and Sara's relationship was bad because Oliver was a douche. It seems like the bad pre-dated Oliver because otherwise why would Laurel get her sister (who she would have loved) grounded because Sara had a crush on the guy Laurel wanted. That seems rather over-the-top. The only way to fix this would be for Laurel to address it directly but I doubt they will. Bad plotting all around? Or another case of upping the OOC to get a good performance? I love it. Even Moira ended up getting fed up with Robert's cheating, but for Laurel it would have been okay if not for it being Sara? Also a nice parallel to not telling Quentin about Sara because he would be too upset. This is another Fail at writing Laurel and Oliver's relationship. A good coupling fits together, they have things in common but enough differences to make it dramatically interesting (e.g. Castle and Beckett who both love weird sci and good wine). Past Oliver had selfishness and history in common with Laurel, Present Oliver has only history.

Ted Grant did flip Laurel when she started getting cocky about how good her boxing was and she landed on the floor complaining. Presumably he's been teaching her basic fighting moves but he's basically a boxer and that's no where near what's needed for the Black Canary. Has Laurel even met 50 Shades yet? I laugh, because it's Felicity who the billionaires go to for help. I think it's in character for Laurel to be so delusional. But Katie Cassidy believing it? I think he's back tracking. He said that there would be a lot of Felicity/Thea so people started thinking that Felicity might be involved in telling Thea about Oliver/Malcolm and setting her straight about who is the good guy and who isn't. With no Thea/Felicity in 310 and nothing specific in sight, it seems he was to pull back because people got too excited for them. Now MGs talking about Laurel/Felicity scenes. All of which makes me think that Felicity will be only minimally involved in the Team Arrow stuff and maximally in Ray's arc. At about the 40 second mark of the new promo, Thea throws something a knife?) at Malcolm which he catches. I suppose it's too much to hope that Thea is on to him.

Yeah,in spite of what MG is saying, it's going to be a Laurel arc. The justification for her taking over Team Arrow in spite of having zero combat or Glades fighting experience and jumping ahead of Roy's year with Team Arrow is that she's the leading lady of the show. They could address it though, and if they really believed they had screwed up Laurel's story, they would. (I can't believe that fanfic writers put so much more though into these characters than the show's writers do.) She could say that she didn't understand before, that helping people at CNRI was not about showing the world what a good person she was but about understanding what the people in the Glades went through; how she kept the anger from the boat sinking for reasons and that's why it was so hard for her when Oliver and Sara came home; that now that she's been hurt herself she understands the scars Sara carried and wish she had paid more attention to her sister when she was alive; that she wishes that as a lawyer she had gone after Malcolm Merlyn's empire to repair the damage he did to the Glades. But now she knows what Oliver does, what his Team does, and she wants to help every way she can. Unfortunately, it won't happen though.

How much do you want to bet the scene with Emily is Felicity telling Laurel that she didn't think she should join Team Arrow at first but now she's seen what a big heart Laurel has and she's glad she's on board? The shift wasn't that great for Oliver as it's going to be for her. For him, he wanted to fix what his father and friends had done to hurt Starling City because he promised his father that he would. So even at the beginning he's against the bad guys because it's the right thing to do. Laurel started out beating up bad guys because it makes her feel better to beat someone up I love i!. Solves the problem of two of my shows. Her fans love it.

The Return is where flashback Oliver visits Starling City, isn't it? Fashion is her passion, as Katie Cassidy has said. This is why I have a hard time accepting Laurel as the Black Canary, not because of her lack of fighting skills. It's because emotionally she's not in a vigilante place. Even in the last episode, she told Dinah that she hasn't told Quentin because she can't take losing someone else. It just seems to me that if you're going to be a vigilante, you should do it to protect the weak, not for your own reasons, be they to calm the fire or to glorify yourself. It occurred to me that if Laurel really is such a bad fighter, she could injured fighting, like in a wheelchair injured, then she could take the Oracle role on a BoP spin-off and Sin could go off to Nanda Parbat to become the next Canary.

Good point about Doug and Carol being an iconic couple that the show started in the middle of their relationship with. Actually it wasn't supposed to be the middle, Carol was supposed to die not just attempt suicide but they liked her so much they kept the character alive. But yeah, better written and acted. I think the initial notes for Laurel Lance are for a potentially great character. The writing, not so much, not ever really. Other than being a lawyer at CNRI, have we ever actually seen her do anything to help the weak or downtrodden? And even at CNRI she could be very nasty to people. If Oliver had slept with them before he was with Laurel, why were they an issue? There are probably a lot of rich 22 year old playboys who have slept with 10 women, but there's no reason they can't settle down when they meet the love of their life. Look at Warren Beatty. The fact that Oliver was with Laurel and still sleeping with other women was the deal breaker. Plus we know that he cheated on her with Babymama while they were in a relationship (because Moira thought it was Laurel who was pregnant), and was planning to cheat on her with Sara. Those facts rather suggest that he was a serial cheater rather than a serial monogamist.

bits of posts There have been all kinds of problems in the writing for Laurel with the result that it's hurt her character not just in terms of Oliver, but in terms of being a viable DA much less the Black Canary. I can understand why Tommy put her on a pedestal, because he was broken from losing both his parents at 8 and being in second place, Oliver's wingman. Even if he were in love with Laurel in high school and college and thought he would have been a better choice for her, I can't see him fighting Oliver for her. Laurel was such a strong, definite person Lost Tommy would have been drawn to her. We never really got to see why Oliver stayed with her other than because she was attractive and put up with his cheating and he was lazy. The flashback scene where she tells him she has to help Sara with her trigonometry and Oliver replies "I don't even know what that it" would have had most smart girls shoving him out the door. Sleeping with 10 girls and Laurel ignoring it because she wants to marry Oliver Queen was the death of her; Oliver going taking Sara after he'd got a girl pregnant was the death of him. That's okay for him because he then has to go through five/eight years of hell to become a better person. Laurel still hasn't gone through enough to recover from it. And the writing still fails because instead of having Oliver say in s1 that Laurel knew the real him while no one else did (still lying to her) and Laurel saying she knows him in her bones when she's just found out a secret other have known for 1 1/2 years, they should have had her realize this is a different Oliver than the one she knew and try to get to know him, acknowledging that others knew him better now.

Greg Berlanti loves Victor Garber, so maybe it will be him. I think he'd be a great contrast to Charlotte Ross (he'd provide Felicity's brains and Donna her heart and lack of a filter. They would also think it clever to tie this Felicity Smoak to the comics Raymonds.

I wonder why they' put Felicity last on the list, after Laurel, Sara, Thea, Lyla, Tatsu and even Carrie Cutter. Has the lack of a costume affected this writer too?

David Ramsey talks about why Diggle's race and maskless status matter to him. Not really spoilery.

The AfterArrow one was during his time off and I get the feeling he'd been in LA for a while so it would have been 311 or 312. He returned to set fairly soon after so maybe it was 312. I get the feeling that SA wishes they would just let the issue of Felicity vs Laurel drop so he could get on to talking about what interests him about the show.

From the Access Hollywood interview, SA's reply about KC as Black Canary And then he goes on to talk about wonderful the costume designers are. Nice, changing the topic like that. I was going to comment on SA's face but Velocity23 got there first. He smiles when asked about Felicity, and it drops immediately she says that in her mind he's still in love with Laurel, to which he replies that at this moment, it's "clearly Felicity". Then she goes on to ask about Raylicity as if he's going to say that Ray is a more suitable match for her. And they say Olicity shippers are fanatics. This is going to sound mean, which I don't mean it to be, but I don't think she can. Her co-workers say she's a nice person but I haven't seen any depth of insight in any interview with her, not even about fashion, and even talking about Laurel's relationship with Sara because she has sisters of her own doesn't get to the real conflicts between them. She just seems to say what she was told about the character when she was hired (she has a big heart, she fights injustice, she's Oliver's true love), and it's made more problematic because she's a method actor. She doesn't seem to get the character who Laurel is and it's reflected in the acting and in the interviews.

I really don't see how they can keep Laurel out of the Arrow cave if she really is going to become the Black Canary. And MG said there were lots of Laurel/Felicity scenes coming up. From tweets, spoilers,interviews, it seems like Diggle is going to be the one to lead the team while Oliver is gone. Good. The bad is that it seems it's going to be Roy who talks them into letting Laurel play on their Team. Nope, not Roy, it's Arsenal the suit. Why is Katie Cassidy talking about Laurel's heart and how big it is? Did she beat up that guy because her heart is so big? Because so far she's only fighting for herself to quench the fire. I think Oliver only returns at the end of 312 so I still expect that to be an Oliver-gone episode. Hopefully back in 313 though. Since Katie Cassidy and Brandon Routh have been the ones giving interviews, it seems like they are the one who are given the chance to acquit themselves. It looks like poor Roy gets shafted yet again. (First in 2B because so much Slade/Sara/Laurel going on, then again in Guilty because it was about Laurel & Ted Grant. Ugh. But at least if they are bonding and Felicity's loss is right now, hopefully Ray is not such an idiot as to make a move on her at this point. They needed to do something the change things up so the show didn't get boring (why Oliver is missing now), but they didn't want to lose Diggle from the Team, he's too well-liked. So he's off the for blink of an eye, and back to help find Sara's killer. To quote someone on the Downton Abbey thread about Robert saying Cora is smart "compared to him, she's a rocket scientist." Perfect