statsgirl

Bringing this here from the spoiler discussion thread, it's fun speculation about how they're going to handle Oliver clutching Laurel's picture on the island in season five when he's back there again: I think the picture on the island is the easier part to fix. When Oliver goes back to the island, he takes the picture out, acknowledges that hanging on to it helped him get through those dark days at the beginning, but now he's a different person. He tenderly puts the picture into his father's book and packs them both up for when he's rescued. The harder part is that picture on Oliver's desk in the present day season one scenes. That implies he was still that much in love with her.

Or maybe frustration goes with not having your OTP together. While they were overwhelming the thing most people were thankful for in TV Line's Readers Give Thanks comments, there's a lot less talk about them on-line since they got married. (Arrow got a couple of mentions too.) I don't understand shipping couples that are never going to be canon (Regina/Emma) but that's just me.

Probably the "big payoff" is Laurel coming into her own as the true Black Canary. I know I can't wait.

TV Junkies: Five couples in need of mistletoe

I agree, I think they do need to talk about Oliver's feelings for Laurel and the Oliver/Laurel/Tommy triangle and put it into context with respect to how the EPs are thinking today. I just hope they don't compare Laurel's feelings then to Felicity's feelings now. No good could come of that, IMO.

I wonder if the Amell's Christmas party this year is going to include a Bad Wig contest. Robbie can bring his from Firestorm. Gosh, I hope so. That would be really great. At this point, there isn't anything in 11 - 14 I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to the Russian FBs too. I wonder if Oliver puts his hair in a ponytail to show he's a tough guy meaning business. But season 5 is island FBs again? That's going to be annoying.

It's nice to see Colin Donnell there at the party. Is SA actually singing with him? I wish I know who all those people were.

Interesting the difference between the two sites. At Spoiler TV, JtV is likely to be cancelled, at TV Line, it's 'too early to tell'. Right now, I'm glad to know Arrow is likely to be renewed (although that syndication number 88 helps). I'll see how I feel in 2015.

Maybe Oliver can say that he's glad that Tommy and Laurel have found happiness with each other, as he moved on with Shado. It would help to explain why Laurel's picture disappeared in s2, and honour what Oliver has with Shado. It won't help much with why Oliver jumped into Laurel's bed the first chance he thought he could have her, screwing over his best friend who believed in him far more than Laurel did, but they'll have to live with that or retcon it with Stone Cold Oliver. They have to try to convince viewers that Oliver/Laurel won't happen again because to do anything else would spoil his relationship with Felicity. She rejected him because he wasn't all in, now he's left her saying that he loves her and to start again with Oliver/Laurel is going to anger the Felicity fanbase, which appears to be considerably larger than the Laurel one. Thus showing they really didn't learn from last year's mistakes after all. I can buy that Arrow is bigger than just Oliver, but that's dependent on which person it's shown to be bigger with, and all the spoilers for 311-314 are about characters I don't care about. It's like the flashbacks, I don't care but they don't annoy me unless they take over the show and I'm not getting what I want, as happened in 2B. If I have to watch to see the emotional payoff of living without Oliver, I want it to be Diggle and Felicity, and maybe Roy a bit, not Roy or Thea or Malcolm and not Laurel.

I think that if I had been watchinh the show he apparently was, I wouldn't have liked it either, Luckily, I was watching something else.

Maybe it will be like in Hong Kong and he'll try and they'll threaten to kill Thea if he does. The question is why in the world would Waller move him to Starling City when the Suicide Squad is close by to do whatever she needs Oliver to do, and do it more effectively? In the pilot episode, the conversation Laurel and Tommy have in the alleyway implies that they hooked up over Oliver's death and Laurel regrets it, although Tommy regrets it not continuing. But would they still be occasionally hooking up three years later, since Laurel kept saying it was a mistake? If the parallel is him pining for Laurel in the past, and for Felicity in the present, it will really weaken his feelings for Felicity. The point of loving Felicity is that it's completely different, more adult and faithful, than his feelings for Laurel. Hee. Was that a Freudian slip, or did you really mean 'twit'? (I'm hoping for the latter.) I'm still wondering about this tactic of marketing Oliver away or minimal during sweeps. Not just me, the guy who writes the We Minored in Film reviews is coming back for 3x10 to find out how the team does without Oliver and then he's not much interested in the rest. I want to know how the team deals with finding out Oliver is dead, and how they react to him coming back. Given the spoilers, there's nothing in between that's must watch for me. The flashbacks are already problematic for me, especially the Hong Kong flashbacks. I. don't. care. So seeing Oliver nursed back to health by a random person who is not Diggle or Felicity is just as bad as flashbacks. There's no emotional payoff for me. I thought it was supposed to be an abandoned island? If there were someone else there, wouldn't they have handed him a razor and a pair of scissors? Edited, because there's no excuse for using 'was' instead of 'were'.

That's very cool. And ohmigosh, the arrows actually are bright green! The show is shot so dark, I thought there were a dark hunter green.

David Ramsey said at Phoenix comic con that there is less shirtlessness this season because it's very hard to keep up the eight-pack, or six-pack or even a four-pack. I guess we'll have to rely more on other factors this season to keep watching, like you know, acting.

I am completely loving this story right now, especially with what is going on on the show. If I could take it to bed with me and hug it all night, I would. Also in the great fic theme, ash818 is continuing the Legacy fic with The Man Under the Hood, as Jonathan Queen steps up to continue the family business and learns that not all the bruises are on your skin.

Eonline: 16 Actors who should have got Golden Globe nominations

Nothing says "I really value you and what you do" like dropping some serious money. Just sayin' since it's Christmas and all. What changes did they make to the later season 2 episodes? Thinking about it some more, it seems to me that the only change they can really make based on the ratings for 310 - 313 is how the season ends. If Black Canary, ATOM and Arsenal are a hit, then Oliver can decide to be Arrow part-time, and work at QC the rest. If they're not, then Oliver can say "thanks for helping out guys, but being the Arrow will stay my full time job although I'll take time off for date nights now and then."

SA said on the AfterArrowShow that there would be two episodes in which we would only see Oliver in flashbacks. I presume those are 310 and 311, and he was on set shooting one day of 312.

I understand that they may want to try out Arsenal and Black Canary in January when it's not sweeps time, and I can understand putting in a flashback episode. But I think that they would have done better to either make 3x13 a heavy O/D/F Team Arrow episode rather than one about Canaries, or make the flashback episode 3x15 and have 3x14 the O/D/F Team Arrow,. A lot of people watch for the original Team Arrow, to take that off the show from 3x09 to 3x15 and replace it with Laurel, Roy and flashbacks, including during February sweeps, doesn't make sense to me. If they were under pressure to expand the Arrow universe, killing Sara was the worst thing they could have done. Sara, Helena, Nyssa and /or Sin could have made a Birds of Prey show, I don't think Laurel will even be able to make up for Diggle if a Suicide Squad spin-off should lure him away. But wasn't the art history lesson a relatively minor change in terms of the overall episode? It still remained Oliver/Slade/Sara heavy in both past and present, Diggle and Roy had little to do and Felicity was reduced to two lines, one of them excruciating (Please save Oliver). I don't know what the original plan was but it seems like there was little change to it other than the tour of Queen Manor. It's possible to make some minor changes to the overall season given feedback to 10 - 13 although not a lot since they will be already writing the finale, which is what I've been saying. I have no doubt Roy will remain Arsenal and it will probably be too late to change the course of Laurel (even if her Black Canary is a fail she's still going to be in the finale saving the city because they'll need her) but it's possible to tinker with Ray, especially as DR said that they don't really know yet what they're going to do with him. I think Brandon Routh's career plans will play into it more than viewer feedback, so as far as I can see, any changes they make to final episodes based on the Arsenal/Canary quartet will be minor. What you see is what you'll continue to get.

Maybe the 2 3/4 episodes felt like 4 or 5 to David Ramsey. I suspect it will to me. It's hard to verbalize what exactly it is that makes me want to watch this show. I like all of Oliver, Diggle and Felicity independently, but it's when they all get together on a mission that the show lights up for me. And while I enjoy some of them in other relationships (Diggle/Lyla, Oliver/Thea), I need enough time spent on O/D/F as a group to really like an episode. Felicity/Barry only worked for me in terms of what it did for Oliver's story, although I really like Felicity on the Flash, and the Ray/Felicity scenes this year are like sandpaper. I thought Suicide Squad was good but not great because there was only one scene with Felicity and I was so fed up with Oliver whining about Slade. It wasn't till 2x20 that the show got back to what I watch for. In 3x10, we'll see Felicity and Diggle react to Oliver being gone but 11 and 12 are big episodes for Arsenal and the new Black Canary. Oliver may be back in 3x13 and there will be a hug with Diggle and a handshake with Roy (just to mix things up) and maybe a Felicity reaction to being abandoned but an episode called "Canaries" is not going to be Team Oliver heavy, and no way will there be enough time to deal with what Felicity might be feeling. By this time, I won't want some scenes, I'll want a substantial storyline for O/D/F because it will have been so long..My guess is that Oliver will object to Laurel fighting, we'll get lots of parallels with Sara, Laurel will prove her worth in the field and then Oliver will finally accept her fighting with them. (I'm bored already.) And then he still has to find out what Ray's been up to. 3x14, like 1x14 and 2x15, seems to be heavy on the flashbacks. The Odyssey worked for me because in contrast to Oliver on the island, the present day was a bottle episode with lots of Diggle and Felicity. I didn't make it through watching The Promise because it was Oliver/Slade/Sara past and present. We'll see what 3x14 turns out to be but with Tommy and Thea in the past and Slade showing up in the present plus a very crowded Arrowcave, how much time is there going to be for Diggle and Felicity to have meaningful interactions with Oliver? "Watch your back, Oliver" or "I pinged his phone; he's at Main and Fifth" doesn't do it for me. I want Oliver and Diggle to sit down and have a meaningful conversation; I want some fall-out with Felicity from Oliver leaving before 3x22. So it looks like 3x15 is the earliest I'll get back the Team Arrow I watch the show for and by then it will be almost March, a long 2 1/2 months since The Climb. That's why it's starting to feel like 2B, because the thing I watch for, Original Team Arrow, will practically be homeopathic by then. (See, there are Diggle and Felicity in the Arrow cave standing by the mannequin where Oliver's suit stands. There must be a few molecules of it left there while he's out with Roy and Laurel, it's a Team Arrow moment..)

I don't think he was in Starling City before he showed up last season. but this is when he comes back to the show although "The Return" doesn't refer to him. So maybe it is about Oliver returning to Starling City and not having time to go to a barber. If there is little Diggle and Felicity in 3x14 because of all the flashbacks, I will be disappointed as we've just come off of the Canary/Arsenal quartet. Does that mean I don't get the show back till 3x15? It feels like 2B all over again.

He can't be doing it to protect her because that weakens Laurel and this whole season is supposed to be about how strong she is. He can't be angry because Laurel is all he's got left. Sara's dead, Dinah's moved on, and his whole world is Laurel and the police station. And his partner, the Arrow, who is currently dead now too, although Quentin doesn't know that either. I don't think there's any way they can write this and save Laurel's character.

The end of season episodes normally get plotted out in December or January for TV shows so they will be in the hands of the assigned writers by the time the BC arc airs. It takes a couple of months to write an episode and then one or two weeks after the white draft is done for the director to do his stuff before they start shooting (SA's explanation for why he won't be directing an Arrow episode). Is the end of April when they stop shooting? If there are any changes as a result of 310 - 312 ratings, it's going to take some pretty skilled tap dancing by the EPs unless Berlanti already has a Plan B. Most likely the season will end with Aresenal, BC and the Atom helping Oliver fight the Big Bad and changes come later.

Isn't that what a deleted scene is, a scene that is shot but the producers decide not to use it? I think the fact that they would have to go back to s1 to find a romantic shot of Oliver and Laurel says something.

The tumblir stuff is interesting. There are only 5 canon couples and the rest are all non-canon slash ships, although I'm not sure what that means.

So I'm assuming they also cut the frames of Oliver thinking of Laurel as he died? The comments are indeed interesting. I don't think I've ever been a member of a cult before.