statsgirl

No, the LoA knew the terrain and the easy way to get up. Yet another reason why it was unfair, because Oliver would have been exhausted from the climb and Ra's was just up there chillin', I mean relaxing. It's the lack of gloves that bothers me. After climbing up through the snow, Oliver's fingers would have been so cold, it would have made it harder to hold the sword, and that much easier for Ra's to disarm him.

i'd never heard of him before, but he's got my vote. Interesting that he objects to the drinking on the show; pre-island Oliver did a lot but post-island Oliver barely does any.

TV.com ran a poll of which would you rather take to dinner, nerdy Felicity or dressed up Felicity, and nerdy Felicity won 3 to 1. I think they can still do it as long as Felicity doesn't see herself as the prettiest, smartest, sexiest girl in the room. (You just know Laurel does, which is one of the reasons the character doesn't work for me.) It's like the trope of no one recognizing Oliver as the Arrow with the green greasepaint, it's ridiculous but you roll your eyes and accept it..

Considering how they use Felicity to get people to like characters, I wouldn't put it past them to put Felicity in danger so that the Black Canary can save her. (just kidding, I hope) I wonder if it's something to do with Sara, since Caity Lotz will be in ep 313. This is the third episode of sweeps?

I'm afraid that having Laurel fail when she first goes out as the Black Canary is just for the purpose of lampshading that it's too soon for her. And having done that and her three episode fail arc, in 3x13 she's going to have a "come to Sara" moment, aided by the Vertigo vision of Sara, and break through that wall and succeed, so that by 3x14, she's be in full BC mode. The Laurel/BC fans will be happy, and the rest of us will be saying "Thank God that's over." It's a cheat, but I'm afraid that's how they'll do it. It's possible, but I'm less afraid of this happening because while the show tries to see Laurel, Roy and Ray as superheroes, what it has got going for them is the Oliver/Diggle/Felicity Team Arrow. To lose that while trying BC, Arsenal and ATOM would be beyond stupid. (Not saying it's not going to happen, just hoping someone at WB or CW has some sense.)

I'm curious to see whether they will do Quentin/Donna. I think Charlotte Ross said about a month ago that she's going to be back on the show. When the episode aired, I tweeted that I wanted Donna back and dating Quentin. The tweet was favorited by one of the writers so they know the idea is out there in the audience as well as PB's campaign. That would be an amazing story. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the show's thinking, which is that men have agency and women are expendable..

I agree with every single thing you wrote, but I want to emphasize this especially because it's so true. I like Captain Jack Harkness but Malcolm Merlyn is interesting to me only in so far as he's balanced by another character equally as strong and as good at deception. I wasn't interested in seeing Oliver fight him physically, I was interested in seeing Moira fight him strategically. Then they killed her for more of Oliver's manpain, which left Malcolm just there, an outlier in the equation of the show. That's why I was hoping that Thea would get on her Moira, play Malcolm for a while and then turn the tables on him. The brain-washing plant? The complete opposite of what I was looking for from their interactions.

Wouldn't a Lance Family scene have to involve more than just Laurel and her father? Because we've had a ton of those, especially in the first two seasons, since they're the only Lances who are regulars on the show. The only way I can see it being a Lance Family scene without Dinah or flashbacks is if it's Laurel and Quentin at Sara's graveside. (Still would prefer it if Sara is not really dead thought.) All this sounds very good, and it's beyond time for Thea to have a good arc. The problem is, aside from Oliver because the show is about him, they don't seem to really care about anyone else's inner motivations and redemption arcs other than Laurel, and we've seen what feels like an endless number of those from her. Look at Roy, all the teasing over the summer about Roy finding out he killed a cop and how it was going to affect him, and it was over in one episode, in which he got a total of 6 minutes of screentime (I counted), and it was mostly about Laurel defending Ted Grant. Laurel gets more individual storytime than anyone else, including Diggle and Felicity. I really hope that this shot at becoming Black Canary is their last kick at the can trying to make Laurel happen because everything they have tried up to now has failed and it's taken up storytime that other characters could really have used. So add me in that while I will resent her being InstaCanary, it's better than seeing her train, and try, and fail, and try again, and be inspired by Sara's vision, and try again and succeed. And it would have justified what she was doing as a vigilante, that if she couldn't get them justice in court, she was going to do it outside of it. It would have been a better reason than because she's mad someone killed Sara, especially since Laurel knew Sara was involved in a dangerous crowd. Repeating this because it's exactly how I fell about it. There always seems to be a lot of Laurel in the episodes, but at least before this season, the lair was a Laurel-free zone.

I wouldn't have minded if they had actually explored Oliver's and Sara's relationship when they were with each other. There's huge conflict in their history -- she liked him but Laurel arranged to get there first, he asked her on the boat and she agreed but then she 'died' but really she was tortured, and then they got together briefly but she 'died' again and now that they're both back in Starling City, what exactly are they? Are they a passing fancy? Old friends who had been lovers temporarily? Two ships who should have connected but never had the chance to? There's a ton of unfinished business there but the show was so busy burning through storylines and the Lance Family Drama, we never really got to see what Oliver and Sara were to each other. And now we never will. In 3x02 when Felicity asks Oliver why he's so stoic when Sara "your Sara" is lying there dead, it was the first time I really felt what they could have been to each other. You know how Stephen Amells said at SDCC that Oliver would have only one woman this season because to have the caravan of women through his bedroom would undersell what they do in the season opener? Well IMO that to have Felicity start a relationship with Ray two months after that goodbye scene and Oliver's kiss would completely go against not only the goodbye but all Felicity's emotions we've been shown over the past two seasons. Felicity spent five years being single because of a guy she thought died in jail because of her. It makes no sense at all for her to move on to Ray so fast. (Not to mention, if the fandom turned against Sara for sleeping with Oliver, it's a mere shadow of what they'll do if Ray sleeps with Felicity, and the EPs want people to like Ray.) Wow. Forget the 582 women that Oliver already slept with. If Felicity is superhero catnip, Oliver is poison to any woman who gets seriously involved with him.

Done, good question. (I just hope # 1, 2 and 3 aren't the death of Sara, Laurel becoming the Black Canary and Ray becoming the Atom.)

Austin Butler, who plays Thea's creepy DJ, has been cast as the male lead. I liked Brandon Routh's film that Stephen Amell's creeped me out. For the first half, I thought I was watching a marriage fall apart, and then she started sleepwalking and they both did weird things, and I kept thinking if he loves her so much, why doesn't he get her medical help? I was surprised that it won a number of awards.

At Phoenix comic com, David Ramsey said that the two cities they are not allowed to use on the show are Gotham and Metropolis. He added that every time they want to use a DC comics reference, it comes with a ton of legal paperwork. Others have said that at the planning meetings for the next season, DC tells them which characters they can use, and others they can't. There were a number of references to Ted Kord in the first two seasons but when it came time for season 3, they weren't allowed to use the character and switched to Ray Palmer instead. I get the feeling MG and AK would love to talk about Batman and Superman and everything in the DC universe but they're not allowed to. For me, the romantic beats for Oliver and Felicity started in season 1 (e.g. the elevator shaft swing "in a very platonic way"). Sara was a FWB relationship generally thought put in there to stall Olicity. Sara even told him to get with Felicity, twice.

I don't think Felicity is going to move on permanently because she's getting as much buzz as Stephen/Oliver, but I don't put it past them to move her on temporarily. Didn't MG say the payoff was going to be in 3x13? That makes me think it's just Laurel because there isn't time to set up other payoffs for Thea or Ray, and they don't care enough about Roy. To quote Oliver "that would be my preference." I was going to say, maybe Oliver sees her in the flashback but then I remembered that he thought she was dead. The EPs have made such a hash of Laurel's and Thea's stories this season, that while there is still hope for Thea, I'm much less receptive to Laurel become BC than I was in September. There were a few ways I could have accepted Laurel becoming the Black Canary even though I'm not a fan of the character but starting with Sara's death for plot contrivance purposes and then notdoing the mystery properly, moving into Laurel not telling Quentin and not even looking for her killer but doing a Hulk impersonation ("Smash, Laurel, smash"), and now doing a four episode arc as she gets beat up (ugh) and then recovers, they've blown it more than I thought possible.

I was hoping that ended in the Cupid episode now they would only be working on the ATOM costume. sigh. Add that to MG's statement that he thinks the best romances are star-crossed and they get together, break up , get together again... and it's not the CW we have to worry about, it's Arrow's EPs.

She really does make good points, everyone is still taking away Thea's autonomy, and Sara's death was such a waste of both the character and the story. I can appreciate why she's fed up with the show.

How did the Board of Directors vote to keep in charge a CEO who tanked the stock?

But it's not enough just to have them all on the show -- they have to be fighting together for the big season finale. Otherwise they may as well stick with the two they've got. I think it really speaks to what these spoilers are that I'm mocking the show I couldn't wait to have return in September. Other than seeing how Team Arrow are when they learn Oliver is gone, there are things in the spoilers I'm in different to and things I'll fastforward but nothing that I actually do want to see. They've brought it up but people kind of need to forget it to buy Laurel with Ra's, and it's harder with Katrina Law standing there, a year older than Katie Cassidy. But I think that putting Laurel with an older man who won't put up with her histrionics and controlling would make me like the character more.

I don't know if he was blinded by sex or not but it's a terrible Oliver moment, and really speaks to what a bad CEO he was that he didn't have anyone else he had made connections to at QC other than the woman who was determined to take his company away from him. If he'd even called Walter for help....

I figure there is going to be a finale where they all fight against the Big Bad again, otherwise what's the point of all those superheroes in Starling City? I've actually been hoping for this because it seems like a more interesting story than anything they've come up with for Laurel so far and it gives her the opportunity to leave Starling City and seriously train with the LoA for a while if they're going to stick with her as BC. As long as you don't look at Nyssa it could work, Nable is only 14 years older than Katie Cassidy.

Arrow in general feels like a farm team for Batman. When I saw the goodbye scene that Marc Guggenheim termed a 9, I sort of rolled my eyes a bit because it didn't seem like that. But thinking about the whole of Oliver's goodbye in terms of the writing and directing as well as the acting, I have to agree. It was some really good TV. In the 2014 Goodbye Tour, first he goes to Thea because it began with Thea. Even though he knows she's been lying to him, Oliver is determined to sacrifice himself to keep her safe. She is what is left of his pre-island humanity, his baby sister, and everything that he is wants is to keep her safe. In the lair, Oliver is packing his bag to leave as Diggle and Roy arrive. To Roy, Oliver says "Take care of Thea", a world away from when they initially met and he warned Roy off as "Thea's disapproving older brother" and again a year later when he made Roy break up with Thea to protect her (and we all know how well that went). This time he entrusts his precious Thea to Roy's care and then hugs Roy goodbye. Why a hug? Because he knows Roy, who is alone in the world, needs him, that Roy asked "Don't abandon me" and now there's a very good chance that he will have to do just that. So for Roy, there is the warmth and physical contact of a hug. Oliver sidelined Diggle in the season opener because Diggle now had the responsibilities of a family and a child, he couldn't let Diggle risk his life and later Digg acknowledged that Oliver had made the right call. But now Diggle said he wouldn't feel right unless he was with Oliver, risking his life. It's a long way they've come too since Diggle was horrified to find out who the vigilante killer was. Oliver won't let him come along and they clasp hands goodbye, recalling the handshake when Diggle first signed on. It's a handclasp rather than a hug because this is a guy thing, two soldiers, comrades, acknowledging what they mean to each other. Then Felicity comes in and realizes what's going one. She's recently told Ray that there is one man who regrets kissing her, Oliver, and she believes it to be true. When she tells Oliver she won't try to talk him out of going, she thinks nothing has changed from last spring when she and Diggle tried futilely to talk him out of giving himself up to Slade, that she's a member of his team and that's it. But for Oliver, things are different and when he replies "I appreciate it", he does, because if anyone could weaken his resolve it's Felicity and what he feels for her. He appreciates that she knows him so well and she accepts him for who he ism that she won't try to dissuade him from his mission. Felicity asks him to do one thing for her and he answers that if it's her asking, he'll do it (I don't think she believes him any more than I do, which is a good thing) and she surprises him yet again by asking him to kill Ra's, to not only survive this battle but all potential battles with him in the future. He answers that he knows two things and one is that he'll do whatever it takes to protect his family. It's not a promise to come back as she asked him for in 2x09 but it's the best he can give her. He kisses her on the forehead, she grabs his sweater (you can see the neckline go down) and leans into it (SA rocks back slightly) The forehead kiss works better for me than a lip lock in terms of both characters. For Felicity, she's still thinking that he regretted kissing her so a forehead kiss is all she'd really be expecting. But this is Oliver, who has slept with 582 women (per David Ramsey) and swapped spit with more. Kissing Felicity goodbye is not about passion or lust, he's shut all that down to go do what he has to do. Kissing her on the forehead is pure caring and non-sexual love. He pulls away and starts to leave. Felicity asks him what the second thing is and he replies "I love you" entirely truthful for once and with no hedging. Stunned and speechless, Felicity watches Oliver leave, and the curtain drops on the end of the act.

I'm accepting that she will be the Black Canary at the end of the season because Oliver will need all those other superheroes to fight the Big Bad. If they are wondering whether to keep her as BC, that will be decided over the summer, but I am doubtful she'll hang up her buckles because they've spent so much time, especially this season, getting her into them. The same for KC leaving the show when her contract is up.

I'm putting this under spoiler quotes because while it's a reply to the posts above,

I could see only one person who said it. I guess people who follow spoilers don't post on his FB page.

Did you go over and post Starling City?

It's Oliver with HK hair on bluescreen so it's obviously a flashback. Did people think that this was present day Oliver and where he is after falling off the mountain?